Giant of the fashion world revitalised Chanel and embraced ready-to-wear
Life Story
Karl Lagerfeld, who has died aged 85, was a spectacularly successful fashion designer. He transformed the once-moribund house of Chanel into the world’s most successful fashion label and constantly reinvented himself, rendering himself relevant decade after decade.
Presciently sensing fashion’s radical change of mood in the early 1960s, Lagerfeld, who moved from his native Germany to Paris as a teenager, turned his back on haute couture and embraced ready-to-wear. He helped pioneer the idea, little heard of then, of the freelance designer, working for several fashion houses. He flitted effortlessly between very different labels – the highend ready-towear house of
Chloe, say, or the
Italian fur company Fendi – subjugating any desire to cultivate a signature style to satisfying the needs of each client. Indeed, he made a virtue of anonymity, once stating: ‘‘I have no personality or I have three, depending on how you look at it. I love that there’s no overlap.’’
He met and was a fan of the similarly deadpan Andy Warhol, starring in the artist’s 1973 film L’amour. ‘‘Karl learnt a lot from Andy,’’ remarked Lagerfeld’s close friend, the interior designer Andree Putman, and certainly his manipulation of his image was Warholian, including his inscrutable shades and sleekly coiffed, snow-white ponytail.
Unlike his biggest rival, Yves Saint Laurent, Lagerfeld gave short shrift to the romantic notion of inspiration, attributing his success to discipline and professionalism. He continually asserted, in his staccato, guttural voice, that he was a doer, not a thinker: ‘‘I sketch everything in my head first. When I do fashion collections, I don’t fuss about. I make decisions. Then I do them.’’
At the same time, though, Lagerfeld liked to trumpet his passion for culture. He claimed that, aged 6, he spoke fluent German, English and French. Those cultural interests fed into his designs.
Lagerfeld was one of fashion’s great survivors. His chameleon-like ability to reinvent himself and the ease with which he diversified guaranteed his enduring appeal and credibility – as did his engagement with popular and youth culture and the latest technology.
In 2004 he created a collection for the high street store H&M. He designed stage costumes for Madonna and Kylie Minogue, and as a photographer and film-maker shot fashion stories for Vogue and ad campaigns for Chanel. He also snapped Mariah Carey and Lady Gaga – the latter on his gold iphone.
Karl-otto Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg in 1933, though he later claimed to be younger. He was given to embroidering his past with tales of sumptuous family luncheons and battalions of servants, while glossing over the grim reality: after the war, the British Army requisitioned the Lagerfelds’ house, forcing them to live for a year in a cowshed.
As a boy, he was besotted with fashion, cutting out magazine pictures and dressing immaculately himself. He could not get out of Germany quickly enough, arriving in Paris in his teens to study couture.
By the mid-1960s he was working prolifically for a whole raft of ready-to-wear labels, his natural exhibitionism helping to keep him in the public eye. He was seen in Paris nightclubs and on the beach at St Tropez, and bankrolled some of the era’s most notorious parties, including the S&m-themed ‘‘Moratoire Noir(e)’’ bash organised by his partner, Jacques de Bascher, and his friend, Xavier de Castella. But he was more voyeur than participant, avoiding alcohol and drugs and maintaining a rigorous work ethic. ‘‘I am a Calvinist toward myself, and totally indulgent toward others,’’ he explained.
In 1975 he signed a lucrative deal to create the first Chloe fragrance, but he parted company with the label after his appointment, in 1983, as couturier and designer at Chanel, where he stayed for a record-breaking 36 years.
By the time he opened an eponymous ready-to-wear fashion label in 1984, he was immensely wealthy. He had amassed a collection of Art Deco furniture, which he sold off in its entirety in 1975. In the 1980s he collected pieces by the Italian design collective, Memphis, selling that collection, too, in 1991. His taste later shifted to embrace contemporary furniture by the likes of Marc Newson, which graced his homes in Paris, Monaco and Vermont.
Lagerfeld had something of a complex about his body. His stringent diet, created for him by Dr Jean-claude Houdret, led to the publication of The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, which became a bestseller. Subsequently he cultivated the look of a 19th-century dandy crossed with a rock star, in high-collared shirts, black leather fingerless gloves and knuckle-duster rings.
Lagerfeld’s autocratic manner earned him the nickname Kaiser Karl – and he enjoyed a good feud. The model Ines de La Fressange was his muse until 1989, when he fell out with her over her decision to pose for a bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, an icon Lagerfeld denounced as ‘‘boring, bourgeois and provincial’’. They were later reconciled.
His loathing for Saint Laurent dated from about 1974, when his rival embarked on an affair with Jacques de Bascher. Until he died from an Aids-related illness in 1989, de Bascher was Lagerfeld’s partner.
In 2012 Lagerfeld caused outrage among fans of the singer Adele by describing her as ‘‘a little too fat’’, compounding his offence by remarking of Pippa Middleton that she ‘‘should only show her back’’ because he disliked her face. –