May 14, 2014 |
CHANEL: CRUISE SHOW 2015
“This is my idea of a romantic, modern Orient, a new One Thousand and One Nights,” said Lagerfeld. Gosh. Edward Said would be turning in his grave. Yesterday we saw what the Middle East looks like through the lens of Karl Lagerfeld. Something that was essentially an explosion of Chanel-flavoured Eastern exoticism. The show was set inside a building covered in a lattice of mock traditional Islamic fretwork made of Chanel’s interlocking double C’s. There were Aladdin’s slippers, Chanel interpretations of thawbs and salwars and headpieces decorated with crescent moons. The jewellery looked like it had come from a bazaar (and subsequently been Chanel-ified by a wave of Karl’s magic wand). We could almost smell the burning incense and hear the call to prayer from our basement at Ten Towers. Despite the clear cultural appropriation from the a romanticised notion of the Orient, Karl maintained that the collection was for the international woman. "You don’t have to be from here. These clothes are for women all over the world.” Reference to the Sixties were also rife. Vincent commented that Malaika Firth resembled Diana Ross while Natalie said that Charlotte Free looked like Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous when she travelled to Morocco. You see the hair was big. Very big. As Style.com tweeted, “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” making Chanel’s bouffants the Babels of hairstyling. Fitting, given the city’s recent erection of a modern day Tower of Babel, the mile-high Kingdom Tower. Will, being an aspiring hair stylist, was naturally a fan. Aside from being a golden collection, it was a spectacle that Lagerfeld created; something we come to expect from him and something that reflects the nature of Dubai. Bravo Karl, bravo.
Click here to see Dior’s Cruise Collection 2015.
By Ted Stansfield
