Today Paris-Shanghai: The Trip That Coco Chanel Only Made In Her Dreams, a short film written and directed by Karl Lagerfeld, premiered online.  The film opens in the 1950s with Coco Chanel having tea with the Duchess of Windsor who notices Chanel’s Chinese art collection and then tells Mlle. Chanel about her adventures in Shanghai.  After their brief meeting, Chanel takes a nap and has a series of dreams where she visits Shanghai at different periods in history – the 1960s, 1940s, 1930s, 1920s and the Imperial Court period.  I’m thinking that’s a clue to the periods of time that Karl Lagerfeld may have found inspiration for the collection – we’ll find out tomorrow.

The film is interesting because it’s actually filmed in Coco Chanel’s apartment but there were little things that irked me.  Chanel has a french accent when speaking English as a young woman, but no accent as an adult…where did the accent go??  (They had this same issue in the Liftetime movie).  Also, a big pet peeve was that they had Chanel familiar faces like Freja Beha and Baptiste Giacobini play Chinese characters.  Sorry, black winged out eyeliner doesn’t make a person Asian, and is up there with Black Face in my eyes – I’m just sayin’.  I’ll try to ignore the aspects I don’t like for now and channel my energy into being excited about seeing the collection tomorrow – stay tuned!