Jinyoung Jo, a talented car designer at Hong-ik University in South Korea, has created the Chanel Fiole concept car, branded with the name of the famed French luxury goods firm. The design is "centered on simplicity of lines" and a classic black and white color scheme in the best tradition of Coco Chanel and her tailored suits. The ultra-aerodynamic coupe features Chanel's famed interlocking C's on the front grille and has three seats. It's not an altogether far-fetched idea given that Chanel kingpin Karl Lagerfeld is something of a car nut (he has three Hummers) and recently designed a Chanel version of the Segway.

At his Paris fashion show on Sunday, the ever-entertaining Karl Lagerfeld debuted a new line of luxurious mink-covered scooter helmets with built-in iPod capability. The over-the-top accessories were created in collaboration with French luxury helmet maker Les Ateliers Ruby and Apple. They're road legal and feature full carbon fiber shells and ultra-soft burgundy nappa lambskin linings. The iPod hookup lets you pipe music directly to the earpieces.

Lagerfeld, who also heads up Chanel and Fendi, showed matching mink vests and other garments in the futuristic fashion show for his eponymous label. Apparently the haute helmets are Lagerfeld's comment on the recessed economy. "Now everyone is on scooters, even chic women, so we had to do the helmet," he explained. No word yet on when the helmets might be made available for sale or what their price would be, but safe to say they'll be extremely expensive.

Provocative British pop star Lily Allen is so flat broke she's had to sell her BMW - and the banks won't lend her any more money. Despite having sold millions of records, the star is in such dire financial straits she decided to get rid of her 3-series convertible. "I've been hit big time by the credit crunch," she tells the London Daily Mirror. "Actually, I just had to sell my car because I'm so broke. I bought the car last year and that was probably my biggest extravagance. Clothes too, I'm always buying clothes."

Chanel and YSL are her favorite labels, and Allen is often spotted in the front row of fashion shows, palling around with the likes of Kate Moss, Kanye West and Karl Lagerfeld. "I'm completely skint," Allen says. "I can't even spend on credit cards. I mean, I won't be, as I'm waiting until I get the royalties from the album and all the radio plays but that takes about a year. The banks will usually front your money in that kind of situation but they are not lending at the moment so it's a tricky time."

Karl Lagerfeld, creative director for Chanel, may choose to ride about town in a trio of larger-than-life HUMMER H1s, the largest of all the mil-spec SUVs, but the design house is apparently thinking a bit smaller on behalf of its customers with a new take on the controversial Segway Personal Transporter. The pairing may actually make some sense considering that Dean Kamen's Segway has taken on iconic status since its inception back in 2001, though perhaps not quite to the point of the classic Chanel 2.55 handbag that adorns the handlebars of this self-balancing machine. Other tidbits unique to this model are quilted handgrips and mudflaps in matching black leather and Chanel badging on the wheels, steering head and handlebars. Top speed is listed at 12 miles per hour and range stands pat at the same 12 mph as the rest of the Segway line.

[Source: Yatzer]

Tuesday brought another round of dazzling shows in Paris. Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel show was black and white and true to the heart of Chanel. Against a backdrop of white paper flowers including Chanel's signature camellias, models paraded by in silhouettes that were blocky but ornate with details like sequins and passementerie and topped by giant flowered confections serving as hats. The entire collection was a showcase of the intricate detail that defines haute couture. One could look at the pieces and imagine the hours of painstakingly detailed work.

Of course no Chanel experience is complete without a Karl quote. Reuters delivers another one of Lagerfeld's pronouncements on the recession. Lagerfeld's latest words reiterate the statements that he made earlier on the healing qualities of the recession. He likens the recession to "having an upset stomach from eating too many good things." His bright white and cream wardrobe of baroque simplicity is meant to be an antidote to the age of excess.

Chanel may have just pulled the plug (as we reported last month) on its Zaha Hadid-designed Mobile Art Pavilion, but Prada is going ahead with plans for an even more ambitious project. Despite the economy, the luxury Italian fashion house just began construction on the Prada Transformer, a tetrahedron-shaped "transformative building" designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas (rendering above), on the grounds of Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul, Korea. Koolhaas, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2000 and also designed the Prada flagship store in Manhattan, describes the building as a "dynamic and living organism'' because it transforms itself into different structures to suit various events. The location of the project, the single largest communications platform for the Prada group worldwide in 2009, speaks to the importance of the Asian market in a depressed luxury goods environment.

Scheduled to open at the end of March, the Prada Transformer will stage a range of art, cinema, culture and fashion events though August. the 65-ft. high tetrahedron is composed of four different shapes, a hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle. "Once a month, cranes will lift and rotate the structure into a different facade and floor plate configuration," the Korea Times reports. "When rotated, each side will be the venue of a different cultural program." On the outside, the entire structure will be wrapped with an elastic translucent membrane. Prada partnered with LG Electronics (makers of the Prada cell phone) and the Hyundai Motor Company on the ambitious scheme, which if successful will probably travel to other cities as well.

Those of you who have been following the saga of Karl Lagerfeld's newest purchase, an 1800s Greek Revival house in Vermont, will recall that he staged a photo shoot there not long after taking possession. The results, and an inside peek at Lagerfeld's Lake Champlain digs, can be seen in the new Chanel Spring / Summer 2009 ad campaign starring leggy blonde German model Toni Garrn (above). The interior looks quite bare as Lagerfeld had not yet moved into the house at the time of the shoot in November. While far from the opulence one usually associates with the Kaiser, the house obviously has an appealingly pared down, classical aesthetic. Perhaps this is emblematic of the designer's somewhat scaled back lifestyle these days.

Chanel may have slashed 200 jobs and pulled the plug on its Mobile Art project, but the label's creative director Karl Lagerfeld says the recession is actually a good thing. "I see it like a cleaning up - it was too rotten anyway - so it had to be cleaned up," Lagerfeld tells the BBC. "I see it like a healthy thing - horrible but healthy, like some miracle treatment of the world."

As for the uselessness of designing luxury goods that many can no longer afford to buy, Lagerfeld insists the premise is faulty. "People have different kinds of dreams," he declares. "After all, people need a handbag, there are cheaper handbags. But if you can buy a beautiful one and if that's your dream to buy, why not?"

We're not sure Chanel's business can solely be sustained on dreams, but that doesn't faze the Kaiser. "I can be interested in a $20 million diamond I will never buy, without desiring the diamond," he notes. "If you want only things you can afford, it's boring too. It's great to see things you may not buy - because you don't have the money - but it is very ugly to think they shouldn't exist because you can not buy them."

As we reported last month, Lagerfeld himself has cut back somewhat these days, but still employs a full domestic staff and three chauffeur-driven Hummers.

A couple of days ago, my colleague Jared Paul Stern reported that Chanel was pulling the plug on their fancy world-traveling global art installation designed by Zaha Hadid. It seems that's not the only penny-pinching the French luxury brand had in mind. According to the Guardian, Chanel is also cutting 200 jobs. The staff cuts are a direct result of declining sales, part of the overall slide in luxury spending that was not alleviated by the recent holiday shopping season. Among the jobs are 16 posts at the brand's boutique on rue Cambon in Paris. The jobs represent almost 10% of the company's production workforce.

This past summer we reported on the burgeoning modeling career of 16-year-old Georgia May Jagger, Mick Jagger's daughter by Texan stunner Jerry Hall (above). Now her mom's doing a bit of modeling once again; she's been picked by Karl Lagerfeld to star in the new Chanel ad campaign. The campaign is based on Cheri, a novel by French author Colette about a woman who embarks on a sexual relationship with a much younger man. Hall will star alongside male model Baptiste Giabiconi, who will be portrayed seeking the uber-cougar's affections on a bed strewn with a quilt - and one of Chanel's iconic quilted handbags, WWD reports. We wonder if the campaign is the one shot at Karl's new spread in Vermont?

Chanel has decided to pull the plug on its avant-garde and attention-getting but extremely costly Mobile Art Pavilion exhibition due to the economic crisis. In October my colleague Tracy Chait reported on the Pavilion's installation in New York's Central Park. Designed by starchitect Zaha Hadid in collaboration with Chanel kingpin Karl Lagerfeld, the high-tech Pavilion (above) is full of self-serving if stylish art inspired by Chanel's iconic quilted handbag. For the Central Park installation alone Chanel paid $400,000 for the space plus a charitable donation. Originating in Hong Kong, it traveled to Tokyo before landing in NYC and was scheduled to continue on to London, Moscow and Paris. Chanel reps cited a "refocusing of investments" in deciding to bring the tour to a premature end.

Even larger-than-live Chanel kingpin Karl Lagerfeld (above with Lindsay Lohan) is scaling down - sort of - during these straitened economic times. For one thing, "I have moved to a smaller house in Paris, and I don't fancy having so much staff now," he reveals to German weekly Die Zeit. However, "The chambermaid, chauffeur and chef are still musts," he says, "around the clock." His passion for gas-guzzling Hummers - the largest model, H1 - continues unabated. "I have three of them," Lagerfeld tells the mag. "Two here in Paris and one in Monte Carlo.... The Hummer is like a tank and gives me a feeling of security. I don't want to drive at the same level as the others." He also weighs in on his new house in Vermont, which we've covered here extensively, noting, "It's very Emily Dickinson. In fact it's almost Puritanical. For me it's a new form of modesty."

As you know we've been following the story of flamboyant Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld's purchase of a historic house in Vermont's Lake Champlain Islands. Now Vermont independent paper 7 Days has come up with the first photo of the house, above. The 3,800 sq. ft. spread consists of a Greek Revival-style brick house dating to 1850 with a newer addition. "Amenities include a small apple orchard, a couple of pear trees, a paneled library and an awesome view of the lake," 7 Days reports, noting Lagerfeld paid just over $500,000 for it. They also note that the house, which is "sizable though far from opulent" is basically right on the highway. Last week Lagerfeld staged a Chanel photo shoot there, as we reported he would, with a crew of 40.

NY Daily News Fashion (the poor man's Vogue?) ran a blurb a few days ago featuring Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a $250 pair of Chanel two-tone pantyhose. As Carrie Bradshaw would say, I couldn't help but wonder, what the heck was she thinking? Is her accountant on board with this kind of spending in a recession? But then I realized she might not have purchased them. The more famous and wealthy celebrities become, the less clothing and accessories they buy for themselves. Companies send them free items to advertise -- I mean, wear and use and enjoy. But as for SJP, and this legwear, I don't know. She's known to be highly professional, so maybe she did indeed buy these for herself.

During SJP's SATC days, you couldn't open a fashion magazine with reading about her wonderful style, classic glamour, etc. Then came her inexpensive Bitten line, which I haven't heard much about since its debut. The News item gives SJP props for getting back on the fashion track, but hits a sour note due to some not-very-nice comments from readers about her personal life (perhaps NSFW).

We have a few more details about the historic estate in Vermont's beautiful Lake Champlain Islands (above) purchased by flamboyant Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld earlier this month, as we reported. Here's what one of Lagerfeld's new neighbors wrote in to tell us about the six-bedroom property:

"It's in Grand Isle, Vermont. It's a Greek Revival home built in 1850, and it's on the Vermont Historic Registry. The price was under $1 million. There are numerous second-home owners in the area - from Montreal, Florida and New York - but no [other] well-known international celebrities. Until now, the Champlain Islands have been a well kept secret.... There are many other estates for sale up here much larger than Lagerfeld's new property, but in terms of price and privacy he got a great deal."

Our tipster adds that Lagerfeld is expected at the house this week for a Chanel photo shoot.

Here's how the town's website describes Grand Isle: "Bordered on three sides by water: on the east with the Inland Sea and the west with the broad lake of Lake Champlain, and to the north the 'gut' at the drawbridge to North Hero. It is the hub for the connecting year-round ferry to Plattsburgh, New York, 30 minutes to Burlington, and a day trip to Montreal. The fertile farmland overlooking vistas of breathtaking sunrises and sunsets is one of tranquility & peaceful pastoral views." You can see a Google map of the area here.

If you're interested in buying your own Grand Isle estate, our tipster suggests checking out the Sweeney Farm property on 10 acres, listed at $1.5 million.