Lagerfeld Parades Ice Princesses in Chanel Show

Bernadette Chirac, Victoria Beckham and Avril Lavigne, while all formidable woman in their own way, would not appear to have much in common in the way of taste. It is hard to imagine Madame Chirac in the skater-kid jeans favored by grunge MTV princess Lavigne, for instance; equally, Madame Chirac’s chic but sensible skirt suits would be unlikely to find favour in the high-octane wardrobe of Mrs Beckham. So it is a testament to the breadth of appeal of the Chanel brand that Karl Lagerfeld had all three applauding enthusiastically in his front row yesterday, after the Chanel haute couture fashion show.

Every woman loves Chanel. Among those who can afford the clothes, the brand appeals to society ladies and to executives; among those who can’t, teens dream of saving up for a chain-handled quilted bag to wear with jeans, OC-style, while older women who would never enter a Chanel clothing store nonetheless forge a deep attachment to the evocative scent and chic, square bottle of Coco or No 5 on their dressing table.

While other designers reinvent their labels afresh each season, Karl Lagerfeld’s tactic at Chanel is more subtle. Over the years, he has painstakingly built a fantasy world of Chanel in which the brand’s icons - the tweed suit, the two-tone pumps, the camellia, the quilted handbag - are tweaked and polished into a new look each season.

In this way, each new collection reinforces the Chanel image, as well as refreshing it.

For this summer’s couture line, Lagerfeld took the classic camel and black two-tone Chanel pump and, in keeping with summer’s Courrèges-inspired new minimalism, made it into a flat boot. The influence of the new minimalism, which echoes the clean lines of the early 1960s, was much in evidence in daywear, with monochrome skirt suits in simple, graphic silhouettes.

But a Chanel couture show, which exists in part as a showcase for the formidable talents of the Paris ateliers, cannot restrict itself to stark simplicity for long. After the first crop of skirt suits, breathtaking detailing started to appear: a hairpiece of hand-sewn silk camellias, a white bodice so thickly embroidered with the palest silver sequins molded into bows and feathers that it resembled intricately carved marble.

In such a rarefied world, it is heartening to note that the broader world of popular culture still has an influence.

The collection also paid tribute to this winter’s ice skating craze: with their white tights and boots and ballerina-style miniskirts, some models could have passed for latter-day Torvills. Others, in their frosted lilac eye make-up and pom-pom trimmed dresses, looked like Narnia princesses. Which is apt, since Narnia is about as down-to-earth as haute couture gets.