Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld is a name synonymous with fashion. He was head and creative director of the fashion house Chanel and the Italian house Fendi, as well as his own fashion label. Lagerfeld was known for his innovative and iconic style, as well as the persona of prestige he crafted around his distinguished look (always featuring his white low ponytail).

He worked his way up the fashion ropes to his throne, where he sat as the king of fashion: an industry legend who could have thrown burlap sacks on models and received rave reviews in Vogue the next day.

Thankfully for us mere mortals and fashion worshippers, he did anything but the bare minimum. His Fall 2018 Campaign featured ready-to-wear items with all the modern elegance we had come to expect from anything with Lagerfeld’s name attached to it. His creative vision was unique in its ability to merge an aristocratic aesthetic with modern tastes that allowed his creations to sizzle at just the right frequency. In doing so, he rendered his style classy, but current; provocative, but polished; refined, but rebellious.

Karl refused to let his age dictate the parameters of his career—a notion made explicit in the controversy surrounding Lagerfeld’s ambiguous birth year. It is rumored that he was born in 1933, making him eighty-five years old, and he never showed any signs of slowing down. Lagerfeld kept himself rooted in the current cultural climate by surrounding himself with the industry’s up and coming models. In an article written by Shinan Govani of Zoomer (“Karl Lagerfeld: Behind the Ponytail”), she claims Karl “collects muses the way Meryl Streep collects Oscar nominations”. This reveals Karl’s deep understanding of the ways in which trends circulate in our technologically advanced world of Instagram and social media, and proved his commitment to being a star player on fashion’s front lines. Fashion weeks come and go, but Karl Lagerfeld will forever remain enduring: dashing, inventive, and unremitting.

R.I.P