PARIS • Fasten your seatbelts, and get ready to take off for spring at Chanel's mock airport departure lounge catwalk.
Director Karl Lagerfeld filled Paris' Grand Palais with a Chanel Airlines check-in desk, waiting area, flight information board and a No. 5 gate - a nod to the brand's famed perfume - to present his spring/summer 2016 collection on Tuesday.
Edie Campbell and Kendall Jenner led the pack of models who wore classic printed tweed looks with skirts grazing below the knee, accessorised with metallic gloves and a cap on back to front.
Campbell wore a check jumpsuit while wheeling a luggage trolley into the hall and Jenner donned a tweed skirt and futuristic red aviator shades.
Guests watched from waiting area seats, looking onto a backdrop of a blue sky and white clouds. Model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne was in the front row as was Vanessa Paradis and her daughter with ex-partner Johnny Depp, Lily-Rose. Sports stars Lewis Hamilton and Maria Sharapova were also along for the flight.
The aviation theme was evident with aeroplane and departure board prints adorning several outfits. The staple Chanel suit came in monochrome print or pastel colours, tied at the waist with a ribbon.
There was plenty of glitz in shiny silver evening tops, silver gloves and silver and plastic booties or sandals.
"It was about shine, the reflection of the sun on the airplanes," Lagerfeld, 82, said. "We did so much gold... at Chanel that it was fun to make everything silver and chrome."
The nostalgia for a time when travel was more glamorous - without a single stressed traveller in sight - comes after Lagerfeld's equally elaborate staging of a casino for his haute couture collection in July, which he said at the time evoked "a time when people dressed up".
"Airports today are not the funniest thing in the world," the designer said. "This is the proposition of a perfect trip to a perfect destination with perfect modern clothes with touches of streetwear but in expensive materials, well done and quite sophisticated.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
