Dubbed “the Kaiser of fashion”, Lagerfeld had missed two Chanel fashion shows during Paris Fashion Week on January 22nd; and the fashion house motivated his absence with “tiredness”
Karl Lagerfeld, the German fashion designer and photographer, is dead. Famous for his dark glasses and extravagant style, Lagerfeld was the artistic director of Fendi and Chanel. Lagerferld was 85, but had always kept the exact date of his birth secret.
Lagerfeld, presumably born on 10 September 1933 in Hamburg, had been ill for two weeks and died in a Paris hospital, according to sources close to Chanel. His condition had worsened in the last days.
Dubbed “the Kaiser of fashion”, Lagerfeld had missed two Chanel fashion shows during Paris Fashion Week on January 22nd; and the fashion house had motivated his absence only with “tiredness”.
Karl had left Germany with his mother as a young man, to move to Paris in the early 1950s. “I wanted to learn how to play the piano at all costs, but after a year of lessons, my mother told me: ‘Draw, you’ll make less noise’ He was right”, he told in an interview with Liberation in 2017.
Passionate about drawing, he immediately made a name for himself as a fashion illustrator and was later hired as assistant by designer Pierre Balmain.
Later, he worked as a fashion designer for the French fashion houses Jean Patou and Chloe ‘, before collaborating with Fendi, of which in 1965 he became artistic director. The same role was given to him, in 1983, by the prestigious haute couture house Chanel, 10 years after the death of his legendary founder, Coco.
