Remembering Karl Lagerfeld
Chanel’s iconic couturier respected as one of the hardest-working figures in the fashion world.
Chanel’s iconic couturier, Karl Lagerfeld, whose accomplished designs as well as trademark white ponytail, high starched collars and dark enigmatic glasses dominated high fashion for the past 50 years, has died. He was around 85 years old.
Such was the enigma surrounding the Germanborn designer 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 French magazine “Paris Match” he was born in 1935, but in 2019 his assistant still didn’t know the truth — telling AP he liked “to scramble the tracks on his year of birth — that’s part of the character.”
Chanel confirmed that Lagerfeld, who had looked increasingly frail in recent seasons, died early Tuesday.
“An extraordinary creative individual, Lagerfeld reinvented the brand’s codes created by Gabrielle Chanel: the Chanel jacket and suit, the little black dress, the precious tweeds, the two-tone shoes, the quilted handbags, the pearls and costume jewelry,” Chanel said in a statement.
“Thanks to his creative genius, generosity and exceptional intuition, Karl Lagerfeld was ahead of his time, which widely contributed to the House of Chanel’s success throughout the world,” the brand’s CEO Alain Wertheimer said. “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.”
Lagerfeld was one of the hardest-working figures in the fashion world, holding down the top design jobs at LVMH-owned luxury label Fendi from 1977, and Paris’ family-owned powerhouse Chanel in 1983. He lost around 90 pounds in his late 60s to fit into the latest slim-line fashions.
Though he spent virtually his entire career at luxury labels catering to the very wealthy — including 20 years at Chloe — Lagerfeld’s designs quickly trickled down to low-end retailers, giving him an almost unprecedented impact on the entire fashion industry.
At Chanel he served up youthful designs that were always of the moment and sent out almost infinite variations on the house’s classic skirt suit, ratcheting up the hemlines or smothering it in golden chains, strings of pearls or pricey accessories. They were always delivered with wit.
Although he spent much of his life in the public eye, Lagerfeld remained a largely elusive figure. Even as he courted the spotlight, he made an apparently deliberate effort to hide what was going on behind his trademark dark shades.
The son of an industrialist, who made a fortune in condensed milk, and his violinist wife, Lagerfeld was born into an affluent family in Hamburg, Germany.
At age 14, he went to Paris with his parents and attended school in the City of Light. His fashion career got off to a precocious start when, in 1954, a coat he designed won a contest by the International Wool Secretariat. His rival, Yves Saint Laurent, won that year’s contest in the dress category.
Lagerfeld apprenticed at Balmain and in 1959 was hired at another Parisbased house, Patou, where he spent four years as artistic director. After a series of jobs with labels including Rome-based Fendi, Lagerfeld took over the reins at Chloe, known for its romantic Parisian style.
He also started his own label, Karl Lagerfeld, which though less commercially successful than his other ventures was widely seen as a sort of sketchpad where he worked through his audacious ideas.
In 1982, he took over at Chanel, which had been dormant since the death of its founder, Coco Chanel, more than a decade earlier.
After his widely known relationship with a French aristocrat who died of AIDS in 1989, Lagerfeld insisted he prized his solitude above all.