Chanel On Tour: Seoul

If you weren't at last night's Mat Ball, there was only one other place you were going to be: the Chanel resort show, this time in Seoul, Korea.

Just as he does the Metiers d'Arts collection every autumn, Lagerfeld takes his resort shows on tour each spring - something that has become an ever-growing trend among the top tier of luxury brands: we're headed to Palm Springs, LA - fashion´s new favourite place and unofficial style capital - this week for Louis Vuitton and then to the South of France next week for Christian Dior and then London-bound back for the Versace Versus grand reveal of Anthony Vaccarello  the following. And it's not even "fashion week". But resort is big - and getting bigger, both in terms of spectacle and the brands partaking in it.

And we don't expect anything small or understated from Chanel - especially if the autumn/winter 2015 collection was anything to go by with Lagerfeld creating his very own cafe Gabrielle.

But café culture was out and K-pop culture was in yesterday in the form of a hyper colourful experience: neon dots for a set that had all the bounce and vibrancy of a computer game about it, housed in the Dongdaemum Design Plaza space designed by Zaha Hadid.

Eschewing The Met were Kristen Stewart, Tilda Swinton and Gisele, who were all to be found front row - the latter model, for a change, trying out this view point instead of taking a turn on the catwalk. It was her first show since retiring from the catwalk.

On the catwalk and Mr Lagerfeld had combined the contemporary with the traditional - as is so often the point of his resort and pre-collections, melding Chanel's heritage with that of another culture, both as it stands now and as it did in the past. "It's a cosmopolitan idea of the local fashion," he told WWD. And so the traditional Korean hanbok styles of dress (empire line smocks) made for the most part of the collection, but rendered in patchwork layered pops or tessellating-tastic colours, dinky and pleated in pastel knit beneath be-bowed or flower-garnished waists. Shapes systematically translated into Chanel's signature tweed jacket shapes, inflated in the shoulder and candy sweet in their incarnation this time round.

Hair, thick braids, riffed on historical tradition while managing to leave a sci-fi reference implanted in the minds of many here and the dots from the surrounds navigated up on the clothes too - for jeans and shorts and youthful looks made all the more cuter by dots under the eyes when it came to make-up.

It was undoubtedly fun, bright and fresh - just what the pre-collection trail will need to start them off on their tour as the next destination calls.