There's the house's association to a stylist, Gabrielle Chanel who made her success out of perpetually cutting superfluous details which helped free women from their corsets in the 40s, but who also left behind a terribly unfashionable maison de couture in the 70s. And then there's self-loving Karl who, while imploding with a creative genius that has brought the house to its current success, has done this by turning Coco the stylist into Coco the icon while simultaneously creating a whole clutter of things Coco's sense of elegance would have certainly cringed at. (These objects include temporary tattoos and inadequate movies).
For this season Karl has once again materialized the easily consumable myth of Coco by building a humungous rococo golden lion representing her vodiac sign in the middle of his catwalk. Certainly the exact overt nostalgia Coco would have hated.
So just to refresh our memory of Coco's beliefs and how weird she really was, here are her definitions of l'élégance et la mode:
"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de plus difficile dans votre métier? Permettre aux femmes de bouger aisément. Ne pas se sentir déguiser. Ne pas changer d'attitude, de manière d'être selon la robe dans laquelle on les a fourées sont des choses très difficile."
