Chanel's Diamond-Bright Gowns & Sensible Suits at Paris Couture Week

I spent about 36 seconds of the Women’s March over the weekend thinking about Karl Lagerfeld’s weak attempt at staging a feminist fashion march on his Spring 2015 runway, and wondered if he was watching, participating, or gave a fuck. And so, despite the dazzling handiwork in his couture show for Spring 2017, which showed today in Paris, I cannot deny that the whole bit feels tonally off, even though the point of couture, at least for Chanel, is to showcase its classicism and exceptionality within the accords of haute couture.

The structure of both the beaded/feathered gowns and the neater suit pieces were inspired by the Swiss sculptist Alberto Giacometti’s 1926-27 piece “Spoon Woman,” a sort of Cubist take on the Venus Figurine. He was inspired by the fertility of the totem, “the metaphor employed in ceremonial spoons of the African Dan culture, in which the bowl of the utensil can be equated with a woman’s womb,” writes Jennifer Blessing, curator at The Guggenheim.