“Cover that boob up so I can’t see it anymore.” This is very well how the creation of Chanel’s pasties could have begun. If you’re looking for a painting to clear things up, it would be “Gabrielle d’Estréés and one of her sisters”, a piece of artwork from the Renaissance with a connotation far from the one we might give it today. It was in 1996 that Karl Lagerfeld dreamed up this small piece of black fabric flanked with the double Cs of the fashion house that he took over in 1983. This year, the audience was dumbfounded as they discovered the featured item of Chanel’s Spring/Summer runway: the black micro bikini, seen on British model Stella Tennant. This swimsuit is surprising and bold in that it covers literally as little of the body as possible. Indeed, it only consists of two round pieces labeled with the iconic Cs, tied to each other by a single thread.
Is this Coco’s revived legacy, pushing the boundaries of feminine liberation? Whatever the case, it was the perfect occasion to provoke and better satisfy the expectations of femininity on a quest for a decorative dimension. On a different note, Chanel’s pasties became the emblem of the 90s when Carla Bruni was caught flaunting a pink version. Its fashion credibility has defied the years. It’s a swimsuit that’s so itsy bitsy teeny weeny, it extols the merits of our quite simply emancipated society without even resorting to yellow polka dots.
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