Full Concrete Jacket

Clichéd it may be, but the famous scene in The Devil Wears Prada illustrates how today's haute couture portends tomorrow's Hot Topic. The colors and volume of the Spring 2008 collections will turn up in the local mall, if not in actuality than in spirit. An acid green t-shirt will recall Galliano, a prom dress the volume of LaCroix, a scarf Valentino's watercolors.

Even when the relationship is a remote one, a keen eye will spot the provenance.

The monster concrete jacket that towered over Chanel's Spring 2008 show may one day be remembered as portentous for another reason. It was said that the jacket--a monumental audacity--represented agelessness and endurance. There will always be a Chanel jacket as long as there is a Chanel show. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. It's one of the few things you can count on in this wacky world, a compass by which we gather our surroundings.

The size of the jacket sent a different message: Chanel is poised to take over the world. Not the world as we know it--that world is shrinking like wool in a dryer--but the new world. There's an acronym for this new world: BRIC. In 2003, the word was coined by Goldman Sachs, an investment banking firm whose business it is to anticipate economic trend. By 2050, the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will have surpassed those of today's wealthiest countries.

In the Spring 2008 show, the giant jacket sent the message that the customers were more important than the couture.

That is not to say that the couture itself wasn't worthy of remark. Chanel has fired a salvo at the youth market and the youth market is firing back. The designs were short and young. There were lots of knees and the awkward poses of teenagers unhappy with having their pictures taken. Flat shoes failed to show the garments to their full potential. Without heels, the models seemed unsure of how to pose their legs and looked as awkward as colts. Dynamism was lost to first-dance gawkiness.

It was all a bit unsettling.

While one expects a clear vision and direction from a collection, the lack of ambiguity here was startling. The old couture clients are a dead or dying breed, their pockets shrinking as those of the BRIC countries grow. The population is exploding; there are now more young than ever before. Someone had to address this, so why not Chanel? Chanel has, after all, an enormous and instant recognizability quotient. Their jacket is probably the most continuously knocked-off item in the world of retail. Aspirational design for today's twelve year old is savvy business. If the Old Guard wants to buy from this collection, they will have to add ten inches to cover up their creaky knees.

Some of the designs were inspired by the shapes and coloration of seashells. What nature intended, Lagerfeld translated into folds and swoops. What nature did not intend (the knees again!), Lagerfeld ignored.

One would not normally expect to find such forward economic prediction in a couture show (where are the rags for the middle class?), but Lagerfeld laid it bare on the world's stage. We have seen the light on the horizon and we are sailing towards it ambivalently. On the beach, amidst the flutes and whorls of the coquilles, Chanel has become a cynosure.

Images: Style.com