Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld posed during the Champs Elysee Avenue illumination ceremony for the Christmas season, in Paris. (Source: AP)Chanel’s iconic couturier, Karl Lagerfeld, whose accomplished designs as well as trademark white ponytail, high starched collars and dark enigmatic glasses dominated high fashion for the last 50 years, has died. He was around 85 years old. Such was the enigma surrounding the German-born designer that even his age was a point of mystery for decades, with reports he had two birth certificates, one dated 1933 and the other 1938.
Lagerfeld was of the most hardworking figures in the fashion world holding down the top design jobs at LVMH-owned luxury label Fendi from 1977, and Paris’ family-owned power-house Chanel in 1983. Lagerfeld’s designs quickly trickled down to low-end retailers, giving him an almost unprecedented impact on the entire fashion industry.
The iconic designer, who was the creative director of Chanel, is believed to have been unwell for two weeks before his death in a Paris hospital. It comes after he missed two of Chanel’s haute couture shows in the French capital in January which caused concern about his health.
He joined Chanel as a couturier in 1983 and spent 36 years working for the company. Lagerfeld worked tirelessly until the end, giving instructions to his teams for the Fendi fall ready-to-wear collection, due to take place in Milan on Thursday.
Lagerfeld was also the creative force behind the furs and ready-to-wear at Fendi for more than half a century, as well as his signature fashion house which encompassed everything from designer RTW to jeans and fragrance over the years.
Arguably, for the stylistic god, to design was to breathe, “so if I can’t breathe, I’m in trouble,” he often quipped to journalists who were astonished by his inexhaustible work ethic and his insistence that he would never retire. Lagerfeld was, in many ways, a self-drawn caricature of what a powerful designer should look and sound like, who was worldly and intellectual, commanding and capricious.
