GENIUS GOES OUT IN STYLE
Fashionably great Karl Lagerfeld, 85, dies
Karl Lagerfeld, the iconic fashionista whose sharp outfits were matched only by his sharper tongue, died Tuesday in Paris. He was 85.
The designer, who was the creative director at both Chanel and Fendi, in addition to having his own label, had been battling pancreatic cancer, but the exact cause of his death was not revealed when Chanel officials announced his passing.
During his seven-decade fashion career, the Germanborn trend-setter was known for his personal style — which included sunglasses, starched collar and an unimpressed scowl — his reinvigoration of the Chanel brand and his caustic, sometimes offensive, wit.
“Today the world lost a giant among men. Karl was so much more than our greatest and most prolific designer — his creative genius was breathtaking and to be his friend was an exceptional gift,” said Vogue editor-inchief Anna Wintour.
Supermodel Claudia Schiffer, whom Lagerfeld anointed as the new face of Chanel in 1992, said the couturier was like “magic dust” for her career.
“He taught me about fashion, style and survival in the fashion business,” Schiffer said. “What [Andy] Warhol was to art, he was to fashion; he is irreplaceable.”
Lagerfeld remained enigmatic despite living squarely in the limelight.
He gave conflicting accounts about his birth year and fabricated tales of noble blood. But the German newspaper Die Welt revealed in 2013 that he was born Karl Otto Lagerfeld in Hamburg, Germany, on Sept. 10, 1933.
His first gig was an apprenticeship with designer Pierre Balmain, which he parlayed into positions at Patou and Chloe. He joined Italian brand Fendi in 1965 and was elevated to design chief in 1977, a position he maintained until his death.
Lagerfeld helped make “Paris the fashion capital of the world and Fendi one of the most innovative Italian houses,” said Bernard Arnault, CEO of Fendi’s parent
company, LVMH.
Lagerfeld took the reins at Chanel in 1983, when the design house had laid fallow for nearly a decade after the death of its legendary matron, Coco Chanel. He took the brand in another, more modern direction.
“What I have done, Coco Chanel would never have done. She would have hated it,” he once said according to the 2013 collection of his aphorisms, “The World According to Karl.”
Lagerfeld modernized Chanel’s signature skirt suits and expanded the company’s footprint in the 1980s by opening some 40 boutiques around the world.
“Today, not only have I lost a friend, but we have all lost an extraordinary creative mind to whom I gave carte blanche in the early 1980s to reinvent the brand,” Chanel CEO Alain Wertheimer said.
But the outspoken designer also raised hackles for a litany of off-color remarks — such as when he called Adele “a little too fat” in 2012, and claimed Kim Kardashian was asking for it when she was robbed of $11 million in jewelry in 2016.
Lagerfeld, who lost his husband to AIDS in 1989, was intensely private about his personal life.
But he did shine the limelight on one family member — his beloved Siamese cat, Choupette, who became an Instagram star.
“She is spoilt, much more than a child could be,” he told The Associated Press in 2013.
Lagerfeld’s health had reportedly been declining for years. Many feared he’d taken a turn for the worse when he didn’t show up for Chanel’s January haute couture show in Paris.
“Why should I stop working?” he told VogueTV in 2012. “If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.”