Karl Lagerfeld has a great talent for making Chanel feel at home in the most unlikely places – last night he combined the label's august heritage with something more rootin' and tootin' when he pitched its annual Metiers d'Art in Dallas. Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Alexa Chung and Poppy Delevingne were among the guests who watched a show seated in vintage Fifties cars, before enjoying a luxury hoedown with the band Hot Chip.

The show is a celebration of the specialist ateliers that Chanel has bought up over the years in order to protect and nurture some of the traditional artisan crafts they ply, and which are so crucial not only to the intricate and opulent couture pieces Lagerfeld designs twice a year, but also increasingly in ready-to-wear too. The Metiers d'Art collection is a means of showing off what each of these workshops and their petits mains are capable of.

These include the house of Lesage (fine embroidery), Goossens (costume jewellery), Massaro (footwear), Lemarie (experts in feather and flower embellishments), Maison Michel (headgear) and Barrie, the Scottish cashmere house that the company bought last year, when it showed its Metiers d'Art in Edinburgh.

Stewart has been chosen by Karl Lagerfeld as the face of the Metiers d'Art campaign, which will launch in May, following in Tilda Swinton's footsteps from last year's Scottish-themed collection.

Despite a film before the proceedings kicked off in which an actress playing Mme Chanel declared 'I hate denim', the collection last night drew inspiration from the American workwear tradition in utilitarian pieces, and native American culture, in beading and fringing.

The link between the Texan city and the prestigious Parisian house might feel unexpected, but it was the Dallas-based store Nieman Marcus that helped Coco Chanel during the 1953 revival of her label. After a period of retirement, her return was greeted with savage reviews in Europe, but the American markets welcomed her back – particularly the oil-wives of Texas.

Further historical ties between Chanel and Dallas come from the assassination of John F Kennedy there in 1963, the anniversary of which passed just last month – an international event that became iconic not least thanks to the pink Chanel-inspired suit worn by his wife Jackie that day.