Karl Lagerfeld backs French gay marriage law with two Chanel brides

Barack Obama was not the only prominent figure to advance the gay rights cause this week with his historic reference to Stonewall in his inauguration speech. At another celebrity-studded, hot-ticket event across the Atlantic, the fashion world had its own watershed moment.

Less than 24 hours after the president's call for equality, Karl Lagerfeld subverted the traditions of Paris haute couture by closing the Chanel catwalk show with not one blushing bride, but two, hands clasped and dressed in identical, ravishing wedding gowns.

Lagerfeld said he wanted to signal his support for the controversial French gay marriage law, which has led protesters to take to the streets of Paris. "I don't even understand the debate," said Lagerfeld. "Since 1904 the church and state have been separate."

However, never one to miss an opportunity for maximum controversy, Lagerfeld added that he was "less keen" on gay couples being allowed to adopt children.

The raison d'etre of fashion is to move with the times, as Coco Chanel knew very well. The challenge for Lagerfeld, and all designers of haute couture, is to make the clothes – which only the super-rich can afford – feel pertinent to a wider audience.

Lagerfeld, whose kitsch and cowboy boots belie the sharpest branding brain in the business, made a bold visual statement with a snappy relevance to the news cycle – and one that showcased the superlative dressmaking and embroidery of the Chanel ateliers to boot – giving the collection a life and spirit outside the world of the super-rich.

The wedding-with-a-twist theme was weaved through the Chanel show, for which a forest of trees was transplanted inside the Grand Palais. Dresses in intricate layers of white, simultaneously ragged and sumptuous, were worn with frothy fascinators falling from the hair, half over the face, exposing just one gothically smoky eye; there was perhaps a touch of Miss Havisham here, of her half-arranged veil and her confusing heaps of lace and trinkets.

The fashion story of the collection was in the silhouette, which put the focus squarely on the shoulders. The show opened with Stella Tennant in a white boucle coat dress with epaulettes wrapped horizontally around the upper arms, a little like a beauty queen's sash. Where eveningwear left shoulders bare, the effect – with lace or leather leggings, mussed-up hair and make-up that suggested the morning after the night before – was reminiscent of Madonna in her 1980s pomp, dressed for the dancefloor in oversized T-shirt and leg warmers.

Trees and flowers have been a theme of this week's haute couture shows. The British couturier Nicholas Oakwell last week staged a show in the ballroom at Claridges, where the catwalk was dotted with miniature trees with twisting, willowy branches.

Christian Dior installed a formal garden of hedges for models to stroll between for their show on Monday. Lagerfeld's catwalk vision of an enchanted forest was hinted at in the invitations, which featured a delicate drawing of a leaf. Coco Chanel's favourite flower, the camellia, was the Chanel motif to star in the spotlight this season, handpainted on silk or in trembling, three-dimensional applique.

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