Chanel celebrates its heritage at a catwalk show in Dallas

THE French fashion house pays tribute to the role Dallas played its postwar revival.

Models parade in a Chanel fashion show in Dallas, Texas

DALLAS. The name of the Texan city conjures up many images for those who have never visited: TV shows and shoulder pads, oil rigs in barren fields, stetsons and denim, bourbon and beef.

What it might not bring to mind is fashion of the highest order. And freak ice storms.

And yet, the latter two came together in December, when designer Karl Lagerfeld decreed that Chanel fly in hundreds of global media to mingle with top-tier customers at its Paris-Dallas show, a fashion event quite unlike any other. Freezing temperatures meant that last minute packing changes were required to survive the stay.

And yes, everyone’s efforts were rewarded with cowboys and Indians, to boot (scoot).

The French fashion house has slated December as the month it unveils its annual Metiers d’Art show, technically a pre-autumn ready-to-wear show but one that focuses on the handiwork of its 12 specialist ateliers. These sometimes historic, often family-run businesses have been slowly bought up by the fashion giant so that they can survive the contemporary fashion climate, starting with its acquisition of Plailly-based button and jewellery maker Desrues in 1985. They include the glovemaker Causse, which was founded in 1892, shoemaker Massaro, and most recently the master pleaters Lognon, one of the last in France. Not all of the ateliers are French, with Scottish cashmere specialist Barrie Knitwear, founded in 1870, being bought in 2012. Chanel created a subsidiary, Paraffection, in 2002, which is the umbrella company for the ateliers. Despite being owned by Chanel, the ateliers are free to work for other brands.

The Metiers d’Art shows, launched in 2002, draw on various cities with links to the house’s founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. And while many have been staged in Paris — the Grand Palais, for example, doubling as Bombay for a lavish feast — just as often they decamp to the city in question. Previous locations include Edinburgh, where guests rugged up in plaid Chanel blankets at Linlithgow Palace, and Shanghai, where they watched the show from a pontoon on the Huangpu River.

Dallas got the beaded guernsey this time thanks to its part in resurrecting Chanel’s business after World War II — Chanel had been all but rejected by the French market after her association with a certain member of the invading party, after which she hightailed it to Switzerland.

In 1954, she reopened the house, and it was the Americans who immediately saw her vision as relevant to their modern woman. So, in 1957, Stanley Marcus, owner of US department store Neiman Marcus, invited Chanel to Dallas, where she was presented with the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion.

(Lagerfeld, Chanel’s designer since 1983, has noted that the French press had been “beyond nasty” about her return.) The designer likes to appeal to the flavour of the host city, on and off the catwalk, so the event was an ode to Midwest America, from pioneering to present, right to its core. On arrival, guests were greeted with a 1950s-style drive-in, complete with roving snack vendors, rum cocktails in paper cups and scores of classic cars of the era.

Armed with boxes of popcorn and chewy chocolate and caramel Milk Duds, everyone took their seats to watch Lagerfeld’s short film, The Return, about Chanel’s US-driven fashion revival. From there, they crossed the art deco-era Dallas Fair Park swathed in coats and scarves, to arrive at a rodeo-style, straw-strewn interior, where the cowboys and Indians-themed catwalk show took place.

Really, it was all in the details, nowhere more so than in the pieces that took to the catwalk. The ateliers worked for months to create this ready-to-wear collection, which arrives in stores this month. Lagerfeld imagined a world where cowboys and Indians coexisted, even within the same ensemble. This may have irked some US press, but not iconic model Lauren Hutton: “What knocked me sideways was the combination in the clothes of Indians and cowboys. It seemed to me to be about an optimistic future.”

Blanket-style coats, skirts and throws were accessorised with a single feather in the hair, while elsewhere models in fringed white riding trousers were festooned with full feather headdresses. The pioneering spirit came through in a mix of prairie-inspired pieces, with white pleated silk tiers in sleeves and collars, mixed with hardworking denim and boots. The open skies of the Wild West would have been filled with stars-another favourite Chanel motif, which were picked out in beads and sequins on tulle and tweed.

The handiwork that went into each piece was perhaps the most astonishing element of this December night.

The denim-and-lace dress worn by Lindsay Wixon on the catwalk may look like one of the less intricate on display, but looks can be deceptive. The blouse element alone took 100 hours of work at the Lemarie atelier, whose area of speciality is feathers and flower-making; it created accordion sleeves with lace applique and wristbands featuring organza and tulle layers. Hatmaker Maison Michel, which was acquired by Chanel in 1997, created a boater-cowboy hybrid hat in brown felt, while Desrues made the choker brooch and ring. A Pocahontas-inspired dress looked like one of the less ornate, but Lemarie again worked extensively on the dress, whose chevron-patterned collar was made from rooster feathers, while the textured stripes that run vertically were made of marabou. The dress took more than 250 hours to create.

The embroiderers at Lesage, acquired in 2002, also had a significant amount of handiwork to finish for the event. The bodice of a pretty skirt and blouse ensemble took 460 hours to create, and was embellished with multicolour pearl beads in Indian-inspired patterns, with Chanel’s preferred flower, the camellia, also represented.

Lagerfeld’s attention to detail continued at a saloon-style after-party. Handsome cowboys poured champagne and whisky shots, pork sliders were proffered for supper, and a mass bootscooting class took over the floor. And just in case anyone might get bored, there were plenty of distractions, including pool tables and even a mechanical bucking bronco, which it-girls including Poppy Delevingne lined up to take on. Suddenly, things were looking a lot like the Dallas of our collective dreams, if not reality.