Karl Otto Lagerfeld was a German creative director, artist, photographer and caricaturist who lived in Paris. He was known as the creative director of the French luxury fashion house Chanel, as well as creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi and his own eponymous fashion label.
Superstar fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has died, aged 85, in Paris. The German designer, who was the creative director for Chanel and Fendi, was one of the industry’s most prolific figures, and worked up until his death.
Lagerfeld also designed collections for his own brand and collaborated with high street brand H&M. The designer had been unwell for several weeks, and had missed a number of fashion shows.
You didn’t have to know anything about fashion to know about Karl Lagerfeld, the most instantly recognizable dandy of our time. Chanel, the luxury fashion house Lagerfeld helmed for more than three decades, announced the designer’s death Tuesday.
As with his designs, his own image was carefully crafted by blending past and present: Snowy white mane and ponytail like a powdered 18th-century periwig; aviator sunglasses; a high, starched white collar; black, fingerless biker gloves worn with multiple silver rings.
His Birman cat, Choupette — as snowy white as his hair — was the subject of her own coffee table book, and is reported to have generated $4 million in modeling fees in 2014.
Closely observing him at work in 1991, the Paris correspondent of the Los Angeles Times wondered: “Does Karl Lagerfeld ever sit still?” The short answer appeared to be no.
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