The Loss of a Fashion Legend: Karl Lagerfield

It’s was a very sad day for the fashion community on Tuesday, 19th February when the great fashion icon, Karl Otto Lagerfeld passed on. Known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, a position he held from 1983 until his death, he was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, and of his own eponymous fashion label. Lagerfeld also collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.

Designer, artist, photographer, costume designer, visionary: Karl Lagerfeld, who died aged 85, was one of fashion’s favourite enigmas. He was that one designer who made me fall more in love with Chanel and I was so chuffed when I got my first Chanel item but I also knew I had to get a hold of one his iconic @karllagerfeld products and all I can say about his fashion pieces is that it’s ‘Street Style mixed with Elegance’ all the way.

Karl was largely recognised for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high, starched, detachable collars and attached to his beloved cat: Choupette. 

The designer became a devoted cat owner and lavished attention on his pet after Choupette was given to him in 2012. On getting the cat, Karl said: “It’s a miracle in the story. Choupette was not even given to me. Choupette belonged to a friend of mine who asked if my maid could take care of her for two weeks when he was away. When he came back, he was told that Choupette would not return to him.”

Details have just emerged that the late fashion designer left some of fortune to his cat and I couldn’t help but smile and remember of his quotes back in 2012: “You know, personally, I don’t even think I’m that famous. Now, Choupette really is famous. She has become the most famous cat in the world. I even get propositioned by pet food companies and things like that, but it’s out of the question. I’m commercial. She’s not. She’s spoiled to death. Obviously.”

Famous for his outspoken and occasionally controversial opinions (he once described himself as “a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm”) he shocked and delighted the fashion world in equal measure over the course of his long and illustrious career. 

• 1973 – On his boudoir: “If you see it you will think about everything except sex, because it is the unsexiest room ever. I love unsexy bedrooms.”
• 1975 – On his working practices: “I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people.”
• 1978 – On his early start: “When I was four I asked my mother for a valet for my birthday.”
• 1984 – On Yves Saint Laurent: “He is very middle-of-the-road French-very pied-noir, very provincial.”
• 1984 – On his feelings following a fashion show: “I’m a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm.”
• 1997 – On living on his own: “I live in a set, with the curtains of the stage closed with no audience – but who cares?”
• 2004 – On his collaboration with H&M and relying less on cost and more on the individual’s sense of style: “Chic is a kind of mayonnaise, either it tastes, or it doesn’t.”
• 2006 – On staying healthy: “Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.”
• 2007 – On his feelings prior to a fashion show: “I have no human feelings.”
• 2007 – On being labelled a squanderer: “If you throw money out of the window throw it out with joy. Don’t say: ‘one shouldn’t do that’ – that is bourgeois.”
• 2008 – On the ongoing fur debate: “The discussion of fur is childish.”
• 2009 – His thoughts on the recession: “Bling is over. Red carpetry covered with rhinestones is out. I call it the new modesty.”
• 2010 – On fame: “You cannot fight against it. There’s a price you have to pay for fame, and people who don’t want to pay that price can get in trouble. I accepted the idea of celebrity because of a French expression: ‘You cannot have the butter and the money for the butter.'”
• 2010 – On political correctness: “Be politically correct, but please don’t bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that’s the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation.”
• 2010 – On crime: “Frustration is the mother of crime, and so there would be much more crime without prostitutes and without porn movies.” 
• 2010 – On fur and animal cruelty: “It is farmers who are nice to the cows and the pigs and then kill them. It’s even more hypocritical than hunters. At least the hunters don’t flatter the animals. I don’t like that people butcher animals, but I don’t like them to butcher humans either, which is apparently very popular in the world.”
• 2010 – On intellectual conversation: “That’s exactly what I am. As a child I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to know everything – not that I like to talk about it. I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion.”
• 2010 – On smoking: “When I was 14, I wanted to smoke because my mother smoked like mad. I wanted to smoke to look grown-up. But my mother said: ‘You shouldn’t smoke. Your hands are not that beautiful and that shows when you smoke.'”
• 2010 – On Andy Warhol: “I shouldn’t say this, but physically he was quite repulsive.”
• 2011 – On Coco Chanel: “What I do Coco would have hated. The label has an image and it’s up to me to update it. I do what she never did. I had to find my mark. I had to go from what Chanel was to what it should be, could be, what it had been to something else.”
• 2012 – On retirement and work: “Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished. ‘m lucky to work in the most perfect of conditions. I can do what I want in all kinds of areas. The expenses are not expenses. I would be stupid to stop that. Work is making a living out of being bored.”