In Paris yesterday, her successor at the famous French fashion house, Karl Lagerfeld, seemed intent on proving this was true.
As the singer, Rihanna, 20, and the boho-dressed Olsen twins, Ashley and Mary-Kate, 22, watched from the front row, Lagerfeld offered one of the youngest collections ever to bear the Chanel label.
Models with messy teenage hair, sprinkled with gold, and hardly any make-up, save for a slick of gold shadow on their eyelids, appeared in ripped denim mini-skirts with black, knitted ‘sloppy-jo’, boyfriend jumpers.
They wore clingy, girly sweater-dresses in grey, trimmed with baby-pink, and accessorized with berets with a badge on the front, or tight, clubby dresses in black crochet or black PVC. Even the classic, Chanel ‘cardigan suit’, which opened the show, had drunk from the elixir of youth.
In a creamy, pastel tweed, the jacket had its collar tucked under and featured a deliberate “designer hole” in one elbow, while the mini-skirt was decorated with “customized rips” in the same manner as way teenagers tear open and fray the knees of their jeans so they look “distressed”.
The mood of high spirits and youthful fun was reinforced by the catwalk in the Grand Palais, which encircled a pale cream, specially-made carousel with oversized Chanel quilted bags, strings of pearls, earrings, bottles of scent, logos and shoes replacing the traditional, painted wooden horses.
It was possible, however, to discern the occasional item not designed for the under-25 market.
The cardigan suit, for example, also appeared in more conventional form, with a belted jacket and maxi-skirt to the ankle. The length had something to recommend it: It hid most of the curious two-in-one tights which were black from the back and nude, textured or lacey from the front.
There were also well-cut tweed dresses with long, egg-shaped, cardigan-coats, trimmed with Mongolian goat-hair, and one classic, tailored black suit, with white cuffs and collar and a white camellia, the signature Chanel flower, at the neckline.
The Paris prêt-à-porter season for next autumn/winter, concludes this weekend with the collections of Chloé, Hermès, Nina Ricci, John Galliano, Lanvin and Louis Vuitton.
Chanel autumn/winter 2008/2009 collection
Photographs by AP
Chanel autumn/winter 2008/2009 collection
Photographs by Getty
