Today’s Chanel haute couture show at the Grand Palais in Paris was garden-party-themed, with guests sitting on white wicker chairs and staring hungrily at platters of cute, pastel-colored macarons. Under the cavernous glass ceiling, the runway was lined with rosebushes in large planters. However, once the show started, the setting was hardly visible: The lights went out, leaving only the catwalk illuminated. Indeed, it looks almost like the models were striding down a sliver of daylight into a cave. But Karl Lagerfeld would never want to evoke a place so slimy and drippy (spelunking is so late-nineties), so, instead, he was probably referencing some lovely grotto. (Famed gardener André Le Nôtre did design some nice grottos in the Gardens of Versailles, a place near and dear to Lagerfeld’s heart, but we might be taking this interpretation a little too far at this point.) Anyway, all of the show’s high-profile attendees — including Milla Jovovich, Leslie Mann, and Diane Kruger with a very dapper Joshua Jackson — were thrust in front of a promlike backdrop with trompe l’oeil stone pillars to have their photos taken. The result: Chanel-branded school dance meets fancy French garden, as you can see in our slideshow.
See the Complete Chanel Fall 2012 Couture Collection.