Enigmatic designer Lagerfeld dies; his legacy was reinventing Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld, a Germanborn couturier whose reinvention of the luxury fashion house Chanel made him one of the most well-known and influential fashion designers of the late 20th century, died Tuesday in Paris.

Chanel confirmed his death, according to The Associated Press. Other details were not immediately available.

Such was the enigma surrounding the octogenarian Lagerfeld that even his age was a point of mystery for decades, with reports he had two birth certificates, one dated 1933 and the other 1938.

In 2013, Lagerfeld told the French magazine Paris Match he was born in September of 1935 — which would make him 83 — but in 2019 his assistant still didn’t know the truth — telling The Associated Press he liked “to scramble the tracks on his year of birth — that’s part of the character.”

With his crystal white ponytail and dark sunglasses, Lagerfeld was an instantly recognizable fixture in the orbit of fashion and popular culture.

He was the creative force behind some of his industry’s most recognizable and profitable luxury brands. Most recently, he served simultaneously as head designer of Chanel, the Italian fashion house Fendi and his own eponymous brand.

Despite being almost twice the age of his fashion competitors in recent decades, he continued to produce collection after collection for his various labels — sometimes more than 15 times a year — and he drew mostly favorable reviews.

A freelance designer for Parisian ateliers and fashion houses in the 1950s and 1960s, Lagerfeld was an early pioneer of the women’s ready-to-wear movement and built his reputation in the fashion industry with his mold-breaking designs as creative director of Fendi and the French label Chloe.

In 1983, he was hired by Chanel as chief designer to modernize the fashion house a dozen years after the death of its founder, Coco Chanel. When he took over, the house was foundering and barely

surviving off its perfume sales. “Everybody said, ‘Don’t touch it. It’s dead,’” he told New York magazine. “But when people said it was dead and hopeless, I said it was interesting.”

As head designer, Lagerfeld reinvigorated the luxury brand and grew it into a multibilliondollar fashion enterprise while maintaining Chanel’s tradition of craftsmanship and quality.

He also made the fashion house accessible and desirable to younger buyers by introducing ready-to-wear clothing and revamping the brand’s accessory lines.

Fashion historian Valerie Steele said the average age of a Chanel customer during Lagerfeld’s tenure dropped from the mid-50s to the late 30s. “In effect, he performed emergency surgery and totally revivified the brand,” Steele told

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