If you’re yet a stranger to the Chanel show sets, it’s seriously a wonder. Karl Lagerfeld has been treating his fashion week audiences to jaw-droppingly spectacular runway landscapes for season upon season. Let’s not forget the time he ferried all the fashion-famous into Cuba, at the lifting of the American embargo in 2016, or last season when he had a life-sized rocket ship take off inside the Grand Palais.
For the display of his Spring/Summer 2018 collection, the German designer and Chanel Creative Director, took his audience on holiday to a mystical destination in the tropics.
Instagram: @chanel
Held once again in the Grand Palais, front row celebrities and fashion editors alike stared wide eyed at the runway, which snaked around a large cliff, from which waterfalls gushed into pools down below. For those who like a little detail, here are some facts about this latest display in set design opulence:
Instagram : @chanel
1. The landscape was a massive 85 metres long in total.
2. There was a total of six waterfalls (ranging between 9 and 15 metres high).
3. The set and all of its constituent parts took two months to manufacture and engineer.
Instagram : @chanel
4. It took 9 days to set up at the Grand Palais.
5. The volume of water used throughout was equivalent to that of a 25 metre (competition length) swimming pool.
Instagram : @chanel
6. The waterfalls were self-supplying, the water pumping in a cycle around a closed circuit.
7. At the end of the show, the water will flow back into the Paris sewer system and recycled into a source of energy, or to water fields in the Paris region.
