You will notice that the headline comes with a question mark (Ed note: this piece would be called 'Blake Lively for Chanel?' if we could include questions marks in our post titles). Thankfully Blake Lively’s involvement in a future Chanel campaign still hasn’t been confirmed by the Paris headquarters. (I did toy around with different puns on ‘Chanel’ such as ‘Blake to Chan(n)el campaign’ and ‘Blake says Chanello’ etc. but a legal eagle friend of mine recapped Chanel’s letter to me from last year, reminding the media that Chanel is not to be used as a verb, an adjective or an exclamation.)
You will also notice that I said ‘thankfully’ in regards to the non-confirmation. It’s not because I dislike Blake Lively or anything, In fact, I’m all for veneers and I very much enjoy her on Gossip Girl. (She’s no
Taylor Momsen, obvs, but apart from Courtney Love, who could be?) I just don’t think she’s very Chanel. I belong to a certain segment of the world, which one might call the Kidmaniacs. We love Nicole Kidman and we think she’s the most Chanel that Chanel’s ever had. This means that any new Chanel hopeful gets compared to Nicole and I’m sorry, but Blake’s no Nicole.
I get the whole who’s-tall-and-blonde-and-famous thing that the fashion PRs of this world have got going. I just don’t understand why you’d put an essentially uninteresting person in a fashion campaign. The things is: very few celebrities are mildly interesting. Mostly they’re just nice and pretty and play themselves on TV. Like Blake. Kirsten Dunst is very Chanel and she’s interesting, too – she’s always struck me as one of those people who might go off on you in interview if you hit a nerve, which is fascinating – but you don’t see her in a Chanel campaign because she doesn’t sell. I know it’s not rocket science, but I think it’s worth stating just for the sheer shame of it.
Nicole Kidman was perfect for Chanel. She embodies the femme fatale, powerful modern woman thing that Chanel is all about – and adding to that, she’s super aloof and quite chilly, just like any perfect Chanel girl. Nicole sort of floats, she walks on air, you can’t imagine her doing normal stuff like cooking or taking a shower. And isn’t that what the magic of fashion is all about? Aspiring for the je-ne-sais-quoi element of out-of-this-world wonderment and unattainability that fashion stands for? I think it is anyway. And there’s certainly nothing unattainable about Blake Lively. She’s way too Cheerleader Barbie. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth and I don’t mean to be horrible because she seems like a nice girl. I just wish she’d be a nice girl in Hollywood rather than Paris.