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"  Vanessa Paradis still gets nervous around large crowds, though not as much as she once did. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like, when I was arriving here,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;everyone is sitting down and watching me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Here&amp;quot; is H\u00F4tel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera, where Ernest Hemingway and, later, Elizabeth Taylor stayed. Here is where Karl Lagerfeld, for Chanel&amp;#039;s resort show on May 9, has ordered Mediterranean blue chairs and patio tables with umbrellas in place of traditional runway seating, as seagulls (had he arranged for these, too?) circle overhead. Here, some 200 guests, ushered in by young men dressed as cabana boys, are gawking at Paradis as she finds her seat. &amp;quot;I still lower my chin,&amp;quot; says Paradis, wearing a black silk lace Chanel jumpsuit. &amp;quot;But I don&amp;#039;t feel terrified the way I used to.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Used to&amp;quot; is when Paradis was a precocious 14-year-old singing the 1987 hit &amp;quot;Joe le Taxi&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;He knows all the streets by heart&amp;quot;), swaying in front of a yellow taxicab in an orange sweatshirt in the video. And when, at age 19, she appeared in her first Chanel campaign for Coco perfume as a caged bird swinging from a trapeze. (&amp;quot;For a week they sent me to circus school,&amp;quot; she says.) &amp;quot;Used to&amp;quot; was before 24 years as a singer and actress made her a celebrity in her native France and a 13-year relationship with Johnny Depp, with whom she has two children, Lily-Rose, 12, and Jack, 9, turned her into one stateside, too. The Monday night resort show capped off a two-day destination fashion party during which Paradis and Lagerfeld&amp;#039;s other muses\u2014Blake Lively (the face of Mademoiselle handbags), Rachel Bilson (of his Magnum ice cream ads), and Chanel brand &amp;quot;ambassadors&amp;quot; Alexa Chung and Caroline Sieber\u2014were chauffeured around Cannes, the procession feeling more like a college reunion weekend than an obligatory step-and-repeat. The day before the show, Lagerfeld is conducting a last-minute fitting in a makeshift studio at the hotel, overlooking the coastline. Seated at a white-clothed table topped with a lit scented candle and an in-explicable supply of glue sticks, the designer watches as models gallop past like show ponies wearing their runway looks: canary-yellow pencil-skirted suits, &amp;#039;30s-inspired dresses with weighty floral embroidery, pleated shorts, and wide-legged trousers. Last year, his models walked barefoot in flowing, bohemian dresses in Saint-Tropez, France; for this year&amp;#039;s dressier collection, Antibes, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, is more fitting, Lagerfeld says. &amp;quot;Cruise collection is about going away,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Resort is just a stupid name. It&amp;#039;s a full collection.&amp;quot; A model wearing a black chiffon dress appears, and Lagerfeld leaps out of his chair to hang a string of pearls across her bare back. &amp;quot;Tr\u00E8s chic, non?&amp;quot; he asks. A team of assistants erupts. &amp;quot;Magnifique!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Ah, ah, Karl!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tr\u00E8s chic, tr\u00E8s chic!&amp;quot; The 5&amp;#039;3&amp;quot; Paradis &amp;quot;is like a fairy,&amp;quot; Lagerfeld says. &amp;quot;When she wears Chanel, it&amp;#039;s different than other red-carpet actresses, who are a little too tall or too big or too much hair, too much everything. There&amp;#039;s a lightness about her.&amp;quot;  Another model comes out, and Lagerfeld is on his feet. &amp;quot;Bianca!&amp;quot; That evening, at a family-style dinner for some 200 people at Le Michelangelo restaurant, Lagerfeld sits Lively to his right and Paradis to his left. &amp;quot;He tells me something he&amp;#039;s done, something he doesn&amp;#039;t want to do, something he has to do,&amp;quot; Paradis later says. &amp;quot;He asks after the kids.&amp;quot; When Paradis, who currently appears in ads for Rouge Coco Shine lipstick, began working for Chanel, her style, she says, consisted of &amp;quot;ripped-up jeans.&amp;quot; To dinner, Paradis, now 38, is wearing a silk chiffon tiered dress (custom-made by Lagerfeld) with suede Chanel booties; she looks like an enchanting Gypsy. That Paradis doesn&amp;#039;t seem to possess the reflex to throw her hand on her hip in the presence of cameras makes her seem both too innocent and too mature in this company. And yet for someone who&amp;#039;s so admittedly shy, her wardrobe of ethereal romantic dresses has consistently articulated a certain appealing mystery, earning Paradis a rapt style following. The next evening, after the show, Paradis observes as a stampede of models (Karolina Kurkova, Natasha Poly, Stella Tennant) head to the after-party, where Bryan Ferry will put on a surprise performance. She seems timid again, thoughtful, like a child surveying the adults. &amp;quot;Look at these girls\u2014tall, beautiful,&amp;quot; Paradis says. &amp;quot;For me, working with Karl is like playing a role in a movie. Walking on a runway is not my job. It&amp;#039;s a very strange thing to stand in front of a lens and take a pose.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a11826/vanessa-paradis-staying-power-610167/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>