Karl Lagerfeld

Fashion Design   Apparel Definition

An Independent Creator Across Several Houses

Karl Lagerfeld is widely recognized as one of the most influential fashion designers of the late twentieth century, and the form of that influence is distinctive. He made his name as an independent creator who collaborated with a variety of different fashion labels, including Chloe, Fendi and Chanel, rather than building a career inside a single house. Working across houses requires a designer to speak several brand languages at once, adapting to each label's history and customer while keeping a recognisable personal hand. That independence later became ownership as well: in the early 1980s he set up his own label, called Lagerfeld, which launched perfumes and clothing lines, so his name carried products directly as well as through collaboration.

His standing role is stated plainly: Lagerfeld is chief executive of design at the House of Chanel. Alongside the house work sits a wider creative life. He has played a role in equipping leading artists, designed outfits for Madonna's Re-Invention Tour in 2004 and for Kylie Minogue's Showgirls Tour, and is also a photographer who produced Visionaire 23: The Emperor's New Clothes, a series of nude pictures of South African model David Miller. Costume for touring performers and photography are both image-making beyond the runway, and they show the same designer working on how people are seen on stage and in print as well as in clothes for sale.

Early Life and the Move to Paris

Karl Otto Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany, on September 10, 1938, according to some sources 1933. His father, Christian Lagerfeld, was a member of a Swedish merchant-banking family and made his fortune introducing powdered milk to Germany; his mother, Elizabeth, was German. Lagerfeld was their only child, born ten years after the couple's marriage, when his mother was 42 and his father 60, and he has several half-siblings from his parents' previous marriages. The family background is commercial rather than artistic, which makes the next step a clear break: Lagerfeld emigrated to Paris at the age of 14, and in 1955, at the age of 17, he was awarded a position at Pierre Balmain after winning a competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat. A competition win converted directly into a professional position, so his entry into Paris fashion was earned through judged work while he was still a teenager.

Eccentric Pieces, Mass Collaboration and Transformation

Individual pieces show the theatrical side of his work. He produced a shower-dress with beaded water streaming down the front and a car-dress with a radiator grille and fender, along with a multitude of outstandingly eccentric hats. Both dresses translate an everyday object — a shower, a car — into a garment, using beading and applied parts to make the reference literal. In the early 1990s he once employed strippers and an Italian adult film star to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi, a casting choice plainly intended to provoke as well as to present clothes.

His collaboration with the Swedish fashion brand H and M shows the opposite end of the market. On November 12, 2004 H and M offered a limited range of clothes in chosen outlets for both women and men, and only two days later H and M announced that all clothes were almost sold out. Lagerfeld expressed that he does not fear working with lower-end brands will taint his image — a position consistent with a career already spread across luxury houses, his own label, stage costume and photography. His dramatic weight loss belongs to the same public story: he lost around 36 kilograms in thirteen months because, in his own words, he wanted to wear clothes designed by Hedi Slimane, fashions modelled by very slim boys.