Lagerfeld (Karl)

Fashion icon / Designed a princess costume and doll dress for Le Nain Bleu, a shop, to raise funds for the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation (December 2009). Légion d’Honneur Commandeur (June 2010)

Karl Lagerfeld’s wit and panache have made him what he is today: Chanel’s creative director and, over and above his job title, one of fashion’s last icons. He was born in Hamburg in the 1930s but borrowed his dandy looks from two 1920s Weimar iconoclasts, Walther Rathenau and Harry Kessler. He hit the scene he loved when he got to Paris in the mid-1950s, winning first prize in a competition organised by the Woolmark brand and sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat (it was actually a tie with Yves Saint-Laurent), and landing a job as couturier Pierre Balmain’s assistant. He worked for Jean Patou for a spell before freelancing for Chloé and Fendi (inter alia designing the latter’s logo). He was still working for Chanel when he introduced his own eponymous brand, Karl Lagerfeld. As he is also into books and photography, he has also opened the Lagerfeld Gallery and Librairie 7L (which is both a publisher and bookshop). But Karl Lagerfeld’s finest ambassador is the man himself. He went on a draconian diet, lost 42 kilos in 13 months, and emerged as the colourful character invariably dressed in black and white whose hands clad in zip-up fingerless gloves created a ready-to-wear collection for H&M and a chic-denim K par Karl line shortly thereafter. Karl Lagerfeld has also designed costumes for operas and films (Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels and Franco Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever, for instance). He was one of the first creators whom Carla Bruni worked for. He indeed created a princess costume and a doll dress, which are sold in Au Nain Bleu, a toy shop, in December 2009, for her Foundation. In an October 2007 interview by Carla Bruni for Le Figaro Madame, Karl Lagerfeld labelled himself as a “reluctant puritan” refractory to any and all variants of nostalgia and averse to comparisons: “Frustration is the mother of murder, and I am not in the least bit frustrated. I never compare myself with anyone: firstly out of pretension and secondly because there is nothing to compare because every path is in itself atypical.” On 3 June 2010, the President of the French Republic handed this couturier his Légion d’Honneur Commandeur insignia at the Élysée Palace.