Well, it took
a year but the mold is broken. Virginie took the brave giant step of not only
changing the pacing of the show but she has in a way sort of redirected the
brand.
On one hand it is a bravo and on the other hand it is a sadness.
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I think the
side snapped leg pants and skirts were a bit overkill as were the hot pants and
those buccaneer boots. Much of what we saw was extremely commercial and ...
well… generic and that is something that Karl was never accused of. This collection,
to me, was all about dissecting it ... pieces ... tons of pieces… blouses, skirts, jackets and
piled on accessories. I even saw a riff of the Lacroix tee shirt that signaled
the change in how we see fashion from the cover of Anna’s first issue of Vogue
in the USA.
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I can’t say
it was a great collection nor can I say it ghastly but there were lots of beautiful
pieces although they may not have been assembled as one would have liked. There
were a couple of superb real Chanel looking jackets and I even noticed a riff
on a Levi jacket to resemble a Chanel jacket or vice versa.
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Maybe what I’m
really trying to say is the collection didn’t translate the excitement which Karl
was so famous for, so either this will
be a stroke of genius on Virginie’s part to have parted with the “old way” and
struck out on a new path for the revered brand or this will be an unmitigated flop.
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In an
afterthought I realized that a lot of what was missing was the visual DNA of
the brand and the fact the brand sort of made this seismic shift from jolie
madame to jeune fille in one season…. I guess we shall have to wait to see how
this evolves.
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PS… I do think Karl would have sneered at any of
the pieces that came off as trend driven and there were more than one or two of
them!
