Chanel’s spring ready-to-wear show took place on a runway decorated with wind turbines. The turbines towered over beautiful models strutting back in forth on an ornamental solar panel runway, wearing the 2013 trends, which included extremely chunky jewelry, flaring vinyl miniskirts, and dresses that look like high-fashion Daleks. Alexis Madrigal has a nice analysis of the show in the Atlantic:
To my eye, perhaps the most interesting thing is that this does not come out looking dystopian. Imagine this same kind of display with an oil refinery or a coal mine or a power plant. Or consider the feel of the show set near a tiny nuclear power plant giving off the trademark Cherenkov glow. There’s almost no way to imagine models walking through those landscapes without it feeling like a commentary about humans *against* the machines.
We are fans of Chanel, particularly the fact that Chanel’s front man Karl Lagerfeld is not a pack rat and he also wrote an amazing and creepy diet book that essentially recommends eating almost nothing, which is, frankly, probably the only way to lose weight. Also, we would have enjoyed the spectacle of this show. Wind turbines and fashion look good together. Wind turbines are big and important and a little scary looking, and it always looks nice to accompany fashion with anything epic.
But here’s what we wonder about with all this eco-chic (and make no mistake, these solar panels at this show were not conducting solar energy, and the wind turbines were running on electricity): Are we going to convince ourselves somehow that our world is greener because it just sort of looks greener? Are we going to comfort ourselves with the aesthetics of what it might be like to save the human race from destruction without actually managing to pull it off? And speaking of pulling it off, could we make that Dalek dress work or what?
