Fashion’s elite came out in full force to celebrate the re-opening of Chanel’s Soho boutique hosted by Karl Lagerfeld on Thursday evening. The newly renovated boutique was insanely fabulous with a 10 foot bottle of the iconic Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle, mirrored ceilings and wall to wall Chanel bags in every size, shape and skin imaginable at the exclusive Bag Bar! Karl was on hand to hob nob with the star studded crowd and later hosted a private dinner (yours truly was lucky enough to attend!) at the Chanel Soho Club.

We noshed on fresh oysters, lobster rolls, veggie tarts and truffle french fries and ended the night with chocolate lollipops, mini ice cream cones, macaroons and mojito jello shots! DJ Baptiste Giabiconi got the crowd on its feet while the Kaiser stood and watched us dance. I had never seen so many supermodels and A-list stars under one roof! SJP, Diane Kruger, Alexa Chung, Erin Wasson, Molly Sims and many many others. I have to say, Chanel knows how to throw a party! You must go to the Soho boutique to see the Chanel Bag Bar for yourself! Address: 98 Wooster.

I am attending the Chanel cocktail party and a dinner with the Kaiser himself tonight– you all know how I feel about Chanel so you can imagine how excited I am right now. I’ve had a very long love affair with Chanel handbags. In college, I carried my jumbo black lambskin Chanel classic flap bag to class– it fit a notepad, a change of clothes (Kelly & I spent the night at each other’s apartments a lot, she was always amazed how much clothes I could fit in my Chanel) and all of my cosmetic essentials.

 

It was my very first Chanel bags and it’s been lovingly used for so long that the lambskin is now distressed (it is so much more fun to distress a bag than to buy one done for you!). Since then I’ve amassed dozens of Chanel bags and each carries with it special memories that no photo album nor journal can capture. The allure of the Chanel bag is as much in the selection of one as it is in owning one. When I look for a new Chanel, it is done with careful thought and consideration. I never ask friends for opinions because a Chanel purchase is so special, no matter if it’s your first or 50th, it should be a very personal decision.

For the Soho Boutique Exclusive bags, I’m aching for the red python (above). Red is such a powerful color and done in python, it’s a major statement but the tassles give it a playfulness that is very me. The chanel bag also comes in gray or brown python.$4,900 at Chanel boutique in Soho.

Anyone who has seen the Resnais film “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) will recognize the source for Karl Lagerfeld’s black-and-white garden at theChanel show today. Some 2,800 people saw the show, at the Grand Palais, a gorgeous display of pale colors and filmy black dresses against a white pebbled ground and black terraces. The garden extended in three directions, with a fountain in the center, and a full orchestra set up at the end of one allee.

The beautiful show gave a greater emotional charge than the winter collection. Well, no wonder — it was set around an iceberg. Mr. Lagerfeld exchanged fake fur for feathers, to convey the sense of lightness that ran throughout the collection. Many of the fabrics are not what they might appear. For instance, classic tweeds may be loosely woven ribbons in pale pink and pistachio; a gray ottoman knee-length dress with a slightly rounded shape was actually done in silver metallic threads. The clothes were light in both construction and attitude, with a disintegrated quality to tweed jackets and frayed denim. A pale pink taffeta A-line dress was slashed with holes and then embroidered with black beads. The hem was filled in with pink feathers.Read more…

The day after the couture shows is typically when magazines do their photo shoots, snagging the dresses they want to tell a story and often working around a house’s client schedule. There is something of a church-and-state divide in couture, with clients in private appointments with a saleswoman on the couture side of a house — separate salon, separate entrance — and editors giving their interpretations of the clothes.

Toward the end of Yves Saint Laurent’s career, when he was still doing couture collections, I would sometimes accompany a few friends who were regular clients — Nan Kempner, among them — on their appointments at YSL. It was fascinating to watch them go through the clothes. They saw them in a completely different way than I did. They were buying pieces for a wardrobe. For them the process was like a slow, ongoing conversation.