With their ironed hair, pale lips, and exaggerated doe-eye makeup, the leggy girls on Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel runway were channeling Penelope Tree, the iconic and kooky sixties model. And in their black-and-white mini-kilts, abbreviated A-line dresses, and pleated cocktail hour "gym slips," they looked as though they had stepped from a David Bailey print. In fact, there was only one long dress in the collection—a drift of pale-gray cloudy chiffon prettily garlanded with ropes of seed pearls—but its diaphanous skirt revealed a mini beneath.
Even the signature Chanel camellias, nestling as appliqués in textured salt-and-pepper tweed, were abstracted into something resembling a naive daisy, a flower symbol that carries with it more than a hint of the youthquake sixties fashions of Mary Quant and Courrèges. Of course, in Lagerfeld's deft hands this was no mere history lesson. The designer used those schoolgirl-short looks to focus on the leg with wrinkling kid boots so high that they disappeared beneath those tiny skirts' hems, or leggings in pale gold or silvery Lurex knits. Jeans and knickerbockers were cut as tight as hosiery and decorated with a flourish of Chanel's black satin hair ribbon at the knee.
With a major Chanel retrospective opening in May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, Lagerfeld also delved into Coco Chanel's history—specifically a 1920's liaison with the Duke of Westminster that saw her borrowing knits and tweedy pieces from his chic country wardrobe. Lagerfeld feminized his layered cardigan and plus fours with scarves twinkling with diamond camellias and topped them with adorable newsboy caps, knit cloches, or floppy berets. But the androgyny didn't stop there. This is the 50th anniversary of the quilted, chain-strung bag that is so emblematic of the house, and Lagerfeld reintroduced it—in a battered vintage-look leather set to become an instant must-have—on the men in his show, who wore them with a swagger, slung across their shoulders and backs.
