A Paris Fashion Week Diary by Flo Kohl
photographs by Flo Kohl
A Cinematic Portrait of Chanel’s Paris in Rome Métiers d’Art Show at Cinecitta with Spoken Word by Jean-Luc Godard
If all roads lead to Rome, then which roads lead to Paris? For Chanel’s 13th Métiers d’Art show, Karl Lagerfeld took to the back lots of the famous Cinecittà film studios in Rome to show the luxury brand’s pre-fall 2016 collection. Since Lagerfeld’s reign at Chanel, his Métiers d’Art shows have become legendary: a rodeo in Dallas (Paris in Dallas), a barge in Shanghai (Paris in Shanghai), a hotel in Salzburg (Paris in Salzburg) – the list goes on. The shows aren’t just bombastic gestures of wealth; their intention is also to celebrate the artisans around the world that contribute to the work of Chanel’s collections, from lace to buttonry to embroidery. But Lagerfeld’s decision to create a vintage Parisian set on Teatro No. 5, replete with bistro tables, a boulangerie, a cinema, a metro station, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in real Paris, had a deeper, more poetic and darkly coincidental meaning. The show, planned well before the attacks, was a cinematic love letter to Paris. Lagerfeld remarked: “I wanted to create a homage to Paris. The best Paris, the most romantic Paris and to nostalgia for an idealized version of the city that never really existed.” The Cinecittà, otherwise known as Hollywood on the Tiber, was built by Benito Mussolini in 1937 in a scheme to revive the Italian film industry – later, such classics as La Dolce Vita and Satyricon were filmed there. In Dustin Lynn’s own cinematic portrait of Métiers d’Art show, set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd and a spoken word piece by film legend Jean-Luc Godard, a modern Rome and a modern Paris clashes with a make-believe, Charles de Gaulle-era Paris. Then there are the models walking the runway, the high fashion, and the after party – just to remind us that it is all just fantasy.
Go See Rebecca Dayan's Exhibition "Assumption" @ Catherine Ahnell Gallery In New York
Catherine Ahnell Gallery presents Rebecca Dayan's first solo exhibition as an artist. Painting is a talent that Dayan has been quietly pursuing throughout her years of loudly displaying her on-screen and on-the-page abilities. A native of the South of France, Rebecca started out as a young model and designer in Paris with the likes of some of the industries most acclaimed role players such as Karl Lagerfeld, Peter Lindbergh and Sonia Rykiel. In 2009 Dayan relocated to New York to pursue a career as an actress. Her acting career has grown rapidly since that year, giving Dayan an impressive collection of features that most recently includes a lead role in the much-acclaimed indie film H, which made its world premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Her current exhibition comes from her research for a film role playing a nun in the film Novitiate - she found it interesting the way nuns would talk about god much the same way that a woman might talk about her first love. This intrigue led Dayan to further explore the parallels that can be found between passions of religion and passions of eroticism, giving her the idea for the series of watercolor portraits she produced for her solo exhibition. Rebeca Dayan Assumption Will Be On View Until October 11, 2015 at Catherine Ahnell Gallery in New York. photographs courtesy of the gallery.