Rest in peace, fashion designer and Paris-based icon Karl Lagerfeld. He had recently designed a set of mega high end super suites at the newly opened Hotel de Crillon ( just marvelous).
Here’s a bit on Lagerfeld from The Wall Street Journal:
Like Warhol, Lagerfeld knows the power of his image, even if the result is fame so engulfing that it has resulted in a kind of self-imposed captivity. Nearly all his outings these days are limited to a four-block radius from where he sits tonight; he has spent the past hour reviewing pieces for the next Chanel fashion show, taking place in four days at the recently refurbished Hotel Ritz Paris, also a couple of blocks away from rue Cambon on Place Vendôme. Coco Chanel confined herself to a similar circuit, having moved into a third-floor suite in the Ritz in 1935 and five years later into a two-room apartment there, staying for the next three decades until her death.
It’s an odd paradox that a designer fascinated by the world beyond fashion can no longer participate so easily in it. “When you go to a restaurant with him, there are maybe 25 people coming up to take a picture or speak to him,” says Carine Roitfeld, who has styled Chanel ad campaigns since stepping down as editor in chief of French Vogue in 2010. “I remember 10 years ago, he would sometimes put on a cap before we went out so he wouldn’t be recognized,” says his longtime friend, editor Stephen Gan. “But now it’s a lot worse. It’s sort of like designer taken to rock-star level.”
“It’s all my fault. I became too cartoonish and easy to recognize,” says Lagerfeld, 83, in the clipped cadence of his native German. Since famously losing 92 pounds 16 years ago, he has adopted a strict uniform that might best be described as dandyish gunslinger: black suede jeans from a supplier on rue du Mont Thabor, a black blazer designed for Lagerfeld by Hedi Slimane, boots made by the Chanel atelier Massaro, a starched Hilditch & Key shirt with a jaw-grazing collar and a tightly knotted, thin black tie adorned with original Belperron jewels that would make any heiress drool. “I don’t want to arrive somewhere sloppy in an old sweatshirt,” he says. “I know I look different from other people, but I don’t feel different, because I think I’m the most normal thing in the world.”
Read more here.
