Paris Fashion Week: "C'était beau, hein?" murmured the woman in the immaculately tailored tweed suit to her equally soignée friend as more than a thousand well-heeled guests thronged out of the Chanel show yesterday in the Louvre.
In what was more like a movie premiere than a fashion show, frenzied photographers and camera teams surrounded front-row guests, actress Nicole Kidman, star of a new Chanel fragrance commercial, and her director, the Australian movie-
maker Baz Luhrmann, in an unseemly and almost uncontrollable scramble.
Equally attention-grabbing were the clothes, a sugar-and-
spice mix of assured urban femininity by day and predatory glamour at night, modelled by an army of some 100 models, twice the normal line-up, led by seasoned storm troopers Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell.
This was a collection deliberately pitched to a celebrity age, and hard glitter flashed everywhere from suits in black or pastel tweeds with sleeves shoved up dismissively to jewelled solitaire sandals that sparkled with every step.
A handbag in the shape of giant pearl made its own mischievous reference to the legendary Coco, and new accessories included "elephant" shoes with double heels and tweed hairbands.
For daywear, skirts with open box pleats added a flirty air to snug jackets while the widely copied tweed-trimmed trench from last season was reinvented in oversize dogstooth check.
These may be golden days for the mighty house of Chanel, and today's jeunesse dorée may want to deck themselves out in shiny black satin and tweed, but a long jeans-style skirt and camisole in gilded denim was pushing the street element a bit far.
Where Lagerfeld has a Midas touch is with evening wear, always light, frothy and romantic, and there were dreamy dresses of black georgette frilled sweetly with bibs of Chantilly lace.
But more demanding of the limelight were the flapper-style shifts hung with strands of tinkling crystal and white fishtail sheaths with no visible underwear, just a diamond C for decoration.
Anne de Meulemeester's show in the Carreau du Temple in the Marais stressed the importance of the tailored jacket but reworked with peplums of frilled chiffon, cutaway shoulders or with added decor like flyaway strips of rodeo-style fringeing, at once offhand and elegant.