Editor’s Note: Ahead of the opening of “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Costume Institute, we are celebrating his talent by adding five newly digitized archival shows he designed to the Vogue Runway Archive. This one, for Chanel couture, was shown in July 1995 in Paris.
Coco Chanel believed in restraint; Karl Lagerfeld did so only intermittently, but this Fall 1995 couture collection for Chanel was one of those times.
The show seemed to reference the second phase of Mademoiselle’s fame, when after World War II, having been dismissed by the French for a liaison with a German officer, she was embraced by American women.
The beginning part of the collection was devoted to the boxy cardigan suit that became the de facto uniform of well-heeled ladies in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was a Barbie-like pertness to these perfect tailleurs that was reinforced by the dramatic hair, which was one part Totally Hair Barbie and the other Richard Avedon and Ara Gallant for Diana Vreeland.
The name Chanel has been synonymous with the LBD (Little Black Dress) since the Jazz Age, but it was Audrey Hepburn in movies like Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffany’s who breathed new life into the look in the postwar period. Lagerfeld offered options for a cadre of Holly Golightlys, and Kirsty Hume assumed a mourning Jackie look.
This was a collection with a happily-ever-after ending, however. Wedding attendants and a bevy of brides in clean-lined columns closed the show on a sweet note.
