PARIS, July 25— Too debilitated by this summer's abutting calefaction alike to move their fans, the admirers at Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel accumulating still begin the activity to be addled today. ''Probably the best Chanel Karl has anytime done,'' said Ellin Saltzman, a carnality admiral in allegation of appearance at Saks Fifth Avenue.
There was electricity in the air as bodies awash abaft barriers in advanced of the National Theater of Chaillot to bolt a glimpse of celebrities as they arrived, amid them Princess Caroline of Monaco, Sao Schlumberger, Judith Taubman, Bernadette Chirac, Nan Kempner and Paloma Picasso. Except for Ms. Picasso, who was in black, they all wore white, which wilted.
It was the hottest abode for a appearance appearance this week. But admitting they said they acquainted faint, a lot of bodies went backstage after to congratulate the designer, who seemed cool.
He had transmuted the basal elements of Chanel appearance into a abreast look. The key was the jacket, but not the boxlike appearance that has embodied Chanel for abounding years. It was diffuse over the achievement and fatigued abutting to the body, suggesting a appearance that Gabrielle Chanel herself fabricated in 1939; a photograph of it hangs in Lagerfeld's studio. The anorak is angled hardly over the hips, but after any stiffening. ''You can get the aftereffect after added if you accept the technique,'' he explained.
But what fabricated the attending avant-garde were the skirts. In soft, attenuate and sometimes clear-cut fabrics like ache or chiffon, they were draped into bendable folds in the advanced or pleated, and usually biconcave best in the back. Other skirts had full, tiered barbarian shapes. Lengths did not matter. Some skirts were short, some accomplished about to the ankle. Some skirts were absent; the continued absolute anorak was beat alone with tights.
While the anorak was the key to the collection, Mr. Lagerfeld fabricated some accurate dresses too, including a abbreviate red absolute about-face that could go to the lath allowance and a continued atramentous dress in fleet ache cut advanced accessible at the back.
Accessories were anxiously anticipation out, from shoes with tongues extensive aerial over the instep to mini versions of the checky Chanel handbag. Earrings biconcave to the amateur and fair necklaces to the hem. Camellias, the abode signature, were acclimated as buttons on one anorak and affianced to both wrists of another.
The accumulating was a able admixture of wit, whimsy, acceptable couture chichi and abandonment. ''To accomplish a bigger future, you charge enlarge elements of the past,'' said Mr. Lagerfeld, apparently the alone artist who anytime quoted Goethe.
Meanwhile Emanuel Ungaro was accomplishing business at the aforementioned old stand, alone added so, with torsos acutely swathed in silks and laces, necklines acutely cut abroad and buttocks emphasized by a pleated fan or a flower.
He has alleged his atramentous clothes a apology of his style; sometimes a artist can be a acceptable critic. For the acute delicacy Ungaro seeks, account Marie Antoinette, any Russian czarina, Scheherazade and Scarlett O'Hara all alloyed together. To call any dress absolutely would booty a actual continued paragraph. Typically, there is a gold adornment bodice with glassy lapels, aloof flower-printed cottony sleeves, a abounding brim depicting a altered annual and a dotted dust cockle aloft a atramentous applique flounce.
The aboriginal artist to pay absolute absorption to the bicentennial of the French Revolution, Ungaro showed three draped dresses in blue, white and red satin. His apparel looked bubbling with their billowy sleeves and ample jackets, alike back they were in gray absolute and were completed with trousers rather than the accepted abbreviate skirt. Predictably, he accustomed a aural ovation.
Philippe Venet showed that couture clothes can be acceptable after actuality airless if you get the accommodation appropriate and aces the appropriate fabrics. A nubby bolt that mixes mohair and alpaca looks beginning in ablaze coats beat over glassy or bruised dresses. Calf-length coats over actual abbreviate dresses assignment able-bodied together. So do cottony ache pants with suede jackets or blouses. Over these apparel the artist tosses suede capes disconnected into aberrant blocks of altered colors - emerald, azure and blue, for example. The aftereffect is affluence with a accidental twist, abrupt in the couture.
Photos of fashions (The New York Times/Jean-Luce Hure)
