Models strut down the boardwalk during a recent showing of Chanel's cruisewear collection on the Lido in Venice. The Italian city was a favourite haunt of Coco Chanel, who went there in 1919 to get over the death of a lover.STRINGER/ITALY
In the opulent lobby of the Excelsior hotel on Venice's Lido, the international fashion pack gathered recently to sip champagne. You could tell the clients a mile away: They were the ones in head-to-toe Chanel.
They were here for designer Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel cruisewear collection, and the location could hardly be more fitting. Coco Chanel came here in 1919 to recover from the death of her lover, Arthur (Boy) Capel, the British businessman who had financed her first Paris shop.
She was instantly enthralled by the city's visual riches. The intricate Byzantine detailing of St. Mark's Basilica would later inform her accessory designs, and she would often return to the image of lions - not only her birth sign but the emblem of Venice. Chanel also met avant-garde Russian choreographer Sergei Diaghilev in Venice, and would later design costumes for his revolutionary Ballets Russes.
"She came here for 10 years," Lagerfeld said. "And there are many photos of her on the beach dressed like a gondolier, with Italian friends. She had a real Italian period."
Chanel, the woman, is having a moment, with no fewer than three films just out or about to be released, including the much-anticipated Coco Avant Chanel (starring Audrey Tautou) and Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky (starring Anna Mouglalis, who was at the show).
Lagerfeld says he saw only five minutes of any of them, but that was enough for the outspoken maestro to pronounce them all "mediocre."
"For me, it's not Chanel. For me, Chanel was a woman who the French call a seductrisse . But that's not what I saw there."
Clearly, Lagerfeld has his own vision of the Chanel spirit, which he presented in front of 350 guests, some reclining on sun beds, assembled under the tented cabanas. "I love the way Karl is able to play with melancholy," Mouglalis said as a cellist and violinist walked out onto the sand and began to play. "I'm mesmerized."
Suddenly, Casanova, in a black cape and tricorn hat, dashed down the boardwalk, followed by iconic model Tatjana Patitz, channelling the Edwardian mother from Visconti's Death in Venice , in a long, creamy lace dress and floppy straw hat.
The seaside fantasy continued to unfold, with Twenties-inspired black-and-white nautical ensembles, striped knitwear, drop-waist chiffon dresses and signature Chanel tweeds with a twist. The collection also riffed on everything Venetian, with golds and Renaissance reds, lion motifs and sunglasses resembling masks.
"Even the embroideries were like the water with the morning sunlight catching it," mused Amanda Harlech, Lagerfeld's creative confidante.
With all the attention on Chanel, it's perhaps unsurprising that Lagerfeld and company would stage such a lavish spectacle. "It feels appropriately decadent," Visionaire magazine's Derek Blasberg remarked post-show, as the champagne flowed on the Excelsior's grand terrace.
"We're in a recession, and there are going to be lots of people who may criticize a label like Chanel for presenting this kind of glamour. But I think there will always be the customer who wants something that's of the highest level," Blasberg said. "And that's why you come to Venice. That's why you come to Karl."
The ghost of Coco would surely concur. Jeanne Beker is the host of Fashion Television and editor-in-chief of FQ.