"The world is a dark place," acknowledged Karl Lagerfeld after the latest Chanel spectacle, which took place amid a fog-shrouded forest on a bed of still-smoldering scorched earth. There was some of the apocalyptic grandeur of German artists Caspar David Friedrich and Anselm Kiefer, and a bit more of the post-apocalyptic grit of Cormac McCarthy s The Road, but, as Lagerfeld himself noted, the models walked into and out of huge glowing squares of white light at each end of the catwalk. And isn t going into the light usually the way out of the dark place? At least it was in Poltergeist.
The dramatic setting and Michel Gaubert s thundering orchestral revision of the Cure s seminal goth classic "A Forest" were matched by Lagerfeld s designs. He elaborated on the audacious theme he established for Spring, where jackets and coats looked moth-eaten or tattered. Here, many of the looks had the ashy appearance of clothes that had weathered a natural disaster (a volcanic eruption, perhaps?) because they d been packed tightly in a trunk. The denim leggings carried over from Couture were distressed. The way Lagerfeld doubled a classic Chanel dogtooth over a substantial double-vented man s jacket (they were actually attached as one piece) or a cropped tweed over what looked like a combat jacket hinted at the hasty expediency of dressing any which way in a hurry when the lava s on the way. It was also one of the most striking instances yet of the boy/girl thing that is a major Fall trend.
The palette stayed shadowy throughout, the proportions slightly man-sized, with rounded shoulders. Even the more overtly "feminine" pieces looked like damaged goods, say a skirt of spectacularly shredded chiffon or a pair of full-length knit sheaths that dissolved into loose strands of wool at the back. The tunics, capes, and tabards added a neo-medieval twist to Lagerfeld s grunge-y fairy tale. Then the whole story took a left turn into gothic with the black lace eveningwear. The jumpsuited models could have been twenty-first-century brides of Dracula. Stella Tennant wore an option that was in keeping with the crepuscular heart of the collection: a sequin-encrusted jacket over a shawl-collared tux. Plus, she was sporting bike boots.
Aside from the mesmerizing scenario, the collection s genius lay in Lagerfeld s supernatural prescience about the way a lot of young women want to dress now, mixing the street with enough high fashion fantasy to make the result seem rich and strange. The proof? After the show, Karl s coterie of bright young things—Lily and Leigh and Jen and Poppy and all the others—couldn t wait to surrender to his dark vision.
