Karl Lagerfeld Brings Paris To Rome With Chanel Metiers D’Arts

It took one and a half months to build the set, hosted‎ 800 guests,‎ featured 52 female and 9 male models. 17 make-up artists, 17 hairdressers and 8 manucurists worked on their looks. If there were any doubt that this was going to be the show of the year, and quite possibly years to come, then Karl Lagerfeld quashed them last night in Rome.

The world’s greatest living couturier installed an entire monochromatic Parisian street scene – think bars, restaurants grocery stalls, cafes and more - into the legendary Roman film studio, Cinecittà for his annual Metiers d'Art collection. It was the stuff that dreams are made of.

Guests moved from the backdrop of Ancient Rome – the TV series Rome was filmed here – through to Studio 5, one-time home to Frederico Fellini’s masterpieces, from La Dolce Vita to Casanova. Elizabeth Taylor as Joseph Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra, Jane Fonda in Roger Vadim’s Barbarella and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York also once worked here.

Back in the present day and said set – almost sepia - came alive with the clothes that were as witty and pretty as it's possible to imagine. Out came leather pasta farfalle lovingly hand-crafted by master embroiderers, Lesage, chiffon hand-painted to look like marble and short papal capes overlaid with veils of rosary beads, all of which nodded to the over-arching Paris In Rome theme.

The show was preceded by a short movie directed by M Lagerfeld himself. Once And Forever, starring Kristen Stewart and Geraldine Chaplin as a young and not so young Coco Chanel respectively, was a Warholian, self-knowledgeable and -deprecating romp through the codes of the most famous fashion house in the world. ‘Chanel is about style above everything else,’ Ms Chaplin opined, putting mere trends in their place – and then some. Chanel is bigger than that.

As for the clothes that followed. It started out as black and white as the surroundings: the Chanel suit came with a trompe l’oeil long-line jacket (or was it a jacket over a skirt?) layered over skinny trousers and with a matching bag dangling from a signature chain. Next were little black dresses in chiffon pleated and frilled to perfection, this time spliced with panels of (also black) and Italianate lace. Later colour came to the fore: faded pastels and old gold in particular were lovely to behold.

With back-combed hair and smoky eyes, models were part Claudia Cardinale and Anita Ekberg, part Brigitte Bardot, if at her most undone The aforementioned style of their wardrobe was quintessentially late Fifties/early Sixties Parisian – this was Chanel, after all - the sultriness appeared to come straight out of Italy at its most screen-sirenesqe.

Post-show, the backdrop too sprang into bustling existence. Shop fronts opened to serve all in attendance pasta – but of course! – wine and gelato. Paris In Rome indeed.