«THE WORLD FASCINATES ME»

Front row at Chanel’s first fashion show in Shanghai, and the view is very different to the usual one of poker-faced editors in dark shades on the other side of the catwalk.Tonight, the entire audience is facing in the same direction, perched in a giant glass box on top of a barge moored on the edge of the Huangpu river, overlooking the extraordinary skyline of high-rises across the water in the booming financial district of Pudong. The night sky is alight with neon – translucent, surreal, glittering in a way that Karl Lagerfeld described earlier in the afternoon as “magical, with colours that look somehow different to Europe, and a kind of transparency about them”.Tallest of all is the Shanghai World Financial Centre, 100 gleaming glass storeys outlined in turquoise lights. Alongside is the Aurora skyscraper, where “Chanel” is flashing in black and white lights up its vertiginous walls. Other towers loom like 21st-century pastiches of Gotham City, with edges jagged as cartoon monster robots, or intersected with giant pink pearls.

The Telegraph
Dec 6 2009