Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died yesterday at 85 in Paris, didn't believe in "lifetime achievements", he often stated so whenever he received a major award. Yet the "Kaiser", as he was also known (a nickname that he didn't like that much and that was inspired by his opinionated character and his German origins), accomplished something unprecedented since his career in fashion spanned over 60 years and for 4 decades he worked for the same fashion house, Chanel.
The news of his death cast a shadow on the A/W 19 shows and shook the fashion crowd decamping from London to Milan to follow the runways, while tributes from colleagues, critics, influencers and fashion fans appeared on the social media.
Born in Hamburg in the mid-'30s (in 1933; some sources claim in 1938) to a wealthy family, Lagerfeld studied in Paris at Lycée Montaigne.
Lagerfeld won the coat award in the 1954 International Wool Secretariat competition (Woolmark Prize) at 21 (Yves Saint Laurent won the cocktail dress category in the same competition). He became junior assistant and apprentice at Balmain, and then worked at Jean Patou. He left it in 1962 and moved with Chloé in 1964, while the following year started a prolific collaboration with Rome-based house Fendi.
Lagerfeld founded his eponymous ready-to-wear label in 1984 (it was sold to the Tommy Hilfiger Group, and now it is owned by investment fund Apax Partners), but before that he started his biggest adventure in fashion. In 1982, the chairman of Chanel, Alain Wertheimer had indeed asked him to design for the famous French maison that at the time was more or less defunct.
Despite early criticism, the choice was a successful one: Lagerfeld revamped the house updating it, taking elements forming the basic code and semantics of Chanel and creating his own language, focusing on modernity and on the needs of his clients.
He designed 10 collections a year for Chanel, relentlessly reinventing the tweed suit and the little black dress, but also adding a series of accessories such as iconic handbags coveted by younger wealthy consumers.
As the years passed he became an icon with a signature style: he discarded his fan, an accessory he used to hide a double chin, and shed around 90 pounds to be able to wear Hedi Slimane's super thin suits for Dior Homme; he let his hair go white and grow long, then gathered it in a ponytail, opted for dark sunglasses, added heavy rings on his fingers and used fingerless leather gloves to hide age spots.
While working for Chanel Lagerfeld developed other interests: a passionate book lover (his personal library boasts 300,000 volumes and hopefully we will not see it being dismembered), he opened the 7L bookshop on the Rue de Lille in Paris, followed by his publishing house Editions 7L, which released fashion and photography books and re-edited rare and out-of-print books with German art publisher Steidl.
In the last 20 years Chanel went through further changes: a passionate supporter of craftsmanship, Lagerfeld was instrumental in Chanel's acquisition (through its Paraffection subsidiary) of 26 specialist maisons, among them Causse (gloves), Maison Michel (millinery), Goossens (goldsmiths), Barrie (cashmere), Lognon (pleating), Lemarie (feather and flower adornments), Lesage (embroidery), Desrues (costume jewelry) and Massaro (shoes).
Besides, runway shows became extravagantly memorable affairs: Lagerfeld reinvented the art of the catwalk show as spectacle, creating sets that featured an iceberg from Scandinavia, a gigantic Chanel jacket, a data centre, an airport, a casino (used as the background to showcase advanced techniques such as 3D laser sintering employed to create computer-manipulated seamless classic Chanel jackets), a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower, an idealised version of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, a rocket, a ship, streets with feminist protests, a supermarket, a huge Japanese-style wooden structure and a serene beach.
In the meantime Coco went loco, and the Resort/Métiers d'Art collections became moveable feasts with shows that travelled across the globe, from Paris to Venice, New York, Linlithgow, Dallas, Seoul, Havana and Hamburg.
Yet Lagerfeld wasn't just about high fashion: in 2004, he teamed with Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M for a one-off collection that was immediately sold out and that sparked more collaborations with other fashion designers for the high street retailer.
Infatigable Lagerfeld was also a gifted sketcher and illustrator and a fashion photographer and produced campaigns for the Chanel, Fendi and Lagerfeld brands, plus other clients including Dom Perignon, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Pirelli. He also created costumes: in 2016 he designed the set and costumes for George Balanchine's "Brahms-Schönberg Quartet" at Paris' Opéra Bastille.
In May 2010, the designer was bestowed with the French Legion of Honor medal, while in 2017 Women Wear's Daily handed Lagerfeld the John B. Fairchild Honor, dedicated to its founder and granted for lifetime achievement. In the same year Chanel registered sales of $9.6 billion.
Lagerfeld appeared in documentaries about him and about the house of Chanel including the acclaimed five-part miniseries "Signe Chanel" by Loïc Prigent, "Lagerfeld Confidential" by Rodolphe Marconi and "Mode Als Religion" by Martina Neue. More recently the house of Chanel was the subject of one of the episodes of Netflix's series "7 Days Out".
Being an easily reconisable icon Lagerfeld appeared in 2008 in ads for road safety in France, wearing a fluorescent vest and the slogan "It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything, but it might save your life." He was also turned into a character in video game "Grand Theft Auto IV" and vaguely inspired the fashion designer/baddie Papillon in animated series "Miraculous Ladybug".
Being outspoken he was often at the centre of controversies: he called singer Adele "a little too fat"; in 2017 he evoked the Holocaust to attack Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy, and last year he stated that models who don't want someone pulling down their panties during a fashion shoot to quit and "join a nunnery".
Fashion never stops, so after the tributes came the inevitable question - who's on next? The reply was almost immediate: at the end of the S/S 19 show and of the Métiers d'Art show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Karl Lagerfeld was accompanied by his closest collaborator for more than 30 years, Virginie Viard. In January he missed the Chanel Haute Couture show, and Viard took the bow accompanied by the last model in the show.
So it was only natural that, after Lagerfeld's death, Chanel accounced that Viard had been entrusted by Alain Wertheimer with the creative work for the collections. The appointment puts a final end to rumours about Phoebe Philo (or Hedi Slimane, or Alber Elbaz, mind you there's also Raf Simons out there...) going to Chanel.
Viard comes from a family of silk manufacturers, studied textiles and she started her career creating costumes for theatre and film. In 1987 she began her collaboration with Chanel working on embroideries; she then became the coordinator of haute couture and of the ready-to-wear collections.
Viard doesn't like the spotlight even though at the moment all eyes are on her and many wonder what will be the new direction of Chanel in future (yet these seems to be exciting times for French fashion with three women directing three historical houses if you consider Viard at Chanel, Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior and Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy). In the meantime Fendi's A/W 19 ready-to-wear collection will take place in Milan tomorrow.
Lagerfeld leaves behind Choupette, his terribly spoiled cat, a huge legacy and a key lesson for the fashion industry: he became an icon because he was allowed to develop his style at Chanel and build a solid vocabulary throughout the decades. Most young designers nowadays aren't allowed to do so, as they are prompted to immediately deliver commercially successful collections. And, while leaving a designer to run a house for more than 30 years and well into his eighties may be a long and tiring affair, changing a designer every few years (or even every few months) isn't always the best way to revamp a maison and guarantee it a stable future.
As for Lagerfeld you can bet he will be somewhere on the Olympus of fashion icons, maybe with his muse, the late Vogue Italia editor Anna Piaggi, finally having a rest and possibly laughing at fashionistas, poseurs and influencers taking selfies (Lagerfeld hated selfies...) at the current shows.
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