"I have nothing to say. I'm actually trying to make sure that I won't be remembered." - Karl Lagerfeld
That’s what the European fashion giant thought of memoirs, and yet, the 2023 Met Gala will be entirely tributed to the late Karl Lagerfeld, a man of great success and talent and also one of the most controversial figures in the fashion industry in his last decade of life.
Lagerfeld was a true aesthete. His unending ardor for luxury directed him since his childhood, and brought him to lead six iconic brands in his lifetime. Still described as a genius, Lagerfeld is personally credited with reigniting Chanel as a European powerhouse in the 1980s. Truly, his influence cannot be understated.
Lagerfeld made his life a work of art, even to the point of fashioning it himself. Growing up sketching and regularly visiting the Kunsthalle Hamburg museum in his hometown, he was drawn to beauty and luxury since his childhood. He started winning design competitions in his twenties and continued on to grow with the other icons of his generation like Yves Saint Laurent. Surrounded by all of this beauty and talent, Lagerfeld’s life really did skyrocket into a world of aestheticism. In later interviews, Lagerfeld started to go back into his life and retroactively alter it into what feels like a more typical designer's story. Lagerfeld fabricated his parents' names and vocations and even changed his birth year. Famously, Lagerfeld announced his 70th birthday when it was truly his 75th. Some may call Lagerfeld delusional but perhaps that is the enacting of a true aesthete. For whatever reason Lagerfeld lied about his past, he simply decided a new one to project, and it now speaks more to his truth than anything else. It is truly artful to build a future so beautiful for yourself that you decide your past was as well.
It is challenging to praise a man with such controversial and often bigoted opinions expressed so harshly in his final years.That being said, how can the Met Gala, the largest fashion event of the Western world, iconize him in this post-modern, politically correct age? In a broader sense, what do we do with the geniuses of their times when they so wildly rejected progressivism?
Lagerfeld was born in 1933, and died in 2019. The eras he witnessed were undoubtedly vast and incredibly dynamic periods. One thing we all may do in an attempt to be as empathetic as we can is to remember how much has changed in the 90 years since Lagerfeld’s birth. The technological advancements, the political conflicts, the social activism, even the changing beauty standards which all influenced Lagerfeld’s life and work in the fashion industry. In BBC, Lagerfeld once said, "Whatever it is, good or bad, it influences fashion. You can see that in fashion quicker than in any other thing going on. Fashion is something that reflects our lives and times with the shortest release because, cars, design and architecture take years to realize."
Even so, with all the changes of the day, putting harmful ideas on a platform as high as Chanel’s is just as dangerous whether Lagerfeld was educated on the issues or not. It is a more philosophical pursuit instead to remember that artists, while citizens with a platform and a duty to do good, are responsible for art. Lagerfeld was an artist, and he brought Chanel back to the world and pushed fashion forward in every sector. He was a calm, unbothered presence in the atelier. His political and social beliefs simply are less important than his work.
Written by Lyla Bhalla-Ladd