In the world of Chanel, there are a few things you can rely on season after season: those interlocking double C’s, **Karl’**s uniform look (from ponytail to shades to fingerless gloves to pointy shoes), and the fact that when you arrive to view the new collection, you never know exactly where you will be taken next. If Fellini had his Cinecittà, Lagerfeld has his Grand Palais and the elaborately conceived settings he stages there (and on the road, whether in Dallas, Dubai, or Versailles) are as magnificent and cinematic as anything from the Italian auteur.
In past seasons, the Parisian museum complex has been transformed into a futuristic private plane, an enormous faux supermarket, a Byzantine palace, a frozen garden. Dropped under its famously vaulted ceilings over the years: a 265-ton iceberg, a gigantic Gulliver’s Travels-size Chanel jacket, tall pillars of quartz. It has masqueraded as Le Corbusier’s 1930s apartment, it has played the part of an ancient decrepit theater, it s destroyed walls revealing a glimpse of the city, and this morning, his catwalk became a crosswalk: a Parisian street scene brought indoors, complete with faux protesters. Here, a look at Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel stage today, and some of the house’s most imaginative runway settings over the years.