Here's the Man-Made Island That Hosted Chanel's Dubai Show

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Yesterday, Karl Lagerfeld invited fashion writers, buyers, top clients and fashion bloggers on a Middle Eastern journey for his Chanel Cruise show in Dubai. The event was held on a small, man-made island and reportedly took two months and upwards of $2.5 million to stage. "Dubai was chosen because it inspires travel and evokes the true spirit of Cruise," said the president of Chanel in a statement.

The island is privately held by Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum. According to this mini-documentary, the man-made islands off the coast of Dubai were constructed of sand dredged by ships from the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The sand is then sprayed over the area in wide arcs. Erosion is held at bay by crescents of rocks that hug the island's coasts, placed one-by-one by a crane, "signed off by a diver and given a GPS coordinate." Here's more information about how Dubai's private islands were created.

The "tent" where the show was held was made of glass, reports ArabianBusiness.com. "The building walls were outfitted with a unique woodwork that combined the elements of a traditional mashrabiya Arabian with Chanel's interlinked Cs logo. Inside, the runway venue's roof was supported by a forest of artificial palms."

Chanel has uploaded images of the entire Cruise collection from the runway, which you can see here. As the Independent details, this Cruise collection was styled according to sharia law, meaning that women were covered from their necks to their knees (or below). "It felt respectful, rather than restrictive," they say, "and gave ample canvas for embroideries resembling intricate Moorish tiles and embellishments like hand-cut leather camellias and encrustations of pearls."
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