London Calling: A Snapshot of Amanda Harlech's Day at Chanel

Yesterday I caught up my British compatriot Lady Amanda Harlech in Paris, who was charging around Chanel headquarters in the Rue Cambon, Hasselblad digital camera in hand. “I’m taking close-up pictures of the collection for Karl,” she declared, hitching up her black chiffon Fendi maxiskirt and bounding two steps at a time up the stairs to the studio. “The fabrics are so amazing. Cubic flowers that look like origami. The finest pinstriped lines of sequin on cellophane. Extraordinary pleating like scribbled clouds. It must be recorded.”

Amanda Harlech (far right)

Amanda’s status as a great British entity and member of team Lagerfeld is just one of those facts of haute couture life taken for granted in Paris. She’s there in one of those mysteriously nebulous roles outside observers might imagine involves a lot of wafting and not much doing. Spending half an hour in her frenetic day of keeping up with Karl puts that notion to rest. Amanda’s responsibilities might be more about being Amanda—sounding board, verbalizer, culture explorer, expert enthusiast, couture cheerleader—than anything a literal-minded human resources officer could pin down as a job description, but her schedule is a nonstop blur. “What am I doing today? Well, I’ve just been to the Grand Palais with Karl to look at the set which is a building site—kind of going to be an Old World theater that crumbles away so you can see a modern skyline beyond. I’m glad I wore flats because I didn’t expect we’d be off tramping over the Seine to see Karl’s exhibition of photographs—daguerrotypes and platinotypes!—he’s done for Fendi about the glory of water. Then back to the studio and the accessorizing. Don’t know when we’ll finish here. It could be midnight. Then Karl will drop me off at the Meurice, and I’ll see [my daughter] Tallulah.”

Tallulah Harlech and Amanda Harlech

Reported sightings of Harlech’s daughter were making their way to the studio. “I’ve just seen her on the street, wearing pajamas!” remarked Franca Sozzani, editor in chief of Italian Vogue, an incoming visitor. “Oh, is she? My pajamas, you mean?” Harlech twinkled, hands on hips. “The ones she spotted on me that I wore in Singapore when we were doing the cruise show in May, and I thought I’d do that 1920s thing?” Harlech junior, an actress, now has a place of her own in the front row as second-generation fashion aristocracy. That doesn’t stop Lady Harlech and her daughter from bedding down in the same room at the Meurice together. (Frugality is a defining trait of upper-class English womanhood).

After the two couture shows today, what’s Amanda up to next? “There’s the Fendi party on the third. Then home. And back again to shoot Karl’s movie for the Metiers d’Art show, which is going to be in Dallas in December. And there’s the ready-to-wear show in Paris before that, of course.” In the meantime, Harlech will be going to the Edinburgh International Festival to take part in its new fashion offshoot.

Amanda Harlech

But the real key to Harlech’s indomitable British combination of flighty imagination and no-nonsense practicality really lies far, far away from fashion on a farm in the inaccessible borderland between Wales and Shropshire. “It can take three and a half hours just to get to London some days,” she says briskly. “But I love it!” At home, Harlech is a writer (she’s working on a novel), a farm manager, and a mad-keen horsewoman. She has eight horses, competes, and is the proud owner of a month-old foal, King Alfred. (All this is documented on her Instagram). Equally in her element at the court of King Karl or mucking out King Alfred’s stable, what could be more terribly down-to-earth and British than that?

http://www.kissyprom.co.uk/mermaid-trumpet-prom-dresses