Word: chanelled
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Mannequins on Parade. The dream, apparently, had been to produce, as a sequel to My Fair Lady, a My Fabulous Lady based on the life and loves of Gabrielle Chanel, the great Parisian designer who is now a fairly fabulous 86 years old. What went wrong? The initial concept was wrong. The focal point of the fashion business is a dress. In and of itself, a dress is not dramatic. A parade of animated mannequins such as one gets in Coco does not make dresses dramatic either. A group of women milling about onstage always looks rather like a herd...
...work and no play. She gets little help. Andre Previn's score always misses, without ever swinging. Beaton's costumes are a slight modification of the timeless Edwardia that he prefers to inhabit, and scarcely reflect the spare Mondrian modern that is the mark of Chanel. Lerner's book manages to suggest a rough draft rather than a finished libretto. He must be somewhat chagrined that the biggest laugh of the evening comes when Hepburn spits out the short word for excrement...
Designer Cecil Beaton has drawn up only two basic sets: Chanel's salon and her ornate, book-filled apartment above the salon. But they are mechanical marvels that split, spin, break apart and generally transform themselves from the identifiable into the abstract, depending upon the mood of the scene...
...with two sets, Beaton ended up designing 253 Chanel-style costumes for the show (total costume cost: $150,000) including 11 that will be dismantled during the performance, as Coco rips them apart and starts all over again. The musical's finale is a fashion show that features Chanel designs spanning 1918 to 1959. "It's like a Busby Berkeley number," says a member of the troupe. "The whole set is transformed into mirrors, platforms and rings going in different directions. Everything is turning and flashing at once...
Beyond the Lerners and Previns and Beatons-even beyond the real Chanel -it still remains very much Hepburn's show. Of Coco's 2½ hours, she is onstage all but twelve minutes. Although a mellower Hepburn than the imperious Kate of earlier days, she is still tough. "I think I'm feisty!" she agrees, "but people have just gotten used to me. Now that I've become like the Statue of Liberty or something. Now that I've come to an age where they think I might disappear-they're fond...