a Trip: exotic INDIA, Paris-Bombay via KL@CHANEL &...

.

.

Mughal architecture in the hexagonal courtyard at Monserrate Palace, 
Sintra Portugal

 built in 1858 for Sir Francis Cook, an English baronet created visconde de Monserrate by King Luís, 

English architect, James Knowles Jr. designed the Palace

(image from Exotic Taste Orientalist Interiors-Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter)

all that was missing were the

ELEgant 

ELLEphants

photograph by Norman Parkinson
Anne Gunning in a Pink Mohair Coat outside the City Palace, Jaipur, India
Vogue, November, 1956

Color me in colors of love,

Color me in your love.
Color my scarf and my lover’s turban,
Color them both in the colors of spring.
Whatever you ask in return

I will give you.
I will pawn my youth
If you will.

-Amir Khusrau, (1253-1325 AD)

 

& of course we all know,

Pink is the Navy Blue of INDIA, 

according to High Priestess Diana Vreeland

Deborah Turbeville portrait

& 
why isn't there an iconic shot of Her on an ELLEphant? 
or even a woven tapestry of the Great One like this?

Can you see it?

ASIA, from 1844

made by the Sallandrouze Factory, after Jean- Baptiste Amedee Couder

(image from Exotic Taste Orientalist Interiors-Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter)

We must just use our Imaginations-
or revisit AVEDON's glory.

”Dovima with the Elephants” by AVEDON

at the Cirque d’hiver, Paris, in August 1955

gowns by DIOR

A pose like this-
with 
Hermes Orange as the Navy Blue of INDIA.

 

"DIAN" by Hermes

Maharaja of Patiala, wearing a diamond and platinum parade necklace created by Cartier in 1928

According to KARL,when questioned by  Vogue's Mark Holgate,

"So, Karl, if pink is the navy blue of India, what’s the navy blue of Chanel? "

"He thought for a nanosecond. "

“Black."

"No."

"Black and ivory.”

No argument with KL.
OK.

"Black and Ivory"
 Lagerfeld is more Chanel than Chanel.

 

 “And Coco [Chanel] loved Indian jewelry. But it’s not a cheap tourist tour of India! It was sophisticated, no?” KL

NO,

COCO was The Original,

but KARL,

Is her High Priest.

 High Priest of the Rock Temple

Photograph by Sir Benjamin Stone

India, 1871.

The collection, Pre-Fall, was shown in the Raj–worthy backdrop created in the cavernous chamber of the Galerie Courbe in the Grand Palais, complete with an eye-popping table laid for a feast and Mughal–carved stone walls, Lagerfeld’s vision of the country (which he has never been to, incidentally; perhaps he sides with the idea that you can see a place more clearly when you look at it from afar) -Mark Colgate-review for VOGUE.com

all excerpts from Mark Colgate's review are linked within this text, READ his entire review at VOGUE.com here
all Chanel Pre-Fall images from Vogue.com by Yannis Vlamos of GoRunway.com or Remy de la Mauviniere  of the ASSOCIATED PRESS


.