Purple Magazine
— F/W 2016 issue 26

Chanel Cruise La Habana, Cuba

photography by OLIVIER ZAHM
style by CAMILLE BIDAULT-WADDINGTON
featuring LINEISY MONTERO

Picture a beautiful but fallen-down Caribbean city with no fashion boutiques, no luxury goods, no street advertisements, no magazines, no Starbucks, and no selfies. The only Internet connections are at a few hotels where people hang around outside hacking the Wi-Fi code. Now imagine a sexy city with a young population craving change after 60 years of ongoing socialist revolution, but one that also offers free education, free health care, and rent-free apartments for its people (you pay if you want a better place).

After US President Barack Obama paid an unprecedented visit to Havana, the Rolling Stones performed there for the first time. Then Karl Lagerfeld arrived with his Chanel Cruise collection, with models parading on the Paseo del Prado in the historical center — a brilliant collection honoring “Cuba Libre” in an explosion of Cuban styles, sensuous shapes, and open attitudes.

Cuba is changing radically but, one hopes, not to an opposite extreme. The Chanel show in Havana was the ultimate symbol of a new beginning. As the small socialist island opens its beaches to the world, one can only hope it will not succumb to an onslaught of tourism and corruption, which the Cuban Revolution eradicated. A few days after the Chanel Cruise show, a massive American cruise ship docked at the island for the first time since the ’50s.

Havana was once a place of resistance to Capitalism. Now the doors to this magically exceptional place, which everyone falls in love with at first sight, are visibly opening. Even young Cuban artists, such as the members of the art collective Stainless, who are benefiting from Cuba’s rapid international success — are among those who aim to protect it. We should all do the same.

[Table of contents]

F/W 2016 issue 26

Table of contents

purple NEWS

purple BEST of the SEASON

purple INTERVIEW

purple FASHION WOMEN

purple FASHION MEN

purple DOCUMENT

purple BEAUTY

purple ARCHITECTURE

purple TRAVEL

purple PHILO

purple SEX

purple NIGHT

purple STORY

purple VISUAL ESSAY

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