Votre Garçon: Chanel Resort 2013

Oh Mr Lagerfeld, you are certainly not fooling anyone or perhaps maybe just me that's noticed with your latest Resort collection for Chanel. I know exactly what you have done and bravo to you sir. Ok, I’ll stop now but this was my immediate reaction when the articles and photographs came flooding in with all the new looks that Karl Lagerfeld presented for the Resort 2013 collection. Just recently, I wrote a blog post on an observation that I had made and which was how one the biggest trends to come out the Spring/Summer 2012 season was the 1950’s vintage Americana style as well as a palette of pastel colours dominating the clothes that we wear this season however mixed with a new trend of grungy hipster meets old school hip-hop that is leading our street style. In which fused together it created this look that consisted of looking glamorise and a pin-up style beauty but still looking old-school grungy Nineties kid. And Mr Lagerfeld has also undoubtedly picked up on this observation as well or there may be a slight chance that he did read my blog post that was posted two weeks ago and managed to whip out a collection in the space of a no more than a week. Somehow I don’t quite think this may be exactly true. Nevertheless this time, Karl Lagerfeld moved us away from the housewife image and replaced it with a well-known figure in history, the 18^th Century Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.

Set in the beautiful gardens at the Palace of Versailles, Lagerfeld demonstrated a hybrid between the 18^th century style clothing crossed with a hip-hop punk edge, creating a “Ghetto Royale” look said DJ Michel Gaubert. The clothes featured eighteenth century details like panniers and fichus but re-created with 21^st century fabrics such as chambray, denims and even plastic and which the models were dressed up in over-the-top lace ruffles and cuffs but then dressed down with platform trainers and short shorts. Yet the collection still featured the well-known Coco Chanel silhouettes of the little double-breasted tweed jackets, the quilted bags and the structured black-and-white dresses. The collection was light and girly as the palette of pastel colours returned once again but still the punk edge look that is driving through our today’s street style, oozed out of this collection. As if it wasn’t for the soundtrack featuring M.I.A latest single with the lyrics “Live fast die young, bad girls do it well” or the evening performance with Alice Dellal’s band, Thrush Metal or the punk-edge garments and accessories featured in the collection, all screamed the bad girl image of today’s youth and which only seemed appropriate to demonstrate the badass lifestyle of Marie Antoinette.

What I found interesting about this collection was the fact that the recent observation I had made showed how two keys trends played together to create a new look which is currently present in the music industry. Take Marina Diamandis of Marina and the Diamonds for example, which in her ‘Primadonna’ video, she prances around great 18^th century inspired halls with huge chandeliers and also completes her latest look with a small heart underneath her eye in which all seemed to translate into Lagerfeld’s latest collection for Chanel. Palace of Versailles? The Chanel logo stickers underneath the models eyes? Ok, so I’ll give you Versailles as this was the home of Marie Antoinette and was only fitting to present this collection here but the stickers, do I need to say anymore? However I did enjoy this collection as my love for 18^th century Paris has been there from a young age and I loved that Lagerfeld took the first step to presenting this new look in a collection and I only wonder now, if other designers plan to add in addition to this for the Spring/Summer 2013 season that we will soon be witnessing in September. And if this is so, I can only imagine that when a year from now as we wear our Spring gear in 2013, the hipsters will be rolling their eyes as we all parade the streets with our creeper style platform shoes. As I certainly would be whipping up a pair of Chanel’s latest shoe design. For all the looks presented in the Resort 2013 collection, the full video of the runway show is featured below.