KARL LAGERFELD, GOODBYE TO THE KAISER OF FASHION

Karl Otto Lagerfeld

Today, The Grandma has received bad news. Karl Otto Lagerfeld, one of the best fashion designer and caricaturist has died in Paris. Lagerfeld is one of the last examples of the 20th century, an age that has offerred other names in fashion like Coco Channel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Iris Apfel, Giorgio Armani or Gianni Versace. The Grandma wants to talk about Karl Lagerfeld as a last  homage.

Before talking about Karl, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 8).

More information: Future II

Karl Otto Lagerfeld (10 September 1933-19 February 2019) was a German creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer and caricaturist who lived in Paris.

He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, from 1983 until his death, as well as creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi and his own eponymous fashion label. Over the decades, he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects. He was recognized for his white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high starched collars.

Karl Lagerfeld

Lagerfeld was born on 10 September 1933 in Hamburg, Germany, and was the son of businessman Otto Lagerfeld (1881–1967) and his wife Elizabeth. 

His father owned a company that produced and imported evaporated milk, while his maternal grandfather Karl Bahlmann was a local politician for the Catholic Centre Party. His family belonged to the Old Catholic Church. When she met his father, Lagerfeld's mother was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin. His parents were married in 1930.

Lagerfeld was known to misrepresent his birth year, claiming to be younger than his actual age, and to misrepresent his parents' background. For example, he claimed that he was born in 1938 to Elisabeth of Germany and Otto Ludwig Lagerfeldt from Sweden, although these claims have been conclusively proven to be entirely wrong, as his father was from Hamburg and spent his entire life in Germany, with no Swedish connection whatsoever. There is also no evidence that his mother Elisabeth Bahlmann, the daughter of a middle-class local politician, called herself Elisabeth of Germany. He was known to insist that no one knows his real birth date. In an interview on French television in February 2009, Lagerfeld said that he was born neither in 1933 nor 1938.

More information: Karl

In April 2013, he finally declared that he was born in 1935. A birth announcement was, however, published by his parents in 1933, and the baptismal register in Hamburg also lists him as born in that year, conclusively proving that he was born on 10 September 1933. Bild am Sonntag published his baptismal records in 2008 and interviewed his teacher and a classmate, who both confirmed that he was born in 1933. Despite that, Karl Lagerfeld announced publicly that he was celebrating his 70th birthday on 10 September 2008, despite actually turning 75.

His older sister, Martha Christiane Christel, was born in 1931. Lagerfeld had an older half-sister, Thea, from his father's first marriage. His family name has been spelled both Lagerfeldt, with a t, and Lagerfeld. Like his father, he uses the spelling Lagerfeld, considering it to sound more commercial.

Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, 1982

His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father's business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH His father was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. After attending a private school, Lagerfeld finished his secondary school at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he majored in drawing and history.

Lagerfeld was hired as Pierre Balmain's assistant after winning the coats category in a design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat in 1955. In 1958, after three years at Balmain, he moved to Jean Patou where he designed two haute couture collections per year for five years. His first collection was shown in a two-hour presentation in July 1958, but he used the name Roland Karl, rather than Karl Lagerfeld. Although, in 1962, reporters began referring to him as Karl Lagerfelt or Karl Logerfeld. The first collection was poorly received.

More information: Vogue

Lagerfeld began to freelance for French fashion house Chloé in 1964, at first designing a few pieces each season. As more and more pieces were incorporated, he soon designed the entire collection. In 1970, he also began a brief design collaboration with Roman haute-couture house Curiel; its head was Gigliola Curiel, who died in November 1969.

Lagerfeld's first collection there was described as having a drippy drapey elegance designed for a 1930s cinema queen. The Curiel mannequins all wore identical short-cropped blonde wigs. He also showed black velvet shorts, worn under a black velvet ankle-length cape.

Karl Lagerfeld

His Chloé collection for spring 1973, shown in October 1972, garnered headlines for offering something both high fashion and high camp. He showed loose Spencer jackets and printed silk shirt-jackets.

He designed something he called a surprise skirt, which was in an ankle-length, pleated silk, so loose that it hid the fact it was actually pants. It seems that wearing these skirts is an extraordinary sensation, he told a reporter at the time. He also designed a look inspired by Carmen Miranda, which consisted of mini-bra dresses with very short skirts, and long dresses with bra tops and scarf shawls.

In the 1980s, Lagerfeld integrated the interlocked CC monograph of Coco Chanel into a style pattern for the House of Chanel.

In 1993, US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour walked out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show, when he employed strippers and adult-film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.

In December 2006, Lagerfeld announced the launch of a new collection for men and women dubbed K Karl Lagerfeld, which included fitted T-shirts and a wide range of jeans.

Following health complications in January 2019, Lagerfeld was admitted to the American Hospital of Paris in Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine on 18 February. The next morning, he died at that hospital, aged 85.

More information: Business of Fashion

 Black-and-white always looks modern,

whatever that word means.

Karl Lagerfeld