“Master of Class”.

Let’s try to abstract from all these: “He is a genius! Everything he touches turns into a masterpiece! He is ahead of his time! “. Let’s try to recognize the origin behind a thick layer of nearly a century of restorations of the image created in the twenties of the last century by “irregular” Gabrielle Chanel. The single original idea: because everything that we saw later was only its particulars.

Fashion created by Karl Lagerfeld is, above all, a perfectly “commercializable” product. When I recently called at the legendary boutique-atelier of Mademoiselle Chanel on rue Cambon in Paris, I was somewhat perplexed by the turmoil abounded there. All shop assistants were busy, and because access to clothes without them was not possible, I had to “get in line.” I waited for about half an hour, until at least one of the consultants became available. And with the price of a jacket starts from 2000 euros, did you say “crisis”?

Karl, in certain way, stays behind the phenomenon of modern history of not only fashion, but the modern society as well, which dynamics is determined primarily by the degree and quality of consumption. He turned luxury into “consumer goods”, exported with similar success to Shanghai, Moscow and Casablanca. He creates a giant, by the number of looks, collection à la Bigfoot of artificial fur and still received a widespread admiration form critics. And then, as if remembering of something very important, almost lost in a huge haystack and nearly drowned in a pool of inevitably melting iceberg, he makes a miracle. Only by returning to something for which, and how it all began, the origin.

Chanel Haute couture collection, spring 2011. The twenties of the last century: the best years ever experienced by the capital of Fashion. Years of madness, women’s emancipation, low waist, deliberately small breasts. The years of friendship of Nicole Groult (a sister of Paul Poiret) and artist Marie Laurencin, habitué at the Gabrielle’s Coco salon. Young Marie Laurencin, whose watercolour palettes and lines, gentle and pure as spring in Paris, largely inspired the Maestro to creating this collection. The spirit of that time with the modernity ideally projected over it. Embroiderers of Lesage and “feather wizards” of Lemarié. Dozens, hundreds of hours of manual work. Waves of tulle and rainy threads of sequins and pearls. Aerial lightness, rejecting rules the earth and “bourgeois” gravity.

You say genius? At this time I could not agree more.)

Photo credits: CHANEL