Catwalking.com Chanel on the runway of “Paris-Londres” in London.

LONDON: The hair was a beehive disintegrating into a haystack. The eyes had a dark, decadent flick of liner. The bag flagged its Cool Britannia connection with a Union Jack pattern.

Was this wild rocker look in honor of Amy Winehouse, she of the updated Brigitte Bardot hairstyle, multi-tattoos and Grammy nominations? Would the troubled but most lauded singer of her generation actually perform on the set Chanel had rigged up for its “Paris-Londres” fashion show last week?

In fact, it was model-turned-rocker Irina Lazareanu, one of Karl Lagerfeld's favorite incarnations of Coco Chanel, who took the microphone, while Sean Lennon and his band created a cacophony of sound.

Yet Amy met Coco in the clothes. They were mostly long and dark, shown with flat shoes but highlighted with Gothic crosses, gilded lace gloves or just a fringed front to a maxi tweed coat to express Winehouse's edgy unraveling.

The details were the story of this bizarre show and the reason why Lagerfeld and his Chanel entourage had hosted a star-studded dinner at London's Nobu restaurant, decorated the city's iconic black cabs with “Chanel” and staged a first big show in England's capital.

The “Métiers d'Art” collection is designed to showcase a collaboration with specialist Paris ateliers dedicated to such haute arts as feather decoration, embroidery, jewels and shoes. Since Chanel acquired these heritage ateliers in 2002, the skills of the seven decorative artists have been shown around the world from Paris to Monte Carlo, New York and Tokyo.

“It is a dream for Chanel to go to London - but I don't come so often because I only go to cities where I work,” said Lagerfeld, citing Coco's historic 1920s connections with English style, gleaned from her relationships with “Boy” Capel, who financed the aspiring designer's hat shop in Deauville; and with the Duke of Westminster, who introduced her to the luxury of jewelry and whose sportswear for playing polo inspired the simple Chanel jersey suits that made fashion history.

François Lesage, of the couture embroidery house, and Raymond Massaro, the haute bottier, or custom shoemaker, both had their own English memories. Lesage recalled embroidered dresses for Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's fashion-conscious sister, who adored Parisian chic but had to conceal her extravagances as she was supposed to support the British dressmakers. Massaro recalled “la grande époque” of shoeing the Duchess of Windsor and the countesses of Bismarck and d'Erlanger.

“The duchess was very rigorous and demanding,” Massaro said. “I can see her feet, not too big, slightly deformed because she was so thin, but very elegant in afternoon shoes in two different fabrics.”

If any of those royal connections and historical encounters had inspired the show, they were hidden under the big hair and rocker attitude. Yet Lagerfeld had taken over one floor of the auction house of Phillips de Pury near London's Victoria Station, to show what he described as “another royal residence.” That meant a series of romantic and mysterious black and white photographs of the Palace of Versailles at its most misty and melancholy, showing Lagerfeld's other skill behind the lens.

The most regal thing about the show were the chairs, designed by Lagerfeld, with a high-rise back topped with a coat hanger, crested with the double “C” Chanel emblem (which some of the naughty guests were unscrewing as a take-home souvenir).

What would clients for this special, out-of-season collection have hung on their chairs? Perhaps the slender gown in the faded gilt of a decaying stately home; or a black satin dress with tucks so tiny that Beatrix Potter's fairy tale “Tailor of Gloucester” might have sewn them.

Or what about the ultimate in laid-back English aristocratic style: the humble cardigan. Except that in the “Paris-Londres” show, that had mutated into an ultrachic, purple-bordered, gilt-buttoned sweater set.

The show could have used some modernist high-tech projections - the techno skills that Prada does so well - to zoom in on the details. A folder of Lagerfeld photographs showed the intense craftsmanship. But as the buried treasures hustled by, it was impossible to gauge how many hours of work had been put in by the “magnificent seven,” who include Lemarié, the feather artisan; the costume jeweler Desrues; Goosens, the silversmith; Michel, the milliner, and Guillet, the floral designer.

Clients looking for exceptional pieces will be able to view and purchase this special collection when it goes into Chanel stores in June, as über-high-end prêt-à-porter (at a cost halfway between ready-to-wear and couture).

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Kate Singleton for the IHT Tania Mazzaglia with a lava stone table she designed and decorated with majolica.

BELPASSO, Mount Etna: Live volcanoes can be voracious. Mount Etna's regular eruptions spew all-consuming rivers of flaming magma down the slopes toward the villages below. Yet the inhabitants revere rather than fear the lava, viewing it as a source of inspiration and income, in that order.

“With lava rock nothing is wasted,” said Domenico Allegra, who decorates lava stone tables and kitchen tops with brilliant majolica portrayals of the fruit that grows in such abundance on the mineral-rich soils of the volcano.

“Lava stone is so resistant that it is used for paving in public areas throughout Italy. Here on Etna we build with it, make dry stonewalls from it, use it for terracing the vineyards. Thirty years ago the technology for slicing the stone into thin slabs became available, and since then we have developed a wide range of decorated furniture. Lava is the product of fire, which means it stands up to kiln firing at 930 degrees centigrade as no other stone can. What we make is extraordinarily hardy, ideal for outdoor use,” he added.

As a child Allegra showed such talent for traditional majolica decoration on pottery that his father sent him off to learn from local artisans during after-school hours. Later he studied for one year at the Fine Arts Academy in Florence, before deciding to return to Belpasso, on the southern slopes of Etna, to open his own workshop. Ceramiche Artistiche Allegra (www.ceramicheallegra.com) specializes in lava stone tables of all shapes and sizes embellished with glorious garlands of oranges, lemons, pomegranates and grapes.

The lava hewn from the slopes around Belpasso is deemed ideal for slicing and decorating. It derives from the 1690 eruption that extended the neighboring city of Catania 300 meters, or 984 feet, into the sea. Brownish and lunar in aspect as it lies in the ground, once sliced it takes on a powdery gray color that darkens with polishing.

Applying majolica decorations onto lava stone involves spraying the given surface with a pale slip onto which the colored designs are painted free hand. The technique and glazes are the same as those used for ceramics, which is why Caltagirone, the Sicilian town renowned for its glazed pottery, is now also producing decorated lava stone tables. Many of the artisans of Caltagirone consider the use of lava stone as a concession to modernity. Their true art lies in creating and decorating an ample flat surface in terracotta. This is much more difficult, because a flat clay surface is inclined to warp during firing. A decorated ceramic table thus costs up to four times as much as an equivalent sized lava stone one.

Yet, as visitors to Salvatore Gurreri's workshop (www.ceramichegurreri.com) will see, the ornate volutes of the Caltagirone tradition look splendid on 3-centimeter-thick (about one inch) lava stone tabletops. What's more, the local ironsmiths who make the hand-forged bases for ceramic tables are now producing models adapted to lava stone tops. Because fired lava stone is so tough, the supporting structures can be lighter and more elegant. Little wonder the Etna firms are now ordering them as well.

Most of the 10 or so workshops producing decorated lava stone tops in the Belpasso area seek and emphasize the perfection of the stone. By contrast, Tania Mazzaglia loves to go against the grain (www.taniamazzaglia.com). She opened her workshop in the Etnean town of Nicolosi two years ago and has successfully experimented with a wide range of unique decorative and chromatic effects.

“Lava is the expression of where I was born and brought up, regardless of how it is decorated,” she said. “I don't feel the need to cover it with traditional borders of fruit. I often get the stonecutters to leave the crude saw surface, or to bush hammer it so that it remains slightly rough. Like that the color is a more enticing shade of gray, which I integrate with the applied majolica decoration. It makes for an interesting interplay of texture and visual design.”

Mazzaglia's creative versatility is evident at Dolce Vita, an irresistible pastry shop and wine bar in Nicosia. The bar she designed is made with blocks of dark, rough-hewn lava stone topped with colorful glazed fragments, while the lava stone tables feature a deep-red foliar motif created like a stencil on an off-white base.

In her workshop she also makes jewelry with fine slivers of stone embellished with majolica designs that embody a sort of swirling energy. Such dynamism is likewise tangible in her experiments with grains of glass, transformed by firing into explosions of color, like reflections of cosmic creation.

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