Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Chanel Haute Couture.

Tues. 01/27/2015.






To Begin, Karl Lagerfeld is perhaps the most Creative Mind of the Latter half of the 20th Century and into the 21st. He will celebrate (Well, He HIMSELF won't, knowing as allergic he is to anything with even a Whisper of Nostalgia or the Backwards Glancing) 50 Years with Fendi this year, He has been at Chanel for 32 years, and at the top of the fashion heap for pretty much 40 of those years! He is without doubt, The Most Important Man In Fashion. The industry can throw Accolades and Superlatives at the likes of Simons, Ghesquiere, Tisci, Slimane, None causes even the Highest ranking Fashion Deity to Tremble with the fear of being Excommunicated from the Church of Fashion that Karl would certainly be The Reigning Pope of. Even the Magazines Editors, whom truth be told, are ones who REALLY  run the show that is the Fashion Industry, Humble themselves before His Majesty, The Right King Karl... and dare not Invoke his Ire, or more fearfully, His Disdain! Karl once said he likes to Set the table for the people around him... so that way if he wants to pull the seat out from under your Fragile Ass... He Can! And Yes, We ALL Want to Sup at that Table!

So, One would have to Question, How does Karl Create this Atmosphere of Worship, Awe... Deification??? Because, He doesn't do anything but Create. He is a Creative MACHINE! He is like a Ninja of the Highest Echelon. His skills are so Finely Honed, and his own Sense of Self Flagellation so Severe (Perhaps it's because La Mere Lagerfeld was such a Earth Cracking force of nature and never let Juene Fils Karl be anything less than his most Extraordinary best even as a mere Slip of a Boy!) That he always feels he has never done Good enough and that he can always do better. This quest for Improvement drives the Kaiser to Ever higher and more Sublime heights. We the Audience, Are the winners of the Jackpot that is Lagerfeld's Ceaseless course of Self Perfecting! 

Like the Great German Beethoven Before him, Lagerfeld is A Virtuoso, His Instrument, Pen and Paper, Same as Ludwig when you boil it down to the essence! But their Mediums are different... Where as Ludwig had Catgut and Brass and Sheepskin and Mahogany and Wire String... Lagerfeld has Boucle Tweed, Chiffon, Needles, Thread, Gold Bullion! The Instrumentation may be different, but the Symphonic result is all the same! And what a Symphony his Spring 2015 Chanel Couture Collection was! A Gasp-Inducing, Jaw Gaping, Hedonistic Wonder! First impression of the show before anything got underway was that one had entered a Gigantic Greenhouse of the Distant Future... One where all Flora had lost it's Colour and Deliciously Sensual form and were relegated to Spiky, Otherworldly White Paper intimations of the real thing. In this Place, Real Flowers no longer bloomed, but their memory had been kept alive like an Imprint. 

Suddenly, Out come the Jardinniers of this future... Were they tending to these Phantom Flowers...? Then as suddenly as they appeared they were gone and out strode Baptiste Giabiconi with the most Hilariously oversized Chanel Watering can known to Humankind. Watering Can? For Faux Flora? What's the Joke, Karl? Ahhhh.... but as you see, your mind simply wasn't prepared or ready, Karl's Was! As Baptiste left the Stage... Something Joyous,  Something Beyond Understanding began to happen! The Paper Flowers began... To... BLOOM! In Orgiastic, Summertime shades of Yellow and Green and Pink and Blue and OH... The Sheer Heart Skipping A Beat Wonderment of it all! All these flowers, 300 OF THEM, All individually constructed and with their own motors to make them bloom...How...? Where...? WHY...??? In Karl's World the only answer is... Because! He had a vision of this Paradisiacal space and Would not settle for one Fucking Iota less than this Exact, Joy Giving, Envisioning! 

If one hadn't known Karl has no love of Repetition, It could have been seen to be a Reconstructed Tableaux of his Singularly Mind-Blowing "Monochrome White" Spring 2009 Haute Couture collection... I think he was Perfectly aware of the connotation and was ready to turn it on it's head! I think he was SO ACUTELY aware that he wanted to present the antithesis of that collection's Absence of Colour and Neutrality and Say... This Is NOT Monochrome White... This is the Diametrical opposite of that collection and skew the perception of the audience into thinking he was travelling a previous Road Taken. NOPE, Bitches! Uncle K. don't Roll like that! 

But what about the clothes you ask... What about them INDEED! Unsurpassed! First out, A Fantasmagoric Orgy of Colour, Carrot Orange, Yves Klein Blue, Daffodil Yellow, Rose Pink, Apple Green, Then Cool Neutral colours, Then Black and White, Then more colour, back to Neutrals, then onto Dirty Pastels... RIOTOUS! What was so Key to this was where so many Couture houses have no sign of Daywear and just produce Candy Coated Confections of Evening pieces, Well, Karl could do that too, if he so desired, Yet he gives us Daywear, Brilliant, Endlessly Exciting DAYWEAR! He knows that Le Maison de Chanel is built on the Suit and he produced about half the show in Suit form... It was so refreshing and beloved that one could have burst into song! These other Jackasses are nothing more than Costumers for parties and that most Definitely is NOT Couture! Are you Listening Elie, Zuhair, DONATELLA... PIERPAOLO AND MARIA GRAZIA....???? The best part about this, in recent years, Karl has taken a shine to seeing JUST HOW elaborate he can make those Tweed suits that are the house Bread and Butter... from them being nothing but Embroidery, to Smothering them WITH Embroidery, to taking it apart and putting it together again... he has pushed the boundaries so far, that he could hardly keep up with himself...

Here, Many of the suits were Totally unembellished, Just Purest Tweed cut to Perfection. The Glory of this simple stroke of Genius was Keener than the edge of the blade on a Sushi Knife! And the Startling Variety to be found! From the more A-line versions that began the show, such as the Exceptional Carrot Orange one that opened the show, the jackets Morphed into Cropped, Midriff revealing versions (Lagerfeld comically called the Midriff "The New Cleavage") which had their most exalted appearances as a Black jacket with a Pouf of a White skirt, or the Confetti coloured Tweed suit in the same Abbreviated jacket/Pouf skirt silhouette on Binx Walton. Both Absurdly Chic and both Cut to a Degree so Infinitesimally Fine that the word "Perfection" would blush at the Crassness of not being comparable enough a Descriptor of them!

I would be remiss if I didn't Pause here for a moment to comment on how this collection seemed to Float In-and-Out of past Chanel collections. Karl may not have even been aware except on the most Cerebral level of his Hitchhiking through his own past. I remember him once telling an Interviewer on "Fashion Television" That he "Sees Everything, Remembers Everything. Forgets Everything and then Re-do it My Way!" That Karl has no Immediate or Obvious use for the Chanel Archives by no means is to imply that he has forgotten any of his work, as much as he'd try to impress otherwise. So, there were traces of the Fall 1994 Couture Collection with the "Wunderkorset" in the Cropped suits with the flaring skirts, Or of his 20th anniversary collection held at Restaurant Ledoyen where he had his Dream of Disintergrating tweeds in the unraveling, fringed tweeds of this collection? Perhaps in one of the best passages in the collection, the simple technical wizardry he showed with unadorned Chiffon and Mousseline in Navy and Electric Blue Pleated and Tiered evening pieces that had their roots in the same kind of Meticulously crafted gowns from his Early-Mid '90's Couture Collections. Most Characteristically the "Comedy In 3 Acts" Spring 1995 Couture collection! Even those Tulle Swathed hats were a Recapitulation of sorts to Philip Treacy's "Thunderclouds" of Tulle he constructed for the Spring 1992 "Le Mode Destroy" Collection.

But I perhaps have erred on the side of Prolixity here, Needless to say, This collection inspired an Abundance of words, anything less would be Tantamount to Blasphemy! Sparing going into any more Excessive detail about the Swoon-Worthy Evening gowns, I MUST mention Exit No. 61 on Kremi Otashliyska, the Peony Pink Radzimir Ballgown with the Bow in front and Embroidered Frontispiece... I Literally Cried. One of the most Impeccably Beautiful things Uncle Karl has EVER Produced. Life-Changing! To bring things to their rightful end here, Lagerfeld is an Unstoppable Force of Nature. No mind in the business is as Febrile and Agile. He is a Superhero in a way, The Tireless Diligence to Improving his already nearly Perfect works... Each collection you wonder How Exactly will he next top himself? You even think that it's simply not going to happen this next time around. Then you see what he has wrought for the next Incarnation and the mind is left Feebly Stumbling for New, more Expressive Superlatives. Truly take it in for a Minute... He produces Eight collections a season for Chanel, Photographs them all, Imagines the most Dauntingly Expensive and Elaborate sets for Chanel, Does the same for 4 Fendi collections, Does his Karl Line... Photographs for Magazines... Produces all the campaign materials for the labels (Campaign Catalogs, Books, So forth) Directs all the windows of the Chanel Boutiques around the globe...

It STAGGERS the imagination. But Seemingly for Karl, It's all simply all in a Days Work! (Staggering the Imagination, Included!)





That's All.





Bye4Now!






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