Edita Vilkeviciute Gets Into Chanel for Karl's First Film

fashionologie — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:20:21 -0800

>> Tom Ford is currently filming his directorial debut, and Wednesday, Karl Lagerfeld will show his own directorial debut, based on Coco Chanel's early years. Unlike Tom's feature film, Karl's film is only ten minutes - a length more fitting to kick off the showing of Chanel's Paris-Moscow collection in Paris. The presentation was originally supposed to take place in Moscow, but Karl changed his mind after Russian customs "wanted to have the clothes three weeks in advance, which means we wouldn't have been ready and the situation seemed risky, so we cancelled."

Shot in a Paris studio in two days, Karl's film is inspired by Mack Sennett's flickering black-and-white silent slapstick movies with "spliced in newsreel footage of WWI because I think it's interesting to juxtapose fashion with the horrible images of the trenches." Rather than cast extras - "they don't know how to touch the clothes" - Karl looked within his own posse to fill positions - muse Amanda Harlech and daughter Tallulah Ormsby-Gore as customer and model, Brad Kroenig as Chanel lover Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and bodyguard Sebastien Jondeau as a Russian general. For the role of Chanel, Karl went with Lithuanian model Edita Vilkeviciute - in character in the film stills below.
*image: source

fashionologie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:35:32 -0800

>> INSIDER WIRE -For his Chanel Pre-Fall Paris-Moscow collection, Karl Lagerfeld is pulling a Stefano Pilati. The presentation Dec. 3 - in Paris at the Theatre du Ranelagh, not in Moscow - will open with a "laugh-packed" silent movie, loosely based on Coco Chanel's life between 1913 and 1923. Lagerfeld muses Lady Amanda Harlech, Brad Kroenig, and Tallulah Ormsby-Gore are all involved - Tallulah plays a Chanel model who has to sell her real-life mother, Amanda, a hat. [WWD, WWD]
*image: source