Who are you, Karl Lagerfeld?

Karl Lagerfeld died on February 19, 2019, at the American Beni Hospital from prostate cancer. He was 85 years old at the time of his death. His funeral was held on February 22. His ashes were interred, at his request, with those of his mother and his friend Jacques, in a secret location. Karl Lagerfeld did not like going to funerals, “when it’s over, it’s over,” and left instructions to prevent this unpleasantness from others.

On June 20, 2500 people who cherished his memory were invited to a tribute film, in the Grand Palais, on giant screens, called "Karl for ever."

This article, published before his death, outlines the character of the great designer.

Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most important cultural icons of our time, fashion designer, interior designer, designer of cars, bottles, watches, pens, marionettes, dolls and what not, painter, photographer, sculptor, musician, by name, publicist, bookstore owner, publisher, likes to define himself as a multinational company. But while his extensive and frenetic professional activities are well known to all, his private life is somewhat obscure.

Journalist Laurent Delaous from the France 2 television channel dedicated to the great designer, on February 19, 2017, a fascinating episode of his series of programs on the destiny of great people, Un jour, un destin, in which he did his best to read the man hidden behind the figure of an 18th-century German nobleman, always dressed in a meticulous black suit, while a white, collared shirt, with a high, stiff collar, decorated with crosses and chains, refines the monastic appearance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MeOcgqf5E8

This article will follow the secret life of Karl Lagerfeld, according to the illuminating plan of Laurent Delouse, embedded with the statements of friends, colleagues, co-workers and assistants of the great designer, who has ruled the fashion kingdom for more than sixty years. Karl Lagerfeld, “the Kaiser”, built an empire and created a legend. Is it possible to approach the Kaiser, the one whose dolls are sold in stores, and look at him as a person, flesh and blood?

The crowd throngs around their idol, hoping to touch him. The young people admire him, the octogenarian, like a rock star. Karl Lagerfeld has slowly built an image, shaped it over the years, a familiar marionette, recognizable from afar, in timeless sunglasses, but what lies within the heart of the string puppet? No one really knows. After the inauguration ceremony of the storefront of the Parisian boutique that Karl Lagerfeld designed for Christmas, the star returns home. Alone. He removes the sunglasses from his eyes, the removable collar from his neck, the diamond-studded brooch from his tie, the skull rings from his fingers. He unties the silver ponytail.

Karl has many friends and acquaintances, but not a single close friend. His best friend is his famous cat, Judge, who serves as a source of inspiration for him (the profit she generated from photos and advertisements in 2014 reached three million euros). Those who really knew him no longer belong to the world of the living. Karl is not interested in revealing his true nature. He will probably leave no evidence, will destroy his letters and diaries, when the time comes. “I erased my biography because every day I write my story anew,” he says.

Karl does not like to dwell on the past. But in a personal room, which he takes with him wherever he settles, he carefully guards furniture and objects from his childhood, which connect him to his roots. In this childhood room is a painting by the German painter Adolf von Menzel depicting 18th-century nobles and scholars, seated at the table of Frederick the Great, in the Sanssouci Palace, in Potsdam, near Berlin. When Karl was six years old, he was walking through the streets of Hamburg with his parents and discovered the painting, “The Round Table,” in a gallery. He suddenly lit up and asked his parents to buy it for him as a Christmas present. An unusual request from a boy his age, but his parents agreed.

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Karl Lagerfeld's childhood

Karl Lagerfeld was born in 1933 in Hamburg, Germany to a wealthy bourgeois family, to a father, a busy industrialist, and a mother 15 years younger than him, cold, arrogant and distant. The resolute Elisabeth Lagerfeld had very progressive views for her time and her son's differences were no problem for her. Sexual orientation, for her, is like hair color. The free woman used housekeepers, gardeners and art, and led her life as she pleased, inspiring admiration from all around her. In 1943, Hamburg was bombed, without a break, by day by the English, by night by the Americans.

Thirty-five thousand people were killed in a week. Those who could escape the hell did. Karl's family had left the city even earlier and settled on their country estate, about forty kilometers from the city. Karl's father, Otto, 62, runs three condensed milk factories. Karl and his two older sisters did not see him often. The mother, Elisabeth, was a strict and abusive woman, but admired and important in the development of Karl, the talented boy, a key figure in his life, even after her death.

She used to tell him: “You have nothing to say. Nonsense, everything you say. So speak quickly. It’s a waste of time!” To this day, Carl is still shooting in droves. The rapid, clipped manner of speech of the international artist, who is no longer a child, is a never-ending source of imitators. Little Carl learned to play the piano, until his mother dryly warned him: “Stop playing, you’re making noise. Paint!” And Carl has been painting ever since. In silence. The boy’s dream was to become a cartoonist and portraitist.

Karl was diligent and quiet. The little adult loved his beautiful, intelligent, and educated mother dearly, who spent a considerable amount of time reading. When he saw her reading a Balzac novel, he learned French, according to her instructions, to read like her. Little Karl read in German, French and English. The writings of Homer were his first books. Today he is a polyglot and even avidly reads many essays on the formation of language. Karl has extensive knowledge of linguistics, philosophy and literature and has a huge collection of valuable books.

In Adolf von Menzel's painting, "The Round Table" (1850), which has accompanied Karl since he was six years old, we see, as mentioned, the Prussian King Frederick the Great at the Sanssouci Palace, the German version of the Palace of Versailles, in the company of Voltaire and other scholars. Little Karl falls in love with the painting: an elegant salon, a private club for 18th-century men in wigs around a magnificent table, a meticulous garden visible through the tall, arched window, an artistic and intellectual way of life. Karl understands that culture must be sought in Paris. He knows that one day he will be famous throughout the world, like the people in the painting.

Career as a fashion designer

His mother continues to guide him on his path. The war is over and the family returns to Hamburg. On December 13, 1949, Elisabeth Lagerfeld takes her son Karl to a Christian Dior fashion show. Karl has met his destiny. With the financial support of his parents, he settles in Paris and sends a design for a coat to the World Wool Association Concours, sponsored by Wal-Mart. The 22-year-old Karl wins the prestigious Concours. His fellow winner is Yves Saint Laurent, for evening dress design.

All eyes are on the two promising talents. The winners of the prize, their future is assured. Karl starts working for Pierre Bellman, Yves for Christian Dior, a more prestigious brand. Karl's father, proud of his son's success, gave him a German luxury car as a gift. Karl would take Yves, who was three years younger than him, for a drive in his car after work, along with Dior's house model, Victoire, who would later marry the painter Pierre Dutrello. The three young people are connected by friendship (only) and spend their evenings together.

After spending time at parties, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, they sleep at Karl's house, on a carpet and pillows. Yves and Karl, soulmates, enjoy spending time and joking in each other's company, but their attraction to men is fundamentally different. Yves' attraction is sexual and concrete, Karl's is emotional and aesthetic. Victoire Duterleau says that in gay clubs, Yves Saint Laurent would willingly accept the advances of the men around him. Karl, on the other hand, would consistently refuse, humorously but firmly. "Sexual attraction cannot last forever, but love can last a lifetime," he would later say.

https://youtu.be/Tyqg2XcoeJw

It seemed that the three-way thread would not be severed soon, but the sudden death of Christian Dior in 1957 changed the balance of power. Yves Saint Laurent, the young prince, inherited the throne. Karl Lagerfeld, who had dreamed of a Dior house while still in Hamburg, at the fashion show, did not, as one might have expected, show any ill will towards Yves' luck. The arrested Karl said nothing. Yves was frightened by the weight of responsibility that had unexpectedly fallen on his shoulders at the age of only 21, and asked Victoire for help, but kept her away from Karl. The latter did not give up and tried to pull Victoire to his side.

The two men compete for the friendship of the Dior house model. Yves meets with the model every evening, Karl meets with her in the mornings, for breakfast at the legendary Ritz Hotel. Thus begins the great rivalry between the two fashion giants, to which British journalist Alice Drake devoted an entire 450-page volume.

Yves Saint Laurent founded his own fashion house, with the help of his partner Pierre Bergé. He had always dreamed of becoming a top couturier. Karl Lagerfeld did not aspire to establish a brand, but to make himself a brand, to enrich the legend built around his image, to enchant the world. His profile did indeed become his trademark. However, all the brands he joined flourished and prospered under his management. The future seemed to belong to the part-à-porter and Karl entered the fashion house Chloé, one of the most prominent in the field.

Jacques de Basher

Karl Lagerfeld sits at the Café de Flor, inSaint Germain, when a handsome young dandy, dressed in a leotard and a sailor's hat decorated with a red pom-pom, entered the hall and attracted all eyes. Jacques de Basher was twenty years old in 1971. After being thrown out of the navy for his provocative behavior, he came to Paris to conquer the capital and its nights with his lively youth. When Jacques entered this or that room, no matter how many people were in it, he would overshadow everyone.

This is the beginning of an emotional connection between the glamorous and demonic dandy, who seems to have come out of a Proust novel or a Visconti film, and the successful designer, a connection that will last 17 years until de Bascher's death from AIDS. Was Jacques a gigolo? Not really. Jacques lives at Karl's expense but entertains him as a contrasting double. Karl and Jacques complement each other like two opposites.

When Karl and Jacques go out together, Karl returns home at the end of the evening. His nights are hard, he works on his detailed and precise drawings. Jacques spends his hours until dawn in the famous gay clubs of the time, the most prominent of which was Le Sept, 7 rue Sainte-Anne, on Sainte-Anne Street. All the celebrities of fashion and art, the kings of the night, men and women, crowded there.

The young dandy frolics, riots, and twirls like a mischievous boy, organizing masked balls, striptease shows, and boundless orgies. Karl knows everything. No detail of his partner's life escapes him. He listens with great pleasure to Jacques' long stories. That's enough for him. Karl doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. He has no need for alcohol, drugs, or sex. Jacques, on the other hand, ruins his health with all of this, experiments without limit, risks his life without reckoning.

The bond between Jacques and Karl was an emotional one as well as a cultural one. Jacques embodied Karl’s aesthetic and artistic ideal, served as a source of inspiration for him and promoted his creativity. Karl used to present him as his assistant. Jacques de Bascher, original and elegant in his appearance, was educated and well-versed in art and literature. Jacques used to spice up his words with endless quotations from the decadent literature of the end of the century, especially from the flagship novel of the period, “On the contrary” (1884) by Joris-Karl Wissmans. Karl saw him as a French nobleman, embodying the culture of his homeland.

Life in a castle in Brittany is like in the 18th century

In Brittany, Jacques discovered an 18th-century castle, Le Château de Penhouët, which he knew his partner would be thrilled with. Karl was indeed captivated, bought it, renovated it, and furnished it. After much painstaking work, the theater stood tall, an ideal setting for pre-war Germany. Karl fulfilled his childhood dream of living as an 18th-century nobleman. Frederick II, from Adolf von Menzel’s painting “The Round Table,” was brought to life, emerging from the frame, hosting select guests, who dined by candlelight.

Jacques had his own room under the roof, and Karl's mother, Elisabeth, had her own room overlooking the garden where, at Karl's behest, orange trees and citronella bushes were planted. After her husband's death, aged 85, in 1967, Elisabeth, aged 70, came to live with her son. First in Paris and then in the château inBarten, from which she would never leave again. In 1978 she died suddenly at the age of 81. Elisabeth left an explicit instruction in which she asked that her ashes be scattered in the castle garden, in a ceremony in which no one but herself would be present. Karl respected her wishes and, as always, remained restrained, dignified, and restrained in his grief.

Yves Saint Laurent and Jacques de Basher

Karl's work in Paris does not allow him to stay long in the fairytale-like castle of his dreams in Brittany. His professional obligations demand a lot of his time. He leaves his partner Jacques complete freedom. Jacques goes out as usual, one evening in 1973, to the Club Set on Rue Sainte-Anne. His gaze crosses that of Yves Saint Laurent. The old rivalry between the latter and Karl Lagerfeld takes on a new incarnation. Just as Yves plotted to keep their mutual friend, the model Victoire, away from Karl, is he now plotting to keep his partner Jacques away from his old rival?

Yves Saint Laurent lusts after Jacques, pursues him passionately, shouts at him under the window of the city mansion where he lives with Karl, the neighbors call the police. What was supposed to be a night's adventure goes on and on. Karl Lagerfeld says nothing. Is it rage? Is it jealousy? Karl does not show his emotions, as always, the noble mask is maintained. But not Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's partner. Bergé is seething, every trick has a limit, there is an end to it. The Yves and Jacques affair, although brought to an end, caused a complete rift between Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. From now on there will be no more contact between the two fashion giants.

Dizzying professional success

In 1983, Karl Lagerfeld saved the struggling fashion house Chanel from closure. He pored over magazines and books about the brand, filled with inspiration, and went to the club Le Palace in the 8th arrondissement, Le Palace, XNUMX rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, to observe the way young women dressed and gain inspiration. He chose a witty brunette model, Ines de la Perse, as the face of the renewed brand. Ines, the first model to become a superstar, was on everyone's lips. Combining symbols from the past with modern elements was a winning combination, under Karl's eye and hand.

Karl works diligently for Chanel, for the Italian brand Fendi, and on and on, for the line that bears his name, and on and on, haute couture, part-time, all at once. Costumes for the theater, for the cinema, for the opera, for dance performances. Lagerfeld receives offers every week and refuses half of them. Lagerfeld's dizzying success breaks boundaries. Gifted with a rich imagination, his feet are firmly planted on the ground.

Lagerfeld is a creative genius but also a rational, logical and controlled one whose fortune is currently estimated at 185 million euros. His businesses and assets are numerous and varied: a chain of boutiques in Europe and Asia, fashion for all ages, accessories, perfume, cosmetics, a collection of photographs, art and books, real estate, stock market investments, a chain of restaurants, hotels, clubs, the esteemed Hamburg football club, and more. Lagerfeld owns urban mansions in Paris as well as luxurious houses full of charm, celebrating the 18th century but also the XNUMXs and other periods past and future, beyond it.

The death of Jacques de Bascher

The masked balls of the decadent aristocracy are emptied of their program by the arrival of the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic reaps its harvest without justice, without mercy, without discrimination. Karl feasts on his beloved, Jacques de Bascher, until the last moment. Jacques asked to be cremated together with his teddy bear, Mishka. Dorian Gray was actually Peter Pan. Karl conquers his grief, buying a house in Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe River, in the same district where he spent his first two, so happy, years.

“Villa Jaco,” he will call it, as a tribute to the man of his life who passed away untimely, only 37 years old. But the voices of Karl’s parents, Otto and Elisabeth, disturb his sleep at night. Karl, who refuses to live in the mausoleum, will never return to “Villa Jaco.” The house in which he invested so many resources will be sold in a short time. Without regrets. Karl loves the design, the renovation, the stages of creation more than the finished product. He prefers the idea to its realization. He will sell many houses during his lifetime. In 1990, for example, he purchased the luxurious villa, La Vieille, in Monaco (600 square meters divided over three floors, with a huge terrace), immersed in a green park and overlooking the sea, and he was its owner for ten years.

The grief that gnaws at him over the death of his beloved causes him to neglect his appearance and he grows fat beyond recognition. The gap between his appearance in the mirror and his true nature motivates him to take action. With Prussian discipline, he obeys the instructions of his doctor, Jean-Claude Audra, who guides the cooks in preparing the meals. Karl proudly sheds forty-two kilos in a year and a month, and he is once again as thin and straight as a pencil. In 2002, Dr. Audra, in collaboration with his friend Lagerfeld, adds a bestseller to his list of books, detailing the secrets of the diet that returned the famous designer's figure to its natural proportions.

Revival

Karl Lagerfeld has recovered from depression and regained his joy of life and creativity. He appears again on television programs, humorously talks about his childhood, expresses his opinions in one field or another, and entertains his many fans. Most people, upon reaching greatness, slide, some slowly, some quickly, down the slope. Not Karl Lagerfeld. He is offered projects from all corners of the world, New York, Dubai, Japan . Jose chases Jose. Everything Carl touches becomes a hit.

The artist is full of ideas, as lively as ever, his gaze sharp, his memory clear, his reaction quick. In his sleep he dreams, when he wakes up he rushes to paint the gifts of inspiration. His profile is becoming more and more refined, in tight-fitting suits, in caps, ties, silver chains, and, of course, in the timeless sunglasses, but which change with the spirit of the times. Karl is amused. When he retires to his bed, he makes sure to comb his hair well and wear an elegant nightgown. If he returns his soul to the Creator, let it be in a dignified manner, in the way he lives.

This is where the original article ends. Karl Lagerfeld returned his soul to his Creator on February 19, 2019, may he rest in peace.