Beneath the glass dome of Paris’ Grand Palais, everything was set up like in real life: baggage check-in windows, personnel on the ground, flight status boards… After the supermarket, Karl Lagerfeld is now bringing his beauties to a Chanel airport. This collection was first and foremost a pragmatic and fantasy-tinged interpretation of the idea of traveling. It’s also a collection that propels the red, white. and blue stripes of the French flag out into an interconnected world. For Spring/Summer 2016, the double-C brand plays with flight attendants’ uniforms to closely imitate the world of airports. It’s immediately apparent that next season’s Chanel woman has the soul of a globe-trotter. Through skirts with tiny flounces, jewelry with tribal inspiration, and frayed fabrics, this Chanel beauty lives across several latitudes.
This spirit inserts itself into the creations themselves as well: long skirts open up to pants. “If you zip it up, you have a skirt or you have the pants alone, this can all exist and coexist.” explains Karl Lagerfeld. It’s in this same spirit that the new vision for the Chanel suit was born: a 100% embroidered piece without pockets or logo, or even the smallest CC-monogrammed button. This suit is purer and more stripped down the emblematic style; collarless, the suit is imagined in black, grey, midnight blue, white, or red tweed with silvery threads forming small checked patterns. This collection is abundant in checkered prints that almost imitate tartan. Spring/Summer 2016 thus imposes its own truth: Chanel will always be Chanel, and the brand’s signature will always remain this emblematic suit first imagined almost a century ago… But today, Karl Lagerfeld is modernizing it and accessorizing it with a backwards snapback!
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