Bikin Girl, Beauty girl, Teen 9x: May 23, 2007

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

"Airports and flying have become a nightmare," Lagerfeld had said backstage a few minutes earlier. "L.A. is about the dream of private jets and beautiful cars and glamour. Cruise collections are about the dream of freedom." To open the show, he sent Raquel Zimmermann out in a navy jumpsuit with stripes at the cuffs. A cross between a captain's uniform and a first-class passenger's travel outfit, it had a kind of jet-set practicality—a mix of sportif and utilitarian that carried through to other looks, including a ribbed knit tunic dress, a sequin baseball jacket worn with skinny jeans and a matching cap, and a cargo skirt topped by the familiar Chanel tweed jacket in army green. "I love that he used a lot of color," said Camilla Belle, "especially the salmon pink."

Bikini Girls - Bikini Model 03

Lagerfeld and Chanel staged on Friday night at a Los Angeles airfield was so audacious, so over-the-top, it elicited a standing ovation before the first model hit the people mover. The designer, who took over Grand Central station in New York last May and commandeered a fleet of buses in Paris the year before that, chose a Santa Monica plane hangar for this year's Resort extravaganza. He had it decorated like an exclusive airport lounge complete with three cocktail bars, personalized flight bags on each and every seat, and arrival and departure screens listing "Chanel Line" flights. It was on those screens that celebrity guests like Demi Moore, Lindsay Lohan, Diane Kruger, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen first caught sight of not one, but two, Challenger 601 jets approaching the runway. "I love it!" exclaimed Angie Harmon, jumping up from her seat, as the models spilled out of the planes in their first looks