Casting Elegant Shadows in Chanel’s Garden

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times Models walk the runway at the spring 2011 Chanel show in Paris. See the full collection.

Anyone who has seen the Resnais film “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) will recognize the source for Karl Lagerfeld’s black-and-white garden at the Chanel show today. Some 2,800 people saw the show, at the Grand Palais, a gorgeous display of pale colors and filmy black dresses against a white pebbled ground and black terraces. The garden extended in three directions, with a fountain in the center, and a full orchestra set up at the end of one allee.

The beautiful show gave a greater emotional charge than the winter collection. Well, no wonder — it was set around an iceberg. Mr. Lagerfeld exchanged fake fur for feathers, to convey the sense of lightness that ran throughout the collection. Many of the fabrics are not what they might appear. For instance, classic tweeds may be loosely woven ribbons in pale pink and pistachio; a gray ottoman knee-length dress with a slightly rounded shape was actually done in silver metallic threads. The clothes were light in both construction and attitude, with a disintegrated quality to tweed jackets and frayed denim. A pale pink taffeta A-line dress was slashed with holes and then embroidered with black beads. The hem was filled in with pink feathers.

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times Chanel spring 2011. See the full collection.

Hemlines were long and short, and Mr. Lagerfeld kept the colors soft and pale: pink, sky blue, peach, gold and silver tones — and heaps of black.

“I really don’t think women want to go around looking like a Saint Laurent shopping bag,” Mr. Lagerfeld said backstage, referring to the bright pink and orange of the vintage YSL bag. They are also among the hot colors for spring.

Before the show, Mr. Lagerfeld, dressed in a Tom Ford black suit jacket and Dior trousers, was visiting with people backstage. Brad Kroenig, the American model who has known the designer for a number of years, was there with his son Hudson, 2, who appeared in the show with his dad — both in a cream cardigan jacket with red braid and blue jeans. When I stopped by, Hudson was playing dinosaurs with the model Angela Lindvall.

Mr. Lagerfeld said that because of the international terror alert, 200 security people were at the show, many in plainclothes.