Shooting Chanel in the Sound of Music mansion

Taken from the summer 2015 issue of Dazed:

The hills are alive with the sound of… Chanel. With models in feather-topped Alpine hats and knitwear decorated with gingerbread house-style embroidery, Karl Lagerfeld’s latest Métiers d’Art show was a full-throttle tribute to the Tyrol. In Salzburg’s Schloss Leopoldskron, fabled residence of The Sound of Music’s Von Trapp family, models wove their way between salon chairs and tables piled high with food, clad in feminine frills and brooches offset with thigh-high boots and flashes of shining leather. Despite nods to the old world, these were thoroughly modern muses: dirndls were ditched for borrowed-from-the-boys lederhosen and military trousers.

A jewel in the city’s cultural crown for almost a century now, the palace offered the perfect baroque backdrop for a modern exploration of Austrian folk history – and for this shoot, which returns the collection to its vaulted chambers once more. But a Salzburg-inspired collection was more than just an excuse for a change of scene – fashion legend has it that Coco Chanel was inspired to create the braid-edged jacket after bumping into a smartly dressed bellboy when visiting the city in the 1930s. The eye has to travel, after all.

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All clothes by Chanel Paris-Salzburg, Métiers d'Art collection; hair Wolfang Steinbauer; make-up Verena Rabl; model Agnes Nieske; photographic assistant Robin Peller; styling assistants Rosie Arkell-Palmer; Sonia Shaleb; hair assistant Lee Ender; casting Noah Shelley; special thanks to Caro Altmann, Hans Stephan Grasser, Schloss Leopoldskron (www.schloss-leopoldskron.com)