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Parisian elegance returns in shape of the two-piece

Jamie Huckbody
Wednesday 09 October 2002 00:00 BST
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After a week of Bollywood clubbers and Seventies dancing queens, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel and Valentino offered a lesson in Parisian elegance.

At Chanel, Lagerfeld reworked the signature two-piece suit into a variety of shapes. There were soft shrug-on suits, or neatly structured jackets with nipped-in waists or trouser suits with matador tight trousers cropped at the calf. And following Lagerfeld's surfwear influences, as in the finale of girls wearing beachwear and carrying surfboards and kites emblazoned with the double C logo, the famous Chanel jacket had even been recreated in neoprene.

There were also references to Coco Chanel's belle époque beach days in Deauville. Wide-legged trousers recalled the time she popularised trousers for women, especially when worn with high-collared blouses and straw hats. Even her favourite striped fisherman's jumpers were present, now decorated with bobbles.

Over at Valentino, the seaside had been swapped for the army campus, as girls filed out against a background of Andy Warhol's huge 1986 Camouflage canvas in lace tops with epaulettes, perfectly proportioned trousers with leather piping down the sides, and in shantung silk strapless evening dresses with army pockets on the bodice. For daywear, there were fluid coats and scarf-tied blouses printed with exotic foliage, worn with fringed suede bags. For evening, there were cape tops covered with sparkly beaded flowers, dresses printed with abstract De Kooning motifs as light as the marabou feather-covered evening bags. This is the stuff of Parisian chic and army dreamers.

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