DESIGN ‘ROCK STAR’
Canadians in the fashion industry remember icon Karl Lagerfeld
When the news of Karl Lagerfeld’s death broke on Tuesday, the fashion world burst forth with condolences, praise and respect for the 85-year-old designer. And with good reason.
Lagerfeld was not just a fashion designer, in the singular sense. He was an icon.
“Karl Lagerfeld was a fashion rock star,” says Noreen Flanagan, the editor-in-chief of Fashion magazine. “I remember being at the after party following the resort collection in Singapore and women of all ages — who were dressed head-to-toe in Chanel — were clamouring like teenage girls to get a photograph of him.”
Lagerfeld, creative director for the House of Chanel from 1983 to 2019, is credited with taking the creative vision of brand founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel and wholly modernizing it, effectively propelling the French fashion house into the stratosphere of luxury brands. While also ensuring it reached both billion-dollar and cult status.
“Lagerfeld revived the Chanel house,” Flanagan says. “In a press release from the company, they quoted him as once saying, ‘My job is not to do what she did, but what she would have done.’
“He achieved that with his inventive and modern twists on Coco’s iconic tweeds, handbags and black dresses. He also introduced his own witty touches that made his designs distinctly Karl.”
To be familiar with Lagerfeld as a designer, either through his work at Chanel, his eponymous brand or through his longtime design role at the Italian fashion house Fendi, was to understand only a small part of who the revered designer truly was. To get a truer sense, one would have to have met him.
Vancouver-based fashion journalist and on-air personality Susie Wall recalls vividly the first time she interviewed Lagerfeld.
“In May of 2005, Chanel was hosting an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I was sent to New York to interview Mr. Lagerfeld for the television program etalk, and also to cover the red carpet for the Costume Institute Gala — now the Met Gala — that evening. It was a dream assignment,” she says.
While some people would have been nervous to meet Lagerfeld, Wall recalls feeling only one emotion: awe.
“I remember I had packed what I thought would be the ideal wardrobe for the interview. But about an hour before I was to leave my hotel for the museum, I received a request that it would be appreciated if I wore entirely white for my meeting with Mr. Lagerfeld,” she says. “Luckily, I had a white cotton blazer, balled up in my suitcase, from days previous in Los Angeles.
“I steamed it, tucked the white tank top that I had, literally, just slept in, into a pair of high-waisted, wide-legged white trousers with a pair of pointed white mules by Emma Hope — and off I went.”
Wall says she spoke with the designer as Vogue editor Anna Wintour — clad in “white bouclé perfection” — looked on.
“He was lovely,” she says. “Engaging, very softly spoken, charming, calm.”
Flanagan recounts her encounter with Lagerfeld in a similarly fond way.
“I met Lagerfeld when he was in Toronto a few years ago. I was the last writer to chat with him after a very long day of interviews. It was after 10 p.m. and I was tired. I expected our chat would be brief as he would be keen to return to (his cat) Choupette, who was staying with him at the Four Seasons,” she says.
“Instead, I was drawn into the indomitable vortex of energy that he radiated. We chatted about his cat, the power of the Jenner clan and supermodels.
“He was disarmingly charming and generous.”
It was this charm and his well-documented wit that rendered him a favourite of so many fashion fans and editors.
“Like his muse, Lagerfeld was an iconoclast with a revolutionary and irreverent temperament. I think he will inspire just as many musicals, movies and books as Coco. And his quotable quotes will continue to be just as witty, acerbic and iconic,” Flanagan says.
But it was his forward-looking fashion sense that undoubtedly kept Lagerfeld at the forefront of his industry — and will continue to do so, for many years to come.