Karl Lagerfeld’s always been a showman, but his latest coup for Paris Fashion Week was bigger than big – and stranger than strange.
He turned the Grand Palais into a Chanel supermarket, where supermodels wandered the aisles decked in his latest collection while announcements about ‘specials’ ran over loudspeaker.
The most mind-boggling part? The sheer scale of his supermarket dream.
Chanel printed 500 different labels for the ‘supermarket’s’ products, which ranged from shampoo to tonic water to vegetables – all perfectly useable. All the labels made them Chanel-brand couture pieces (often with terrible Coco-based puns to boot).
And the supermarket was fully stocked – over 100,000 products, from cream to chainsaws, stocked the shelves.
All in all, the spectacle was amazing, and the crowd, which included Keira Knightley and Rihanna in the line’s new controversial ‘illusion’ dresses (they feature a faux-slimmed waist), were loving it. Apparently the shelves were mobbed at the end by fashion editors and onlookers wanting a souvenir.
But some of the press weren’t so convinced. Tabloids asked whether ‘cat food was the new catwalk’, if Lagerfeld had gone ‘off his trolley’, and if (a legitimate question) Lagerfeld had stepped foot in a supermarket in the last decade.
The collection itself? A new season play on updating the Chanel classic tweed, this time with raspberry trimmings, exaggerated shoulders and silhouettes, some very strange pink feathering and corset-like nipped in waists on everything. Our favourite? The rainbow print that showed up frequently – linings, skirts, one huge glorious coat.
Watch the Chanel Paris Fashion Week 2014 video below..
