Katy Perry arrives at Chanel's ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2014 fashion collection in Paris. Picture: AP Source: AP
KATY Perry, Kate Upton and Vanessa Paradis were among the front-row guests as Miranda Kerr and Cara Delevigngne strutted down the catwalk for Chanel at Paris Fashion Week.
With flipped-out short wigs and brightly coloured eye makeup, Kerr and Delevigngne showed off the latest Chanel designs, featuring a range of colours and the signature Chanel fabric.
Singer and Ray-Z protege Rita Ora and The Beach's French actor Virginie Ledoyen also turned out to support Chanel's designer Karl Lagerfeld at the 2014 Spring/Summer show.
Lagerfeld is a man of many talents: Not only is he Chanel's lauded designer, but also an industrious artist, a sensitive colorist and a gallery curator.
With a snap of his black-gloved finger, curator Lagerfeld transformed the vast interior of Paris' Grand Palais into his very own gallery space.
Colourful oil paintings lined the walls, one featuring an abstract rendering of "Chanel No. 5.'' A whole host of curious art objects scattered the runway - like a giant-sized handbag or a surreal one-metre perfume bottle made of marble that seemed to sink into the floor.
"It's like the days of Andy Warhol,'' Lagerfeld said backstage, raising the age-old philosophical question: is fashion art?
British model Cara Delevingne walks down the catwalk at Chanel's Paris Fashion Show. Picture: AP
The question was answered here in a painterly clothes palette of some 150 different colours. There was a series of strong, colourful brush-stroke patterns on flowing and fitted dresses in dark to light hues.
Then there was the large "portfolio'' bags, the painted Chanel logos on handbags, and a rucksack with large wooden brushes poking out.
Although Lagerfeld doesn't often use much colour in his Chanel shows, here he reminded guests what a talented colourist he really is by using 89 tonal shades of purple, blue, pink, red, gray, black and white.
Perhaps channeling Chanel's acclaimed Arts and Crafts show in Edinburgh last December, Lagerfeld used the black-and-white spats of Scottish pipers to inspire great stocking shoes that looked like a thick sock that went to mid-calf.
Elsewhere, he crossed traditional Chanel skirt suits with a frayed tartan pattern in cyclamen pink and black, and many of the looks sported cape silhouettes as worn by pipers.
Even the diagonal crossover of tartan fabric that Scots band across their chests was evoked when Lagerfeld dropped the collar off one shoulder but rendered it in contemporary lines of diffused color.
Australian model Miranda Kerr shows off a black and lace dress at Chanel's Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2014 show. Picture: AP
Where does the 79-year-old find the energy to produce such new ideas season upon season?
"For me, I like this kind of life: living in evolution and in the inventive spirit all the time,'' explained the designer. "For me, it it's like breathing.''
Model Kate Upton arrives at Chanel's ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2014 fashion collection. Picture: AP
