The designer Karl Lagerfeld, who has died aged 85, explored and exploited couture, ready-to-wear and even mass-market fashion for more than 60 years. He had a genius for visual quotation and allusion, impersonation and pastiche, especially at Chanel, the fashion house he headed for more than three decades, and it made him the first postmodern fashionmeister. Nobody else stayed on top of so many labels for so long: besides Chanel, Lagerfeld headed Fendi, and intermittently had his own-name brand. And he evolved into a commentary on the whole business: personally stylised into his own logo (glasses, gloves, the defensive composure for the camera); encyclopedic about the history of design, yet devoid of sentimental nostalgia. Edna E Mode, the opinionated couturier in the Pixar cartoon The Incredibles, says: “I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now.” Totally Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld’s first imaginative creation had been himself. His version set his birth at variable dates on a country estate in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, his papa Otto possessed of a fortune from condensed milk, and mama Elisabeth (nee Bahlmann) a woman of culture. Karl Lagerfeld at work for Jean Patou in the 1960s. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images He told of his strict upbringing, governess, and the family’s oil painting of the court of Frederick the Great. However, German records set the date earlier at 1933, downgrade his father to a successful businessman, his mother to a lingerie saleswoman and the schloss to a manse in the leafy suburban Baurs Park district of Hamburg, from which the family was evicted by British occupation forces. He later dropped the final letter of Lagerfeldt to arrive at a more marketable name. Witnesses remembered a longhaired outsider determined to be far from the hungry postwar countryside or grim Hamburg. In both versions, he was an autodidact who made bold connections between visual aspects of the zeitgeist. That was his genuine gift: he combined a historian’s knowledge of the past with a diarist’s curiosity about the present, and subjected them to the ruthlessness that ruled his life. Anything and anybody was abandoned as soon as he considered the present should turn to past. He called it “vampirising”. Karl Lagerfeld with the Golden Spinning Wheel, which he won in 1973. Photograph: Bertram/DPA/PA Images After private school and a spell, at his request, at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, Lagerfeld won in the coat category of the 1954 International Wool Secretariat competition, and was invited as apprentice to Pierre Balmain’s couture house. After that he joined Jean Patou, where he designed under the name Roland Karl; there was enough family money to pay for a Mercedes and a social life. He left in 1962 to work as a designer for upmarket ready-to-wear firms that had begun to serve customers for whom couture was too expensive and dressmakers too dowdy. Lagerfeld collected books, a copy to shelve plus another to gut for images, while observing the current mood on the streets. His designs were commercial, and his workrate exceptional – ideas in, sketches out, all of it thrown away immediately on completion, for Krizia, Ballantyne, Isetan, Charles Jourdan, Tiziani of Rome and many other quality firms. In 1967 he took over furs for the Italian firm Fendi, and did things with pelts none had dared before. For the dreamy frock company Chloé, which had recruited him in 1963, he used his understanding of old dressmaking details. Flea market vintage, bought decades before retro was chic, and his collector’s familiarity with art deco, set the house style; his 1972 deco ready-to-wear collection attracted more attention than most couture shows, although Lagerfeld’s relationship with Chloé and the other employers remained discreet. He didn’t take bows. The fees they paid, plus the extra Lagerfeld accumulated through using his antennae to deal in antiques and art, funded his high visibility: attention was paid to his appearance, possessions and the premises he stashed them in. Andy Warhol borrowed a Lagerfeld apartment as the venue for a movie, L’Amour (1973), and Lagerfeld adopted Warhol’s creed of superficiality, although behind that facade lay a wide and deep consumption of art and literature. Lagerfeld and the Puerto Rican fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez had a Parisian salon, in the arts not fashion sense, early in the70s. Along with Warhol, Lopez introduced Lagerfeld to American pop culture and its idea of fashion based on attitude more than actual garments. Lopez and Lagerfeld drew competitively. They snapped Instamatics. They assembled collages, prototypes of the mood boards that began to dominate collections as fashion expanded its markets in the 1970s. Carole Bouquet, the French actor, left, with the model Inès de La Fressange and Karl Lagerfeld attending the spring-summer ready-to-wear fashion show in Paris in 1986. Photograph: Pierre Verdy/Getty Lopez and his circle were bankrolled by Lagerfeld, who paid for clothes and presents – Lagerfeld gave, without stint, personally chosen gifts to favourites and as business offerings. A Chloé perfume in 1975 increased his income and his flamboyance flared, but his famous fan, tied-back hair and wild garments never impeded the flow of reliably saleable designs for clients. Lagerfeld was the German industrial miracle. His longterm bet that ready-to-wear would prevail surprisingly brought him in 1982 to the couture house of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who had died in 1971. The first show, in 1983, was not a critical success, although his pastiches of Coco’s classics were passable and his learning about his predecessor unsurpassed: “I’m like a computer who’s plugged into the Chanel mode,” he said. By the second collection he had deconstructed her lifework into a mood board – tweeds, braids, quilted bags, costume jewellery and the double C logo – and played outrageous games with them. To those who hated his mockery of Chanel’s practical clothes, he replied the house had been “a sleeping beauty who snored”. Timeline Karl Lagerfeld Show 10 September 1933 Birth Karl Otto Lagerfeld was born (it’s thought) on this day in Hamburg to Otto, a businessman who imported evaporated milk, and Elizabeth, a lingerie salesperson, although his true age remains a mystery to this day.<doc-sep>Though he spent virtually his entire career at luxury labels catering to the very wealthy — including all of 20 years at Chloe — Lagerfeld’s designs quickly trickled down to low-end retailers, giving him an almost unprecedented impact on the entire fashion industry. Lagerfeld was of the most hardworking figures in the fashion world holding down the top design jobs at LVMH-owned luxury label Fendi from 1977, and Paris’ family-owned power-house Chanel in 1983. Indeed, his indefatigable energy was notable: he lost around 90 pounds in his late 60s to fit into the latest slimline fashions. At Chanel, he served up youthful designs that were always of the moment and sent out almost infinite variations on the house’s classic skirt suit, ratcheting up the hemlines or smothering it in golden chains, stings of pearls or pricey accessories. They were always delivered with wit. “Each season, they tell me (the Chanel designs) look younger. One day we’ll all turn up like babies,” he once told The Associated Press. His outspoken and often stinging remarks on things as diverse as French politics and celebrity waistlines won him the nickname “Kaiser Karl” in the fashion media. Among the most acid comments included calling President Francois Hollande an “imbecile” who would be “disastrous” for France in Marie-Claire, and telling UK’s The Sun that he didn’t like the face of Pippa Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister. “She should only show her back,” he advised. Lagerfeld was also heavily criticized for sending out a negative message to women when he told France’s Metro newspaper that signer Adele was “a little too fat.” Despite this, he did have an under-reported soft side. He was known to be very kind to his staff at Chanel and was famous for according journalists generously long interviews after each fashion show. He also shared his unmarried life in his Parisian mansion with a Siamese cat called Choupette.<doc-sep>Karl Lagerfeld, the most prolific designer of the 20th and 21st centuries and a man whose career formed the prototype of the modern luxury fashion industry, died on Tuesday in Paris. Though his birth year was a matter of some dispute, Mr. Lagerfeld, who lived in Paris, was generally thought to be 85. His death was announced by Chanel, with which he had long been associated. “More than anyone I know, he represents the soul of fashion: restless, forward-looking and voraciously attentive to our changing culture,” Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, said of Mr. Lagerfeld when presenting him with the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Fashion Awards in 2015. Creative director of Chanel since 1983 and Fendi since 1965, and founder of his own line, Mr. Lagerfeld was the definition of a fashion polyglot, able to speak the language of many different brands at the same time (not to mention many languages themselves: He read in English, French, German and Italian).<doc-sep>Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most prolific and widely popular designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has died in Paris. He was 85. Lagerfeld was creative director of Chanel, the French house founded by Gabrielle Chanel, for an era-defining, age-defying 36 years. Upon assuming the reins in 1983, Lagerfeld swiftly revived Chanel, reinterpreting the house founder’s iconic tweed skirtsuits, little black dresses, and quilted handbags. He did it via the lens of hip-hop one season and California surfer chicks the next—he was a pop culture savant—without ever forgetting what the revolutionary Coco stood for: independence, freedom, and modernity. In more recent years, as the company’s fortunes grew and grew, Lagerfeld became known for the lavish Grand Palais sets he conceived for the six Chanel collections he designed a year. There was a rocket ship, a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, and a supermarché stocked strictly with Chanel-brand products. Florence Welch sang on the half-shell at the Spring 2012 show. Most memorable of all was the improbable giant iceberg from Scandinavia that Chanel shipped across the continent for the Fall 2010 show. Lagerfeld also pioneered the concept of the traveling pre-season show. The Karl caravan has landed variously in Versailles; West Lothian, Scotland; Dallas; Seoul; and, spectacularly, Havana, Cuba. “What I love best in life is new starts,” Lagerfeld once said. And thank goodness. In addition to his duties for Chanel, Lagerfeld was the creative director of fur and ready-to-wear at Fendi, a position he assumed in 1965. In an era of designer musical chairs, when creative directors are given three years—or even less—to make a brand work, Lagerfeld was the éminence grise that broke the rule. The multitasking designer also designed collections under his own name, but despite his international fame, neither his eponymous collections or the ones he did for Fendi achieved the status of his work for Chanel. Lagerfeld was the worthiest of successors. The public’s fascination with him rivals its interest in Chanel herself, who was the subject of numerous biographies, plays, and films both recent and vintage; Katharine Hepburn played her on Broadway in the 1970 musical Coco. There is no musical about Lagerfeld’s life yet, but don’t count him out. He cut an indelible figure with his omnipresent sunglasses, black leather gloves, Chrome Hearts rings, and powdered white ponytail. In the early 2000s, he shed nearly 100 pounds in order to wear the narrow-cut suits designed by Hedi Slimane for Dior Homme, and wrote a book about the process with his doctor called The Karl Lagerfeld Diet. More recent testaments to his notoriety include the public’s fascination with his Birman cat, Choupette, who is also the subject of a book and the popular Where’s Waldo? parody Where’s Karl? In the second season of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which aired in early 2018, the actor Neil Patrick Harris’s character, Count Olaf, donned a very Lagerfeldian disguise—high-collared shirt, strictly tailored jacket, ponytail wig—and went by the name of Gunther.<doc-sep>
Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most influential fashion designers to shape the industry, has died at 85. Prolific in every sense of the word, Lagerfeld designed for three brands—Chanel, Fendi and his namesake label—branching out into photography and hospitality. If every person has one detail that unlocks their mythology, for Karl Lagerfeld it was the way he read books. For every new page he’d finish, he’d tear it out . It wasn’t a sign of a disrespect for the written word—Lagerfeld was a book collector and maintained his own imprint, 7L. Rather, it was symbolic of his relentless quest for newness. When you’ve been working for more than half a century, it’s easy to ossify into the same habits, but Lagerfeld was always looking around the corner, at what was next—whether it was the next “It” Apple product, the next “It” girl, or a brand-new inspiration. For someone with reverence for the old-fashioned (hand-drawn pastel sketches, classical music, rococo fans) he lived resolutely in the present, and he was inexorably drawn to the future. Pascal Le Segretain Getty Images And he continued working, and looking ahead, right up to the end. According to WWD, he gave his design team at Fendi instructions for the fall-winter 2019 collection, set to show as planned during Milan Fashion Week this Thursday. It’s no exaggeration to say that Lagerfeld put an indelible stamp on fashion, from his floaty, feminine vision for Chloé, his logo-rific work at Fendi (he designed the iconic double-F logo!) and, of course, his Chanel shows that transported us everywhere from a supermarket to an airport terminal to a glamorous data center. “Moving forward, changing and enticing. That’s what fashion is about!” But beyond his runway omnipresence, he was also early to catch each new wave of fashion—mass-market collaborations (his collab with H&M in 2004 marked the first linkup between the retailer and a designer), social media (his cat Choupette has racked up over 116k Instagram followers) and our golden age of non-verbal communication (he launched his own emojis in 2014.) He grasped “branding” early on: his snow-white ponytail, shades, stiff collar, and fingerless gloves were enough of a semaphore to make him identifiable from miles away. Karl Lagerfeld And he was generous. When Lagerfeld took a fancy to someone and they joined his jet-setting Chanel crew—whether it was a budding star, or his beloved Choupette—he celebrated them. In the pages of ELLE, he relaxed with Nicki Minaj and gathered together some of his intimates—including model Joan Smalls, Chanel studio director Virginie Viard, and classical violinist Charlie Siem—for a group portrait in our December issue. Perhaps that inclusivity was the most modern thing about him, and in keeping with ELLE’s mission to make fashion accessible and fun. As he told us this past fall, “Moving forward, changing and enticing. That’s what fashion is about!” Véronique Hyland Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director.