Can the little red dot stand shoulder to shoulder with the little black dress? A native islander and friends look at fashion (and such) in Singapore, and, occasionally, among her neighbours, and a little further afield
They went big on the bloom, in more ways than one. GWPs out of control
It is not surprising that Virginie Viard turned to the bloom so closely linked to the maison to set the tone for her latest collection. The camellia is, according to the brand, “eternal code of Chanel”. When the time comes (and it does), you turn to the fleuron forever because it is easy and convenient: it’s always there. As it turned out, this is the centennial year of the use of the 16-petal camellia at the house of Chanel. Time to celebrate, but rather than imagine the camellia as, say, a whole bodice, Ms Viard used it as a motif for fabrics and as ornamentation other than brooches or hair clips. The employment is undeniably classic, which is easily euphemism for stodgy. Or, unimaginative. One supposedly novel use of the camellia was to place white blooms in different sizes on black knitted tops (frumpy round-neck cardigans), like random polka-dots! The result was, at best (and regrettably), juvenile.
In contrast, the show was minimal and sleek. It was staged at the Grand Palais Ephémère, the temporary exhibition space (in the park Champ de Mars), erected to stand in for the Grand Palais, practically Chanel’s show home, which is under renovation, in preparation for next year’s Olympics. The set up was simple, but monumental: a really long runway with two circuses on which each, a trio of gigantic camellias sat, front-facing. A black-and-white moving image of Chanel’s “ambassador”, the Japanese actress Nana Komatsu (who attended), was projected on the uncoloured flowers—the petals seemed to be in motion. For the finale, those camellias were lit in red, a striking patina, no doubt. But when the clothes appeared in a row, they had, sadly, less the dramatic impact than the set. In fact, this, to us, was the funniest Chanel collection of recent memory.
Humorous because, well, the outfits were comical. We were not expecting Ms Viard to do anything that might be considered inventive or clever. Boucle jackets with asymmetric hems, for her, could be considered advanced. Some critics have said that she does not vary from a handful of silhouettes. We struggled to count even that many. So it was down to the extraneous to make a giggle-inducing difference. This season, there were the marabou puffs on a vest that looked like pockets and more of them all over a black pullover and skirt. The feathers were even used to trace the outline of Chanel’s resident flower and applied, oversized, all over a sweater! By themselves, the individual pieces of the collection might just be a tad okay if not for the styling. Ingenious meant a gilet over a coat-dress, cardigan with knit shorts, sweaters with lace biker tights (there were many more shorts, in fact)! A cropped jacket was teamed with a pair of knickerbockers. A romper, well-loved garment no doubt, had bloomers for legs. Ms Viard has been partial to styling with a frumpish persuasion, but this season, she went big with it.
And, of course, more camellias! There were leather leis on the lapels of a leather trench, posies for pockets or beaded (single) blooms, 3-D cutouts on a T-shirt, as single petal that dotted a gilet, and repeated patterns (in a grid) for fabrics that were as beguiling as bus flooring. The blooms were woven into the knits, stitched decoratively on a jacket, studded on a denim pantsuit, stitched together like yo-yo quilts, sequined on fabrics already with camellia prints. They framed a neckline so that it looked like a necklace was worn and dot cuffs as if they were giant links. They came as buttons (of course) and as bags, too, but some, oddly, in the shape of balls. They replaced the double-C clasps (or perhaps covered them) on flaps, were edged-out on sheer gloves, and finely patterned on boots. Jelak yet? The sum probably exceeded the quota that, elsewhere, would be considered judicious use. Surely every house limits the profusion of such “codes”? If the camellia was not a cliché before, it sure is now.
Who was the slain, haute couture-wearing HongkongerAbby Choi?
Abby Choi, wearing Elie Saab, in Paris early this month. Photo: xxabbyc/Instagram
Warning: This post contains description that some readers may find disturbing
She is on the news in Hong Kong daily since last Wednesday when her dismembered body was found in Lung Mei Tsuen (龙尾村), Tai Po (大埔), in the New Territories (新界), north of the SAR. “Reality is more gruesome than fiction” was a repeated comment on Weibo when the news broke. Abby Choi Tin-fung (蔡天凤), a model and an influencer who has been constantly referred to as a socialite, was found mutilated in a mysterious village flat. The grisly murder has been very much covered by the local media, including the discovering by police of cooked body parts, as well as a mincer and an electric saw at the crime scene. According to the South China Morning Post, “body parts were discovered in two soup pots police retrieved” and “two female legs were found in a fridge at the house” in a search that stretch to the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Tseung Kwan O (将军澳), some 27 kilometres away from the Tai Po. In what has been described as 一家落网 (yijialuowang or one family netted), police have arrested four related individuals in connection with the case: first husband Alex Kwong Kong-chi (邝港智), his elder brother, and their father for murder, as well as their mother for perverting the course of justice. In addition, a “lover” of the father was also arrested. Reportedly, Mr Kwong was apprehended by police while waiting for a speedboat to abscond to the mainland at Tung Chung Pier (东涌码头) on Lantai Island. He was found with cash of HK$500,00 (or about S$85,857) and luxury watches, including a Patek Philippe, all estimated to worth a total of HK$4 million (or about S$686,858).
The backstory to the murder that emerged is, given the consistent glamour that Abby Choi projected, inconsistent with a fashion personality who has been a couture week fixture. In Paris, just this past January, she was seen lavishly dressed at Dior and Chanel, two labels she seemingly adored, as well at the shows of Giambattista Valli, Zuhair Murad, Elie Saab, and the Greek designer Celia Kritharioti. She also attended the Dior and Chanel dinners after the respective presentations. At 28, she was considered one of the youngest customers of French high fashion. Ms Choi loved ultra-feminine styles, and her adoration of all those maisons was not surprising. She was also seen on the front row at the Louis Vuitton men’s presentation, shortly before the start of couture spring/summer 2023 season. And just last Wednesday, Ms Choi shared on Instagram an image of her on the (digital) cover of L’Officiel Monaco. The e-mag described her with considerable enthusiasm as “a fashion icon and media personality who has taken the world by storm with her impeccable sense of style and her unbridled passion for fashion” and “a true trendsetter, with fans from all over the world following her every move”. And on that same day, she was reported missing after she was not contactable the day before. Two days later, police made the gruesome, partly-cooked find.
In Chanel at the Grand Palais Éphémère for the Chanel couture spring 2023 show in January
The flat in a quaint, nondescript four-storey block, where the body parts were found, is believed to have been rented by Ms Choi’s former father-in-law Kwong Kau (邝球) just a few weeks ago. The latest reports state that Kwong Kau’s mistress, a mainlander who works as a masseuse in Sham Shui Po (深水埗), Kowloon (九龙) and is known only by her surname Ng (伍 or wu) to media and Yung Yung (容容) to her customers, was the person who facilitated the rental of the flat. Police believes she also harboured Alex Kwong in another flat in Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀). The rented residence where the dismemberment was carried out sits in a beach-side village—half an hour drive’s from the city centre—that tourists do not generally associate with the gleaming metropolis: verdant surroundings of the New Territories and the Pat Sin Leng (八仙岭 or ridge of the Eight Immortals) mountain range for a backdrop. Those who choose to live here generally prefer to get away from the manic heart of the city or to adopt a seriously quiet life. The village, by many accounts, “look(s) like forever holiday”, and it is in this tranquility that a brutal crime could easily be carried out. Tai Po is, ironically, home to the world’s tallest bronze Goddess of Mercy, and just three kilometres to Lung Mei Tsuen is a river that leads to a plunge pool, known locally as 新娘潭 (xinniangtan) or the Bride’s Pool.
According to the HK news site Mingpao (明报), Ms Choi’s petit body was discovered by the police in parts, separately. Two stainless steel pots found in the unfurnished flat contained a skull in one and bits of ribs, hair, and “small amount of human tissue” amid green and red carrot chunks in the other, as well as soup dregs. According to one Reuters report published after the body parts were found, a refrigerator apparently was where her legs were stored. At the time of this post, Ms Choi’s body was not completely found. Her torso and her hands are reportedly still missing. The police have not explained why searches (two, apparently) were required in the Tseung Kwan O cemetery or if clues pointed them there. It was also revealed that a 6.5 cm by 5.5 cm hole was found on the skull, behind the deceased’s right ear. Followers of Ms Choi on social media cannot reconcile the description of the dismembered body with images of the fashionista/influencer frequently seen on social media or society pages of magazines. “Who hacks a beautiful woman like that?” Or any body? Were the slayers so consumed by rage in whatever Ms Choi did or said to want to murder and mutilate?
The Lung Mei Tsuenflat where the gruesome mutilation took place. Photo: EPA/Shutterstock
Hong Kong news reports posit that the murder was set in irreversible motion by squabbles between Ms Choi and her former in-laws that related to a luxury property in Kadoori Hill (加多利山), a historic-enclave-turned-residential-neighbourhood-of-the-wealthy, south of Kowloon Tong (九龙塘). The hill is named after the prosperous Mizrahi-Jewish Iraqi family that is widely linked to Hong Kong’s oldest hotel The Peninsula in Kowloon. Kadoori Hill scores favourably among the rich—Andy Lau (刘德华) is an esteemed resident—for the many good schools in the area (known as the “Prestigious School District), as well as grand mansions and swanky low-rise flats, earning the area the reputation of the “address of the elite”. It is reported that back in 2019, Ms Choi purchased the disputed Kadoori Hill flat for HK$72.8 million (about S$12.5 million). Full payment was completed three months later, purportedly leaving behind no mortgage records. Her former father-in-law was apparently the name in the sales contract, witnessed by lawyers. It is not certain if this was a gift to the old man, but the media speculated that Ms Choi was trying to save on stamp duty that amounted to HK$7 million (about S$1.2 million). Hong Kong real estate portals estimated that the unit could fetch HK$67 million at current prices.
Her long-time unemployed ex-husband and his family lived in the luxury flat located on up-hill Kadoori Avenue. Most accounts claimed that Ms Choi continued to support Mr Kwong and his family financially even when the marriage was over. Even her brother-in-law, Alex Kwong’s older sibling Anthony Kwong Kong-kit (邝港杰) was employed as her personal driver. It is not known when she and the younger Kwong brother were divorced (common guesses place the year in either 2015 or 2016). She apparently met him in school when she was 15 and married him three years later, in 2012, and bore him two children. It is not known why she chose to wed at such a young age, if her parents agreed to it, or even if she was still in school at that time. Little is also known about her married life or why she chose someone “not her economic equal”, as Netizens had said. The Chinese edition of the BBC shared that Alex Kwong has a criminal record, having been charged in the past for seven counts of theft. China’s Sohu News (搜狐) claims it was fraud that involved deceiving four men into investing HK$5 million (about S$859,022) in a non-existent gold business. He disappeared after receiving the money. Financial crunch and trouble plagued the Kwong family. Both brothers were, at various times, hauled to court for credit card debts that included a purported HK$1.576 million (or about S$270,730) that Alex Kwong owed to American Express. Although their mother Jenny Li Ruixiang (李瑞香) was a retiree, she mysteriously filed for bankruptcy in 2016, presumably due to overwhelming debt. Despite this chronic familial financial debility, Abby Choi continued to support the Kwongs, who probably saw in her their chance to rewrite their fate.
In Dior couture with pal Moka Fang (right) at Ms Choi’s 27th birthday party last year. Photo: Photo: xxabbyc/Instagram
Sometime at the end of last year, Ms Choi made an unexpected decision: she wanted to sell the multi-million Kadoori Hill flat. Apparently her lawyers had told her that she could keep the proceeds of the sale if proof that she had paid for the unit could be produced. The possibility of the Kwongs no longer being able to use an “address of the elite” enraged the family. Ms Choi and her ex-husband reportedly were at loggerheads as a result. According to Hong Kong media, the elder Kwong, also known as 球哥 (kao gor in Cantonese), was infuriated too, and so incensed that one day he threatened his former daughter-in-law: “[如果] 你卖楼，不安置我哋，我会杀你 ([if] you sell the flat and do not find a replacement and settle us down, I will kill you)”. It was not expected that he would carry out his threat. Kwong Kau, who was a former police officer, but resigned after “being involved in a rape case” (he was allegedly the perpetrator, but was not known to have been prosecuted), was noted for his foul temper. Police believed that he plotted the murder based on his knowledge of criminal investigations in the Hong Kong police force, although he had left 18 years ago. The plan was to get Ms Choi to pick her daughter, born to her ex-husband, up from school, but that trip would be intercepted and she would end up in a seven-seater car in which she would be bludgeoned before arriving at the Lung Mei Village flat to be butchered. That part went according to plan. The Chinese have a perfect expression: 谋财害命. To plot and kill for the victim’s property/wealth.
Abby Choi was born in 1994 in Hong Kong to a family believed to be wealthy. The extent of their riches is not established, nor the source. Similarly, there is no mention in the media about her childhood, where she grew up, her teenage years, or her academic pursuits (no information about her school either). But it is said that her parents, business people with commercial interest in China, specifically Hainan Island (海南岛), brought up Ms Choi and two other sisters (both are younger, with the youngest only 17 this year) in a “富裕环境 (fuyuhuanjing) or well-to-do environment”. Her mother, Zhang Yanhua (张燕花), known as 五姐 (wujie) or fifth sister in the mainland, where she’s seemingly based, is from 文昌 (wenchang), a city in the northeast of Hainan Island that is famed for being the ancestral home of the Chinese political figures, the Soong sisters (宋氏三姐妹). Little is known about the mother of the deceased except that she maintains a Douyin (抖音) account and have been, according to mainland Netizens, ‘liking’ commentators’ consolatory messages. She has offered to take care of her grand children in the wake of her daughter’s death. Curiously, there has been no mention of Ms Choi’s father; his identity has not been disclosed.
With Pharrell Williams at a 2018 Chanel party in Hong Kong. Photo: xxabbyc/Instagram
In 2016, Abby Choi, reportedly worth HK$100 million (or about S$17.2 million), married her second husband Chris Tam (Chinese media, including those here, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, refer to him only as Chris), whose father 谭泽均 (Tan Zejun) is behind the popular TamJai Yunnan Mixian (谭仔米线) restaurant chain. Little is known of Mr Tam, but as the heir apparent of his father’s company (until it’s sold in 2017 to Japan’s largest operator of noodle shops Toridoll Holdings), is called “谭仔米线太子爷 (crown prince of TamJai Mixian)”. Although the couple’s nuptial celebration was described by local media as a lavish event, their marriage was, in fact, not registered. They are parents to two children, a boy and a girl. Friends consider Mr Tam a good husband, who is not concerned with his wife’s—in hindsight—complicated past, and loves the two kids born to her and Alex Kwong as if his own. As she found stability in wedded bliss, Ms Choi slowly began her social media career as a fashion influencer. For a social media star, however, she was relatively late in joining Instagram and Facebook. Her first IG post on 12 July 2012 was of a green, snake-skin Lady Dior bag, while on FB, it was even later—on 1 January 2017 of herself sunbathing; both posts had no comments. It is not known when she started attending the European fashion weeks, but an IG post in February 2016 showing her at the Dolce & Gabbana show in Milan, which could possibly be her first.
Her social media posts soon showed more expensive fashion (especially in tulle) and, unsurprisingly, celebrities (it isn’t clear if Ms Choi knew them before). In January 2018, there was the pose with Pharrell Williams, who, like Ms Choi, was admirer and guest at a Chanel show (presumably couture, given the date) and the expected after-party. Mr Williams, as well as Ms Choi, probably didn’t know then what laid ahead for the singer. Even Bryan Boy was quick to Tweet that she was “an acquaintance”. One name that was often mentioned this past week is Moka Fang (方媛), Aaron Kwok’s (郭富城) model/influencer wife of six years and mother of his two daughters. Ms Choi, who has been called “温柔 (wenrou)” or gentle by those who know her, has described Ms Fang and her as “情同姐妹 (qingtong jiemei or deeply close sisters)”. Both women do look rather alike, with their straight, long hair; bright almond-shaped eyes; delicate lips; and pointed chins. The two friends were known to attend fashion events in Hong Kong together although, interestingly, there are practically no photos of the duo in Ms Fang’s IG page. In a recent IG post of a black-and-white photo of a white rose, Ms Fang wrote in Chinese: “Feeling extremely sad. For now, still can’t accept this as fact. The sadness in my heart is unspeakable; there are only a thousand whys. The great sorrow still can’t be subdued.” Reality is more gruesome than fiction.
The next Met fashion exhibition has been themed. ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ might just be Anna Wintour’s personal tribute to her “brilliant friend”
Chanel has been Anna Wintour’s go-to label for the Met Gala. From top left, in 2010, in 2017, in 2018, and in 2019. Photos: Getty Images
In the biography Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Fashion, Anna Wintour stated that the ‘Kaiser’ “often said that when he died, he wanted to disappear”. She quickly added, “Well, that cannot happen”. With the next spring exhibition at the Anna Wintour Costume Center (AWCC, formerly the Costume Institute), the Vogue editor will keep to her word. Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty is the next theme of the Met’sannualshow and opening-night fete. Although it sounds like the exhibition spin-off of the book, it would be, as it was in the past years, the work of Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the AWCC and its fashion exhibitions, and the life partner of the designer Thom Browne. Mr Bolton told the media at the press conference to announce next year’s theme, “I’m not sure Karl would approve of the exhibition”, echoing Ms Wintour’s own sentiment. In all likelihood, the monographic show was initiated pushed through by the woman whose name precedes the Costume Center.
It is no secret that Anna Wintour is Karl Lagerfeld’s ardent supporter in not only what the designer did for brands such as Chanel and Fendi, but also in her continual wearing to the Met Gala the Chanel haute couture gowns that Mr Lagerfeld designed, sometimes just for her. Both of them were thought to be close. In a tribute, titled ‘My Brilliant Friend’, published in Vogue in 2019, after Mr Lagerfeld’s death, Ms Wintour wrote: “We were often in touch” and “the hours I spent with him at the (dinner) table make me feel luckier than any stroke of fortune I’ve had at my editing desk”. Both did not see each other frequently, but they had “a standing dinner date in Paris on the first Sunday of every Fashion Week”. Despite the suggestion of deep friendship, Ms Wintour did not reveal why “it’s doubly painful to have lost him”, as she wrote, except that “he never fell out of love with his work or with the world, and his death marks the end of the era of craftspeople who could do it all”. What did their relationship really mean to her?
“the hours I spent with him at the (dinner) table make me feel luckier than any stroke of fortune I’ve had at my editing desk”
Anna Wintour
It is hard to know if she was that close to Mr Lagerfeld. In a sort of postscript to his book Karl: No Regrets, the author/artist Patrick Hourcade, who knew the designer well since 1976, drew up a list titled ‘Fellow Travelers’. Anna Wintour is not under the subhead ‘The Closest’ (another Anna is—Piaggi); her name does not appear beneath ‘In the Realm of Fashion’ (a familiar one, Ines de la Fressange, does). She is there in the final lineup ‘A Few Journalists’; her famous moniker at the end of the page, after Andre Leon Talley. It is not clear how Ms Wintour met the Chanel designer. Mr Talley, who knew Mr Lagerfeld and had met him much earlier than the Vogue supremo, in 1975, suggested that it was he who facilitated the acquaintanceship between the designer and the editor, even claiming in his second autobiography The Chiffon Trenches that his “role at Vogue was no doubt secured by my relationship with Karl Lagerfeld.” He was emphatic about their bond: “His importance in my life and career is without parallel.” Ms Wintour was never that forthcoming or sentimental.
Mr Talley even revealed that the Chanel dresses that she wore for her wedding to Dr David Shaffer—a psychiatrist—in 1984 were not acquired through her special friendship with Mr Lagerfeld then or connections with the couture house, but “through Joan Juliet Buck (the former editor of Vogue Paris, as it was known then) to gain access to the dresses”. Anna Wintour has loved Chanel from her early years in journalism, especially when she finally joined Condé Nast. Mr Talley shared that “she purchased her Chanel at Bergdorf Goodman”. But she would soon have an arrangement with Chanel when she became chummier with Mr Lagerfeld. In the 2005 biography of the EIC, Front Row, author Jerry Openheimer wrote that Ms Wintour was (likely between the mid to late ’80s) “wearing nothing but elegant, very discreet Chanel as her Condé Nast work uniform.”
He then went on to describe what was dubbed ‘The Chanel Affair’ (also the title of the chapter), quoting Cristina Zilkha, the wife of Michael Zilkha, a business partner in the New York music company ZE Records that represented US New Wave groups such as Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Mrs Zilkha, who did not think Ms Wintour liked her, recounted: “Michael said to me, ‘You know, you’ve never had a Chanel suit, so I told Anna that when she sees Lagerfeld to get you something… because she gets fifty percent off.” When the parcel arrived, “it was half a suit of a really nasty pale yellow with a puce undertone—a Mr-Livingston-I-presume double-breasted safari jacket with thick, huge gold metal buttons, each of which had a huge CC. It was vulgarity one couldn’t believe and something Anna would not have been caught dead in”.
Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld. Photo: Glamour
For herself, Ms Wintour was always immaculately fitted in the brand with the double Cs. At the Met Gala opening parties, Ms Wintour has almost always been in Chanel. There were, of course, regular attendees who wore the French brand, but none so routinely as Ms Wintour. In her Vogue tribute to Karl Lagerfeld, she readily admitted that his designs “expressed who I was and what I hoped to be”. Yet, in the recent video editorial Vogue’s 73 Questions, she commented that her style is “safe, verging on extremely boring”. Did she mean now, as opposed to then? How amaranthine the Chanel style is is reflected in her choosing of the brand. According to Amy Odell in Anna: The Biography, the editor “often wore Chanel couture” and when she attended the shows, it “was always opportunity for her to shop”. Ms Wintour admits to the frequency in which she picks Chanel : “I’ve worn Karl’s beautiful clothes during the most important, emotional moments of my life: at my wedding, at my children’s weddings, when I received a damehood from the queen, at Franca Sozzani’s memorial service”.
Karl Lagerfeld appeared to appreciate the friendship and was very generous to her (as he was to others he held in considerable esteem, until no more). Glamour reported that in 2015 after the British Fashion Award, when Ms Wintour presented Karl Lagerfeld the trophy for Outstanding Achievement, the honoree gave the presenter a gift—a tennis court built on his Biarritz compound, described as a “ploy to get her over as a houseguest”. A thrilled Miss Wintour said, “Karl was trying to give me somewhere I could feel at home, where I could be myself. This was the first and surely the last time anyone has constructed sporting turf in my honor.” The next fashion exhibition at the Met would be her opportunity to construct something in his honour, even when Andrew Bolton had asserted, “Karl never tired of telling me that fashion did not belong in a museum.” But the exhibition would not be devoted to just his work for Chanel since, in 2005, the Costume Institute had staged a Chanel exhibition that went by the brand’s mononym and featured Mr Lagerfeld’s work. It almost did not open, as he had initially withdrawn support for it.
Next year’s Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty would not be the first exhibition at the Met dedicated to a single designer. In 1983, the year Mr Lagerfeld joined Chanel, the Costume Institute opened the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, organised by the late Diana Vreeland. It was touted as “the first retrospective of a living couturier’s work”. Before her loyalty to Chanel, Ms Wintour wore a lot of YSLs. In Front Row, a friend recalled her cupboard in the Upper East Side apartment where she was staying: “I opened her closet and it was extraordinary—there was one Saint Laurent suit from ready-to-wear after another that she’d bought from Paris, all perfectly hung with the shoes above them.” No one needs to open Anna Wintour’s closet today to be able to visualise the row of Chanel clothes in there. What would, perhaps, be more fascinating is to know how many of them would be on load or donated to the Costume Institute to make the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition her line of beauty, too.
Chanel continues to churn out “iconic” jackets that are “beautiful”. It that really this much Virginie Viard can produce?
She said it at last, although it did take a while. Suzy Menkes posted on Instagram after the Chanel autumn/winter 2022 couture show: “the word I felt while watching models lined-up on an upper gallery seemed just plain ‘dull’.” So useful and apt that word was that Ms Menkes applied it twice, both in a single post, in one paragraph. That was double the dullness. For a near-octogenarian to suggest that a constantly-lauded brand produced a collection that caused boredom was quite something (eye-opening?) when she had previously quite adored the label, even after Karl Lagerfeld was no more. But Ms Menkes is not saying something new. For many seasons now, Chanel has not reversed the feelings of those still unimpressed. Reacting to Ms Menkes’s comments, which included noting the “smell of horses” of the venue (equestrian school Étrier de Paris), one commentator wrote, “No magic spark, nothing to ignite the imagination. Expertly crafted, dull indeed.”
Virginie Viard, as we have observed, has taken the path well trodden, even trotted, since the demise of Mr Lagerfeld. Why trek new trail when the old and familiar is more level for walks, and hence safer? As with any way beaten by heavy foot traffic, the course is smooth and will not impede the continuing of an outing that was never creatively fraught to begin with. It is possible Ms Viard never sought excitement. She is not a risk taker. She is comfortable with merely continuing. Or, as we like to say, coasting. She has acquired her momentum. There is no need to change the gait. Why gallop when you can trot? She is happy with her rhythm, staying on the first level of the training scale. Or, from the horse’s mouth: “My approach to work has always been rather simple and pragmatic, but more than ever, I feel truthfulness and a realness will be leading me going forward (Vogue, April 2020)”. She is okay with dull. So are many Chanel customers.
But dull, as with ugly, is not necessarily a bad thing. There are—more and more, and more—no negatives in fashion. They are just clothes, to be worn, not hung on the wall to be admired. As long as it fits, it is good to go. Dull is immensely wearable. In all likelihood, Ms Viard is guided by the economics of fashion, to keep Chanel ahead of the quickly-catching-up Dior in the sales stake. For as long as they appeal to women with no fashion aspiration but wealth, or taste-weak and stylist-dependent actresses, auntie-becoming influencers, and editors who just swoon at the sight of tweed, they are on a safe path, and Ms Viard can continue to amble along, happily and unprovocatively. So she’ll continue with her modest styles of straight-shouldered jackets, frumpy blouses, mid-calf skirts, and the occasional va-va-voom gown (this season, in puke-green). At the show, you won’t be jolted out of your placid enjoyment if you are not going to be shocked.
But Ms Viard tries to astonish and her idea of surprise—in pairings, for example—is bringing together “tweed and flou with a boyish allure”, as Chanel later described on their Facebook page, possibly alluding to the moderately masculine style Coco Chanel herself adopted in the 1920s. Femininity is, however, the core of Chanel, and now under Ms Viard, extreme femininity: “Swathes of floating white tulle”, went the proud announcement. One dress, perhaps, sums up this couture season for them—the last outfit, a white (or off-white), ankle-gracing dress described by many on social media as a “wedding gown”. Chanel touts it as “embodying the intricate lightness” of their couture. The bustier number is in chiffon with a bodice of criss-crossed, pleated panels, left to hang over the skirt that was gathered at the waist. The dress is completed with a crepe shawl— embroidered (of course) with flowers and on its end trimmed with fringing. It is possibly “intricate”, but is the sum effect special? Does the bow atop the model’s head make it more so? There are those who insist that haute couture is “never how it looks; it’s about how it’s made”. The sad thing is, in some cases, despite the work—all done by hand and consisting of many, many hours, we are constantly reminded—the end result is just nothing—nothing to look at, nothing to shout about, and nothing to remember them by.
Chanel has refused to sell to Russians overseas, who intend to use their merchandise back on home soil. Despite the ban, there are Russians who are determined to buy their fave bags, failing which, they take to social media to denounce the perceived Russophobia
Is it true that Chanel is presently Russophobic, as charged by some Russians online, after they failed to secure their desired items, even when abroad? According to media reports, Chanel stores across the world have stopped selling to Russians who reside in their native land (the French brand has, like their counterparts, stopped operating in cities such as Moscow). Chanel has stated that they are merely acting in accordance with EU sanctions that forbid the export of luxury goods to Russia costing more than €300 (or about S$445), as well as the sale of these goods to shoppers who intend to use them there. Bloomberg quoted a Chanel spokesperson: “We have rolled out a process to ask clients for whom we do not know the main residency to confirm that the items they are purchasing will not be used in Russia.”
Unhappiness over the drastic Chanel move was expressed swiftly on social media. Russian influencers were the first to condemn the purchase ban, as if it they were prohibited from buying sugar. One of them, Liza Litvin, who was shopping in Dubai, was quoted in many news reports to have posted, “I went to a Chanel boutique in the Mall of the Emirates. They didn’t sell me the bag because (attention!) I am from Russia!!!” The outrage was expressed by wealthy Russian fans of Chanel not only in words. Some went even further. Marina Ermoshkina, actress/TV presenter/influencer, was reported to have cut up her Chanels in disgust, and posted a video of the destruction, saying “If owning Chanel means selling my Motherland, then I don’t need Chanel.” It is not known if Chanel has calculated the cost of incurring the wrath of Russian influencers.
Customer browsing at the Chanel store in Takashimaya Shopping Centre
The Russians who were able to score Chanel merchandise were reportedly told to put their signature to an agreement that they will not use—or wear—their new purchases in Russia. Ms Litvin confirmed this by sharing on social media that Chanel “has a new order that they only sell after I sign a piece of paper saying that I won’t wear this bag in Russia.” The company has admitted to the press that “a process” is in place to ensure that what they sell do not cross into Russia. Many Russians call this need for signed assurance before a transaction can be completed “humiliating” and a slap to the staggering amounts they had been spending in Chanel stores.
It is remarkable that Chanel remains so desirable that some Russian women are willing to face painful loss of pride to buy something from the house. Despite repeated price increases globally in the past two years and, now, this ban, these Chanel measures have not put a damper on Russian enthusiasm for Chanel, or the die-die-must-have stance that many women here would relate to. This surprised many observers: “Chanel is not that exclusive to be this desirable”. Wherever you go, from neighborhood shopping centres to Orchard Road malls, you’d see someone carrying (rather than wearing) something with the familiar double Cs, they noted.
Curious to know if the ban is extended to these parts (or SEA), we asked a member of the three-person staff manning the queue outside the newly refurbished Chanel store in Takashimaya Shopping Centre. She said she wasn’t aware and would have to ask her manager. Before she disappeared inside, we wanted to know as well if a Singaporean buying for another Singaporean residing in Russia is allowed. In less than a minute, she was back. Cheerily she said, “All are welcome.” We expressed surprise. And she repeated, “All are welcome. Everyone can buy.” Two women, who had just scanned the QR code on a tablet held by another staffer to receive a queue number, heard our query. One of them asked the other, “Got ban, meh?”
A fashion collection may be conceived six months or so earlier, but at the time of its showing, it is hard not to put it in the context of what is happening around us. When the general mood reflects a troubled world, where, in one corner, a war rages, however upbeat the clothes are, they would just look unconvincingly optimistic. Chanel’s autumn/winter 2022 collection (not the models) tries to project a certain joie, but it falls flat under the weight of one of its own ‘codes’: the tweed. So enamoured with this fabric Virginie Viard is that the entire show venue—the temporary exhibition hall Grand Palais Éphémère in the greenspace Champ de Mars—is done up in tweed. Unsurprisingly, the collection is an unsubtle, effort-lite homage to this cloth that was once associated with menswear until Coco Chanel rattled the status quo in the mid-1920s.
The house calls it “a luminous tribute to the landscape of the River Tweed so dear to Gabrielle Chanel”. A natural stream, River Tweed (also Tweed Water)— however beloved to Coco—is not, in fact, directly connected to the history of the woolen fabric. As the story goes, it was an accidental name. In 1826, in the town of Hawick, a label on a shipment of the wool to London read “tweel”—the word the Scots used for twill (one of the weaves of the fabric; the other plain). It was misread and confused with the name of Scotland’s famed river, and the moniker stuck. Tweed, according to some lexicographers, is also an old Brittonic word meaning “border”, which makes sense as the river flows through the Anglo-Scottish border, also known as the Borders region.
Any mention of ‘border’ these days, unfortunately connects us to territorial security (or insecurity?) and conflict—in particular, the one now seen in Ukraine. Sure, Chanel’s colourful tweeds this season does not bring to mind the besieged nation (Ms Viard told the press she’s inspired by London in the ’60s), but the aesthetical sum seems to point to the dress preference of certain women of means of the attacker state. While tweed is a symbol of Scottish culture, it is also a show of immense wealth—the Chanel tweed jacket a veritable status symbol. That in itself does not stir much thought until one sees in the designs that Ms Viard has dreamed up for those undeniably sumptuous tweeds. Hard as we tried, we could not decipher who this collection is for other than the unquestioning die-hards and the paid muses. Could Chanel still be thinking of the wives (or mistresses?) of oligarchs, even when the company has stood alongside other French brands to pause their retail operations in Russia?
The platitude that Ms Viard is increasingly tacking Chanel to is hardly unnoticeable. Her designs appear to seduce the purchasing might of those with money but not taste, with power but not influence. Compounding that, the pieces are inexplicably frumpy! And, suppressing the urge for a rude modifier, boring. Apart from the tweed jackets, coats and dresses in relaxed shapes that would appeal to grannies (but truly those for whom brand name and celebrity endorsement could easily supersede brilliant design), there are those curious cardigans that could have been swiped from a Salvation Army. Or, that pink sweater with appliques and scarf borrowed from a GUM department store sales girl! Sure, an attempt is made to style them young, but even denim shorts and knit leg warmers under Wellingtons can’t distance the clothes from any pile marked stodgy.
Beautiful eyes. Who doesn’t want them, especially those of us not especially blessed, and need some tools of colour for enhancement? But I really can’t make out the make-up du jour. From Chanel’s single blacken eye to Julia Fox’s total black out, what is really going on? Why, at a time when we really want to look healthy and unscarred by a unrelenting virus, does any woman desire to give the impression that she was abused? Willingly! Or, is this some self-pummeling as a beauty expression I—and, presumably, you—know not of? If I were to leave my home looking like that, people I know (and do not) would be very worried. Either my eye make-up skill has gone to the dogs, or domestic violence—no laughing matter—has roosted in my home.
The Chanel models I can understand. They did not have a choice in the colour of their eye makeup, nor the intensity of the make-believe bruise. But for Julia Fox, a woman then dating the most powerful man in music and fashion, the indefatigable Kanye West (they reportedly broke up in the middle of this month), and attending the Kenzo and Schiaparelli shows with her beau, the black eyes offered not quite positive optics for the actress and the man next two her, known to be somewhat misogynistic (how do you call his attack of Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish?). Could this be Mr West’s doing—a compulsory makeover of the women he dates? Or was Ms Fox trying to look as sexy as Diggs of Cats and Dogs?
I am tempted to see this trend as makeup brands attempting to sell more eye colour. Chanel’s runway looks certainly impacted their makeup division bigly before—remember the nail colour Vamp? Or was 1994 too long ago? Dark nail polish (and it would get darker), while totally new then, was not suggestive of violence (Vamp would go on to be so successful that it was ranked fifth all-time best-selling nail colour of the previous century) willfully inflicted on women. But a black eye socket? So that fashionable women could appear as though there were physically assaulted? Or, in the case of Chanel, like they fell off a horse? I give up.
Their marketing drive via an advent calendar is drumming up even more news, for the wrong reason. Sadly, the their latest métiers d’art collection won’t take the heat off quickly enough
Who would have guessed that a seasonal calendar could create so much noise. Chanel’s certainly did. A week ago, not too long after the release of the brand’s highly commercial and expensive—and sold out(!)—advent calendar (above), also labelled on the front as Le Calendrier, social media was abuzz with chatter that the said object, in the shape of a Chanel No. 5 bottle, is not worth the asking price. It was really a ringing complain, and it started with one beauty influencer Elise Harmon in the US, who TikToked her disappointment with the item, for which she paid an eye-watering USD825 (approximately SGD1,110). Her post was not a single entry, but at least half a dozen of them! Although she did not really slam Chanel, it was clear she did not find her purchase a best buy. “When you try to get festive by buying a (sic) advent calendar but are left with shattered hopes and dreams,” went one post, showing her clutching her pillow-sized calendar in bed, crestfallen.
This is Chanel’s first advent calendar (usually issued by brands at this time of the year to amp up their standard offering of festive beauty coffret), which was created to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Chanel No. 5 this year. It is not clear why Chanel, always touted as a premium luxury brand, would want to partake in such a mass marketing exercise, but it could have been a good opportunity to boost the grand standing of the French house. Rather, many of the products found in those 26 individually-boxed items, marked 5 to 31, inside the calendar are not quite the stuff as desirable as Chanel camelias. To be sure, we’ve only seen them online—the non-standard Chanel items looked like they were sourced from Taobao. As Ms Harmon said, when she found some stickers in one of the boxes, “this is a joke”. Or, the all-plastic snow globe: “this mess (sic) me up because it looks like it came out of a gumball machine”. Or, the temp tattoos: “I’m done”.
Miss Harmon is not the only shopper to be disappointed with the festive purchase. In China, Netizens have been complaining about the Chanel advent calendar since last month when, on 2 November, one Weibo user, @淦诗岐 (Gan Shiqi) shared a 开箱视频 (kaixiang shipin, unboxing video) and said that some of the item were “ridiculous (太扯了吧!)”. A voiceover even countered, utterly deadpan, “14 无价之宝 (wujia zhibao, priceless treasures)”. But Ms Gan was rather jovial about her bad luck. Over in Hong Kong, just five days ago, a TikToker with the handle @ideservecouture, went all ballistic and WTF-cursed (and in Cantonese expletives too) her way through the video post when she found those things that she, like so many others, did not consider worthy of occupying a Chanel advent calendar (known in China as a 盲盒 (manghe or blind box). With Ms Harmon’s videos going viral and global, Chanel offered a media statement, saying that they are “sorry that this calendar may have disappointed some people” (clearly not those who received them from Chanel as a gift). They described what’s inside as “original content” and the calendar “a true collector’s item whose value cannot be summed up by the products it contains alone”. Is Chanel really listening to the very vocal disapproval?
But Chanel was not only dismaying followers with the debut advent calendar. The statement came just a day before their Métiers D’art collection in Paris. The show left some observers wondering what was happening with the metiers, now housed in their own headquarters, Le19M, a purpose-built, seven-story complex in the 19th arrondissement, where the craftspeople would be less fournisseurs (suppliers) and more the employees of a formidable employer. Conceived to “celebrate craftsmanship”, as it’s oft-repeated, Métiers D’art straddles the gap between Chanel’s pret-a-porter and haute couture. But the latest,staged at Le19M, seemed veered towards the former. Designer Virginie Viard has ditched the (sometimes kitschy) thematic approach of the past, telling the New York Times that working with the mains in Le19M, “there are no rules.”
And indeed there were not. Anything goes seemed to be the guiding ethos. A sum that Chanel calls “a metropolitan attitude”. Striving to modernise the work of these craftspeople (which probably went beyond the French official 35-hour work week), Ms Viard chose what seniors in the creative field often associate with modernity—and youth: sweatshirts and graffiti! Yes, a tweed bomber now featured “sweatshirt pockets with graffiti-embroidered sequins” (really sequinned graffiti) that form the name Chanel! But one proper noun is not enough. Logos, still de rigueur, must appear too, so she really got the embroiderers working by making them sew sequinned double-Cs on cardigans! Perhaps even such overkill could be overlooked. At odds with the believe that exquisite clothes by the métiers should be elegance sans vulgarity are the over-washed denim pants with, gasp, elasticised waists! Ang Mo Kio Central hack?
Sure, Chanel is repositioning itself for a new era. Even Métiers D’art—in its 20th year—has to be reimagined and reset to distance itself from the explicit refinement of the Karl Lagerfeld years. Perhaps the street invasion at other luxury houses legitimises Chanel’s willingness to go with petrifying “graffiti-embroidered sequins” and the like. And an advent calendar that contained what could be a fridge magnet. One editor told us that in the past Chanel was very strict about what extraneous items were bundled with their famous products. “They would never pass of flimsy Christmas tree hangings as exclusive.” The inevitable: even Chanel has to squeeze within the confinement of modern apparel conception and the conundrum of monoculture. If fake news is very real, is mock modernisation just as existent?
Refined and impeccable taste: Have they become so boring that going the opposite way is now far more appealing?Recent trends—and events—have made us wonder: is bad really better?
In a recent article about the rise in the popularity of wellies, the Guardian described the boots mostly associated with rain wear as “bad taste”. And it’s in the headline! Wellington boots, to call them by their proper, more tasteful English name, have a long history—whether illustrious or not, we can’t say. They go back to the early 1800s, and are associated with the British aristocracy. The footwear is, in fact, named after the 1st Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley. The good Duke was a military man and a Tory statesman. In fact, the chap served as prime minister not once, but twice. We do not know if he was an aesthete, but since he ruled over a dukedom, he probably had refined sensitivity towards his sartorial choices. Yet, the trusty wellies that he popularised, as well as their descendants (Bottega Veneta calls theirs by the positively low-brow ‘puddle boots’) are now associated with taste that’s not anywhere near good.
It does not require deep knowledge of current affairs to know that ‘ugly’ is, for more than half of the decade, not the ugly that we know. Ugly, the cousin of bad taste, is attractive; ugly is good; ugly is cool. We were even told that ugly wasn’t a passing fad. And it is true; it is still a trend! Ugly has redefined what is flattering just as much as it has changed what is considered attractive. In fact, chances are attractive is really not. Yet, it now encompasses so many aspect of contemporary tastes that even awful is in the jumble. And there is a word for it: inclusive. Or, the fake synonym, diverse. Both let ugly into the club. Ugly is dancing and winning. Now, if you refer to ugly in the negative, you’d have ugly-shamed! Ugly is so influential (in digital life, is influential synonymous with ugly?), it brought bad taste in too.
The thing about bad taste is that it needs it’s competitor good taste. Without good taste, bad taste won’t be that bad. One isn’t the mirror image of the other, but one can see what the other is not. It isn’t the bad that’s so bad it’s good. It’s bad that makes good look its part. What would Cinderella be without the bad—er, ugly—stepsisters? Would Cinderella stand out? Was it not the Fairy Godmother who gave her everything she needed that had some semblance of good taste? But what the Fairy Godmother created for her so that she could go to the good-taste ball came from the opposite of good: the footmen from mice, the driver of the coach from a frog, and the ball gown from rags! Oh, there is, of course, the coach; it was a pumpkin transformed, not a Yubari King melon!!!
Graphics om the Balenciaga ‘The Simpsons’ T-shirt. Product photo: Balenciaga
Fashion these days is hemorrhaging so much bad taste that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore it as aberration that will vanish the next season. More and more, we can’t wish it away. It keeps coming at you, like mosquitoes on warm and humid days. Sometimes in ways you won’t expect. We are not hyperventilating. The Simpsons of every-town America, Springfield, for example, are not fashion darlings. As Matt Groening told the Smithsonian magazine in 2012, “I thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word ‘simp’ in it, which is short for “simpleton’”. But thanks to Balenciaga—the fearless bender of taste, the family of five are fashion icons. Is any of the Simpsons, now in Balenciaga and on Balenciaga, the epitome of good taste? Even poor Lisa Simpsons looks like a misguided 2nd grader who spends too much money on Shein, pearl choker intact. The Simpsons in Balenciaga seem to suggest that taste, like mood and marriages, can change overnight.
Balenciaga of the present, of course, straddles good and bad tastes, but oftentimes with one foot firmly planted in the latter. Their pairing with the Simpsons maybe irony at its highest order, but is it good taste? Or is this a sure reminder that so many people, like Homer Simpson, simply have no taste until someone comes along and gives them some. Not that Homer Simpson would be able to tell what is good or bad taste. In the case of the Balenciaga makeover of the residents of Springfield, it really depends on luck. But Balenciaga is increasingly able to make make bad taste better, so much so that it becomes good bad taste, or, as some might call it, “impeccable”. Example: Crocs. And recently it shows that on the runway or red carpet, bad taste can walk both. But with their haute couture revived, who’d dare say that Balenciaga is the arbiter of bad taste? Just badder?
Sometimes bad taste comes in the clever guise of ‘eclectic’. This eclectic is a parody of bad taste, often with kitsch as a partner in crime, and the devil around the two. That it might be steep in historicism does not take away bad-taste-as-eclectic’s parodic heft. The pied piper of this constantly jokey, retro-tinged pastiche is Gucci. Like stablemate Balenciaga, Gucci has made bad taste impossibly good, even gauche, galvanising the glaring and the glamourous into action. But few drawn to Gucci see the parody, nor, to be sure, the bad taste. When overexposed to such bad taste, we become immune to it. Bad-taste eclectic has a special—even sexual—power over those seeking fashion that looks like fashion. The nouveaux, like part of China’s social class tuhao (土豪), as well as the new-to-fashion are especially drawn to eclectic, like the proverbial magpie to shiny things. Or, a scene we get to see, flying termites to street lamps!
Chanel’s attempt at bad taste as seen on Lily Rose Depp in a recent campaign
When Balenciaga leads others follow. Bad taste is so potent that many can’t resist its pull, like boba tea. Chanel, once the epitome of good taste, is now moving away from it, baring so much underwear (above), just to name one transgression, that it would be considered bad taste just three pandemic-unheard years ago. Even Lily Rose Depp in the fall campaign couldn’t reverse the course. In fact, none of them nubile young things could. Blackpink’s Jisoo in the promo video Exploring Dior with Jisoo, expressed no taste, good or bad, when she saw the clothes; she was only able to utter, “I love this… I love this… Oh my god, I love this”. Is good taste daft? Chanel and its ilk joined the circus, but others have always been the ringmasters from the start. All-out bad taste at Dolce & Gabbana (including their marketing communication) keeps it in the spotlight. Others may fare less triumphantly but are no less trending, such as Roberto Cavalli and Virgil Abloh’s also-designer/DJ pal Heston Preston. Even to be named the “King of Bad Taste”, as Philipp Plein has, is an accolade. Zoolander, it seemed, saw the future.
To be sure, the Guardian isn’t the first to have ‘bad taste’ in its headline. Vogue, ever the seer of the future, already declared in 2018 that “Bad Taste Is the Best Thing to Happen to Fashion”. It did not conceal its enthusiasm for looks that were “about the hodgepodge style of looking like you don’t care at all coming into fashion”. But of course they cared (and still do), and the media continually shines a spotlight on bad taste, sending it on its inexorable rise. They do this by featuring the many artistes and celebrities, for whom bad taste is also the passport to ‘cred’, such as the Beibers, as well as so many American artistes-turned-whatever. Hip-hop stars have a big part in the rapid rise of bad taste. Whether by designing stuff or wearing them to effect insider advantage and cool, the sum of which frequently courts bad taste. But it isn’t just American stars who succumbed to taste aligned with bad. The Berlin rapper UFO361, a proponent, who attended the Balenciaga couture show, enthused in Stay High, “Nobody rocked Balenciaga. Crazy man. Long live Demna”. Ditto bad taste?
Perhaps bad taste is still taste, and in the world of fashion, it is increasingly better to have some taste than no taste. As the English novelist Arnold Bennett wrote in the Evening Standard in 1930, (even back then) “good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste”. Although Mr Bennett was commentating on literary taste, what he said is just as applicable to much of today’s culture, not just fashion. In fact, bad taste is so much better that we have become used to it, and to the point it isn’t bad anymore. For many here, bad taste is who are: this is how we dress and behave. Accept it! And who even calls out bad taste when they can wallow in the repository of bad taste—TikTok, even YouTube? Has social media accelerated the consumption of bad taste? Its widespread use has certainly put bad taste persistently visible online. Bad taste manifests in not just what we wear, but in how we behave, in how we speak, in how we write, in the expletives we prefer, in the division we sow, in the crassness we consume, in the asinine jokes we rollick through, and in the private lives we expose—all delightfully. Even the most ardent among the promulgators of bad taste have become the arbiters of good taste. And our appetites only grow. And grow.
Before Mediacorp’s Star Awards 2021, there was Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel 2008, 2012, and 2016
An airport created inside the Grand Palais for Chanel spring/summer 2016. Photo: Chanel
The attendees at the Star Awards 2021 held inside the terminal building of T4. Screen grab: Mediacorp/YouTube
We are an island of many firsts. Mediacorp’s recent Star Awards, curiously staged at Changi Passenger Terminal T4, is one of them. It included a “fashion show” with a short runway on the tarmac, in front of an SIA jet. Another first. And stars strutting their stuff in front of an the aircraft—a first too. For the uninitiated, this must have been the grandest event Mediacorp has ever put together, and with more fashion than an average TV/MeWatch/YouTube viewer will get to see in their lifetime. But the aviation theme is hardly new in the world of fashion/entertainment. Watching the unreasonably long broadcast of six-and-a-half hours, with no real content in the first three, we started to stray and think of the grand sets of the old Chanel shows under Karl Lagerfeld’s watch that included an airport and aircraft. Grand. Monumental. Splendid. Stupendous! The descriptions came easily, but we struggled to find similar for Mediacorp’s dalliance with Changi Airport.
Outside their studios, Mediacorp was rather lost—a 孙公公 (sun gonggong, Eunuch Song!) in 21st century Singapore with a four-terminal, two-runway international airport. T4 is not the most attractive among all of Changi’s dissimilar terminals, and Mediacorp made it even less telegenic. From the “red carpet” on the red asphalt of the driveway to the plush, but utilitarian interiors of the departure gates, the show venues had the ambience of an MRT station during the Circuit Breaker. And to see the stars on both driveway and airport apron in sometimes laughable clothes that contradicted the spirit of red-carpet fashion (Chen Hanwei ridiculously over-fashioned by Q Menswear, for one) was really both highlight and downer of the whole event. It might be alright for us to laugh at ourselves, but thinking that the other regions with similar and far more polished award nights having a national giggle was pain-inducing. So, it was best to think of other memorable events.
Chanel cruise show in 2008 featuring a Chanel private jet from which models appeared. Photo: JKLD
Zoe Tay in Carolina Herrera at Changi T4. Photo: Mediacorp
Chanel’s over-the-top shows are, by now, legendary. No idea is too audacious or too unachievable for the house and their budget, and that includes creating a departure lounge and naming the check in counter Chanel Airlines. In fact, there was even a Chanel Line. Back in 2008, Chanel staged a couture show on an airfield in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. The audience was seated in a hanger and two planes—the Bombardier Challenger 601 (considered “business jets”, hence for private travel)—arrived to allow the models to alight. So spectacular the whole staging was (including a first-class departure gate set up in the hanger, complete with cocktail bars) that guests reportedly gave the show a standing ovation even before the first model, Raquel Zimmermann in an airport-ready navy jumpsuit, could deplane. So outstanding the presentation was that jet-setting attendees, such as Victoria Beckham and Demi Moore were duly impressed. If watching the action outside the aircraft was not quite enough, for the spring/summer 2012 couture collection, Chanel brought the show inside the cabin, with a set that allowed members of the audience aisle or window seat!
The house of Chanel had a long connection to aviation. In 1966, Coco Chanel herself even designed the uniforms—featuring her signature boxy jackets—of the flight attendants of Olympic Airways (now Olympic Airlines) of Greece, which was, at that time, marketed as a luxury airline owned by the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (who married the widowed Jackie Onasis). Back then, flying was a stylish affair. And an airport was not a place for T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops as it is now. In bringing back or remembering the romance of travel, Karl Lagerfeld had an airport terminal built in the Grand Palais for the Chanel spring/summer 2016 show. Models appeared as passengers ready to check in at the Chanel Airlines counter, manned by just-as-impossibly-good-looking staff. The flight information display system above (interestingly, not a split-flap) showed the final destinations of Chanel Airlines: Dubai, Seoul, Tokyo, and, amazingly, Singapore! We needed another country to show that we are worthy.
Tone-on-tone is the chromatic choice among the women attending yesterday’s US presidential inauguration
Topcoat day: (from left) Jil Biden, Kamala Harris, Michelle Obamam, and Jennifer Lopez. Photos: Getty Images
It looks like the women attending the inauguration of the 46th US president Joe Biden received the memo: go in a single colour. And wear a topcoat. That’s certainly the case with the office-holders and high-profile women who attended the Washington DC event. Could they have also been inspired by one of the key trends at the recently concluded Milan Men’s Fashion Week—monotone? Or, is a single colour a lot easier to deal with than coordinating with different colours and prints? National-level political events are probably not the time to take a gamble with fashion. Staying safe in a single colour not considered challenging (or worse, controversial) is the best strategy. Few women have the sartorial guts of Lady gaga, who sang the national anthem in a custom-designed Schiaparelli (by Texan Daniel Roseberry, for those nationalistic fashion watchers!) of fitted, navy, wool, lapel-less jacket and froth of red silk-faille skirt. Oh, there was also that distracting gold dove.
Peace may have been on Lady Gaga’s mind, but unity seemed to be on the other women’s. A single colour is perhaps an unambiguous message about how good it looks to be united. As the president himself said, “without unity, there’s no peace.” And to show unanimous support for America (or to express national pride?), they wore American designers, all largely unknown, at least outside the US. Jill Biden wore Makarian, the four-year-old New York label by Alexandra O’Neill; Kamala Harris wore Christopher John Rogers, the New York-based black designer-du-jour, who founded his eponymous label in 2016; Michele Obama wore Sergio Hudson, another black designer, whose seven-year-old label had a kick start at Bravo channel’s Styled to Rock, the reality fashion TV, executive-produced by Rihanna. Well, except for Jennifer Lopez, who sang in, surprisingly, total Chanel.
Outgoing FLOTUS Melania Trump, too, was in a single colour. But it surprised no one that the one-term Slovenia-born first lady emerged from the White House for the final time in not a shred of designed- or made-in-America. She was in telling, mourning black—the separates comprised a Chanel jacket and a Dolce & Gabbana dress. It was a silhouette that was similar to the Ralph Lauren suit that she wore to her husband’s inauguration four years ago. But now that she no longer needed to show that she supported American labels (not that she really did; the relationship was mutual), it was back to her usual enthusiastic nod for her favourite European brands. Towards the end, as with everything Trump, disconnected she happily stood.
Style On The Dot 