Converted post office awash with Chanel

BRITAIN: Karl Lagerfeld made a rare London appearance yesterday to present a Chanel fashion show outside the official catwalk calendar called "Paris Londres Maisons d'Art" to highlight the work of the seven Parisian couture artisan houses with which Chanel has collaborated for decades.

Five years ago Chanel acquired these ateliers specialising in everything from costume jewellery to millinery, including the embroidery house of Lesage, and since then it has presented special collections each year which have been shown in Paris, Tokyo, New York and Monte Carlo.

The London presentation took place in a converted post office in Victoria, now the premises of Phillips de Pury, one of the oldest art auction houses in the world, which has held sales for among others Napoleon, Marie Antoinette and Beau Brummel. Guests included Naomi Campbell and Yoko Ono, whose son Sean joined the model Irina to provide live music. The place was packed with well-heeled women wearing Chanel. Dozens of dark limousines waited outside.

Given its raison d'etre and the season that's in it, the clothes had a festive touch with black riding coats decorated with colourful jewellery, seams picked out in silver or gold piping and grey houndstooth or plaid waistcoats glittering with crystal. Though such references to traditional British dress were deliberate, bowler hats cocked atop blonde bouffants were hardly subversive. The show seemed neither particularly Gallic nor particularly British in spirit nor particularly new.

But it did have that familiar Chanel mix of street trends rendered with great force and finesse like skinny satin trousers with jet embroidered jackets along with more romantic pleated and pintucked black dresses.

As always, a host of accessories told their own story from orb-like evening bags to elaborate velvet shoes with gold and crystal heels. Black leather fingerless gauntlet gloves, a Lagerfeld signature, were fringed with silver, but the designer in his familiar frockcoat and white shirt failed to take his customary runway bow.

© 2007 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times