PARIS — As the fashion crowd gathered at the Grand Palais on Tuesday morning, snowstorms were pummeling the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, closing airports and wreaking international travel havoc. But in the world according to Chanel, all was tropical cool.
An arboretum of white cardboard palms had been constructed under the glass ceiling, blooming via mechanical magic into a garden of mimosas, poppies and lotus flowers amid a sea of white pebbles strewn like so much pearlized sand.
This is theoretically spring, after all, at least in couture time. If you can’t live it, why not recreate it?
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It could easily have descended into cloying sartorial cliché (Spring blooms for spring? There’s an original idea!) but the sweetness was balanced by the slouch of the cut, and the result had a palpably contemporary feel. These were clothes, extravagant as they might be, for all seasons. The weather was internal, and the temperature was right.
A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2015, in The International New York Times. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
