Pharrell and model Cara Delevingne sing and dance for Chanel

PARIS - Chanel unveiled a sneak peek Monday of a splashy music video featuring US pop star Pharrell Williams and British supermodel Cara Delevingne that retraces the birth of the fashion house's iconic jacket.

A sample of the clip has Williams in the role of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph waltzing in a dark and dreamy ballroom with wife Sisi, played by Delevingne, who's gone brunette for the occasion.



The full eight-minute video, directed by designer Karl Lagerfeld, is to premiere at Chanel's December 2 fashion show in Austria.
 

In the clip, titled "Reincarnation," the musician behind the global hit "Happy" sings his new song "CC The World" with the model, according to Chanel. 

It's a video drawn from the moment that inspired fashion house founder Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel to create her iconic jacket.

In that episode Chanel was staying at a hotel in the suburbs of Salzburg in 1954 when the outfit of a lift operator there gave her the idea for the piece of fashion history.

"It was the moment to show the origins of the Chanel jacket ... the jacket of a lift operator reincarnated as a timeless piece of women's clothing," said Lagerfeld.

After Mumbai, Edinburgh and Dallas, the fashion house has chosen the 18th century rococo Leopoldskron Palace in Salzburg for this year's "Metiers d'art" event, which showcases the work of skilled artisans. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Unique camera from NASA's moon missions sold at auction

VIENNA - The only camera to return from NASA's moon missions in 1969-1972 was sold at an auction in Vienna Saturday for 550,000 euros ($760,000), far outdoing its estimated price.

The boxy silver-colored camera, which was sold to a telephone bidder, was initially valued at 150,000-200,000 euros.

The Hasselblad model was one of 14 cameras sent to the moon as part of NASA's Apollo 11-17 missions but was the only one to be brought back.

As a rule, the cameras -- which weighed several kilograms (pounds) and could be attached to the front of a space suit -- were abandoned to allow the astronauts to bring back moon rock, weight being a prime concern on the missions.

"It has moon dust on it... I don't think any other camera has that," Peter Coeln, owner of the Westlicht gallery which organized the auction, said of the rare piece.

The camera, which was being sold by a private collector, was used by astronaut Jim Irwin to take 299 pictures during the Apollo 15 mission in July-August 1971.

A small plate inside is engraved with the number 38, the same number that appears on Irwin's NASA snapshots.

Close to 600 objects were on sale on Saturday. The Westlicht gallery is the world's largest auction house for cameras and has overseen the sale of some of the most expensive photographic equipment in history, including a 1923 Leica camera prototype that sold for 2.16 million euros, a world record. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Kardashian confronts tradition at elite Vienna ball

At 24, Olga Goreglyad is a veteran of society balls around Europe but her ambition will not be fulfilled until she dances on Thursday night as a debutante at Vienna's Opera Ball - something celebrity guest Kim Kardashian will not be doing.

Almost every social group and profession in Austria, from confectioners to firefighters and pharmacists to refugees, holds its own ball, but the Opera Ball is the most elite, with a presidential opening and top-class music and ballet.

"It's an event where the opera can present itself. It's an important platform," opera director Dominique Meyer told Reuters.

But each year, the fine classical performances of the Vienna Philharmonic and State Ballet are overshadowed in the Austrian media by the paid celebrity guests invited by Viennese millionaire mall developer Richard Lugner.

Lugner's past guests have included singer Geri Halliwell and actors Larry Hagman and Pamela Anderson. This year, reality-TV star Kardashian is his main guest.

"Dancing is not my thing," she said at an autograph and question session on Thursday when asked whether she was having waltz lessons. Asked how she kept in shape, she replied: "Armenian genes and squats."

The 144 debutants and debutantes who will open the ball, on the other hand, have spent weeks in intensive rehearsals for a performance that lasts just three or four minutes but has a huge audience on television at home and abroad.

PROTESTS AND HIGH PRICES

"I'm actually addicted to dancing," said debutante Goreglyad, who works as a commercial producer in Moscow.

"I figured it was about time to stop being a debutante, but where to stop? It had to be the highest point, the Opera Ball," she told Reuters during a get-together at a vineyard in the Vienna Woods.

The tradition so admired by viewers from afar is not universally appreciated in Vienna. In past years, it has attracted large protests against its perceived decadence, as well as against some of the guests.

But much of the protesters' attention has switched to the so-called Academics' Ball organised by the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe). Opera Ball organiser Desiree Treichl-Stuergkh said she had hired some former Opera Ball protesters as DJs as part of a careful modernisation.

Treichl-Stuergkh said she was careful to maintain traditions treasured by guests able to afford prices that range from 250 euros ($340) for a regular ticket to 1,850 euros for a box - and that's before even a single glass of champagne.

She said the event was still a rite of passage for modern debutantes, even if it is no longer the formal entree into society it once was.

"Today a young girl of 18 has done almost everything," she said, "apart from opening the Opera Ball." -- Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com