Fashion: Style Notes

CHANEL No 5 has taken great pains in creating its new television commercial, to be shown at the end of the month. Ridley Scott, who made Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise, has been responsible for the commercials since 1968. This time round, however, Jacques Helleu, Chanel's artistic director, decided it was time for a change.

Enter American screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven, whose successes include Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct. And, after a number of heated discussions, exit Eszterhas and Verhoeven. Helleu brought in Roman Polanski to direct the Eszterhas script. After a test shoot, exit Polanski.

Next time round, Helleu started afresh. He hired photographer Bettina Rheims to shoot a commercial based on the 1946 King Vidor classic, Gilda, which starred Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. Chanel's version of events 'stars' Carole Bouquet and Peter Coyote in a 30-second, love-hate confrontation.

It is easy to why Chanel should be so picky about getting the right advertisement most scent is sold in the two months before Christmas. Kate Constable

BODY-PIERCING is taking over from tattooing as the most painful fashion

accessory. Steven Meisel's latest model find, Stella and her pierced nose appeared on Paris catwalks for names as diverse as street-wise Jean Paul Gaultier and, the ultimate ladies-who-lunch designer, Chanel. This month's issue of i-D magazine features tongue- and lip-piercing, and for those too squeamish to be pierced, there is jewellery that looks frighteningly real. Fashion victims are now boasting huge gold safety pins that give the appearance of piercing through their cheeks.

Never one to be far behind a trend, Christy Turlington (who has a flower and the initials of her loved one tattooed on her ankle) found herself at a loose end recently with her friend Naomi Campbell.

A piercer was summoned to the hotel suite. Christy's once-perfect belly button now has a silver ring through it, and Naomi's dainty nose has a tiny flaw. Both came in very handy at Gaultier's show, in which silver Indian jewels were slung from ear to nose and back again.

HERE are the latest script developments on Robert Altman's Pret a porter, due to start shooting at the Paris collections in March next year. The head of the Chambre Syndicale is a Russian spy. The editor of US Vogue is a nymphomaniac. The reporter from The Washington Post (Tim Robbins) spends the entire collections in bed with the reporter from The Atlanta Constitution (Julia Roberts). One of Paris's star designers saves a failing business by staging a nude fashion show. Sounds like an ordinary tale of simple fashion folk.

JERRY HALL has taken time out from advertising meaty Bovril to lead a purer life as a yoga guru. The Texan blonde is at number 1 in the health and fitness video charts with her video, Yogacise.

WE HAVE sniffed the Salvador Dali aftershave and perfume in their surreal lip- and nose-shaped bottles copied from the sculpted shape of the mouth and chin in his painting 'L'Aphrodite de Cnide'. We have seen the aftershave, Salvador, in its silver-plated bottle, hammered with virgin's-ear shells, as collected by the Surreal One and his sister on the shores of Cape Creus. And we have worn the lipstick, applied from its L'Aphrodite de Cnide holder.

Now, we can wear the limited edition Softwatch, inspired by Dali's 1954 painting, 'The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory'. The watch, an interpretation of Dali's concept that time and memory melt away, features numbers so distorted that telling the time becomes a surreal experience.

The Softwatch starts at pounds 79, and is available from Selfridges, Harrods, The Watch Gallery and Dickens and Jones.

SO MUCH for designer labels being outmoded. Name Workshop has just opened in London, stocking many of the new breed of fashion designers for men and women. They include British names such as Copperwheat Blundell, the duo who shone at the recent 'new generation' show in London Fashion Week, shoe-makers Lawler Duffy, and more established names Katharine Hamnett and Jasper Conran. Name Workshop is at 268 Brompton Road, London SW3.

IF YOU are racked with indecision, Oasis is offering a helpful service between now and Christmas. Style consultants will be available on Fridays and Saturdays from 19 November at Oasis stores in Brighton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and London.