Paris Fashion Week: At Chanel, looking for a sign

Reporting From Paris —  Karl Lagerfeld took to the streets for the spring Chanel show Tuesday morning at Paris Fashion Week, constructing an indoor boulevard inside the Grand Palais, complete with building facades, balconies, sidewalk puddles and manholes.

The models strolled the asphalt in groups, as the brand faithful in the seats hoisted their iPhones high. At the end, there was a rumble backstage, then the whole posse came out, fists in the air, holding signs with slogans such as “Be Your Own Stylist,” “Tweed is better than Tweet,” and “We can match the machos.”

It was a rallying cry for individual style that raised a central question being discussed here this week: In the age of style blogs, Instagram and YouTube stardom, pre-collection pressure, cheap chic lines and Normcore, when the whole system has gone topsy-turvy, what is fashion?

Of course, it must be said that there are people rioting in the streets in Hong Kong for real democracy, braving tear gas and joining in mass renditions of “Can You Hear the People Sing.” And whether or not it was tasteful at this moment to stage a protest on a catwalk is another issue. But the show must go on.

And getting back to the question of fashion, it’s not a consensus, that’s for sure, and hasn’t been since reporters like me traveled to Paris to breathlessly report if hemlines were up or down so Mrs. Smith would know which skirt to buy at Gimbels.

Today, fashion is a suggestion, one that many women (and some designers) choose to ignore, resisting the idea that there could ever be such a thing as a new look. For many women, the thought that they need to spend $995 on tweed sneakers because Lagerfeld tells them so, or to stop wearing those $995 sneakers six months later just because they’re no longer new is lunacy.

Coco Chanel knew all of this. One of her most famous quotes remains true, “Fashion passes, only style remains.”

Today, blog style stars such as Leandra Medine (Manrepeller) have nearly as much power as Lagerfeld, which is why swarms of photographers gather outside every show to snap photos of what she’s wearing. (At Chanel, it was a pair of eyelet, wide-legged pants -- the same pants silhouette that’s all over the runways here, and won’t be in stores for six months hence, and she’s already rocking them.)

Of course, when you’re a big house such as Chanel, with a storied heritage, you have design codes that are written into the lexicon of style -- the tweed jacket, for example, which is and always will be a classic.

So Lagerfeld began with that, tweed suits, including a navy-and-white number with high-waist trousers and a short-sleeve jacket with wide lapels that conveyed the same ‘70s spirit we’ve seen elsewhere.

Then out came the color guard, in bold, watercolor-floral pleated skirts, top coats, flat boots covered in print and aviators with graduated lenses. The utility crew filed in next, in fatigue-green safari jackets and wide pants, carrying beatnik bags -- a suitcase and satchel covered in badges, patches and buttons, and a cross-body style tricked out like a tweedy Chanel jacket. (If you don’t want to wear the jacket, you can carry it!)

The girlie girls wore short boucle A-line skirts and swing jackets, or boucle shifts dressed up with concrete-colored tile sequins. There were marine stripes, pinstripes, lace doilies decorating the shoulders of jackets, frilly bow blouses, midi-skirts, mini-skirts, walking shorts, short sleeves, rolled-up sleeves and no sleeves. In other words, there was pretty much anything you’d ever want to wear.

It was, like the Internet, a flood of information and choices coming like rapid fire, which is one way to keep the copyists at bay. It’s hard to copy a deluge.

And then, a protest. Enough! Some of the signs threw feminism into the mix. “Vote for you.” “Feminism not masochism.” “Boys should get pregnant too.”

Wait a minute, what? Was Lagerfeld really bringing that up, fashion as a feminist issue? Was he throwing himself on the pyre as the evil patriarch and urging us to go our own way?

Maybe. (Our own way to the closest Chanel boutique is more like it.)

But before designers such as Lagerfeld and Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent throw in the towel and decide to take an extra month of vacation in Ibiza instead of wrestling with the new, consider this: Women need you. We don’t all have an innate sense of style that attracts flashbulbs like moths to a flame. We can’t all go to a store and zero in on the perfect jacket for a big meeting or dress for a big to-do, whether that store is Chanel or Zara.

In the vast wilderness, there is a need for direction, a map, even just a sign. A little help, please?