Winter snow hasn't melted for Chanel. The venerable French house sent out crisp, ice queen looks in frosty whites at its Tuesday spring-summer haute couture collection.
Sequins and rhinestones sparkled like icicles on A-line cocktail dresses paired with abbreviated bellboy jackets and short sleeve caplets that fitted squarely over the shoulder.
Bond girl Olga Kurylenko hailed the collection as "absolutely stunning."
"It was so elegant, the lines were so modern and graphic, and it was a mix or romanticism with modernism," the Ukrainian-born actress and model told The Associated Press, adding that she was stunned by the craftsmanship.
Nowhere was the expert work of the label's "petites mains" — the seamstresses and embroiderers who hand-stitch the made-to-measure garments — as evident as on the collection's evening gowns.
Long and lean, the architectural dresses shimmered with thousands of sequins and feathery strips of chiffon. Designer Karl Lagerfeld also paired white matchstick trousers with long capes, their hemlines heavy with beadwork.
Papery white camellias, Chanel's trademark flower, also adorned the garments, the models' hair and the venue — a marble hall on rue Cambon, where the label's Paris flagship store and the former apartment of the label's founder, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, are located.
Oversized paper flowers decorated the staircase taken by models heading to the catwalk.
They wore the same paper flowers in their hair, some on wiry crowns of thorns. Framed by a bonnet of white petals, one model's face was like the center of a flower.