At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld Literally Interprets Fashion Merry-Go-Round

A fur coat the color of pond scum oozed down the runway at Christian Lacroix, while Rei Kawakubo described her collection as “Comme des Garcons does bad taste.” The best may be yet to come at Paris fashion week (seeing as Ralph Rucci‘s show is Sunday night), but this morning Karl Lagerfeld presented his fall collection for Chanel to an audience that included budding authors Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. In past seasons, Lagerfeld’s show sets have involved such crowd-pleasers as hovering “clouds” made from miles of tulle, a working jet emblazoned with those famous crossed C’s, and a Chanel jacket that towered 75 feet in the air, but today he topped himself by showcasing his youthful vision for fall on a giant Chanel-themed carousel that rotated at the center of the runway. The International Herald Tribune‘s Suzy Menkes has the details:

Instead of the usual fairground seats of sculpted horses, this whirligig was fitted with super-sized bags, shoes, pearl chains, camellias and even Coco Chanel‘s signature hat. And at the end of a show, in which the only bag was a tiny egg-sized clutch for evening, the models clung to the giant accessories as the carousel twirled.

Paper magazine’s indefatigable Mickey Boardman, blogging from Paris, had only one word to describe the carousel set. That word? “Fierce, fierce, fierce, as that kid with the crazy hair on Project Runway says!”

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