Paris Fashion Week: Chanel spring/summer 2013 Having installed 13 near real-size, revolving turbines in Paris's Grand Palais, Karl Lagerfeld's latest vision for Chanel was plugged in and fully charged. The front row included Kanye West, Jennifer Lopez (with cute-as-a-button daughter Emme), and bouclé-loving ladies galore - this was a crowd more au fait with offshore banking arrangements than offshore energy farms. So the installation of 13 near real-size, revolving turbines on a catwalk gridded with solar panels at Chanel's show this morning might have put the wind up them: was Karl Lagerfeld poised to join Livia Firth and Katharine Hamnett as a tub-thumper for sustainable fashion? IN PICTURES: Chanel spring/summer 2013 collection Oh no. Yes, the model in a double-C fronted swimming costume (shouldering an instant-classic extreme Chanel bag made of two hula-hoops and a semi-circle of that famous quilted leather) was global-warming ready. And yes, when the clustered spheres used throughout as buttons, chokers and bracelets changed colour from pearl - an enduring Coco motif - to metallic they resembled droplets of mercury spilt from a shattered thermometer. Chanel takes over the Grand Palais in Paris. Photo: Reuters But this epic staging didn't feel particularly like a political statement: it was dramatic, not thematic. Like the icebergs, volcanoes, and crystal caverns of Chanel's other recent Grand Palais spectacles , it was merely a compellingly titanic backdrop against which to frame the titanic might of this formidable fashion house. We saw the white-on-green grids of those solar panels reflected literally in a sequin-glittered, strapless, above the knee dress (of which style there were plenty more, particularly successfully in pearl-studded chambray blue). More loosely, there were grid-reliefs on ever-so-slightly oversized jackets, and (much more loosely) in the plaid bouclé minidress worn by Stella Tennant. A bolero-high jacket shape teamed with a flared, just-above the knee skirt shape was this collection's most consistent silhouette - girlish and fun. But the swollen chest, cinched waist, and swept-to-the-floor train of a mid-show section of black dresses had a Belle Epoque afternoon-wear grandeur to them. All the latest news from Paris Fashion Week One long white dress encircled at the waist by two lines of those pumped-up pearls and with a slit balloon back was particularly beautiful, but easy to miss in the onrush of more eye-catching pastel-rainbow bouclé, mesh trousers or sheer dresses and trouser suits fringed with scraps of what looked like coloured taffeta. Lagerfeld generated more than enough fashion voltage in this one collection to power up the Chanel order-books for months to come.