Paris Fashion Week SS10: CHANEL

Now I remember why it is I do what I do. The endless queuing, the gnawing model envy, perpetual battling with PRs, pushing, shoving, no time to eat, let alone sleep--all the while tottering painfully in heels, ready to crash once and for all to the fashion floor, never to arise again. After experiencing some serious fashion fatigue post LFW and shelving my plans to plow on through the catwalks of Milan, I am back in the game. And I owe it all to the utter genius of Karl Lagerfeld.

Paris is fashion as it should be, and Chanel is the ultimate of the ultimate. Even for Karl, this season was above and beyond. It was a dreamy pastoral landscape housed within the stunning venue of the imposing Grand Palais. An affair to remember, the show had more security detail than Obama's last visit to the City of Lights, and for the first time at a fashion show, I and my fellow fashionistas found ourselves walking through metal detectors. Good thing it was a Chanel show, so most had piled on the pearls and thus avoided an embarrassing pre-show, very public pat down.

Once we'd emerged from security, been handed our little gift bags (one guy nearly got into a full on physical brawl with one of the PRs after trying to sneak an extra one), we glimpsed the set: a full on CC-branded barn, complete with giant haystack, occupying center stage. And the clothes (models popped one by one or two by two from out the haystack!) were every bit as lavish and wonderful as their surroundings.

It was a sort of pastoral dream--almost like being suspended in the midst of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde or the pastoral ballet occupying the middle of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. It was sweet meets chic in the best possible way: even the six inch clogs sported by models with floral-embellished tutu frocks and muted tweed suits looked adorable rather than clunky, Dutch and all-wrong.Here was fashion at its best, the detail and construction at times almost converging on couture. In a word: breathtaking.

Lagerfeld's take on the house's classic tweed was reworked in straw colors with delicate beading, sweet gingham with hand-folded flower adornment, lady-like chiffon jackets layered over flirty full-skirted, floral-embellished, tulle swathed numbers. Sheer breezy trousers and the occasional urban edge (chain denim, a model talking on a cell phone and a red and white tweed-patterned sequin skirt suit) kept things feeling ready-to-wear rather than venturing headlong into the fantasy realm of the costumey.

But it was when the first flowing evening gowns appeared that I truly, and for the first time this season, swooned. Somewhat deviant from the house's usual evening offerings, Spring/Summer 2010 will see some of the most beautiful dresses I could have possibly dreamed up hitting the red carpet and gracing the covers of Vogue. In a wondrous nexus of Shakespearean theatrics combined with the softness and grace of movement of ballet costume, beautiful gauzy dresses in layered cream chiffon, sashes flowing elegantly behind models appeared like delicate fairies.

The collection really and truly was the needle in this season's four-week long sartorial haystack. And I didn't even mention that mid-way through, a floral-bedecked gazebo rose up from under the stage bearing the one and only Lily Allen, who then performed as the last of the models navigated their straw-strewn barnwalk.

Leave it to the House of Chanel, even in the bleakest of times, to reinvigorate aching soles and revitalize stymied hearts. This disillusioned fashionista is disillusioned no more, merely swept up once again in the realization that fashion, fashion as art, as one of the ultimate means by which to express beauty in a feminine form, is still alive and well in the heart of Paris and the vision of Karl Lagerfeld.

Click here to see more pics from the show on Facebook: too many beautiful dresses, too little cyber space

Rihanna scopes out what's to be under her umbrella next season

A model casts a downward look at the changing landscape beneath her six-inch clogged feet

Lily Allen pops up for a visit

This was my favorite dress from the collection, I love it so much I want to get married in it. So so gorgeous.

Finale: a little menage in the hay...

The man himself: check out that huge grin on Grace Coddington (whom, by the way, I ended up sitting directly next to as I lunched post-show at Cafe Flore in St. Germain). What can I say? Great minds think alike.