The Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Korea Photo: Getty Images
The fashion won’t be the only star of Chanel’s Resort show in Seoul, South Korea, on May 4. Karl Lagerfeld and his team have selected Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza as the venue for the presentation. First opened to the public in April 2014, the building is no stranger to fashion—its undulating rooms and winding hallways have already played host to Seoul fashion week.
Chanel’s decision to show its collection in Hadid’s latest creation is in line with high fashion’s current love affair with architecture. Two days after the Chanel show, Louis Vuitton will show its Resort collection in the equally futuristic Bob Hope Estate in Palm Springs, California, a counter to LV’s own feat of architecture, the Fondation Louis Vuitton designed by Frank Gehry in the Bois du Boulogne in Paris. In New York, Max Mara collaborated with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on a Whitney-inspired handbag; in Milan, Prada is working with Rem Koolhaas on an art center.
The Chanel-Seoul collection logo Photo: Courtesy of Chanel
The trend toward architectural partnerships might have been started by Lagerfeld himself, who often selects outstanding venues for his Chanel presentations. (Few will forget his recent trip to a private island in Dubai for Resort 2014 or Versailles the year prior.) Lagerfeld also has a longstanding relationship with Hadid, who designed the setting for Chanel’s Spring 2012 underwater-themed runway show, as well as the Chanel Mobile Art Center in New York’s Central Park in 2008. He has cited her as his favorite architect, with whom he hopes to build a permanent library, and stressed the importance of the relationship between fashion and architecture repeatedly, telling Wallpaper in 2006, “Architecture stimulates fashion. The systematic relations of both can last in time and space for quite a long period.” Seems like the rest of fashion is coming around to the Lagerfeld way.
—Steff Yotka, Style.com
