We’re counting down to the Spring 2019 couture season with a look back at five very haute archival shows. Chanel’s Fall 2000 couture collection was presented on July 11, 2000, at Piscine Keller in Paris.
Karl Lagerfeld might not be able to walk on water, but he seemed to walk through it when he took a bow with Devon Aoki at the close of his Fall 2000 couture collection for Chanel, the first he presented in the 21st century. Shown in the turquoise interior of the Piscine Keller in Paris, it featured predominantly to-the-knee silhouettes, and there was a breeziness to the palette, if not to the styling.
Having inherited a legacy house, Lagerfeld has become a master of looking forward and back at the same time; and this season, he collided decades with force. Models wore Valley of the Dolls–style bouffants (’60s) and New Wave–esque makeup (’80s). “The shoulders are back but without looking like the ’80s,” Lagerfeld told The Observer at the time. “Please, no. This is a remix for 2000.”
Some of those shoulders were adorned with shredded tulle ruffs. Chanel, said Lagerfeld, “often did destroyed tulle and things like this.” While it’s well known that Mademoiselle would take pieces apart over and over again in her search for perfection, she was hardly the deconstructivist Lagerfeld is. He exposed seams at Chloé long before joining Chanel, where he disassembled the engine and put it back together in modern, imaginative, and attention-getting ways.
Coco Chanel is credited with saying “Elegance is refusal.” Lagerfeld, too, knows when to draw the line. When asked in The Observer story what the point of couture is, Lagerfeld replied: “The point of couture is couture itself. It’s like asking what is the point of life. Life is about life.”
