Karl Lagerfeld invented a new kind of designer
Karl Lagerfeld was an extraordinary designer — as famous as many of the celebrities he dressed. But for a lot of people, he was a celebrity before he was anything else.
Lagerfeld, who died Tuesday in Paris, was a multitasking Renaissance man who kept the 109-year-old Paris-based Chanel vibrant, desirable and culturally relevant. He served as Chanel's creative director for more than three decades, maintaining the brand's stature and financial might in a fickle industry that always seems to be in the throes of generational upheaval. He also spent 54 years at Fendi, helping to transform it from a family-run Italian fur label into an international brand with a distinctive point of view. He also founded a signature collection — in various iterations, all of them with modest levels of success.
Lagerfeld dabbled in book publishing; he took up photography; he said mean things about others; he said self-deprecating things about himself; he hated fat; he venerated skinny. His work was widely admired by the fashion industry. His energy and endurance dismayed it.
Yet, he may best be known in the broader culture for his distinctive appearance — an Edwardian rock-and-roller suited up with high white collars, skinny black trousers, fingers full of rings and powdered white hair swept back into a ponytail. He didn't so much walk as strut with a cocky toe-heel, toe-heel gait. He was Germanborn and spoke English with a thick accent, sling-shotting words across a conversation. Often those words landed with a bruising sting. They never failed to fascinate.
While other designers love to romp through a flea market or go on an archaeological dig through a vintage shop, Lagerfeld hated looking back. He despised retrospectives. His concern was the present.
"The greatest tribute we can pay today is to continue to follow the path he traced by — to quote Karl — 'continuing to embrace the present and invent the future,' " Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel fashion, said in a statement. Lagerfeld's longtime studio director Virginie Viard will take the design helm.
When hip-hop style began to transform the way in which young people dressed, he incorporated that ideology — for better and, often, worse — into Chanel. He introduced athleisure into the Chanel vocabulary. He embraced technology as both a tool for making life better and as a stylistic opportunity. He was renowned for being an early aficionado of the iPod and he loved tossing sci-fi allusions into a collection.
His haute couture collections were a breathtaking display of artistry and precision. The couture show gave the atelier an opportunity to show off its skills, for the incomparable seamstresses — the petites mains — to shine. Chanel helped to save couture from extinction, in part by buying up many of the specialty studios that had for generations been responsible for the hand embroidery and featherwork that define these one-of-akind gowns and suits.
Couture serves as a reminder that Lagerfeld was part of a generation of designers who have mostly passed away or retired. He came of age in the 1950s alongside the greats such as Yves Saint Laurent. He studied and apprenticed for others. It was craft first, and then everything else. Lagerfeld might have hated looking back for inspiration, but couture was his connection to the foundation of fashion. It was also his enduring gift to a rarefied customer. The standard for couture, after all, is perfection.
His ready-to-wear shows were a torrent of ideas. Season after season, he would flood the runway with some 80 individual models, each wearing ensembles that were sometimes spectacularly appealing and at other times spectacularly not. He seemed equally at peace with both. The important thing was the constant striving toward something new and invigorating. Fashion, for him, was a constant evolution, an endless series of tweaks. He aimed for the best, but sometimes the only way to get there was through rocky and jarring terrain. If there was fear, it was of obsolescence.
"If there's something I don't like or don't understand, I say it's my problem, not the problem of the times. I have to adapt to it. I have to find my niche in the moment that's going on," he told The Washington Post in 2006. "Don't compare your life to what happened before. Every day has to be different. Don't compare. Don't compete. Don't think it was better before, because it was better before only if you think it was."
He had his muses and his obsessions, and they informed his vision. There was the male model Brad Kroenig and his then-elementary-school-age son Hudson, who is Lagerfeld's godson. Both regularly appeared in Chanel shows wearing Lagerfeld's curious version of menswear. For years, his model of choice of Ines de la Fressange, until he had a fallingout with her. He favored Claudia Schiffer, too. His front rows were filled with influencers and Academy Award winners, musicians and political spouses, devoted old-money clients and new-money arrivistes. Everyone wanted a piece of the Chanel world that Lagerfeld created.
Lagerfeld is not known for popularizing any silhouette or inventing any fashion item. Instead, he transformed the way in which fashion operates and the way in which people relate to it.
Last year, the privately held company released its financials for the first time. It is a $10 billion entity, making it one of the largest luxury brands in the world.