SEPTEMBER 10 CELEBRATES THE BIRTHDAY OF KARL LAGERFELD - DESIGNER, PHOTOGRAPHER, PUBLISHER, SHOWER AND BUSINESSMAN. RARE CUTE COUNTRY BROUGHT INTO THE WORLD OF FASHION SO MUCH USEFUL AND REQUIRED DECISIONS, AS THIS GERMAN, NEVER REMOVING A PUBLIC OF DARK GLASSES.
Man antenna
The future Kaiser of high fashion was born in 1933. Karl’s father, Otto Lagerfeld, was Germany’s first producer of condensed milk, and his mother, Elizabeth Balmann, the daughter of a local centrist party leader. In addition to Karl, his older sister Marta and daughter Otto from the first marriage of Thei were brought up in the family.
“I started reading from the age of six, the first books were The Iliad and The Song of the Nibelungs. German myths thoroughly scared me, and Homer had a serious impact, you can say, shaped my personality,” couturier told the writer Frederick Beggeder in 2010 . According to him, the maestro learned to tie a tie and fasten cufflinks at 11 years old. After a private school in his native Hamburg, Karl Lagerfeld continues his studies at the Paris Lyceum of Arts named after Michel Montaigne. There in 1954 he participated in a competition announced by IWS (International Association of Wool Manufacturers) and received not only the first prize for a sketch of a female coat, but also an invitation to work as an assistant with Pierre Balmain. This French couturier, promoted by Gertrude Stein, with an architectural education, was sheathed by then Marlene Dietrich, Catherine Hepburn and the Duchess of Windsor, actively implementing the New Look style proclaimed by Dior. Balmain teaches Karl not only to draw costumes, but also to sew them as a professional tailor.
In 1958, Karl Lagerfeld became the art director of one of the oldest French fashion houses, Jean Patou. The terms of the contract provide for the creation of two collections per year. Lagerfeld signs his first two-hour show with Roland Karl and fails. The catwalk is booing, the UPI news agency reports that the 25-year-old designer has "approached the matter too subjectively and radically." The commonality with the previous collections of the House is not traced, from the length of cocktail dresses and the depth of the evening neckline, even reporters who are used to everything get a lump in their throat. But Patou treats all this condescendingly, since Karl did the main thing - he came up with and visualized a fundamentally new silhouette “K” - straight in front and expanding from the back up and down from the thinnest waist.
At the 1960 spring skirt show of Jean Patou, then-fashion designer Vogue Kerry Donovan rated it as the shortest in Paris. “This is no longer a couture, but an extremely clever and accurate marketing move designed for the future of mass production,” writes one whom Lagerfeld himself later calls the best expert in his field. And indeed, in just a couple of years, mini-skirts will last a long time, if not forever, to conquer the world. Patou’s third and final collection by Carl is finally a success. Most remembered are the original satin hats that partially cover the face, which the author calls "slaps".
“I got bored with them, and I left,” the couturier explained his break with Jean Patou. “I wanted to continue my education, but there was simply nowhere. I spent two years on the beaches.”
In 1963, a Texas friend Evan Richards invites Carl, who was thoroughly sunburned and deflated, to work on the brand he had just created. Together, friends come up with 90 dresses, borrow diamonds from the Catherine the Great collection at Harry Winston and open a three-day continuous fiesta Roman boutique. Subsequently, Elizabeth Taylor, Gina Lollobrigida and Princess Marcella Borghese become clients of the House of Tiziani. Lagerfeld collaborated with this brand until 1969 - already under his real name, which journalists at first shamelessly distort.
Since 1964, Karl begins a freelance collaboration with other fashion houses - Chloé, Curiel, Fendi. Here he is no longer required to create entire collections - at least a few items that add weight and emphasis to annual shows. On the defile of Italian brand Curiel in 1970, Lagerfeld dresses blond fashion models in short black velvet shorts, and this decision becomes no less epoch-making than the miniskirt predicted by him. About 10 years remain in the fashion world until the next “K-revolution". This breakthrough will be the leggings that the master invented as the creative director of Chanel House. “I got the feeling that ideas are in the air, and I just catch them like a television antenna,” the artist noted later.
The new dress of the emperor
In 1974, Karl Lagerfeld launched his own men's clothing line in Germany - KL Impression - and ten years after that he opened his own fashion house in Paris. But, like any creator, he gradually becomes closely within the boundaries of the podium, and the master masters new genres. Since the 80s, he has been teaching fashion modeling at the Vienna Higher School of Applied Arts.
As a costume designer, he collaborates with a number of theaters. According to his sketches, Berlioz’s “Trojans”, the “Comedy of Temptation” by Schnitzler in the Vienna Drama, “Difficult Character” by von Hoffmannsthal at the Salzburg festival are staged at La Scala. In Carmen’s dress from Lagerfeld, opera diva Maria Callas is shot in an autobiographical documentary, while Madonna and Kylie Minogue order the master’s concert wardrobes for their world tours.
Sophisticated in staging his defile, Carl in 2013 tries himself as the director of a black and white short film about Coco Chanel with Keira Knightley in the title role. As an actor, the master acts in the 2005 reality show Signé Chanel.
In 1980, Lagerfeld illustrates the tale of Hans Christian Andersen's “New Dress of the King”. Karl’s interest in book publishing is not limited to illustrations. In 2000, he founded the 7L Publishing House and opened the bookstore of the same name in Paris. The personal library of the master currently has 300 thousand volumes - mainly books on the history of art. Own perfume line for a fashion designer today is not something unique, but it was Karl who came up with the idea in 2012 to create perfumes with the scent of a freshly printed book - Paper Passion.
Couturier became interested in photography in the late 80s, when they were still filming exclusively on film. He sold pictures in Harper's Bazaar, Numéro, Vogue, brought into the orbit of popularity Claudia Schiffer and singer Mariah Kerry. For the 23rd issue of Visionaire Magazine, which has been appearing in New York since 1991, Carl makes a session "The Emperor's New Dress", in which models Amber Valletta, Linda Evangelista, Karen Elson and Alex Lundquist, actor Rupert Everett, actress Julie Delpy, Minnie starred Driver, Lisa Marie and Demi Moore, designer Marc Newson and ballet dancer Nikolai Hubbe. The master repeated a similar feat in 2010 when he received the Order of the Legion of Honor from the hands of Nicolas Sarkozy and when the Pirelli brand ordered the newly made gentleman his next calendar.
"They, in fact, were the first to use the technology of viral advertising attack," explained Lagerfeld to Begbeder. "At first, Pirelli released these calendars for ordinary people - auto mechanics and truck drivers, but soon the publication became an important event in the art world." The concept of the calendar of 2011 was the mythology beloved by the master from childhood. The roles of the goddesses went to Julianne Moore, Lara Stone, Daria Verbova, Natasha Poly, Iris Strubegger, Isabel Fontana and others. For a three-day session in his Paris studio, Carl specially created a collection of jewelry and carefully reproduced the rest of the antique props - helmets, shields, wreaths.
“Actors and models are modern gods who embody the current idea of beauty,” the author said at the calendar presentation ceremony in Moscow. “I hope that I managed to translate the canons of ancient sculpture into photography. Photography for me is not just a hobby, it's work, but that's it "for which I undertake, I am used to doing with maximum return."
Guard the beautiful
After the Parisian apartments of Lagerfeld hit the pages of the Architectural Digest, the maestro felt a taste for the design of spaces. In 2010, the world spread the news of the construction of the “Fashion Island” as part of The World’s artificial archipelago in the United Arab Emirates. The developer of Dubai Infiniti Holding chose Karl Lagerfeld as the main architect of the project and, if not for the next oil crisis, an island style empire with three hotels, one and a half hundred villas, at least a number of boutiques, SPA salons, restaurants and cafes would have hosted guests today.
“Dubai reminds me of a flower bud that is about to blossom in order to turn into a new world center of aesthetics, fashion and design,” Karl Lagerfeld noted about 10 years ago. As we see, this prediction is gradually coming true.
Today, at 83, Carl continues to amaze, and with enviable frequency. In June, Eddie and Jules Trump ordered the Kaiser to design two recreational lounges in the Estates at Acqualina condominium under construction in Miami. In July, the master initiated the project of custom sneakers from Lagerfeld, which every Internet user can order in accordance with personal preferences. These shoes cost from 200 to 9,000 euros.
The couturier’s extraordinary intelligibility for modern information technologies is pleasantly striking: after all, even his beloved Burmese cat, Karl Schupett, whom he compares with Greta Garbo, has his Facebook accounts, Instagram and Twitter. By his own admission, the master spends a lot of time on the Web. Here Lagerfeld also actively defends the principle: a public person should first of all take care of himself. Heidi Klum, Adele, Pippe Middleton, as well as all Russian men, with the exception of Naomi Campbell’s friend, once got from the Kaiser.
Lagerfeld also encourages to stay in good physical shape by personal example - in 2001, he turned to Dr. Jean-Claude Udre and with the help of his special diet Spoon Light (which provides for the rejection of sweet, fatty, bean, certain types of fruits and cheeses , limiting the use of meat and vegetable oil and including additives from algae and cacti) lost 42 kilograms per year, trying on size 46 teenage jeans (which it still wears today).
The attention to the mass market that Lagerfeld has been showing since 2004 when he signed a contract with the H&M economy class label is far from just a business strategy that allows you to earn much more money than the podium gives. Saturating the market with truly stylish, high-quality and at the same time affordable products, Lagerfeld fosters mass taste, thereby making the planet’s population a little better.
"Greco-Roman culture was inherent in the ethics of beauty, which we have lost," the master argues on his favorite topic. "I think we all need to return to the disciplined beauty of antiquity."
