Old Hollywood glamour in jewel tones at Chakra

[July 06, 2010]  PARIS (AP) -- There's no missing the Georges Chakra woman. In body-hugging goddess gowns in metallic fabrics bedazzled with sequins and rhinestones, the Lebanese designer's girl could inadvertently blind you from a mile away.

Chakra looked to old-school Hollywood glamour for a fall-winter 2011 haute couture collection Monday of high-shine looks that were all but begging for the red carpet.

He served up nip-waisted cocktail dresses with strands of white sequins that swayed and jangled as the models walked and bustier gowns in bronze lame with mermaid tails and oversided plum-colored bows -- gowns, in short, that almost uncannily resembled the Oscar statuettes they were meant for receiving.

"It's like watching those old black and white movies from old-time Hollywood, but this time it's in color," Chakra told The Associated Press in a pre-show interview. And what color. The asymmetrical cocktail dresses shone darkly in iridescent emerald, prune and maroon, and jewel tone silks shone beneath swishy panels on some of the lame dresses.

Refrains from the "Mad Men" soundtrack and the Radiohead song "No Surprises" played over and over, and both were a kind of shorthand for a collection. Steeped in the kind of classy glamour that has become Chakra's calling card, the lovely collection stayed in familiar territory, presenting, as it were, no surprises at all.

[Associated Press; By JENNY BARCHFIELD]

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