At Chanel, Indian elegance in silk and tweed

PARIS — Like first-time visitors to India, guests at Chanel’s “Metiers d’art” show emerged with acute cases of sensory overload.

Between the clothes — sophisticated Parisian takes on Indian staples, smothered in accessories — and the set — endless dinner tables heaped with a banquet fit for a Maharaja — you simply didn’t know where to look.

Silk saris and tweed jackets don’t sound like the ingredients of a fashion match made in heaven, but Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris chic looked perfectly at home in his dreamy take on India.

The designer looked beyond the admittedly glaring differences between the two aesthetics — Parisiennes’ obsession with black compared with Indians’ enthusiastic embrace of the entire color wheel, for one — and tapped into something both cultures share: Elegance.

“It sounds terrible to say this, but India is the one country where even the poor have something very chic about them,” Lagerfeld told reporters after the show. “Even if she has nothing, the poorest women will have two three bangles, an elegant pink sari. It’s very courageous, really.”

Lagerfeld served up rhinestone-studded dress coats shaped like salwar kameezes and sent out flowing broomstick skirts like those worn in certain parts of Rajasthan.

He paired cropped tweed jackets — Chanel’s trademark for decades — with second-skin, thigh-high boots in supple leather that evoked the skinny churidar pants Indian women wear beneath their tunics.

Knee-length silk skirts had the fancy draping of a sari, and the evening gowns were fitted with sweeping lengths of fabric the models draped over their heads, like pallus.

And then there were the accessories.

All the models — including an unusually large contingent of girls of South Asian descent — were swathed in what literally appeared to be their weight in jewels — chokers, dangly earrings, anklets in burnished gold and strand after strand of pearls and chains that ringed the models’ necks, waists and cuffs and ran from their oversized noserings to their hair.

Asked what she thought of Lagerfeld’s vision of India, Delhi-born former model Kirat Young pronounced it “magnificent” and predicted it would win swooning approval back home.

“Everything goes on YouTube and people will be seeing this in India, and they’ll be copying it straightaway,” said Young, who hit the tone of the collection spot-on in her pastel pink Chanel jacket and an antique silver sari that once belonged to her mother.

“Already I was sitting next to the princess of Jaipur, and (during the show) she was saying ‘look at that, I think I’m going to do that when I get home’,” she said.

The runway was a thin strip of ground between the banquet tables, where waiters had bustled before the show, serving up steaming masala chai and topping off guests’ Champagne flutes.

Multitiered silver platters were heaped with tropical fruits and fashion insiders nibbled on macaroons and spicy Indian snacks. Crystal chandeliers dangled overhead and elaborate candelabras with electric candles dotted the tables.

It was the kind of perfectly executed mega-production that only Chanel, the label with the deepest pockets in the luxury industry, could have pulled off.

Chanel’s annual “Metiers d’art” collection was dreamed up about a decade ago to showcase the work of its “petites mains” — artisans from embroiders to flower-makers to goldsmiths — whose handicraft is such an integral part of the Chanel product.

In a statement Tuesday, the label said it had added an eight atelier to its portfolio — crochet and needlework embroidery house Montex, which was founded in 1949.

Chanel’s Paraffection subsidiary also owns Desrues costume jewelry maker, feather-working house Lemarie, Gossens goldsmith, Guillet fabric flower-maker, Lesage embroider, Maison Michel milliner and Massaro cobbler.

The collection shown on Tuesday will hit Chanel boutiques worldwide starting in May.

Though the house has taken its “Metiers d’art” displays on the road, staging runway shows in Istanbul and Shanghai in the past, label officials said there were no immediate plans to show the collection in India.