Karl Lagerfeld praised the actress as 'beautiful' and 'so good,' the perfect choice for his short movie about Gabrielle Chanel's life.
- Nov 20, 2015
AceShowbiz - Karl Lagerfeld personally and adamantly chose Kristen Stewart to portray the one and only Coco Chanel in her younger days. "She's beautiful, no?" the Chanel creative director told WWD when previewing a short he directed to coincide Chanel's Metiers d'art collection presentation in Rome on December 1.
First look of Stewart as an actress playing Chanel has her wearing the frilly white collar and thick eyebrows which were the trend in the era. "She can look like Chanel, and I wanted to show Chanel through all the decades of her life and the comeback in the 1950's," Lagerfeld said about Stewart in a press release.
"Once and Forever" is a fiction film that retells the imaginative tale of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's life. It will show the famed designer in various stages of her life in the context of a behind-the-scenes film set. "If I had made image after image of Chanel's past, it would be boring," Lagerfeld explained.
In the previews from the short, Stewart embodied a young actress with diva attitude who often clashed with her co-stars. Geraldine Chaplin also stars in the film as middle-aged Coco. Lagerfeld thought Stewart was the perfect choice for the role. "I think she's one of the greatest actors of her generation," Lagerfeld told WWD. "She gives the right emotion and the right intensity immediately so it's very easy to work her, like it's easy to work with Geraldine."
For Stewart herself, it was a brand new experience that involved her favorite brand. "We didn't receive scripts," Stewart said. "From the outside it looked as though Karl was making it up as we went. And maybe he was."
