Runaway Bride

Source: Vogue UK June 1991, photography by Karl Lagerfeld

And I am off to continue dreaming of the best of the best from the Fashion Week…

Paris fashion week: treats and temptations

Desserts are always a very special treat. No matter how delicious the entire meal is I will always make sure I have a room for dessert. I look forward to my special sweet moments and truly enjoy them. Paris fashion week is also a kind of dessert for me. It's tempting, beautiful and simply irresistible. It is the final accord in a symphony of fashion. It's worth waiting and tuning to because this is where the flavour finally develops, all the notes sound in perfect harmony and all the missing pieces find their place in our soul and, for the lucky ones, wardrobes.

Celine

Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld

Valentino

Giambattista Valli

Photos via style.com

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Claudia Schiffer by Karl Lagerfeld for Vogue Germany October 2009

Classy sensuality and 50s glamour beautifully presented by gorgeous Claudia and perfectly captured by super-talented Karl Lagerfeld. Adore this editorial.

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Natalia Vodianova by Karl Lagerfeld

It's an old editorial, Numero March 2003, but somehow I've never seen it before. It's so dark, mysterious and gorgeous... I know I often overdose on Natalia, but there are so many impossibly beautiful editorials, it would be a shame to ignore them.

Chanel Haute Couture Fall 2009

Chanel. Beautiful, timeless, elegant and unique. Yet another gorgeous collection from Mr. Lagerfeld. Perhaps, this is my unfashionable imagination, but don't you feel as if you are in a time machine going from era to era and from one country to another and the looks change? To me, there are certain influences from Imperial Russia, ancient Greece, French "Directorie" and modern Parisian chic.

You can see all the 65 beautiful looks here. As for my favourites, the dreamy ones. I adore the cream dress with plissé details, bows and ribbons worn by Sasha P. and the dark lavender gown worn by Nastasia Ohl. I just love everything about it, the way she posed on that photo, the softness of fabric, the delicate movement, the tiny sparkles and the lace.

Oh, Mr. Lagerfeld, you are a genius!

Photo source: style.com

Karl Lagerfeld designs for the National Ballet

"The Dying Swan" has always been one of my most favourite ballet performance. I first saw it when I was four or five in a movie about Anna Pavlova who worked with Mikhail Fokine who created the solo ballet dance in 1907. Accompanied by Camille Saint-Saens's The Swan (the thirteen movement of the Carnival of the Animals) it was incredibly moving, beautiful and very sad.

Anna Pavlova

Since then I saw this magical dance many times as it was always performed after "The Swan Lake". Should I also mention that as a little girl I always dreamed of having this costume? I even created something out of what was available (probably, my grandma's curtains) and vividly remember attaching a finishing touch to the top bit - a big ruby brooch, which was also borrowed from my grandma (I don't think she ever found out though).

This year Karl Lagerfeld designed a dream costume for Senior Principal Dancer Elena Glurdjidze who performed the Dying Swan as a part of the English National Ballet's season of Ballet Russes at Sadler's Wells in London in June. The costume took 3 women and 100 hours to make and is a work of art, a true masterpiece. As a part of her final fitting, Elena danced The Dying Swan for Lagerfeld in his Chanel studio. The video of the beautiful dance was made by Karl Lagerfeld himself and you can watch it here.

"As a child I was already impressed by old images of Anna Pavlova dancing the ballet," Lagerfeld said in his interview, adding that, "the Ballet Russes were an influence for me". It looks like the history is repeating itself as Lagerfeld seems to be following the steps of Coco Chanel herself, who supported Sergey Dyagilev while he was staging The Dying Swan in 1919.

Here I also include videos of Anna Pavlova and Maya Plisetskaya (I adore her and think that her Swan is the most beautiful ever).

Translation: ....the Dying Swan became famous. This short 2-minute dance was choreographed for a young ballerina Anna Pavlova in 1907. The Dying Swan was an impromptu idea and is considered to be one of the most inspirational Fokine's works, a dramatic symbol of rebellion against death.

Sources: youtube.com, chanel.com, vogue.co.uk, bloomacious.com