Breezy collection blows breath of fresh air into Chanel label

FASHION, COCO Chanel used to say, is what’s in the sky, what’s in the air. Yesterday, at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld drove home the point with a breezy spring collection in the Grand Palais on a catwalk dominated by 13 lifesize wind turbines.

Though not quite eco-Coco, a new energy seemed to power this collection, recharging the brand’s familiar themes in an upbeat, contemporary way. It proved that age has not withered Lagerfeld’s ability to keep his ear close to the ground and keep Chanel fresh and relevant season after season.

Free of the usual riffs on the old motifs such as camellias and chain bags, the collection was lighter and more pared back. This allowed the clothes – their textures, colours and shapes – to shine (in some cases literally) rather than logos and accessories.

The scale of the event was overwhelming. The thousands of guests thronging the entrance, the celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and Kanye West surrounded by police and paparazzi, the traffic congestion, camera teams, and crowds of tourists and passersby outside the Grand Palais left nobody in any doubt as to the sheer power and might of the Chanel enterprise.

Lagerfeld is due to open a huge concept store in Paris in February. Marking the change in the spring collection were shorter lengths in summery colours, fuller skirts, cropped matador-style jackets in tweed and graphic prints that defined the silhouette.

Windswept hair, windmill-print knits and a dress in grid-shaped sequins swept the theme along, while chunky oversize pearls, cute candy-striped sandals and transparent wide-brimmed hats were the main accessories.

A sole nod to the interlocking Cs was on a swimsuit, with the model shouldering a quilted bag framed by hula hoops in a cheeky send-up of the label’s familiar logo.

THE IRISH IN PARIS

Promoting chic across Europe

From Macroom in Co Cork and a horse-racing background, Carra Sutherland has been working as a consultant for Value Retail (which operates the Chic Outlet shopping village across Europe) in Paris for the past four years, taking care of public relations and their VIP programme for the company both in France and in Belgium.

She came to Paris at 19 for a year as part of a business course and stayed on, joining Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs as a fashion PR woman in 1996. Four years later she moved to Ungaro as head of international press and left in 2005 when the designer retired and sold the company. She was headhunted by Value Retail while working for Bell Ross watchmakers, having started her own consultancy company in 2009. Married to a Frenchman, she lives outside Paris with their 16-month-old baby, Max.

French Order of Merit award for Tipperary woman

Helen Lambert, the owner and CEO of global luxury agency, Lambert Associates, who is from a farming family in Nenagh, Tipperary, will next month receive the Chevalier dans L’Ordre National du Merite (National Order of Merit) award from the French government, in recognition of her services to France. Lambert, a familiar figure at Paris fashion weeks, she started her career with the International Herald Tribune, later moving to Elle and Elle Deco before moving to AGA which she took over in 2005 and rebranded.

Married to a Frenchman, she has two children, lives in Neuilly and is a member of the Global Irish Network and on the board of the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris.