Chanel stages spectacular finale to haute couture show

Models wear haute couture creations by German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld for French fashion house Chanel. Picture / Reuters

PARIS - For its financial might alone, Chanel is a fashion house that often seems to tower over others in Paris.

Hence the spectacular finale to the brand's haute couture show yesterday, where a bright white 15 metre-high column slid upwards to reveal beneath it five tiers of models standing on a spiral staircase.

While hands continue to be wrung over the future of haute couture - the spring/summer event features only a half-dozen fashion houses still able to produce entirely hand-made, highly-ornamented clothing for a few hundred of the world's wealthiest women - for Chanel it is business as usual.

Thanks to the late Coco Chanel, chief designer Karl Lagerfeld has a rich seam of house signatures to plunder: the little black dress, the tweed suit, the camellia and the double-C logo.

There was a Sixties feel to Lagerfeld's curvy black dresses, which were worn with flat white go-go boots, and an even more youthful interpretation of the ultimate bourgeois uniform, the Chanel suit, which for spring is in high-maintenance shades of white or powder pink.

If the brand's monied, mink-clad clients - who were thoughtfully provided with Chanel-branded white fleece blankets and logo-stamped flasks of tea during the show - don't wish to flash as much thigh as Lagerfeld's models did, meanwhile, they could also cover up with made-to-measure silver-grey beaded leggings.

Perhaps considering a chaste new image, Victoria Beckham sat front row at this show.

Beckham was joined in the audience by Canadian singer Avril Lavigne and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger's American girlfriend L'Wren Scott.

But ahead of next month's Academy Awards the Hollywood A-list will also be weighing up the virtues of Chanel's fairy-princess evening dresses.

In white, they had short, full skirts - some even resembling ballet tutus - with sugar-sweet embroideries, beaded silver camellias or trimmed at the hem with peach-coloured silk flowers.

In July 2002 Chanel, which is owned by the secretive Wertheimer family, made a commitment to the survival of the specialist workshops in Paris where artisans, or "petites mains" labour for hundreds of hours to smother minute sequins over a single dress.

White was also a theme at Valentino's show on Monday evening where the girls stepped on to the catwalk from behind a sand dune in front of a brilliant sun in a constantly changing sky.

"They have this lightness and for the first time I did a white collection that transforms into powdery colours with only a single red," the Italian designer said afterwards.

Guests were treated to ruffles and sparkles and glamorous gowns fit for nights at the Oscars. A pearl grey and gold organza dress was matched with an organza bolero with balloon sleeves and an embroidered tulle blouse was worn over an ivory crepe strapless creation.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS