Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld's latest couture collection for Chanel was a argument for the delicate and pretty, laced with a bit of symbolic black. The girls paraded down the runway in what seemed like an endlessly embellished show. Tailoring seemed the focus at the outset, but in time Karl gave in to dreamy pale pink looks that sometimes felt like they might float right off the models. There was a bit of a "playing dress-up" quality about the collection, but it was refined and whimsical, not messy or silly looking. The inspiration for the collection was the artist Marie Laurencin. The long version goes something like this, "In 1923, she designed Les Biches, a ballet commissioned by Diaghilev with a scenario by Cocteau. Chanel was designing Le Train Bleu for the ballet impresario at the same time. She asked Laurencin to paint her. The languor and sweetness of the portrait that came from the sitting weren't pleasing to Chanel, but Lagerfeld seized on those qualities to reinterpret her ethos in a way that was paradoxically provocative and modest." (style.com). The ballet inspiration was seen most prominently in the loose-fitting, sometimes-sequined leggings and the barely-there flats, paired with every look. The leggings in particular, contributed a perfect amount of perversity, ensuring that the collection wouldn't be a flat statement about the beauty of pretty things. Karl never makes a flat statement. By the looks of things and my limited knowledge of his brain, such a statement won't happen until the day he says, "I'm done."

Freja Beha Erichsen

Melissa Tammerijn

Caroline Brasch Nielsen

Dorthea Barth Jorgensen

Abbey Lee Kershaw

Daphne Groeneveld

Snejana Onopka

Freja Beha Erichsen

Melissa Tammerijn

Alina Kozelkova

Lindsey Wixson

Sigrid Agren

Magdalena Frackowiak

Frida Gustavsson

Stella Tennant

Anna Selezneva

Julija Steponaviciute

Freja Beha Erichsen

Kristen McMenamy


Photos via style.com