David Lynch, the unparalleled visionary behind canonical films such as Blue Velvet (1986), Wild At Heart (1990) and Mulholland Drive (2001), passed away this week (15 January 2025) at the age of 78. On Wallpaper.com, we pay tribute to the auteur by remembering his guest editorship at the magazine in October 2010.

Craig McClean has also written an obituary, recalling an anecdote from his meeting with Lynch: ‘That morning, we sat in the concrete cube that was this multidisciplinary artist’s painting studio, one of a series of similar structures slotted into the Hollywood Hills that comprised his home with his fourth wife, the actress Emily Stofle,’ he says. ‘We were, of course, drinking coffee,’ McClean continues. ‘And yes, it was damn fine, not least because it was a cup of David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Roast (signature notes, according to my genial and welcoming barista from beneath a shock of silver quiff, ‘sweetness, smoothness, no bitterness even if it’s just pure, straight black espresso, packed with flavour’).

Lynch directed a four-minute-long commercial for his namesake coffee brand in 2011, featuring a close-up shot of a Barbie head held between his fingers. 20 years prior, he created a Twin Peaks-inspired series of adverts for the Japanese brand Georgia Coffee, featuring cast members from the TV series including Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper, Mädchen Amick as Shelley Johnson and Catherine E Coulson as the Log Lady.

Clearblue pregnancy tests and Alka-Selzer antacid tablets; Parisienne cigarettes and the PlayStation. These are just a few more products Lynch had a hand in marketing via short commercials. But here, Wallpaper* reflects on the times Lynch turned his signature surrealist lens to perfume advertisements for Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Lancôme, Jil Sander, Karl Lagerfeld, Dior and Gucci.

David Lynch’s dreamlike perfume commercials

Calvin Klein (1988)

Following on from the acclaim of Blue Velvet, David Lynch was commissioned to produce his first-ever commercial by Calvin Klein for its fragrance Obsession. Released in 1988 as a series of four black and white shorts titled Awake, Dangerous, Explore and Kissed, each tells the stories of four pairs of lovers (one of which is played by Heather Graham and Benicio Del Toro). Every film was inspired by a different novelist – Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Gustave Flaubert and F. Scott Fitzgerald – and included a voiceover reading excerpts from their writing.

Giorgio Armani (1992)

Giorgio Armani selected David Lynch to create the campaign film for his 1992 fragrance Giò. According to lynchnet.com, Mr Armani ‘personally’ phoned up the director asking for a concept, which Lynch then sent to him in the form of a short poem. The resulting advert Who is Giò? is a Lynchian neo-noir, with model Lara Harris playing a mysterious femme fatale flitting in and out of parties and around the backstreets of an unnamed city, as the paparazzi follows her trail.

Yves Saint Laurent (1992)

Giorgio Armani wasn’t the only designer seeking the talents of Lynch, with Yves Saint Laurent calling on him to dream up a commercial telling the story of the best-selling house fragrance, Opium. This time using colour - alongside his quintessentially dream-like dissolves and double exposures - a woman in a gold dress, with long red fingernails complimenting the perfume’s lacquered bottle, ascends the stairs to an apartment. Upon applying Opium to the nape of her neck, she is overcome with ecstasy.

Lancôme (1993)

Isabella Rossellini became the face of Lancôme in 1982. She would meet David Lynch a few years later during the casting process for Blue Velvet, where he remarked on her uncanny resemblance to Ingrid Bergman (not knowing that Bergman was her mother). Rossellini and Lynch entered into a relationship, with Rossellini also playing the role of Perdita Durango in Wild at Heart alongside a cast that included Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe. Although parting ways romantically in 1991, they remained life-long friends and collaborators, with Lynch capturing Rossellini on film once more in 1993 for Lancôme’s fragrance commercial for Trésor.

Jil Sander (1993)

The Instinct of Life, David Lynch’s 1993 campaign film for Jil Sander’s now-discontinued fragrance Background, is set in a vast, arid landscape. Amidst smoke machines and vivid coloured lighting, a lone protagonist chases a black panther throughout the night, ultimately befriending the animal as the sun rises. It seems as though Lynch was trying out techniques for Lost Highway (1997), which was shot in California at Silurian Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. (Lynch once said in a 1999 interview with Movieline that he liked to take on commercial work to ‘learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn’t be available to me’ for later use in feature-length films).

Karl Lagerfeld (1994)

Daryl Hannah never worked with Lynch on any of his feature films. However, she did collaborate with the director as the 1994 face of Sun Moon Stars, a fragrance by Karl Lagerfeld created by the designer for his namesake brand. In the commercial, Hannah assumes a role reminiscent of the Marilyn Monroe-esque ‘Hollywood blonde’, a character trope so often used by Lynch. Here, the actor is seen in a dream-like state, swathed in lilac silk and floating around a cosmic backdrop as she longingly muses on the solar system.

Dior (2004)

In 2004, during his tenure as the director of menswear at Dior, Hedi Slimane tapped David Lynch to direct the fragrance commercial for Fahrenheit. Set to a snippet of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls , a 20-minute-long jazz fusion track, Swedish actor Andreas Wilson is seen hurtling upward in a clinical chrome elevator as he begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of the natural world. When Wilson reaches the destination floor the doors open, revealing a heavenly expanse of orange sky. (Slimane’s long-time collaborator on make-up for campaigns and shows Aaron de Mey posted a tribute to Lynch on his Instagram, remembering this campaign shoot).

Gucci (2009)

David Lynch filmed his last perfume commercial in 2008 for Gucci (which also happened to by the first television ad for the Italian house). It starred models Raquel Zimmermann, Natasha Poly and Freja Beha Erichsen as the faces of new fragrance Gucci by Gucci. Above, watch the commercial in full, which was filmed in Paris and set to Heart of Glass by Blondie. Below, find a BTS look at the making of the campaign, which provides an intimate glimpse of the maestro at work and the uplifting atmosphere he cultivated on set. (He said in a 2017 interview with GQ that he never ran a working environment on fear). Highlights include Lynch smoking as he perfects a shot of cascading glitter and at a wrap party with the cast and crew – a moment in which their feeling of love and admiration for the director is palpable.

Step through the sliding glass door at 7 Rue de Lille in Paris and you’ll find yourself inside the sumptuous psyche of one of fashion’s most prodigious figures. Karl Lagerfeld, the designer who left an indelible mark on visual culture during his 36-year tenure at Chanel, founded Librairie 7L in 1999, converting a former art gallery into a photographic studio, bookshop and library. Its cavernous atrium is lined with printed matter spanning Balthus to David Bailey, Goethe to Andreas Gursky, slow diets to fast food. Speaking to the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2014 in his direct and unsentimental style, Lagerfeld said: ‘My paradise is a library ... I am a paper freak. I was born a paper freak … I was not interested in anything else but books, books, books and drawing paper.’ Librairie 7L is sublime proof of that.

An exclusive tour of 7L, Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris bookshop and library

Since Lagerfeld’s death in 2019, 7L has maintained the designer’s prolific eclecticism and scholarship through its three activities: the public-facing bookshop (where titles are presented at eye level on high tables or displayed on picture rails like paintings), the publishing house Éditions 7L, and the library, which has also now become a space for cultural events, exhibitions, music performances, dance recitals and poetry readings.

Under the erudite stewardship of Laurence Delamare, who has been director since 2021, 7L is a ‘living projection of Karl Lagerfeld’s mind’. Here, some 33,000 titles are organised without hierarchy or pomposity. ‘Karl used to tell me that reading the catalogue of an exhibition is often more beneficial than visiting it. “Books are sufficient to themselves,” he would say. “They ask for nothing and they are silently patient, but they are always there for you”.’

During the 15 years that she was global head of fashion PR for Chanel, Delamare would regularly attend any number of editorial and campaign shoots at the address with the hope of squeezing in short interviews with Lagerfeld between frames. He was usually two or three hours late, which left her with a good opportunity to browse. ‘Each and every time, I was impressed by the magic of the place, and I couldn’t help buying something in the bookshop while waiting. He would say that books make us look at everything with renewed pleasure and a wiser eye.’

The capacious library is accessible upon invitation. Guests can nestle into deep Christian Liaigre sofas or perch on Andrée Putman leather stools, which sit among graphic, hand-knotted rugs by Christopher Farr. ‘Entering the library is like entering a book cathedral,’ says Delamare. ‘With Karl’s curiosity being so huge and intense, spanning all areas of life, culture and history, it could have been overwhelming, but I’m exhilarated by his complete absence of snobbery.’

From the start, she wanted the building to remain a hub of creation. It was, she says, ‘the only way to keep it alive without nostalgia’. A small technical room once dedicated to photographic retouching is today a gallery – recent exhibitions have featured works by Agnes Varda, Mary Ellen Bartley and Magnum’s Cristina de Middel and Rafał Milach, as well as a series of screenings in collaboration with the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.

Later this month, historian Chantal Thomas will be in conversation with Delamare as part of 7L’s monthly Reading Room event, and the salon will host performances by artistic and social initiative, Paris Dance Project. Meanwhile, this autumn, Éditions 7L will publish books on Ronan Bouroullec, and Xavier Veilhan’s scenography for Chanel, among others.

Lagerfeld’s legacy, beyond his myriad contributions to fashion and pop culture, lies in his unrelenting commitment to learning. His books are witness to a world in constant flux. ‘We invite all the artists to find and share their path into the library,’ says Delamare. ‘It is the rule of the 7L game! Each performance expresses its singular connection to the spirit of the place. The ultimate aim is to gather a family of authors, artists and publishing houses, and an audience that share their curiosity.’ Drawing from its previous life as a dynamic photo studio, Librairie 7L is really only whatever is happening inside of it. It is an inviting bookshop, a salon for creative contemplation, a room eager to be filled.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper*

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In Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, a new six-part series from Disney+, audiences are made privy to a designer still ascending. Interpreted by the German-Spanish actor Daniel Brühl, this Lagerfeld finds pleasure in sartorial eclecticism, adorning himself in tall red boots, vibrant striped ties, and pyjamas speckled with sports figures. His subsequent, distinctive armour of sobering black and white receives only vague recognition via the show’s costume design, elsewhere informing an exchange with a potential business partner, as Lagerfeld highlights the appeal of ‘austerity, white, black, brown, timeless things’ before describing his would-be namesake label as ‘for those who like purity in clothing design’. Then in his late thirties, the German designer is an anomaly in the French capital, frustrated with the perceived limitations of his creative director role at Chloé when a young dandy, Jacques de Bascher, arrives in his orbit, exasperating his already strained love-hate relationship with former ally, Yves Saint Laurent.

Daniel Brühl on ‘Becoming Karl Lagerfeld’

The narrative is largely pulled from Raphaëlle Bacqué’s 2020 biography Kaiser Karl, which provided a vital framework for Brühl, once he’d committed to the project. ‘It felt absurd,’ he shares of his initial response to the casting. ‘I laughed hysterically when I got the call.’ Encouraged by the character’s richness, he absorbed additional biographies, met people that knew Lagerfeld, and took ‘fashion lessons’ among the Chloé archives. 

‘The fun with a real character is asking where you find each other. The danger is doing a caricature or copy,’ he notes. ‘The interesting part is the responsibility, defending your character and approaching it with respect and admiration.’ Despite his having met Lagerfeld on a shoot after his breakout performance in 2003’s Good Bye! Lenin, the actor was conscious of the gulf between the man with the camera and the man he portrays on screen. ‘I met the persona,’ he observes. ‘Karl had the gloves on, the white hair. So I asked myself, how does that happen? How does someone become that? Also, how is it possible, to keep sane in this crazy world, living under the extreme spotlight and incredible pace of the fashion world?

‘The books had many contradictions,’ he continues, ‘because Lagerfeld made up many different versions of his life, which I found endearing. I like people who are imposters.’

Fundamentally a battle of ego and emotion, predominantly between Lagerfeld, de Bascher, Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé (Saint Laurent’s business partner and president of the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-á-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode during the show, which begins in 1972 and concludes in 1981), the show also sees Lagerfeld clash with Marlene Dietrich, having promised French Vogue that she will guest edit an issue of the magazine, wearing his designs.

In 2009, Lagerfeld played the same role in his guest-editor interview for the October issue of Wallpaper*, telling Alice Rawsthorn at the time: ‘Nobody can beat me in terms of technical knowledge. Nobody. I don’t want to be pretentious, but I have studied all the old techniques and know all the new techniques.’ 

While his singular uniform is yet to emerge, core Lagerfeld signifiers begin materialising across the new series, as Brühl’s Lagerfeld adopts sunglasses, fans and starch collars. Leaning into his own experience of the fashion industry for the part, the actor reflected on his friendship with Ermenegildo Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori, whom he met nearly 20 years ago. ‘As actors, sooner or later you have a relationship with fashion, because there are so many events. Alessandro made me understand what fashion is about; how much focus, discipline, creativity and energy you need to do this job, similar to Lagerfeld,’ he says. Working with costume designer Pascaline Chavanne, he immersed himself in the details of the designer’s wardrobe. ‘But there were moments of crisis. At the first fitting I thought, “Jesus Christ, there's no way I believe this, I look like a clown”. I did not buy myself as the fashion designer, so I had to grow into these clothes,’ he explains. ‘But the extravaganza of the 1970s and playing a fashion icon was great, I ended up loving it, wearing it with pride and dignity.’

And the physical sensation of particular pieces ultimately instructed his wider performance he says, most notably Lagerfeld’s corset, which is employed in the opening of an episode. In a nod to the designer’s knotty relationship with body image, he’s introduced getting dressed opposite a three-way mirror, wearing white briefs while pulling a matching corset taut.

‘Wearing that, you understand so many things: there's always inner fights going on, he’s a guy who doesn't want to lose control,’ shares Brühl. ‘And similarly wearing heels made me think of flamenco and a certain kind of pride, which is both masculine and feminine. Before every take I was doing my silly torero moves because it gave me the right tension, to feel closer to Lagerfeld. Then later, the shades, the famous tail, hiding your eyes to start that transition, to become that character that he became.’

‘Becoming Karl Lagerfeld’ is out now on Disney+

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In news announced late last night (5 June 2024), Virginie Viard is set to leave her role as artistic director of Chanel. Her five-year tenure began after the death of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019, having worked with the German designer for over two decades prior. She was often called his right hand. 

‘Chanel confirms the departure of Virginie Viard after a rich collaboration of five years as artistic director of fashion collections, during which she was able to renew the codes of the house while respecting the creative heritage of Chanel, and almost 30 years within the house,’ a brief statement from the house read.

Virginie Viard to exit Chanel after three decades

Viard’s tenure – which has been one of enormous commercial success, with sales reaching close to $20 billion in 2023 – was defined by a breezy, youthful femininity, which often looked back to the life and designs of house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel for inspiration. After the dramatic show sets of Lagerfeld – who might construct an airport or supermarket in the Grand Palais – Viard favoured subtly and intimacy, at one point holding a show on the banks of the River Seine. 

Her last collection was the house’s Cruise show in Marseille, held on the rooftop of Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s 1952-completed ’vertical city’ in May. ‘Marseille is a city that puts me in touch with my emotions. I tried to capture its power of attraction, its breath of fresh air, and to convey the energy that reigns there,’ she said. Her Métiers d'art show was held last December in Manchester seeing Viard inspired by the energy of the city’s music scene. ‘It incites to creation,’ she said. 

As yet, her replacement has not been announced, with Chanel saying they will be revealed ’in due course’. The house’s upcoming haute couture show is still slated to take place on June 25 2024 in Paris. 

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Those with even a passing interest in fashion will know that the first Monday of May means the annual Met Gala – the so-called ’Oscars of fashion’ which gathers designers, fashion houses and a phalanx of A-list celebrities to celebrate the opening of the latest Costume Institute exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Led by American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – whose name hangs above the Costume Institute wing at the museum – alongside her selected panel of co-chairs, the red carpet proceedings have a theme that guests must adhere to, usually related to that year’s exhibition. As such, themes have spanned ’In America: An Anthology of Fashion’, ’Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, ’Camp: Notes on Fashion’, and ’Punk: Chaos to Couture’ – spawning some much-talked-about looks in the process.

Taking place this year on Monday 6 May, 2024, this year’s gala coincides with the opening of ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ (May 10 – September 2, 2024), which promises a re-exploration of the museum’s ’masterwork’ garments through ’smells, sounds, textures and motion’. 

Met Gala 2024 and ’Sleeping Beauties’ exhibition: everything you need to know

The date: Monday 6 May, 2024

As ever, the Met Gala takes place on the first Monday of May – this year, it falls on Monday 6 May, 2024. In preparation, we suggest a viewing of ’The First Monday in May’, the 2016 documentary which follows the preparations for the 2015 Met Gala and exhibition, ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’, directed by American filmmaker Andrew Rossi. The exhibition itself, ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’, will run from May 10 – September 2, 2024.

The theme: ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’

Following 2023’s ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ is the title of this year’s exhibition, which as in recent years is curated by Andrew Bolton, the curator-in-charge of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (we selected him as part of the Wallpaper* USA 300, the names defining America’s creative landscape, in 2023). Spanning 250 pieces, ’Sleeping Beauties’ promises a new look at some of the ’masterworks’ in the museum’s expansive collection through ’smells, sounds, textures and motion’ as well as through innovative new technologies, from X-ray to AI.

Spanish fashion house Loewe is this year’s sponsor, so expect a selection of Jonathan Anderson-designed looks to appear in the exhibition itself – including the Gerhard Richter-inspired silk dresses from the house’s A/W 2023 collection printed with ghost-like ’memories’ of garments from previous seasons – as well as on the red carpet. Other pieces will span a 1958 floral shift dress by Nina Ricci, a duo of Christian Dior gowns from 1949, as well as a ballgown by pioneering British couturier Charles Frederick Worth from the late 19th century, while a 400-year-old 17th-century Elizabethan bodice will be one of the oldest pieces on display.

‘Fashion is a living art form that requires most of our senses for its fullest appreciation and the greatest understanding,’ said Bolton this morning (6 May 2024) at the exhibition’s preview. You can take a first look inside as Tilly Macalister-Smith takes a tour of the exhibition for Wallpaper* here.

The dress code: ’The Garden in Time’

Unlike previous years, the dress code diverts from the exhibition itself, as Anna Wintour announced via a playful video which saw the American Vogue editor-in-chief ’texting’ the evening’s co-chairs (find out who below). Titled ’The Garden in Time’, it takes its name from a 1962 JG Ballard short story whereby protagonist Count Axel and his wife await the arrival of an approaching army in a villa surrounded by a garden of crystal flowers, which the count plucks one by one to keep the hordes at bay. As for how this will play out on the red carpet is anyone’s guess, though it’s safe to assume that florals will prove ubiquitous.

The co-chairs: Zendaya, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny

An eclectic line-up of co-chairs joining Anna Wintour include actors Zendaya and Chris Hemsworth, and musicians Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny (last year, it was Penélope Cruz, Michaela Coel, Roger Federer and Dua Lipa). Zendaya will likely garner the most column inches if her recent press tours for Challengers and Dune are anything to go by: expect her to adhere to the dress code in dramatic fashion, helped by her stylist, ’image architect’ Law Roach.

Around 600 other guests will join the co-chairs from the event, spanning the worlds of Hollywood, music, culture, art and more – though, as is tradition, the full guest list is yet to be announced.

Where can I watch?

Though the inside of the gala is kept strictly under wraps, Vogue will host red-carpet action on YouTube, hosted by Gwendoline Christie, La La Anthony and Ashley Graham. It will begin at 6pm EST.

Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs explores the dialogue between three creative categories in its permanent collection galleries dedicated to modern design.

Transdisciplinary exhibitions are an exciting way to learn about shared ideas across categories. A recent model juxtaposing two disciplines, fashion and art, is Traversing Appearances – When fashion enters the Musée National d’Art Moderne, on view at the Pompidou Centre in Paris till April 22. A dialogue involving three, however, is obviously much more complex. Boldly embracing this “trio” formula is Fashion, Design, Jewellery Exhibit, now showing at the city’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

The museum, which boasts of the vast collection of applied art from the medieval period through today, has experience in staging two-dimensional shows. For example, shortly after the passing of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019, several looks by the designer were added to the modern period section within the permanent collection galleries, including his creation for Chloé from the 1980’s, showcased in the middle Memphis furniture. The site’s huge costume archives are always the great source to choose the right pieces to illustrate the respective themes. The institution’s jewellery gallery is also expanding with new acquisitions.

For Fashion, Design, Jewellery Exhibit, Mathieu Rousset-Perrier, who is in charge of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs’s Medieval, Renaissance and Jewellery Collection, was one of six curators from different departments of the museum. “We were seeking a way to pay tribute to the donations of the last fifteen years, in parallel with the regular itinerary of the design section”, he says. “In whichever discipline, creatives are curious and look at what the others are doing. Very often they build solid friendship, not to mention Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparell. They were respectively surrounded by the artists, authors, poets and musicians. Designers and creators are influenced by everybody and everything interesting”, explains Rousset-Perrier how creative threads expand indefinitely and sometimes develop into artistic movement.

Spreading over five floors (level 5 to 9 of Pavillon de Marsan of the museum), thirty- something costumes and about one hundred jewels enrich the design collection spanning from the 20th century to the present day. The selection is free of hierarchy: Haute-couture or ready-to-wear, and fine jewellery or costume jewellery, is not the important criterion, which is rare in terms of museology. Twenty groups are formed around the same inspiration or style, or simply the period, either by interactive influence or coincidence.

The first spotlighted design of the show is Marc Newson’s Pod of Drawers cabinet. It is accompanied by two gorgeously embroidered jackets, one of which is paired with the bustier dress, created by Olivier Rousting for his first collection of the house of Balmain in 2012. A dozen pieces of Art Deco jewellery by the emblematic French goldsmith Jean Després completes the installation. Here, the inspirations were not exactly the same, neither the period. Instead, the parallels are found in the metallic luminosity and geometric lines, which reminds of the Streamline Modern style. Another highlight features Charlotte Perriand.

“Through the research for the show, we perceived Perriand’s close tie with Jean Lurçat, not only artistically but also politically. Both communist, they even travelled together to Moscow in 1936. It is a small anecdote but not initeresting”, says Rousset-Perrier. For this installation, the selected work of Lurçat is a series of gold jewellery, not the whimsical and colourful tapestry for which he is known. On the last floor, the organic forms, dull glow and coal black shade link Rick Owens’s ensemble, Finnish designer Inari Kiuru’s jewellery and the luminous object by Czech duo Stanislas Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova.

Visitors can spot design references by the iconic names such as Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Jean Royère, Martin Szekely and so on, displayed with looks by Christian Dior by John Galliano, Courrèges by Nicolas di Felice, Helmut Lang, Paco Rabanne, Stéphane Rolland as well as the artist Jean Dubuffet who created the theater costume. Alongside jewellery gems by the prestigious maisons like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, also by Jean Schlumberger, who seduced the Swans by his work for Tiffany & Co., a necklace and rings by furniture designer Ettore Sottsass are a true discovery. “We are excited to see how visitors react to this new perspective on the designs”, adds Rousset-Perrier who is impatient to hear the feedback.

'Fashion, Design, Jewellery Exhibit' is at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs until November 10 2024

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Founded in 1971 in St Tropez, Vilebrequin is known for swimwear collections that capture the allure of the French Riviera in its 1970s heyday. It’s the same heady period during which, in the French capital, Parisian fashion stalwart Ines de La Fressange was dominating the runway as a teenager (her modelling break came at age 17 in 1974).  A decade later, she would be the first model to sign an exclusive modelling contract with Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, alongside walking for houses including Christian Dior, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and more, before founding her own eponymous label.

Paris meets St Tropez: Vilebrequin x Ines de la Fressange

Now, Vilebrequin and de la Fressage – both symbolic of French style and taste – have united for the first time, collaborating on an exclusive swimwear range that couples effortless Parisian design with Vilbrequin’s vision of a relaxed, riviera lifestyle. Indeed, the collection itself draws inspiration from summertime in Paris – and days spent lounging on the banks of the River Seine – with timeless swimwear cuts and a breezy palette reflecting the colours of the French flag, in navy, red and white, while a mood of Riviera ease runs throughout.

‘The beach is where Vilebrequin was born. And it’s where we belong. Every summer since 1971, it’s been the backdrop to an art of living in the sun,’ Roland Herlory, CEO of the French swimwear label, previously told Wallpaper*.

The collection features 14 pieces for women and seven for men, including swimwear, T-shirts with Vilebrequin’s notable turtle emblem, shirts, tunics, pea jackets, and trousers crafted from lightweight organic cotton and linen. ‘The modernity shared by Vilebrequin and Ines de La Fressange Paris transcends generations, reinventing the elegance of French holidays spent in the city or by the sea,’ says the brand.

Vilebrequin is no stranger to collaboration. Last year, it created a technicolour swimwear collection with Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel, while other recent collaborators have included Off-White, Bape, Deux Femmes Noires, Sylvie Fleury, John M Arleder and more. Elsewhere, collections draw inspiration from colourful art movements, from the Memphis Group to Pop Art.

The Vilebrequin & Ines de La Fressange Paris collection will be available online and in selected stores from April 2024

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As much as the final weeks of the year are synonymous with celebration, they equally mark a moment of much-needed relaxation and reset: the perfect time to put down the iPhone and catch up with a new book (all the better if it provides inspiration for the imminent year ahead). 

Here, for the style-conscious bibliophile, an assortment of new fashion books released this winter, each of which provides a new insight into the greats of fashion – whether Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Hubert de Givenchy, or more contemporary figures, from Alexander McQueen to Thom Browne. 

Together, they provide not only a stylish reading list to see you through winter’s darkest days – whether through comprehensive deep dives or glossy, transporting photobooks – but a stylish adornment for coffee tables and bookshelves alike.  

Winter 2023’s best fashion books

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses (Thames & Hudson)

Karl Lagerfeld’s fashion oeuvre is well-known, all the more so after a blockbuster retrospective – and the accompanying Lagerfeld-themed Met Gala – which took place at New York’s Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spanned tenures at Chloé, Fendi and Chanel. 

A new book, Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses (Thames & Hudson) offers a lesser-seen glimpse at the designer’s domestic life, charting the glamourous portfolio of international homes that Lagerfeld resided in across his prolific career. Expect a suitably liberated use of colour and print – an apt reflection of his collections – alongside an extraordinary array of design objects, whether his Memphis-filled Monaco apartment or the 18th-century interiors of Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo, opulent enough to rival his beloved Versailles. Read more. 

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses, with text by Patrick Mauriès and Marie Kalt, is available now from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. 

Gabrielle Chanel (V&A Publishing)

Lagerfeld‘s forebear Coco Chanel – an equally enduring fashion figure – is the subject of an expansive new tome published by the V&A to coincide with the London institution’s own blockbuster exhibition on the designer, Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto, which opened this past September (until 26 February 2024). Titled ‘Gabrielle Chanel’, the suitably chic book hones in not on the couturier’s well-documented life, but the garments themselves, which heralded a new era for women’s fashion. 

‘She defined her approach to fashion quite early on,’ Oriole Cullen, the exhibition’s creator and co-editor of the book, told Wallpaper* earlier this year after an exclusive look inside the V&A archive. ‘It’s about chic, simple clothing, looking at movement and the body. These elements she creates – the jersey, the little black dress, the suit – these are the things she comes back to time and again and refines them.’

Spanning her 60 years in fashion, and featuring garments from the Chanel Patrimoine in Paris and the V&A, the 288-page book is one of the most complete catalogues of couturier’s designs yet, providing more than enough material to delight even the most fastidious style aficionado. Read more.

Gabrielle Chanel, edited by Oriole Cullen and Connie Karol Burks, is available now from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble.

Givenchy Catwalk: The Complete Collections (Thames & Hudson)

The latest instalment of Thames & Hudson’s ‘Catwalk’ series – which documents every show and collection from a fashion house or designer – turns its lens to Givenchy, a house synonymous with Parisian style and refinement. Beginning with house founder Hubert de Givenchy – who famously outfitted close friend Audrey Hepburn in some of her most enduring looks – it goes on to explore tenures by fashion iconoclasts John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Riccardo Tisci, alongside more recent creative directors Clare Waight Keller and Matthew M Williams (who earlier this month announced his departure from the house). 

‘In all its purity, I think Hubert created one of the most complex legacies in fashion, because it reaches far beyond dressmaking,’ explained Anders Christian Madsen, one of the book’s co-authors, to Wallpaper* earlier this year. ‘It’s an aesthetic that came to be synonymous with sophistication and good taste, and those set ideas are hard to mess with.’ Read more.

Givenchy Catwalk: The Complete Collections, featuring texts by Alexandre Samson and Anders Christian Madsen, is available at Waterstonesand Barnes & Noble.

Yves Saint Laurent: Gold (Abrams)

‘I love gold, it’s a magical colour; when reflecting a woman, it’s the color of the sun.’ So said Yves Saint Laurent of his love of the gilded hue, which appeared throughout his collections, a facet of his oeuvre explored in Yves Saint Laurent: Gold, which arrived in bookshops this past October. The official accompaniment to ‘Gold, les ors d’Yves Saint Laurent’, which took place at Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, the book nonetheless stands as a glamourous standalone catalogue of some of the designer’s most enduring looks featuring suitably glamourous cameos from Zizi Jeanmaire and Catherine Deneuve. Think of it as jewellery for your bookshelf – perfect for fashion magpies.

Yves Saint Laurent: Gold, featuring texts by Yvane Jacob and Elsa Janssen, is available at Waterstones and Barnes & Noble.

Shoes A-Z, the Manolo Blahnik Edition (Taschen)

Shoes A-Z – which captures the vast collection of footwear in The Museum at FIT’s expansive collection – remains one of the most comprehensive books on the evocative accessory, spanning designs from Ferragamo, Chanel, Gucci, Saint Laurent, Christian Louboutin, Vivienne Westwood and plenty more (Taschen, the publisher, describes it as a glimpse ‘inside one of the world’s most enviable closets’). 

A rare, limited-edition version of the book comes complete with three prints by contemporary fashion’s most lauded shoemaker, Manolo Blahnik. Printed on cotton paper by Fabriano and housed in a gilded ribbon-fastening portfolio, the 1000-edition version of the classic tome will satiate the most avid of shoe addicts.

Shoes A-Z. The Collection of The Museum at FIT. Manolo Blahník Edition, an edition of 1000, is available from Taschen.

Thom Browne: The 20th Anniversary Book (Phaidon Press)

Thom Browne – who was named part of the Wallpaper* USA 300 in the ‘Legends and Trailblazers’ category – is one of fashion’s most avid storytellers, his runway shows often taking place amid fantastical sets or drawing inspiration from fairytale, film and folklore alike. Similar flights of imagination define his most famous export: the grey suit. Shrunken in proportion, and hemmed at the ankle, the distinct silhouette has become a canvas to be dramatically riffed upon season on season.

Celebrating the brand’s 20th anniversary, a new book documents the designer’s collections, curated by the designer’s partner Andrew Bolton (who is the Wendy Yu curator in charge of the Anna Wintour Costume Centre at the Met in New York) and featuring original photography by Johnny Dufort. ‘For me, the most important thing is to tell stories and make people think in new ways,’ Browne told Wallpaper* when the book was released in October. ‘This was no different when approaching the monograph.’ Read more.

Thom Browne: The 20th Anniversary Book, by Andrew Bolton and Thom Browne, is available from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble.

When it comes to fashion’s most enduring figures, Karl Lagerfeld is undoubtedly top of the pile. Synonymous with style – his life encompassed roles at Chloé, Fendi, and, most famously, Chanel – the German designer has transcended the hallowed halls of Paris’ haute couture salons to become a true household name (with an equally enduring look to match). 

Now, a new Thames & Hudson-published tome, Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses (£75, available Waterstones) offers the reader a rare glimpse into a lesser-seen side of the designer’s life, charting the glamourous array of homes that Lagerfeld resided in across his career. Each one is constructed with the same meticulous attention to detail and liberated, eclectic eye for colour, print and design as his fashion collections (which could equally be inspired by the crinolines of Marie Antoinette as the vivid postmodern lines of Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group).

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses

The wide-ranging, glossy tome – which features texts from authors Patrick Mauriès and Marie Kalt – steps inside Lagerfeld’s extraordinary portfolio of homes, from Paris to Biarritz, as well as residences in Rome and Hamburg. As expected, each features not only memorable design floruishes – a matching striped couch and wallpaper, surrounded by 19th-century portraits in his Roquebrune-cap-Martin home, adorns the cover – but also hundreds of precious objects which he collected on his travels.

The rooms no doubt also provided spaces for him to dream up his fashion collections, not least in his famous libraries, where the self-confessed bibliophile gathered thousands of books on floor-to-ceiling shelves (as at 8 rue des Saint-Pères in Paris) or scattered over tables. A single page in these was enough to spark a collection, which he would design via drawings that were then sent to the Fendi and Chanel ateliers to be fastidiously recreated. ‘I hate tourism. Travel for travelling?’ he told Wallpaper* when he guest-edited the October 2009 issue of Wallpaper*. ‘No thank you, my dear. I’d rather stay at home enchanted by my books.’ 

That said, architecture and interiors were a continuing fascination for the designer, who also sought inspiration from palaces, castles, apartments, galleries, city buildings and private residences around the world (some, he said, were only visited in the pages of his library). In the same issue of Wallpaper*, he noted that his tastes could change on a whim. In 2009, he was in the throws of a love affair with 18th-century interiors, having recently tired of Memphis. ‘Nobody else did a total house in Memphis. Nobody. I loved it, but you can't live with it for long,’ he said. ‘After a few years it was like living in old Courrèges. Ha! I'm a fashion person. I can’t spend the rest of my days living with the same old style.’

One of his favourite homes – which is photographed in the book – was a residence 51 rue de l’Université in Paris, where he lived for 30 years from 1977. This past fashion season, the extraordinary home hosted shows by Marni and Victoria Beckham, the first time the house has been used in this way. Just afterwards, it would play host to the first edition of Design Miami/Paris.

In the book, each of the homes is introduced by a short text by Marie Kalt that also catalogues the various objects each home contained. These span an apartment in Saint-Sulpice, Paris, inspired by art deco, an opulent 18th-century mansion, Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo (as the book notes, his friend and collaborator Amanda Harlech said he had a ‘Versailles complex’), an apartment in Monte Carlo, a French countryside pile, and ’Nordic villa’ in his native city of Hamburg. 

Together, it provides a satisfying look through the keyhole of one of fashion’s most influential names, alongside continuing clues about the oftentimes enigmatic figure’s aesthetic fixations, and unconventional – but impossibly glamourous – life at home.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses, with text by Patrick Mauriès and Marie Kalt, is available 7 December 2023 from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble

thamesandhudson.com

The unveiling of the Claridge’s Christmas tree marks the unofficial start of the festive season, as the London hotel picks up its little black book and selects a fashionable friend to create the unique display – from Karl Lagerfeld to John Galliano, Diane von Furstenberg to Kim Jones, who have each designed their own distinct take on the Yuletide centrepiece over the years.

Unveiled today (23 November 2023) in Claridge’s historic lobby is the latest collaboration; though this time, the hotel has drafted an institution synonymous with both style and travel, Parisian fashion and leather goods house Louis Vuitton, which began life as a trunk maker in 1854. It was the same year that Claridge’s itself was founded, and the two have long been intertwined – it would probably be impossible to count the number of Louis Vuitton suitcases, hat boxes, and handbags that have been carried across the hotel’s threshold since its opening.

Claridge’s Christmas Tree 2023 by Louis Vuitton

The dramatic, five-metre-tall display looks back to these roots in travel, comprising an enormous version of the Louis Vuitton trunk in signature monogram adorned with Claridge’s travel stickers based on the hotel’s historic ephemera (founder Louis Vuitton’s grandson, Gaston-Louis Vuitton, was an avid collector of hotel stickers, which he would use on his luggage as a memento). Inside, the trunk opens to reveal a shimmering stack of shiny chrome trunks, their shape recalling that of a traditional Christmas tree.

As for decorations, 21 examples of Louis Vuitton’s ‘mascot’ Vivienne – a keepsake doll introduced in 2018 that recalls the house’s monogram and comes in a multitude of collectable iterations – clamber across the display, including a Father Christmas. Elsewhere are miniature trunks and a dusting of snow, while in lieu of a star or angel at the top is a model of Asnières, the historic home of the Louis Vuitton family and atelier. Located on the river in Paris, it is particularly important to the house’s history; in 1875, it was where the Louis Vuitton hard-sided wardrobe trunk was created.

‘[This year’s Claridge’s Christmas tree] is by our legendary friends at Louis Vuitton,’ says Claridge’s general manager Paul Jackson. ‘Christmas is the most magical time for us here at the hotel and we look forward to welcoming guests and seeing visitors immerse themselves in Louis Vuitton’s world.’

Claridge’s Christmas Tree 2023 by Louis Vuitton can be seen at Claridge’s, Brook Street, London.

louisvuitton.com

Parisian nightspot Le Palace – a former theatre-turned-1980s haunt of Yves Saint Laurent, Grace Jones, Karl Lagerfeld, and more – provided the setting for Celine’s A/W 2023 menswear show, held in February of this year.

It was a place of particular resonance for creative director Hedi Slimane, who first frequented the club when he was 16 years old. Later, he would celebrate his 50th birthday in Le Palace, noting that the spot ‘triggered his future as a couturier’. During his tenures at Dior Homme, Saint Laurent and currently at Celine, he has drawn on the heady spirit of adolescence, oftentimes infused with an after-dark sensibility. 

Hedi Slimane directs Celine Homme A/W 2023 film

Released today, a new short film by the French designer is released by the house. Shot in Slimane’s distinct style, it captures the energetic mood of the show, which was inspired by what he called the ‘rediscovery’ of 2000s electro-clash and electro-rock ‘sounds and scenes’.

As such, leather was central to the collection: notably, a pair of skinny leather pants worn in ‘double leather’ looks with biker and racer jackets. Other pieces draw a line between Le Palace’s heyday – it was founded in 1978 and came to be known as ‘Paris’ Studio 54’ – and the 2000s in furry animal print jackets, beaded trompe l’oeil bows, tassels and numerous studs and rhinestones. Looks were completed with a spritz of ‘Nightclubbing’ perfume from the house’s Celine Haute Parfumerie collection.

The show, which was titled ‘Paris Syndrome’, also featured a soundtrack by 1970s New York electronic band Suicide fronted by Alan Vega. The late musician’s artworks featured across the collection, while instrumentalist Martin Rev created the soundtrack. ‘Everybody came in to see Suicide to be entertained,’ Vega was quoted as saying in the collection notes. ‘And all we did was give them back the street, in all its glory.’

The release of the video also coincides with the announcement that Hedi Slimane will show his latest menswear show – Celine Homme S/S 2024 – on Sunday 2 July 2023 in Paris. Like last season, it sees Slimane divert from the official Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024 schedule, which concluded earlier this week.

Watch the film below.

celine.com

The sartorial legacy of prolific fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is on full display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Staged within the museum’s Tisch Galleries in an exhibition designed by Tadao Ando, ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ (5 May – 16 July, 2023) offers a view into the designer’s multifaceted creative process with over 200 objects, original sketches, video interviews with the atelier craftspeople he collaborated with, alongside captivating recreations of his desk and modes of working. Named after Lagerfeld’s love of duality, and his embrace of both the straight and serpentine line, as well as other opposing forces, the definitive exhibition highlights the breadth of the designer’s influences, whether art, film, music, literature or philosophy. 

Inside ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ at The Met

Notoriously tireless, Hamburg-born Lagerfeld began designing in the 1950s, working until his death in February 2019. In those six-plus decades, he effectively redefined how a fashion designer was seen – as a creative polymath rather than being confined to a singular discipline. A self-taught draughtsman who moved to Paris in 1952 aged just 19, Lagerfeld began his career in fashion illustration before submitting sketches to the International Woolmark Prize and winning the coat category in 1954, before his first official job in fashion, becoming a design assistant to French couturier Pierre Balmain in 1955. Roles at Patou, Chloé, Fendi and Chanel would follow, the latter with which he would become synonymous, transforming the then-ailing house’s fortunes when he joined in 1983. 

For the exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton treated the show like a visual and conceptual essay rather than a traditional retrospective. Divided into juxtaposing themes that echo Lagerfeld’s love of contradictions, such as feminine and masculine, romantic and military, rococo and classical, and historical and futuristic, the exhibition captures just how far Lagerfeld’s eye wandered, and also how effortlessly he could unite the most disparate of inspirations.

‘The exhibition explores Lagerfeld’s complex working methodology, tracing the evolution of his fashions from the two dimensional to the three dimensional,’ says Bolton. ‘The fluid lines of his sketches found expression in recurring themes in his fashions, uniting his designs for Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, Patou, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion.’

There is no shortage of glamour and fantasy within the exhibition, which is displayed across gestural curving platforms, dramatic single pedestals and monumental arcades – all designed by Ando, who met Lagerfeld in 1996 when the late designer commissioned him to create a design studio in Biarritz that was never realised. But where its true beauty lies is in divulging the secrets to Lagerfeld’s genius: through his unique style of sketching, which was his primary mode of creative expression and communication, and his deep relationships with the premières d’atelier – the seamstresses credited as the architects of Lagerfeld’s vision, who translated his two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional garments. On-camera interviews with these craftspeople, directed by the French filmmaker Loïc Prigent, who followed and documented Lagerfeld from 1997-2019, provide insightful context into how Lagerfeld’s garments were realised, especially when his sketches are shown next to the finished garments. 

‘Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most captivating, prolific, and recognisable forces in fashion and culture, known as much for his extraordinary designs and tireless creative output as his legendary persona,’ adds Max Hollein, director of The Met. ‘This immersive exhibition unpacks his singular artistic practice, inviting the public to experience an essential part of Lagerfeld’s boundless imagination and passion for innovation.’

‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, supported by Chanel and Fendi, runs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from 5 May – 16 July, 2023.

metmuseum.org

On 1 May 2023, the annual Met Gala will take place at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – a lavish star-studded celebration of the institute’s latest Costume Institute exhibition, which this year centres on the career of legendary German designer Karl Lagerfeld. Titled ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, the vast exhibition provides a rich survey of an expansive career, which lasted almost seven decades and saw him design clothing for some of the 20th and 21st century’s most important houses: Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi and Chanel, the last to which he will be forever linked. 

Ahead of the exhibition’s opening on 5 May 2023, we look back into the Wallpaper* archive to the October 2009 issue, which Lagerfeld guest-edited, including a peel-off ‘strip tease’ cover featuring model Baptiste Giabiconi. In this extract, Alice Rawsthorn meets the outspoken designer to hear more about his then-current obsessions – from a Marc Newson necklace for Boucheron to Alvar Aalto‘s Maison Louis Carré and designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s ‘Pebble’ furniture – which were then photographed by Lagerfeld around the world.

Karl Lagerfeld looks rather pleased with himself. ‘You know, this isn’t to my taste,’ he says with a cackle. ‘It isn’t even a period I like that much. I didn’t know these people or live in their world, the intellectual French art world, which was pretentious in a way. But it is amusing to have a glimpse, to take a look, to see what they considered modern. I like this idea of them being tempted by modernity without letting go of the conventions of bourgeois life.’

He cackles again. It’s a strike for Mr Lagerfeld (as his numerous employees call him, or ‘Kaiser Karl’, as he’s known throughout the fashion world). Several strikes, in fact. In a couple of sentences, he has a) shown that he has superior taste to the original owners of the house we’re in – an elegant but, yes, rather conservative villa built in the late 1950s in the countryside near Versailles by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for the Parisian art dealer Louis Carré and his wife, Olga; b) dissed the French, who’ve never quite forgiven him for being German; c) wrought revenge on the intelligentsia for sneering at him for being in fashion; and d) spat out the word ‘bourgeois’ with a soap-operatic sneer.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Wallpaper* October 2009 guest edit

Whether or not he approves of his surroundings, Mr Lagerfeld (as he’s in such a sunny mood, it seems mean to call him Kaiser Karl) has given up his Sunday to photograph La Maison Louis Carré for Wallpaper*. He’s doing it, as he does everything, accompanied by a SWAT team of black-clad assistants crying ‘Que c’est joli!’ whenever his images flash up on their iBooks. A luxury minibus has brought them to the house, while Lagerfeld and his driver did their bit for global warming by thundering along the autoroute in a Hummer.

Every so often, one of the black-clad assistants approaches with a silver tray bearing a single glass of Pepsi Max. (Lagerfeld recently switched brands from Coke after a kerfuffle over calorie content.) His sole responsibility seems to be to ensure the boss can take a sip or two of fizzily fresh cola whenever he wishes.

As for what he is wearing, it might not be what you would expect from a septuagenarian on a country jaunt, but it’s the uniform Lagerfeld has favoured ever since he shed 103 pounds a few years ago, and wrote about it in a best-selling diet book. Today it consists of: a skinny black jacket (Dior Homme); skinny black jeans (ditto); starched white shirt with a fine blue stripe and four-inch collar (Hilditch & Key); skinny black tie pinned with a pretty diamond and pearl brooch (Lydia Courteille); diamond-encrusted fobs (Chrome Hearts); an S&M-ish pair of fingerless black leather gloves (Chanel); white powdered ponytail (his own). ‘Oh, don’t look at me today,’ he cries in mock horror, as though I could count on him to look completely different on another day.

This particular guest editor of Wallpaper* needs little introduction, although for the benefit of readers who have recently returned from a Carthusian retreat, here’s a quick crammer.

Karl Lagerfeld is a very, very famous fashion designer, who started off as an assistant to Pierre Balmain then worked for Jean Patou in the late 1950s, before designing for Fendi and Chloé. He clinched his place in fashion history by rescuing Chanel in the 1980s (one fashion editor had written it off as ‘Seconal City’), and thus triggering the 'Lazarus' syndrome of resurrecting deadbeat fashion brands. Cue Gucci’s revival by Tom Ford, Prada’s by Miuccia Prada, Lanvin’s by Alber Elbaz, Balenciaga’s by Nicolas Ghesquière and so on.

Lagerfeld designs for Fendi and his own eponymous label, as well as Chanel, while flooding the fashion gossip mill with whoever happens to be in – his muse, Amanda Harlech, the stylist Charlotte Stockdale – or out with him at any particular moment in time.

He somehow still manages to find time to ransack Colette’s music racks, buy thousands of books and read most of them in any of the four languages – German, French, English and Italian – he speaks fluently. And it shows. Lagerfeld can be thoughtful, funny, knowledgeable, bitchy and dogmatic all in the same sentence, and peppers his conversation with references to everything from Aristotelian rhetoric and German classical music to early 20th-century novels.

Just a few of his recent extracurricular gigs include: running a publishing house and bookshop; kitting out a Steiff teddy bear in his skinny black uniform; shooting David Chipperfield’s restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin for German Vogue (‘Very, very beautiful,’ Lagerfeld enthuses. ‘I am mad for it.’); DJing for Grand Theft Auto IV; and recording the voice of the villain in French animated children's film Totally Spies!. ‘Apparently my voice is strange and special with a different accent in every language,’ he says gleefully, in tones that, although delivered at supersonic speed, are softer and less like a Teutonic baddie’s than you'd expect. ‘They want me to do the same thing in America, but how could I stay in Hollywood for three weeks?’

Lagerfeld has strong opinions on most subjects, and loves to air them. On travel: ‘Only for business. I hate tourism. Travel for travelling? No thank you, my dear. I’d rather stay at home enchanted by my books.’ On fashion: ‘Nobody can beat me in terms of technical knowledge. Nobody. I don’t want to be pretentious, but I have studied all the old techniques and know all the new techniques.’ On socialising: ‘You know what killed conversation in France? The smoking ban, cell phones and people who make believe that they’re politically correct. Boredom is guaranteed.’ On his mother: ‘Everything was fun with her. Even when she was mean, you couldn’t be mad at her. People she treated badly said “thank you”.' On himself: 'I am a vampire – open to everything and attached to nothing.’ You get the gist.

He’s here to talk about the things he’s photographed for Wallpaper*, and his thoughts on design and architecture. One of his chosen subjects is the Alvar Aalto house. Another is Marc Newson’s $1m-plus diamond and sapphire necklace for Boucheron: ‘Why shoot it? Because it's the most beautiful necklace made recently and Marc is the genius of geniuses in design today.’ Then there is Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s ‘Pebble’ furniture: ‘They are genius, too. There is something very modern and very romantic about what they do. It touches me.’ He has also shot the Queen’s Theatre in Versailles and some of his favourite places in Rome.

Lagerfeld has been fascinated by design since childhood, and learned about it by reading old issues of architecture magazines. As a fashion student in Paris during the 1950s, he was obsessed with the sets in the silent French films shown at the Cinémathèque. (A favourite was designed by the art deco architect Robert Mallet-Stevens for Marcel L’Herbier's 1928 film, L’Argent.) He also made his first visit to a great modern house: Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in Poissy, then a village, now a western suburb of Paris. ‘Beyond divine,’ recalls Lagerfeld. ‘But it was in bad shape then and the surroundings are horrible now.’

It wasn’t until the 1960s that he could afford to start collecting design pieces. He kitted out his Paris apartment with futuristic furniture, much of it in steel by Italian designers. Then he got into art deco, buying 1920s and 1930s pieces by Jean Dunand, Eileen Gray and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. ‘I had everything before anyone else,’ he declares. Then I tired of art deco. I thought it was too bourgeois, so I sold it.’ A flirtation with hi-tech followed (he bought most of his furniture from medical suppliers). Then came his abiding love of 18th-century French interiors. Lagerfeld decked out his townhouse at 51 rue de l’Université, where he lived for 30 years from 1977, as an 18th-century enclave (down to Madame de Pompadour’s lacquer furniture in the bedroom) and repeated the exercise in his weekend chateau on the Marne river.

La Pompadour’s lacquer was just the beginning. By the early 1980s, Lagerfeld was rich enough to become seriously self-indulgent. He bulk ordered most of the then-spanking new Memphis collection for his Monte Carlo apartment: Ettore Sottsass’ ‘Carlton’ cabinet, Masanori Umeda’s boxing ring-cum-‘conversation pit’, the works. ‘Absolutely divine,’ he drawls. ‘Nobody else did a total house in Memphis. Nobody. I loved it, but you can't live with it for long. After a few years it was like living in old Courrèges. Ha! I'm a fashion person. I can’t spend the rest of my days living with the same old style.’

And he hasn’t. Lagerfeld recreated the milieu of one of his heroes, Walther Rathenau, the early 20th-century German plutocrat and model for a protagonist in Robert Musil’s literary trilogy The Man Without Qualities, in his Berlin apartment. His house in Rome was dedicated to the Wiener Werkstätte furniture made in fin-de-siècle Vienna and a villa in Biarritz to Jean-Michel Frank’s 1930s work. A country house in Vermont is filled with his childhood furniture, and his New York apartment with another passion, the Deutscher Werkbund movement of early 1900s German designers who inspired the Bauhauslers. ‘I love it,’ declares Lagerfeld. ‘I think it’s because it’s from the period when my parents were young and Germany was most interesting.’

Every piece was chosen with painstaking precision and tracked down laboriously. He’ll often spend years perfecting an interior only to discover once it is finished that he is bored with it (as he was with Memphis) or doesn’t have enough time to go there. Take the Berlin apartment, where he spent just three weeks in seven years. That’s been sold, as has the Biarritz villa, although he’s hung on to the river Marne chateau, despite having not visited it for three years. ‘I like to collect,’ says Lagerfeld cheerfully. ‘But I don’t Iike to own.’

For years he tried to build a house in France to a Tadao Ando design, only for the plans to be rejected twice in Paris and once in Biarritz. ‘Impossible!’ he snorts. ‘In France, you can’t build in a city and I’m scared of the country, so where can I go?’ Instead, he played architectural patron by commissioning Zaha Hadid to design a mobile art pavilion for Chanel. ‘She’s a genius and she’s fun, but beyond rough,’ laughs Lagerfeld, rolling his eyes tragicomically. What does he mean? 'The way she talks to people, the way she behaves, it’s very funny. I had a great time with her, but she must be terrible to work for.’

Having abandoned the Ando house, he spent years gutting and reconstructing an apartment on quai Voltaire in Paris into what he calls ‘a spaceship for a selfish person’. (Guess who?) It is a cavernous open-plan space filled with contemporary pieces, mostly shiny, silvery ones by designers like Newson, the Bouroullecs, Amanda Levete, Barber Osgerby and Martin Szekely. Lagerfeld bought most of the furniture from Galerie Kreo in Paris and Established & Sons in London. ‘I’ve always said that the best thing about Stella McCartney is her husband,’ he purrs. (Translation: Established’s co-founder, Alasdhair Willis, is married to McCartney, who has incurred Lagerfeld’s wrath by having the cheek to make a success first of his old role at Chloé and then of her own fashion label.)

Lagerfeld loves living at quai Voltaire – ‘my paradise now’, as he calls it – but has already started work on his next grand project. ‘It’s a little townhouse, 17th century, that I am doing on rue des Saints-Pères,’ he says. ‘It’s difficult to describe because it’s not finished yet, but it will be beyond the super-modernity of quai Voltaire. There’ll be a baroque touch, although it won’t be baroque at all. My favourite house in the world is Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna. The new house will be like that, but modern, modern, modern, modern.’ 

A version story first appeared in the October 2009 issue of Wallpaper*. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ runs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from 5 May – 16 July, 2023.

metmuseum.org

Karl Lagerfeld Maison, the fashion brand’s new interior branch, makes its debut during Milan Design Week 2023, with an inaugural collection created in collaboration with interior designer Matteo Nunziati and presented at a new showroom at via Passione 8.

The launch comprises four collections, each named after Karl Lagerfeld’s favourite areas of Paris:  ‘Saint Germain’ and ‘Saint Guillaume’ include living areas and bedroom furniture, ‘Quai Voltaire’ is dedicated to the kitchen, and ‘Rue de l’Université’ is a lighting collection.

The collections are directly inspired by Lagerfeld’s own approach to interiors. His passion for design was evident in every space he put together; his highly researched and refined interiors combined classic and historical design with contemporary pieces. ‘He was not a collector, he was more someone that was filling a house and his brain with an idea of style,’ says Caroline Lebar, the brand’s SVP of Image and Communications, who worked alongside Lagerfeld for nearly four decades. ‘What was special about Karl was that as soon as he was focusing on a period or style, he would become an expert.’

Lagerfeld developed his passion through a series of interiors across France, from an apartment at Monaco’s Millefiori tower to a 19th-century house near Versailles, and apartments in Paris, used as homes and offices (the contents of these interiors were sold in the Karl Lagerfeld Estate auction by Sotheby’s in 2021). ‘What was very specific to Karl was that he was really not specific to a period,’ continues Lebar. ‘He approached the interior design of a house like he would a fashion collection, or the installation for a show.’

Karl Lagerfeld Maison: 'a message of love to Karl'

Every collection will feature the work of a new guest, who will be invited to create an interpretation of Lagerfeld’s approach to design. The collaborative path is something that Lagerfeld himself had been championing for the brand, and something that, Lebar stresses, the team follows for any of the company's new development. The process of putting together this and future collections starts with Lebar spending several hours with each creative to immerse them in Lagerfeld’s world, with the result being a series of designs that together encapsulate the creative director’s DNA.  

'This project builds a different point of view on Karl,' Lebar says. 'It highlights Karl as the lover of interior design; it’s so important to use him as a starting point – the first collection should be a message of love.'

‘Saint Germain’ collection: a book lover’s delight

During his design process, Nunziati considered the aesthetic of Paris and Hamburg, two cities close to Lagerfeld, and imagined the designer walking along the German city's canals, or strolling by the mansions of Paris’ Saint-Germain-des-Prés. 

Among the key pieces in the collection are the ‘Saint Germain’ sofa (the hero piece, as Lebar describes it), whose sides and back are designed as a small library to display tomes horizontally (Lagerfeld's preferred way to display his books, so he could easily read the titles on the spines). The feature recurs across the ‘Saint Germain’ series, with slots for books in side tables, coffee tables, a sideboard and a bedroom wall system.

But among Lebar's favourite pieces is also the ‘Quai Voltaire’ dining table, featuring a lacquered glass top and a metal frame whose design she describes as 'a mix of today and Bauhaus'.

The kitchen is another interpretation of Lagerfeld's style: while he himself was not a 'kitchen person', the design featuring a standing bar is close to his vision. 'You can stand and have a conversation: it's a very social approach to the kitchen,' notes Lebar.

The colour and material palettes match the visual spirit of the brand (and of the man), with white and black discreetly punctuated by reds and pinks, and a selection of reflective materials, brushed metals and glass surfaces.

'I have been dreaming of this day, launching our design collection,' says Lebar. 'Because Karl was so incredible when thinking about interior design, and that's a great achievement for the brand and a reflection of our legacy.'

Karl Lagerfeld Maison launches on 18 April 2023

Karl Lagerfeld Maison
via Passione 8
Milan

karl.com

Karl Lagerfeld’s Estate auction, held over two weeks in December 2021 by Sotheby’s, will take place in Monaco and Paris, and online, where bidding opens 26 November, 10am CET. Among the treasures for sale are the contents of various spaces belonging to the fashion designer, photographer and collector, who passed away in February 2019: his 19th-floor apartment in Monaco’s Millefiori tower; his 19th-century house in Louveciennes near Versailles, where the poet Leconte de Lisle was once a frequent guest; his apartment at 17 quai Voltaire in Paris; his office at 15 rue des Saint-Pères; and the never-before photographed apartment opposite, at 8 rue des Saint-Pères.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris home

The designer purchased 8 rue de Saint-Pères in 2008 and renovated it himself. Revealed for the first time here, the result is both modern and classic, with a formality to the apartment interior design and something wonderfully old-school about the back of the home, where mirrored double doors lead to hidden kitchens, bathrooms, storerooms and service entrances. Almost every wall is covered in shelving piled very neatly with books. The wall-mounted white powder-coated steel bookcase design, a system created by Lagerfeld, can also be found along the walls of his quai Voltaire apartment (photographed by Benjamin Bouchet in 2017 for Wallpaper* magazine’s ‘Subscribers Since... 1996’ portfolio).

Lagerfeld used both apartments in his day-to-day life; the extra space came in very handy for a collector of his stature. There are more pieces here by the likes of Konstantin Grcic and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec than I have ever seen at an exhibition at Galerie Kreo, one of Lagerfeld’s favourite Parisian haunts. The designer had a 25-year relationship with the gallery’s founders, Clémence and Didier Krzentowski, and amassed a collection of around 100 pieces.

In the entrance lobby sits Grcic’s 2018 ‘Volumes’ collection in Bleu de Savoie marble; Lagerfeld bought each of the six pieces from the show in duplicate, choosing to pair them up. Lining the walls of the staircase are eight of the Bouroullecs’ 2010 ‘Roches’ shelves, made of extra matte lacquered basalt grey fibreglass (a second set of five is installed upstairs in the dressing room).

Next to the Grcic collection are the 2007 ‘Black Sun’ and ‘Mirror One’ mirrors, both in silicon carbide, by Martin Szekely. ‘Mirror One’ is cleverly placed behind an early 20th-century woman’s head in white marble on a pink marble base, allowing the ponytail on the back of the head to be viewed when passing.

An eclectic design collection

It’s this pairing of contemporary minimal design pieces with more decorative artworks that is so unique. In the drawing room, Maarten Van Severen’s 2006 long black Bakelite desk (also from Galerie Kreo), 2.7m of starkness, is paired with a set of 19th-century Louis XVI-style black lacquered wooden chairs. An 18th-century chandelier and a towering late 18th-century sculpture of two women holding an Athénienne stand, attributed to Nicolas-François-Daniel Lhuillier, sit next to a black ‘Quilt’ sofa by the Bouroullecs from Established & Sons.

Off of the drawing room is a study, where Ron Gilad’s ‘Dear Ingo’ chandelier from Moooi fills the high ceiling. Among the bookshelves is an art deco desk and chair from Louis Süe et André Mare circa 1920 (Lagerfeld amassed around 30 pieces from these French designers), another of the Bouroullecs’ ‘Quilt’ seats, and Marc Newson’s 2008 ‘Carbon’ ladder from Kreo. Newson was another of Lagerfeld’s personal favourites (Newson’s wife Charlotte Stockdale worked with the designer as a stylist for Fendi). Included in the sale is an Hourglass from Ikepod Watch Co and the 2008 ‘Atmos’ clock from Jaeger-LeCoultre, a gift from Newson.

Purpose-built in stainless steel with curved Perspex legs, the desk in the upstairs bedroom is a personal favourite of mine. Precisely laid with minimal accessories in stainless steel holding pencils, notebooks and multiple iPod Minis. 

The sale is not all decorative arts and design pieces; there are also items classified as memorabilia, including Aston Martin dumbbells, clothing from Dior Homme, Lagerfeld figurines from Tokidoki, Fendi iPhone cases, a Simpsons poster featuring a Lagerfeld cameo, and naturally, items used by Choupette, the designer’s Birman cat.

Lagerfeld probably wouldn’t have minded that his collection is being sold. He told me once that what he found interesting was to collect things, rather than to own them. It’s not the first time his possessions have gone under the hammer: in November 1975 Lagerfeld auctioned his art deco collection at Drout; in October 1991 his Memphis collection at Sotheby’s Monaco; in April 2000 it was furniture and works of art at Christie’s Monaco; in May 2000 his Old Master paintings at Christie’s New York; in December 2000 the contents of his Monaco home La Vigie at Christie’s Monaco; and in May 2003 20th-century decorative arts at Sotheby’s Paris.

This time around, there are 4,000 items that have been catalogued by Sotheby’s, a task that took the auction house more than three months. About 1,200 of these will go on sale at the December auctions.

INFORMATION
‘KARL’, Karl Lagerfeld’s Estate Auction in Monaco, 3, 4 and 5 December 2021; Paris, 14 and 15 December 2021; online auction, session I from 26 November – 6 December 2021, and session II from 6 – 16 December 2021
sothebys.com

When German photographer Daniel Biskup heard Karl Lagerfeld would be in Berlin, friends and colleagues warned that the fashion icon wouldn’t permit photographs. It was 2002 and Lagerfeld would be visiting for a pop-up exhibition featuring his own photographs — of musicians as well as behind-the-scenes shots from Chanel campaigns — at a former butchery in Mitte. Not easily discouraged, Biskup went shopping and bought a black cashmere trench coat and black Gucci shirt. Wearing the new garments, he showed up to the vernissage of Lagerfeld’s exhibition, boldly introduced himself in French, and asked if he could make some portraits. Lagerfeld, Biskup says, looked him up and down, paying particular attention to the trench, and said, ‘When everything is finished here, come to me and we will see.'

Fast forward a few hours, and from 10pm to 3am, the photographer and designer wandered Berlin’s streets and subway stations, trailed by a security team carrying a crate of Lagerfeld’s drink of choice: Pepsi Light. Almost all of resulting images from that night have remained unseen — until now. Opening today at Hotel de Rome in Berlin is ‘Karl Lagerfeld in Berlin'; an exhibition featuring 20 of Biskup’s intimate portraits, in remembrance of the icon exactly one year after his passing. Accompanying the show, specifically held at Hotel de Rome because it was Lagerfeld’s hotel of choice when in Berlin, is a new coffee table book featuring an even wider selection of Biskrup’s images.

In the series of nearly 40 of photographs, we watch Lagerfeld walk through the distinct, orange-tiled corridor at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz train station (‘He took this subway station as a runway,' Biskup remembers); standing on a balcony overlooking Gendarmenmarkt, a picturesque historical square; picking up the pink receiver of a T-Mobile payphone; and even giving autographs to passerby (‘He was so friendly to everyone,' Biskrup recalls). Lagerfeld took to Biskup’s creative direction, bestowing upon the photographer a type of collaboration that he doesn’t often encounter. ‘It was a big gift, what he did for me that night,' Biskrup says. ‘People think, "Karl Lagerfeld was so untouchable," but that night, it was completely different.' 

INFORMATION

‘Karl Lagerfeld in Berlin', Hotel de Rome, 20 February until 20 May.
daniel-biskup.de
Book available here

ADDRESS

Hotel de Rome
Behrenstraße 37
10117 Berlin

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It makes sense that ‘SHOW OFF: Austrian Fashion Design’ is huge in scale. It is, after all, the first ever major exhibition of Austrian fashion. Hence, enormous, visually ambitious, displays show the work of 66 designers, 34 photographers, and 250 fashion objects. It’s not just a numbers game, though. Curators Ulrike Tschabitzer-Handler and Andreas Bergbaur balance size and audio and visual spectacle with historical sensitivity as they carefully guide the viewer through five themed spaces about the social and cultural factors shaping Austrian fashion since the 1970s, from fashion education, distribution, and publications to the garments themselves.

Upon entering, the viewer is confronted by talking heads, a video installation showing projections of interviews with agents, stylists, journalists, and managers about Vienna’s fashion scene. This, logically, leads to a look at the fashion department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (‘die Angewandte’). Since the 1980s, guest professors like Karl Lagerfeld, Jil Sander, Raf Simon, and Vivien Westwood have informed the work of young Austrian designers. This information is blasted at you from either side as you walk a runway framed by two huge LCD screens by projection artists Lumine showing output from the school over the years.

SHOW OFF’s centrepiece is a huge scaffolding-like sculpture designed by architect Gregor Eichinger containing 40 years of clothing, shoes, bags, and jewellery from designers including Helmut Lang, Rudi Gernreich, Andreas Kronthaler, and newcomers like Kenneth Ize. It allows a 360-degree-view, accessible by stairs from several levels. Most importantly, since the Austrian state does not have a permanent fashion collection, the viewer has the unique chance to get close to garments without them being stuck behind glass like traditional museum pieces.

The exhibition ends with two neon-lit glass cases containing examples of fashion publications about or from Austria, including issues of Wallpaper* and i-D from the late 1990s and locally important magazines like Wiener, Take, and INDIE. This not only places Austrian fashion design in the wider context of style shifts in graphic design, photography, and typography, but shows that, though the Alpine republic isn’t the first place you think of when it comes to contemporary fashion, it is more than a museum for classic styles from the past.

INFORMATION

‘SHOW OFF: Austrian Fashion Design’, MAK (Museum of Applied Arts), until 12 July. mak.at

ADDRESS

Museum of Applied Arts
Stubenring 5, 1010 Wien
Austria

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‘If you understand Mademoiselle Privé, you understand the brand,’ Chanel’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, explains two days before the globetrotting exhibition’s Shanghai opening. ‘The show is about energy. Chanel is about the creative energy we want to share with our audience.' Fitting for a city so explosively dynamic that it feels as though electricity is crackling through the air. Following its debut in 2015 in London, Mademoiselle Privé stopped over in Seoul (2017) and Hong Kong (2018) before its current six-week stint at Shanghai’s West Bund Art Center. For the latest show – named after the words written on Gabrielle ‘Coco' Chanel's studio door – the Parisian maison has tailored the exhibition to a massive 6,000 sq m of space.

On the ground floor, you can flip through a small library with volumes on Coco Chanel and late icon Karl Lagerfeld or watch Lagerfeld’s films and shorts about the house projected onto a large screen. Upstairs on the mezzanine level, the exhibition presents three houses, reached through individual staircases, spotlighting the house’s three creative pillars: haute couture, high jewellery and the iconic 1921-founded Chanel No 5 perfume.

Enter 31 rue Cambon – the Parisian address of the house’s haute couture ateliers since 1918 – and weave through seven collections, spanning S/S 2013 to A/W 2018/19, by Karl Lagerfeld. Classic silhouettes refashioned in innovative materials like neoprene and aluminium inhabit nooks within the cloudlike space that’s been draped in vast swathes of luxurious fabrics in white and cream. Listen closely: each season has been imagined as haute couture might be lived in modern life – three friends chattering away at a rock concert, a small group of seven gossiping on the tube after a night out.

Next door is the olafactory wonderland of Chanel No 5. A soft echo of Lagerfeld’s floral-splashed S/S 2015 show, beds of mint green, pale pink and pastel yellow coloured paper flowers sprout up from the ground. Each represent one of the 80 scents (jasmine, may rose, ylang-ylang) found in the legendary fragrance created in 1921 by Chanel and perfumer Ernest Beaux.

The crown jewel of the Shanghai show may just be 18 Place Vendôme, the house’s display of the birthplace of its high jewellery. Chinese artist Wu Guanzhen has reinterpreted Coco Chanel’s collection of antique Coromandel screens – the theme of its 2018 High Jewellery collection – into three exquisite artworks ‘Lofty Mountain', ‘Early Spring' and ‘Garden of Pleasure'.

‘My first consideration was the exhibition space and its atmosphere,’ explains Wu, who was inspired to work with lacquer first in 2011 by the childhood memory of leaves flickering in the sunlight and their texture. ‘It’s an environment which called for more delicate pieces.' Tactile and alive with texture like many pieces at 31 Rue Cambon, the diaphanous screens coated in lacquer complement the equally delicate-but-daring, glittering re-edition of Bijoux de Diamants, Gabrielle Chanel’s one and only jewellery collection designed in 1932.

In its Shanghai chapter, tech-forward Mademoiselle Privé, which had its own app for other cities, has embraced China’s digital eco-system with a mini programme in the country’s one-size-fits-all social media/messaging/payment platform WeChat. Through WeChat, visitors can book and discover more about Mademoiselle Privé and its programming of half-hour workshops – like embroidery, gold leaf application and baudruchage (the art of sealing perfume bottles) – and once onsite, scan QR codes to delve further into the Chanel story through multimedia content.

‘The best colour in the whole world is the colour that looks good on you,' Coco Chanel once said, and Mademoiselle Privé looks pretty good in the shade of Shanghai.

INFORMATION

Mademoiselle Privé is on view from 20 April to 2 June 2019. For more information, visit the Chanel website, West Bund Art Centre website

ADDRESS

2555 Longteng Ave
Xuhui Qu
Shanghai Shi
China

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Karl Lagerfeld, who passed away aged 85 in 2019, joined the house of Chanel in 1983. In his tenure as creative director of the famed Parisian maison, Lagerfeld was renowned for creative, showstopping runway sets, not just at the Grand Palais in Paris, but across a host of locations, from Cuba to Dubai. The immersive and cinematic sets resembled, variously, windfarms and polar landscapes (complete with a real iceberg), airport departure lounges, space stations and supermarkets. Here, in celebration of Lagerfeld’s boundless creativity, we look back at Chanel's most awe-inspiring show set design.

Karl Lagerfeld’s 20 greatest Chanel show sets

Karl Lagerfeld has passed away at the age of 85. The legendary fashion designer was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1933. Lagerfeld was known for being at the creative helm of two leading luxury brands – he joined Chanel as creative director in 1983, and had been creative director of Fendi since 1965. A creative tour de force, Lagerfeld was a designer, illustrator, photographer, publisher and collector. He even guest edited an issue of Wallpaper* in 2009 (W*127).

Lagerfeld was renowned for his voracious absorption of literature, art and trends and his talent at filtering these influences into covetable ready-to-wear and Haute Couture collections that captured the zeitgest. Chic bouclé tweed suits and miniscule logo bikinis were both features on the Chanel runway, while at Fendi, the house was revitalised with its impeccably crafted ‘Fun Fur’. Lagerfeld’s white ponytail and starck personal colour preference, passion for Diet Coke and love for his cat Choupette also made him a mythologised figure in popular culture, a visage he honed throughout his career, whether toning his body builder physique, wearing a monocle, or opting for a host of silver rings and a pair of oversized sunglasses.

A student at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, Lagerfeld first rose to prominence in 1954, when one of his designs – a yellow wool coat with a buckled collar, won the Coat category of the inaugural Woolmark Prize. Lagerfeld’s sketch was bought to life by Pierre Balmain, who offered the young designer an assistant position at his maison a year later. In 1959, Lagerfeld left to work for Jean Patou, staying at the house until 1962. After a period working as a successful freelance designer, honing his ability to design for a wide variety of brands and aesthetics, Lagerfeld began working for Gabrielle Aghion at Chloé in 1964. He moved from designing two collections for the ready-to-wear house per season, to designing its entire collections, and producing its first fragrance in 1975.

German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, 1984.

In 1965, Lagerfeld began collaborating with Fendi, transforming the Roman family-owned furrier and leather goods house into a major fashion world player. In 2008, he began collaborating with Silvia Venturini, currently the menswear and accessories director of the house, and the granddaughter of Fendi’s founders. The two were renowned for taking a bow together at the head of the runway after every Fendi womenswear show. 

Lagerfeld presented his first Haute Couture collection for Chanel in 1983. The show, presented in the rooms of the famed Rue Cambon atelier, was inspired by Chanel’s silhouettes from the 1920s and 30s, and featured knee-length wool suits, wide lapel jackets, scarab-inspired jewels and ruffled organza eveningwear. 

In his long tenure at Chanel, Lagerfeld was renowned for continually reinventing the skirt suits and bouclé tweeds synonymous with the house, imbuing his collections with a kaleidoscopic and humorous range of references. These ranged from surfboards, hockey sticks, or UFO-inspired accessories, to experimentation with Chanel’s interlocking ‘C’ logo, garments inspired by feminist uprisings, the Gorge du Verdon, or airport terminals. ‘I'm lucky that I can put it on paper and people can immediately see it and make the dress without asking too many questions,’ Lagerfeld said of his design process in 2015. ‘I don't change my mind because before I present an idea I throw 20 into the garbage bin.’

Lagerfeld gained a reputation for being not just a master designer, but also a spectacular showman. In 1978, the ostentatious wedding party he hosted for Paloma Picasso and Rafael López Sánchez, acted as a precursor to the awe-inspiring runway sets both Fendi and Chanel became renowned for. In 2007, Fendi held a show on the Great Wall of China, and in celebration of the house’s 90th anniversary in 2016, it staged a runway set stretching across the Trevi Fountain in Rome. At Chanel, Lagerfeld transported guests from Cuba to Dubai, Texas to Edinburgh, and erected spectacular and cinematic show sets at the Grand Palais in Paris, resembling casinos, ancient Greece, a space station, and most recently, with a serene leaf-lined forest. Lagerfeld launched his eponymous line in 1984, and collaborated with brands including Hogan, Louis Vuitton, H&M and Vans. He also worked as a costume designer for a variety of productions and films, including 1984‘s Betrayal by Harold Pinter and the English National Ballet's Apollo in 2009. But it is more than just a fashion legacy he leaves behind. A passionate photographer, Lagerfeld lensed not only Chanel’s advertising campaigns, but also shot a plethora of landscape and architectural images, some of which were captured in the 2007 book Konkret Abstrakt Gesehen. And in recognition of Lagerfeld’s passion for image making, Chanel has partnered with Hyères Photography Festival since 2014. Lagerfeld was also an avid art and furniture collector since the mid 1970s, and sporadically auctioned pieces from his art deco, Memphis, Old Masters and French design collections. He also collaborated with both Orrefors and Cessina. Despite his monumental creative legacy, and starring roles in the stratospheric success of two of the most prolific houses in fashion history, Lagerfeld took little interest in his past designs. He preferred, instead, to look resolutely towards the future. And that is the true legacy of Karl Lagerfeld.

Quite the renaissance man, there seems no end to Karl Lagerfeld’s creative talents. Recent weeks have seen the fashion powerhouse  commended for his collaboration with Puma, as well as a wave of praise for his recent Chanel S/S 2019 collection which premiered on a catwalk beach during Paris Fashion Week.

Look back further and the list of achievements of this Wallpaper* guest editor diverges further from fashion; it is as heterogeneous as it is surprising. Illustrator, photographer, reality TV show star and film director, Lagerfeld has also put his name to a teddy bear in his likeness and the design of a series of residences.

Most recently, he has taken to sculpture. The solo show ‘Architectures’ at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in the Marais presents a series of marble sculptures by Lagerfeld, created in collaboration with the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman. The pair most recently worked on the renovation of Paris’ Hôtel Crillon, where Lagerfeld installed a two-tonne bath cut from a single block of Carrara marble; this show is the continuation of the work that began there.

In keeping with the gallery’s remit, these are not so much sculptures as design pieces. One might call them functional sculpture, but for this categorisation I refer you to Franz West’s current exhibition at the Centre Pompidou instead. Despite the coolness of the milky marble, and the decidedly impractical dimensions, there is a decadent domesticity to the works which take the form of pier tables, lamps, fountains, and mirrors.

Heavily influenced by Antiquity — an epoch which, according to Lagerfeld, knew no such thing as bad taste — each piece is created in both black Nero Marquina marble and Arabescato Fantastico in editions of eight, the latter of which has not been quarried for over 30 years. Hovering between the ancient and the contemporary, it is intriguing to see the sculptural design work of a man whose influence over all aesthetic spheres has been so ubiquitous for so many years.

INFORMATION

Karl Lagerfeld’s ‘Architectures’ is on until 22 December. For more information visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website.

Scene setting: Guests still reeling from the caramel luggage carousel last season were jolted into a new mood as they walked into a darkened room for the S/S 2019 show. The brand’s headquarters had been transformed into a high-gloss grotto designed by Italian multimedia artist Nico Vascellari. Models emerged from a blackout chamber featuring a trompe l’oeil Perspex cave, splattered in illuminated drawings of tiny demons, FF-forked snakes, cards and dice.

Mood board: Vascellari’s playing cards depicting the FENDI monster as king, Silvia Venturini Fendi as queen and Karl Lagerfeld as the ‘JoKarl’ glowered across accessories and t-shirts. As always there was an athletic performance-wear focus to the clothes, including short shorts (as at Prada, Versace and No.21), knitted polos and a playful use of perforated textiles.

Team work: The house’s collaboration with guest artists always creates newsworthy buzz. Last season, Fendi worked with digital collagist @hey_reilly's range of humorous graphics, which re-appropriated the FILA logo for the brand. For S/S 2019 FENDI worked with Vascellari, known for his playful interpretations of anagrams and magic of the natural world. He teasingly switched the house logo to read FIEND; ROMA read AMORE. The iconic FF was rendered in naïve watercolour across technical fabrics; fur was pushed through a softer monogram on a leather shirt jacket.

What better way to nod to the retail concept of a cruise collection – one which caters to sun-kissed sun lounging and tropical getaways – than by showcasing it aboard a cruise ship? It was anchors away at the Grand Palais in Paris yesterday, as Karl Lagerfeld erected a gargantuan streamliner to debut Chanel’s Cruise 2019 collection, one brimming with Parisian holiday staples-like Breton stripe trousers, glittering berets, blazer dresses with steamship stamped buttons and porthole patterned skirts.

From Biarritz to Deauville, Coco Chanel had an affection for French seaside resort towns, but it was in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, where she chose to build her famed French Riviera villa La Pausa in 1928. Steering the label’s history, Lagerfeld named his two-decked liner ‘La Pausa’, one complete with a majestic sun deck and swimming pool, the fabrication of which took 4 weeks to create, and fifteen days to install.

Coco Chanel was also an avid seafarer. Last year, Chanel named its high jewellery collection Flying Cloud, after the 1930s superyacht owned by its founder’s lover The Duke of Westminster. And while Karl Lagerfeld has staged his Cruise fashion shows in French seaside destinations including Antibes and St Tropez, it was notable that his steam liner docked in Paris, the home city of the maison, surrounded by 150m of catwalk, in a setting which totalled 5624 square metres. On 5 May, Chanel will also invite 500 students to step on board the ship, to view the bouclé, PVC and ruffled details of the maison’s Cruise 2019 collection up close. All aboard!

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Chanel website

Against a nationwide tapestry of hardening politics, war, and intensifying race relations, 1970s New York rebelled with artistic, and sexual, abandon. A riotous new film shines a hazy spotlight on the era’s key arbiters of style: wildly seductive fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, his partner Juan Ramos, and later in Paris, Karl Lagerfeld.

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco starts in 1960s Lower Manhattan – a melting pot of creative talent, inclusive of disparate creative camps that cut a broad swathe through culture. Lopez’ days were spent working feverishly to create the latest looks, while nights were spent writhing at Max’s Kansas City, Hotel Chelsea and Club Sept with his bevy of charismatic beauties (Grace Jones, Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall) until dawn.

The feature length documentary charts a moment where the demimonde — homosexuality, club life and blurred gender lines — rises in a euphoric push, out of the club and onto the catwalk. Its driven by the nostalgic beat of Donna Summer, Chic and the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield.

‘I became fascinated with Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos through Interview magazine when I was a young teenager in rural Indiana,’ explains director James Crump. ‘Their magical lives and milieu aroused me no end and made me fantasise about the early 1970s in New York and Paris – a period I was too young to experience.’

In 1997, Crump met Paul Caranicas, Lopez’s and Ramos’s heir who has since given him unlimited access to many thousands of drawings, photographs and 8mm and 16mm footage. Offering never before seen footage, interviews and imagery, the film documents a transformative journey that Lopez and Ramos took in 1969 to Paris – itself in the midst of radical social and cultural change. Ostensibly visiting to sketch the latest collections by the fashion house, Chloe, they become fast friends with a lithe young Lagerfeld, forming an improbable, yet long-lasting, friendship.

It was the dawn of the age of the rock star fashion designer. Today, the Seventies are often looked back on as the halcyon days of ultimate, creative freedom, decadence, and sexual promiscuity before the black cloud of AIDS rumbled over.

Even with all we’ve learnt in the half century since Lopez’ prominence, the archival footage is just as relevant and prescient today. ‘Given the elements of race, ethnicity and sexuality that Antonio injected into fashion – a Puerto Rican-born, Bronx-raised bisexual – the film needed to be produced now at a moment when Latino, African-American and LGBTQ rights and issues are still being contested and under represented in dominant media and culture,’ says Crump. ‘Antonio envisioned what the future could look like. He is an ideal emblem of freedom and attainability worth remembering, especially now in the current post-election malaise.’

INFORMATION

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco is at cinemas and on demand from 6 April, and playing at BFI Flare on 30 - 31 March 2018. For more information, visit the James Crump website

Karl Lagerfeld, one-time guest editor of Wallpaper*, is a fan of Cassina furniture. He’s been collecting pieces from the Italian stalwart for half a century – his first ‘order’ was the famous ‘LC4’ chaise longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand in the 1960s. Having lived with, laid upon, and loved, each piece he has owned, Lagerfeld was the ideal photographer for a new photobook, Cassina as seen by Karl that documents (and salutes) the brand’s 90-year history.

It’s the first time Lagerfeld has collaborated with a furniture manufacturer on a venture of this nature, where his favourite design references would ‘pose’ in front of the lens. The project was entrusted to him in 2013, alongside Gerhard Steidl. The renowned German publisher, who has been involved at every turn, printed the limited edition photos which were first shown at first in the Cassina Saint-Germain showroom during Paris Design Week, and then internationally. Now, the dynamic snaps have been stuck into a beautifully leather-bound commemorative publication by hand, imbuing it with an uncommon sense of fragility, not dissimilar to that of a treasured family photo album.

Described as an ‘anthology of haute-couture design’, Cassina as seen by Karl features pieces from Lagerfeld’s own collection, including the Le Corbusier-Jeanneret-Perriand masterwork, and the ‘Auckland’ armchair by Jean-Marie Massaud. Arranged in graphic compositions, the familiar shapes are seen as if for the first time. Chairs are stacked in colourful jumbes, bookshelves talk to each other, a table becomes the protagonist on a darkened stage. It’s a book, says Steidl, that ‘rivals Cassina’s furniture in terms of quality materials, craftsmanship and longevity.’

Indeed, Lagerfeld’s passion is punched into the pages. ‘I had never worked on this kind of project,’ he says. ‘To visually reinterpret examples of perfect design is completely new for me, and therefore stimulating, exciting even.’

The publication – which will please both furniture fans and Lagerfeld lovers – presents a rare picture of the storied aesthete as not just a designer, but a design devotee.

INFORMATION

Cassina as seen by Karl, published by Gerhard Steidl. For more information, visit the website

Left, Lemaire

A jolt of colour contributed to Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s ode to German aesthetics of the 1970s and 1980s.

Shirt, £270; trousers, £395; shoes, £340, all by Lemaire


Right, Christopher Kane

The designer’s saccharine yet sensual domestic goddess favoured frothy ruffled details and scarlet shades.

Coat, £3,995, by Christopher Kane. Earrings, £225, by Fay Andrada

As originally featured in the February 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*227)

Far left, Céline

Powerful proportions informed Phoebe Philo’s collection, like this draped dress with an accentuating leather waistline.

Dress, €4,500, by Céline. Earrings, €635, by Proenza Schouler. Tights, £35, by Wolford


Left, Lanvin

In a collection inspired by our fragmented digital age, different looks were spliced together, such as this utility-focused boiler suit and jacket.

Coat, £2,250; jumpsuit, £2,650; collar, £280, all by Lanvin


Right, Jil Sander

As part of their debut for the German house, Luke and Lucie Meier offset monastic shapes against skin-baring chequered fabrics.

Dress, £2,220; culottes, £560, both by Jil Sander. Earrings, £240, by Ambush. ‘Stromboli’ table, €5,800, by India Mahdavi

Left, Dior Homme

Sharp tailoring was offset by a soft nostalgia, evoked by ribbon scarves bearing the Rue de Marignan address of the Dior men’s studio in Paris.

Jacket, £1,600; trousers, £590; scarf, £230, all by Dior Homme. Shoes, £387, by Pierre Hardy


Right, Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri paid homage to Niki de Saint Phalle, this trench coat nodding to the French-American sculptor’s bold use of colour.

Coat, £4,700; boots, £1,150, both by Dior

Left, Raf Simons

There were Japanese elements to the Belgian designer’s offering, which featured oversized blazers buttoned across the chest in homage to the cut of a kimono.

Blazer, €1,239, by Raf Simons


Right, Hermès

Workwear stitching and movement-friendly shapes did the heavy lifting in Véronique Nichanian’s relaxed offering.

Shirt, £590; trousers, £540, both by Hermès. Scarf, vintage, from Kiliwatch Paris. ‘CH23’ dining chair, £569, by Hans J Wegner, for Carl Hansen & Søn

Left, Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello continued his love affair with the 1980s with voluminous puffball silhouettes inspired by vintage haute couture.

Dress, £12,855, by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Earrings, €635, by Proenza Schouler


Right, Louis Vuitton

For his Hawaii-inspired collection, menswear director Kim Jones juxtaposed monogrammed surfer tops with oversized Wall Street suiting.

Jacket, £1,950; shirt, £600; top, £440; trousers, £650, all by Louis Vuitton. ‘D.156.3’ armchair, €4,524, by Gio Ponti, for Molteni & C


Far right, Louis Vuitton

Meanwhile, head of womenswear Nicolas Ghesquière used leather to add a modern edge to the high necks and wide collars of regimental frock coats.

Coat, £7,500, by Louis Vuitton. Earrings, £225, by Fay Andrada

Left, Gucci

Part of a catwalk collection that blended gender, genre and decade, Alessandro Michele’s gently flaring suit has real retro flair.

Jacket, £1,310; shirt, £355; trousers, £435; shoes, £2,070, all by Gucci


Right, Loewe

The Madrid-based house celebrates contemporary craft in this reinterpretation of the trench coat, shredded into curling streams of fabric.

Coat, £4,890; boots, £725, both by Loewe. Earrings, €635, by Proenza Schouler. ‘Henri’ bench, €4,860, by India Mahdavi

Far left, Prada

The women’s collection sported polka dots, plastics and fake folds, emphasising Miuccia Prada’s fascination with punk, 1950s fashion and trompe-l’oeil. 

Coat, £1,810, by Prada. Earrings, €635, by Proenza Schouler


Left, Prada

For menswear, her triple-layered silhouettes looked to comic strips, retro spacesuits and colour-blocked bowling shirts.

Coat, £3,005; shirt (tan), £435; boiler suit (red), £1,030, all by Prada


Right, Ermenegildo Zegna

Alessandro Sartori matched sports-luxe silhouettes with organic shades, as seen in this combo of caramel overcoat and trousers with jogging bottom detail.

Coat, £2,860; trousers, £800, both by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture. Shoes, £340, by Lemaire. Scarf, vintage, from Kiliwatch Paris. ‘Henri’ table, €11,880, by India Mahdavi

Left, Proenza Schouler

With this corset-detail overcoat, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez gave outerwear silhouettes an eveningwear vibe.

Coat, €3,170, by Proenza Schouler. ‘D.156.3’ armchair, as before


Right, Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld took on the elements with plastic fantastic double-breasted coats, rain hats and gloves.

Coat, £11,740, by Chanel. Earrings, €635, by Proenza Schouler. Tights, £35, by Wolford. ‘Henri’ bench, as before

This month marks Wallpaper’s coming of age: our 21st anniversary. It’s also my tenth year as editor-in-chief, having switched from being creative director in April 2007. I must confess that my coming of age came a number of years earlier. Time flies.

One of the earliest projects I worked on in my new role was our inaugural October Guest Editors’ Issue. Now, many media outlets have given over their editorial reins to appropriate talents in order to bring a fresh perspective and generate some PR buzz. But because of Wallpaper’s multi-faceted editorial remit, we felt our spin on the concept should be equally all-encompassing – we would invite not just one, but up to three diverse creatives each year who would reflect our offering, but also push us to try new things.

So year one saw a purist industrial designer, Dieter Rams, an iconoclastic artist, Jeff Koons, and a much-more-than-a-fashion-designer fashion designer, Hedi Slimane. To rebalance the unintentional male bias for 2007, the next year saw Louise Bourgeois, Zaha Hadid and Rei Kawakubo bring art, architecture, and fashion girl power to our pages. Subsequent editions have seen Karl Lagerfeld, Philippe Starck, David Lynch, Robert Wilson, Kraftwerk, Christian Marclay, Lang Lang, Ole Scheeren, Taryn Simon, Laurie Simmons, Elmgreen & Dragset, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, William Wegman and Liz Diller have fun at our expense. That makes 21 in total, and therefore a convenient excuse to take a retrospective look, as well as request some updates for our latest issue. (Our thickest issue yet, the spine also happens to measure a serendipitous 21mm)

In addition to a 20-plus page section within the magazine, each of our Guest Editors was also invited to design a cover. Many called for unusual paper technologies – Hedi used specialist printing inks to simulate glitter, whereas Karl invited readers to strip the Dior Homme suit off his muse by means of a peelable layer. Starck constructed a transparent front cover using three layers of tracing paper. And Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter tacked on a pair of 3D specs, to go with his 3D cover portrait and portfolio of exclusive images tied to key Kraftwerk compositions.

If I had to pick one favourite project it would be Zaha’s. Her cover was a gatefold construction using multiple die-cuts, while inside she produced a 16-page die-cut sculpture, which was a take on her ‘Lotus’ room installation at that year’s Venice Biennale. ‘I want to put a big hole in the magazine’, she told us. We dutifully obliged.

Zaha was profiled by art critic Matthew Collings, who visited her at her London offices and provided a pleasant distraction from discussions about cement. Collings and ‘Big Z’, as he affectionately called her, hit it off immediately. ‘Her architecture is the greatest art of the moment,’ he said.

So it’s a huge pleasure for me and I think a fitting tribute to Zaha (who tragically passed away 18 months ago) that this anniversary issue’s cover was created by Zaha Hadid Architects and its principal and torchbearer, Patrik Schumacher.

Enjoy this special issue and raise a glass to Big Z.

Tony Chambers, Editor-in-Chief

As originally featured in the October 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*223)

Our thickest issue yet, the spine also happens to measure a serendipitous 21mm, in keeping with our celebration of 21 years, and 21 guest editors

INFORMATION

The October 2017 issue of Wallpaper* is out now. Subscribe here

‘Who’s the skinhead with the beard, tight suit and tattoos?’ A few years ago, a distinctive looking chap appeared on the front row of the fashion shows and caught the attention of other regular attendees. ‘He’s the buying director for MyTheresa,’ replied one sage. This particular tattooed gentleman was Justin O’Shea and he was definitely rocking a ‘Thing’. And he was getting noticed. O’Shea came from a humble background. Prior to his Thingness, young Justin grew up in a remote village in Queensland, Australia, working in mines with his dad and shifting boxes at supermarkets. Now he was an unmistakeable feature on the fashion circuit with an exploding social media profile boosted by numerous half naked selfies. Some dismissed him as a bit of a joke. Others said he was a smart guy who knew his fashion retail and also knew how to project himself as a brand – as a Thing.

Fast forward to July 2016 and O’Shea is no longer on the front row but on the catwalk, taking a John Galliano-style bow for his debut collection for Brioni. His appointment as creative director a few months earlier raised eyebrows as he had no formal training or experience as a designer. But it was a reflection of the changing responsibilities of such a role and of the industry and society more widely. It’s no longer just about being able to design or oversee a collection, it’s about communicating a style and a vision. It’s about being an ambassador who projects that vision. It’s about being noticed and talked about. It’s about having a Thing!

I wish I had a Thing. I realised some years ago that anybody who is really successful, who has really made it, has a Thing. I’m doing all right, but if I had a Thing I’d be big. I’d be someone. A Thing gets you noticed and remembered. ‘Do you know Tony Chambers, the editor of Wallpaper*?’ ‘I don’t think I do… oh, hang on, is he the xxx guy with the xxx? Yes, sure I know him.’ Being noticed and  remembered seems to make you better.

Think of Le Corbusier. Would he have been as successful without those black, thick-framed round spectacles? Richard Rogers has his brightly coloured collarless shirts, while Jean Nouvel keeps it monochrome. Peter Marino’s career took off after he adopted the Tom of Finland look. John Pawson keeps it minimal, of course – he has his NOthing.

Steve Jobs had his black polo-neck and 
dad jeans – the low-key thing. While Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli always wore his wristwatch over his shirt cuff. A bling thing!

Fashion designers are undoubtedly kings of the Thing. Alber Elbaz ‘owns’ the big bow tie and Rick Owens ‘owns’ elegant goth, while John Galliano has borrowed just about everything – currently settling on a sober Savile Row gent Thing. Karl Lagerfeld has about five Things. The greedy Kaiser has his powdered ponytail, his high-necked starched shirts, ever-present dark glasses and fingerless gloves, and his celebrity pussy, Choupette.

Although copper is his big Thing, designer Tom Dixon also had a pet Thing. Until her recent sad passing, Dixon would always be seen at cocktail events with his pet poodle, Molly. Even Molly had a Thing – she had to be carried as she was deaf, blind and 120 in dog years. Dixon also proudly sports artfully dishevelled curly hair, rides a vintage motorbike, and was apparently the first person in London to go sockless.

Ron Arad has his ever-present trademark hat, gallerist Rossana Orlandi her oversized eyewear, and Marcel Wanders has his 1970s playboy Thing. Karim Rashid, Jack Mama and Nina Tolstrup are the undisputed bright things. And the younger generation of designers are not to be outdone. Bethan Laura Wood does her Boy George Thing, while Philippe Malouin and the Formafantasma boys have made facial topiary their favoured chin Thing.

Photographers naturally understand the power of image. Terry Richardson has his retro porn star Thing and thumbs-up Thing. Juergen Teller is unvaryingly in the shortest of short, sporty, short shorts. And the late, great Bill Cunningham was never without his bright blue French worker’s jacket.

Successful magazine editors are inveterate thingsters. Graydon Carter’s sweeping patrician pelt, Anna Wintour’s bob, Suzy Menkes’ pompadour and Grace Coddington’s fiery red locks are their mane Things. The follicly challenged have to take another tack. British GQ’s Dylan Jones resorted to wearing comically large shirt collars. It may look preposterous, but at least it’s his Thing. He’s got a Thing. I haven’t. Even our Bespoke art director Aneel has developed a personal way of wrapping his shoelaces behind his ankle. ‘It’s my Thing,’ he answered proudly when quizzed by puzzled colleagues.

What could be my Thing? A monocle? Nah – too old fogey. A single bright, block-coloured outfit? Nah – too Rashid. A hat? A cane? A polka-dot bow tie? Deerstalker and pipe? Pants outside my trousers? Not right! I was about to give up when, lo and behold, I had a Thing bestowed upon me. Last year I contracted vertigo, an inner ear condition resulting in room-spinning, nausea, loss of balance and, subsequently, deafness in my right ear. All rather unpleasant and irritating, but at least I now have my Thing. ‘Tony Chambers? Oh, is he the wobbly guy with the ear trumpet who vomits involuntarily? I know him, he’s a legend!’

As originally featured in the October 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*211)

For its A/W 2017 show in February, Chanel rocket-launched into the future with an interstellar show at the Grand Palais, a venue transformed into the chicest of space stations. At the house’s Resort 2018 show this week, Lagerfeld took instead to a time machine, travelling to his idealised version of Ancient Greece, one defined by beauty and the highest echelons of culture, and bouclé-clad muses and goddesses.

From Antibes to St Tropez, Chanel has staged its Resort shows in a range of exquisite French locations. For its show last year, the house headed to Cuba, but for 2018, Lagerfeld erected his idealised vision of ancient culture – complete with Parthenon-worthy crumbling columns and a sunset view of the Aegean – at the Grand Palais’ Galerie Courbe in Paris, a city at the centre of a polarising general election.

An arrow brooch, pinned to a bouclé tunic, nodded to Eros the Greek god of love. Photography: Olivier Saillant

At the show, he entwined his mythical vision of ancient Greece with the classical interests of Coco Chanel. A first century headless statue of Venus still sits at her Rue Cambon apartment, and an iteration of it appeared on set, wrapped in cloth and a construction site of wooden scaffolding.

In 2011, Karl Lagerfeld shot the ‘Mythology’ Pirelli calendar, imagining a host of models as figures from ancient Greco-Roman legends. It's a theme he revisited for his latest Resort collection, as Lagerfeld took his vision of ancient Greece to Olympian heights, erecting an entire mythical city.

His Grecian goddesses donned draped and asymmetric sleeved gowns, column inspired sun-pleat trousers and tunics in Cycladic blue bouclé. Details came in knitwear featuring ancient urn motifs, golden laurel cuffs and sautoirs, column-heeled gladiator sandals and bejewelled corsets evoking Spartan breastplates. ‘Reality is of no interest to me,’ he explained. ‘I use what I like. My Greece is an idea.’ We like it.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Chanel website

Scene setting: Paris’ Grand Palais was once again the scene for Chanel’s wide-scale fashion show. And although a bit less over the top than years past (i.e. no live airport or supermarket recreations), Lagerfeld did fill the space with ‘The Chanel Data Center’ – a series of huge rows of twisted coloured wires, switches and LED light boxes that gave the impression of being inside a giant computer.

Mood board: The data system got clearly downloaded off the outsized props and onto the clothes, where Lagerfeld amped-up his usual pastel-tinged confections with the sizzling energy of high-kick colour. The best looks in this techno-tinged show took Chanel’s traditional tweed and reworked them in new boxy swing jackets or Caban coat silhouettes and pumped them up with a fluorescent red, orange or pink trim.

Finishing touches: Lagerfeld veered on the delicate edge of throwing on everything but the proverbial kitchen sink on his fully-loaded looks. The models were one half hip-hop posse girls with their tweed hats worn backwards or to the side, and their ropes of pearls and enormous medallion necklaces worn with rapper chains. The other half was a pure lady, wearing sparkling rhinestone pins, bracelets and the new low-blocked shoe boot.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Mood board: Karl Lagerfeld's muse this season at Fendi was a modern rococo girl who likes her hems hiked up high and her frou flouncing around her like a cascading pastel cloud. The mood was sugary and light even when Lagerfeld worked with gorgeous stiff floral jacquards on exquisite pouf circle skirts and sweeping dresses.

Best in show: Though we spied a couple of terrific fur intarsias with intricate floral scenes, our favorite part of this collection were the graphic stripes which jazzed up everything from pinch-waisted canvas blouse jackets to leather balloon pants and even crop-top knit sweaters.

Finishing touches: Those stripes reappeared on happy-looking knee socks worn with trainers or stretch calf length boots laced with grosgrain ribbon. Also new this season was the new Kan bag that comes crusted with a smattering of candy colored studs.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Loyd-Evans

It's an impossible endeavour (and a foolish one at that) to try and condense fashion designer/artist Karl Lagerfeld’s colossal career into a short and snappy introduction. In many ways, being such a powerhouse brand means that simply mentioning his name is sufficient.

It is precisely Lagerfield’s monolithic presence that makes his latest collaboration so intriguingly intimate and personal.

Serving as a testament to his aptitude for illustrating – the central driving force behind his fashion designs and striking works of art – Lagerfeld has teamed up with the premium pencil-maker Faber-Castell to create the 'Karlbox'.

Combining Lagerfeld’s sublime style with Faber-Castell’s timeless sophistication, the 'Karlbox' is a luxury kit comprised of 350 fine art tools for drawing and painting.

The extensive collection includes Albrecht Dürer and Polychromos colour pencils, highly pigmented Pitt Artist ink pens, Castell 9000 graphite pencils, watercolour brushes and Pitt crayons and pastels; complete with essential accessories such as a foldable water cup, an eraser and sharperners.

Demonstrating his eye for simple, refined design, Lagerfeld conceived the box’s all-black aesthetic. The wooden frame is reminiscent of a Chinese wedding cabinet, with the drawers housing shades that have been systematically sorted into primary and secondary colours. The drawers are also removable to fully personalise the working space.

Reflecting on his preferred mode of expression, Lagerfeld says: 'To me, drawing is like breathing and writing. These are things that almost relax me.' This admission suitably sums up the 'Karlbox', which feels like a love letter to the art of drawing itself. 

INFORMATION

The ’Karlbox’ is priced at £2,500 and is available exclusively at Faber-Castell stores, Karl Lagerfeld boutiques worldwide and at Harrods. For more information, visit the Faber-Castell website

Number 8 Calle Este, between 37th and Parque, in Havana, is a significant address in the history of the Cuban revolution. The whitewashed house used to belong to René Vallejo. His books still line the shelves. One is called Communist Guerrilla Warfare. Another is uncannily prophetic. It is named Ironies of History.

Vallejo was a doctor who fought alongside Fidel Castro in his rebel army and became the Cuban leader’s personal physician after the Communists overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. When the spoils of the revolution were divided up, Vallejo got one of the biggest houses in one of the most fashionable neighbourhoods of the capital, Nuevo Vedado.

Today, the four-storey structure plays a new, very different political role. After Vallejo died and his family upped sticks to – don’t tell Fidel – the US, the property was bought by Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters). They are Cuba’s most acclaimed artistic collective, founded in 1991 by Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés, Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez and Alexandre Arrechea, who has since left.

Their latest work, on display in the studio, is a series of billboards that satirise the political advertising Fidel’s Communist Party still uses to exhort Cubans to stay true to his revolutionary ideals. Instead of the usual messages – ‘Socialism or Death!’ Or ‘Commander, we are ready!’ – the slogans read: ‘Fidel has cocked it up’ and ‘The whole place is ruined’.

It’s a witty – and shockingly refreshing – comment on decades of Communist mismanagement that has left Cuba a banana republic that is so broke it cannot even grow bananas for its people. Ananda Morera, who runs the studio, explains: ‘People do 
not believe a lot of government advertising. Los Carpinteros use the real phrases of people in the street and make them into billboards.’

As well as capturing the Cuban creatives behind the country's new cultural revolution, New York photographer Daniel Shea shared his personal travel diary with Wallpaper*. See it in full here...

Much has been written about Cuba’s new economic revolution, kick-started by US president Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother and successor as Cuban leader. Between them, they have ended 57 years of hostility between their two countries, introduced free market reforms, and loosened the US economic embargo. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have set up private businesses and Western firms, notably Iberia, Virgin Atlantic, Starwood Hotels, Nestlé and Unilever, are investing.

Rather less has been written about the cultural revolution that has been sparked by free(er) speech and greater tolerance 
of artistic independence – developments that have accompanied the economic liberalisation. The world has long known about Cuban ballet and music, mainly in the lithe form of Carlos Acosta and the mournful tunes of the Buena Vista Social Club. Cuban artists have begun to make it into the occasional international show, notably Art Basel in Miami, where local Cuban-American collectors champion their work. But, for most observers, that has been about it. Stand by to make up for 57 sluggish years. Cubans are back in the culture business in the broadest sense, from art to media, through design and hospitality.

‘There’s an explosion of talent,’ says Ydalgo Martínez, as he greets me when I step out of the rickety lift that sways unnervingly up to his penthouse, which looks out over the Malecón, Havana’s corniche. Martínez has returned to Cuba to set up a design and property development firm, after working for Swiss fashion house Bally in Zurich. Cubans can now buy and sell homes freely and plucky overseas investors, who are still banned from owning bricks and mortar, are partnering with locals to purchase real estate.

Martínez buys up property and searches old homes, flea markets and antiques shops to do them up. He likes to mix styles that reflect Cuba’s history – colonial, midcentury modern, contemporary – to create a uniquely Cuban aesthetic. ‘The whole point of being in Cuba is to be Cuban. If you make a house, it’s important to make it with a sense of Cuba. We are in Havana, not London!’

Finding antiques is easy, he says. ‘People have amazing furniture from the 1940s and 1950s in their homes. I buy it, renovate it and put it in my houses.’ Murano glassware is easy to come by, too, thanks to the large number of Italians who lived in Havana before the revolution. If he needs anything modern, he imports it from Panama, where prices are low.

Raúl’s economic reforms have sparked a boom in artisanal companies, which helps Martínez. ‘For the first time, I can find private carpenters, upholsterers and fabric restorers. Cuban people make great furniture. Cuban skills and cash from overseas – they are a good team,’ he grins.

Glenda León is another Habanero who is back living and working freely for the first time in her home town. Noted for her experimentation with sound and music, issues of femininity and video art, she is one of a new generation of artists that is, at last, replacing the old iconography of Cuba – 1950s American cars and faded grandeur – with something fresh, modern and outward looking. She grew up in the politically stifled 1980s and Orwellian ‘Special Period’ that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Moscow’s financial support of its Caribbean satellite ended and the economy collapsed. It was a fallow, callow time for the arts. ‘In the 1980s, all the artists felt the need to express the problems of censorship. Some went to jail. Others left the country,’ she says. Including herself. She took up residencies in Paris, Cologne, Madrid and Montreal. But now she has opened a new studio in Vedado in a 1940s house that will be her permanent artistic home.

Like Los Carpinteros, she is taking advantage of the growing freedom of expression. In one of her most celebrated works, Summer Dream (Horizon is an Illusion), 2012, she persuaded the city authorities to fill the vast swimming pool at the base of the iconic FOSCA building, which had been dry for decades. Then she turned it into her take on the literal and figurative gulf between Havana and Miami. She created a huge street map of each city at either end of the pool and encouraged locals to swim its length, from one to the other – a controversial invitation in a country where so many still try to escape by sailing to Florida. Thousands took 
a dip, much to their and her delight. ‘The neighbours were so happy when they saw it, they wanted to make a cake for me,’ she grins.

Like Martínez, León is enjoying working with local artisans. Since she uses found materials, including audio tape and chewing gum, her pieces need to be box-framed, with a separation between the glass and  the  backboard. As recently as five years ago ‘no state carpenter or framing house would or could do it. Now I’ve found a couple of entrepreneur carpenters who do it better than anyone,’ she says.

In spite of the new freedoms local artists now enjoy, León is delighted that some Cuban idiosyncrasies remain in the arts scene. ‘Havana’s Biennial is now a Triennial because of budget restrictions, but it is still called the Biennial,’ she laughs.

It’s not just economic and social liberalisation that has sparked the culture boom. One of the most famously unchanged societies, set economically and culturally adrift before most of its population was born, has finally entered the internet age. Raúl has ditched rules that restricted the web to the offices and homes of senior officials of the Communist Party, trusted academics, artists, sports stars, approved journalists, doctors and hotels reserved for Westerners. The communications revolution has triggered 
an explosion in publishing and media.

Marita Pérez is the 26-year-old editor of On Cuba, a new Havana-based online magazine that is pushing the boundaries of free speech. Hot-desking in an office in a peeling tower block on the seafront, she tells me: ‘We are very polemical and we attract a lot of readers. We are pioneers. I can speak about everything now. I am young. I have nothing to lose. It’s a good time to be in Cuba and to practise journalism.’ That is the most remarkable – and uplifting – thing any Cuban has said to me since I first visited in 1993.

On her ageing desktop, Pérez shows me how respondents on sites like On Cuba and others are beginning to discuss the future of their country with unprecedented frankness. One columnist on a site called El Estornudo, Juan Orlando Pérez, describes Cuba as a ‘failed state… a prison whose people have no opportunities’. It could not be more different from the turgid state TV and the local rag, Granma, which is the dullest and most stiflingly politically correct newspaper outside North Korea. However, Pérez cautions that speech is still not wholly free. The internet remains censored.

Those who do not have access to the web can still get their fix of independent news and culture, thanks to something called the ‘Weekly Package’. These are memory sticks distributed among Cubans on the black market. They contain films, TV shows, video games, glossy magazines and books from inside and outside the country.

Westerners, notably Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, have moved quickly to take advantage of the new web access. He posted behind-the-scenes images from May’s Cruise collection show direct to  the world. Lagerfeld flew more than 700 people to Havana to watch the spectacle on a specially constructed catwalk on the Paseo del Prado. It was French Culture month in Havana and the famous promenade was rich in cross-cultural symbolism. The boulevard was designed in 1928 by French landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas and showcases eight bronze lion statues created jointly by his compatriot sculptor Jean Puiforcat and Cuban artist Juan Comas.

The fact that Chanel’s $1m show – planned by a Chanel team that had been based in Cuba for months – took place the same week that the first American cruise ship for four decades docked in Havana looked like a masterstroke of cultural synergy, although Chanel resisted the temptation to make any capital from the timing. ‘There is no political message, no aim other than being here and being able to present a collection inspired by this Cuban culture in Havana,’ Bruno Pavlovsky, the French label’s president of fashion, told Wallpaper*.

The local cool kids might not be able to afford Cruise-wear outfits worth $20,000 just yet – that’s 50 years’ wages for most Cubans – but they have enough pesos to pay the cover charge to get into the Fábrica del Arte Cubano (FAC), a fashionable new club-cum-gallery in Havana. Local musician and artist X Alfonso created it by converting a state-owned warehouse in Vedado into multiple gallery and performance spaces. Columnists in state-run newspapers have criticised him and the crowd of mobile phone-waving hipsters he attracts as ‘too capitalistic’. But Alfonso knows how to navigate the delicate local cultural politics. He has classified FAC as a ‘community project’, enabling him to occupy government property while pushing the boundaries of creative expression.

The two sectors that have grown the fastest in Cuba in recent years are hotels and restaurants – because that’s where the tourist dollars are. On one of those Cuban mornings that is so hot you swear your brain is a conch fritter, I meet Daymarys Camejo. She is converting her 1946 house near the beach in the Miramar district of Havana into the city’s first boutique hotel. She is working with her Italian business partner, Elisa Avalle, who used to be a Dolce & Gabbana model. ‘We both used to work in fashion in Milan and one day I said to Elisa: “Now is the time to invest in Cuba.” She trusted me to create a boutique hotel, which is our dream.’

When it opens this Christmas, Milano will have just six rooms, gardens with water mirrors and fire pits, a café and a boutique selling Cuban-designed and made clothes and accessories. The interior will blend the original aesthetic – the house was designed 
by modernist pioneer Max Borges – with minimalist chic. The target market is the growing class of Cuban YUMMIES (young upwardly mobile Marxists), and wealthy Westerners. ‘There is a new clientele in Cuba. Chanel’s visit shows that,’ Camejo says.

Down the road, in a converted factory, Roberto Fernandez is trying to do for food what Camejo is doing for hotels. He’s the kind of man who could only exist in Cuba. He was born in Ukraine, but, growing up, spent summers in Cuba. His father was a Cuban diplomat. After training as a chef in the US, he moved to Havana in 2011 to open a Russian restaurant called Nazdarovie, decorated with Soviet flags. It became wildly popular, especially with American visitors, who saw it as a way of tasting two exotic, once-forbidden fruits for the price of one – the old Soviet Union and Cuba.

Then he came across an old cooking-oil factory, which reminded him of New York. It was renovated and reopened, as El Cocinero, with a rooftop tapas bar and a fine dining restaurant downstairs on a terrace built around an avocado tree. Fernandez’s new menu encapsulates his uniquely modern interpretation of Cuban food. Think grouper fillet with papaya and coconut curry.

Cubans’ love of cooking, and restaurants themselves, almost died under the double cosh of communism and the US embargo that made daily life a struggle for decades. ‘There’s been little but rice and beans and omelettes here for years, so it’s no surprise that there’s still a lack of professionals,’ Fernandez says. ‘We need a culinary school of international standard. But we’re getting there.’

It’s a feeling shared by artist Adonis Ferro, whom I meet in his studio in Old Havana. He is in talks with curators at MoMA and Tate Modern about doing shows in New York and London. Although ‘art and artists are more visible now’, they are not taken seriously enough internationally, he frowns. ‘Western galleries see Cuban artists as emerging artists, even though many of them are already very well known here. They don’t think we make a difference in the art world. In the future, we will prove them wrong.’

The way things are going, it won’t take too long. 

As originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION

Photography: Daniel Shea

Milan may be Italy’s fashion capital proper and home to its seasonal catwalk shows, but Rome is the city of choice for one-of-a-kind, fabulous fashion blockbusters. Fendi proved that theory true last night in a multi-venue event spectacular that had models literally walking on the water of the sparkling Trevi Fountain and ended with moonlit dancing in Rome’s lush Villa Borghese.

The evening began at the Accademia di San Luca with a cocktail and the reveal of Fendi Roma, a new Assouline book that traces the Roman brand’s 90 year history in photos and illustrations, as well as its fruitful 50 year collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld.

Five-hundred guests then moved by foot to the Trevi Fountain, which after three years of laborious restoration funded by Fendi was finally unveiled as its former gleaming, glorious immaculate marble self. A plexiglass runway had been constructed just inches above the emerald green water which allowed the models — all clad in Karl Lagerfeld’s wizardly haute couture creations – to walk beguilingly across its surface.

The fashion was as lofty and beautiful as the location, Lagerfeld painting his meticulously made garments with intricate fur intarsias and embroideries that showed landscapes and romantic fairy-tale scenes. Incredulously all made from fur, the clothes were both light as air as well as ornately complicated, true mini masterpieces that showed the wonder of what Fendi’s artisans can actually do.

Later, guests were shuttled up to the Terrazza del Pincio, where 600 seats had been set under an open sky, a crescent of sculptural pine trees planted by Mussolini, miniature fountains recreated for the night in honour of the evening’s theme and a spectacular light installation designed by Paul Cocksedge at the entryway.

With a view over St Peter’s in the distance, Fendi CEO Pietro Beccari gave a proud speech, admitting that authorisation for the fountain’s use had occurred at just 1am the night before. His beaming French boss, LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, didn’t seem to mind. Kate Hudson, meanwhile, grabbed the mic and introduced performer Giorgio Moroder. The dancing began under the stars, and then moved to the Raspoutine nightclub.

The following morning, Fendi inaugurated 'Fendi Roma: the Artisans of Dreams', its first major exhibition at the Palazzo della Civilità Italiana. As Lagerfeld rightly put to his boss Beccari, after the mega fest: 'What on earth are we going to do in 10 years time?'

Leading guests to the evening’s dining table was an illuminated installation by Paul Cocksedge. Taking inspiration from his Gust of Wind artwork first displayed at the V&A in 2010, the London-based designer engraved sketches from the Fendi archives onto each handcrafted sheet. ’The warmth of the reflection worked really well; it not only lit up the path to the dining table, but illuminated everyone as they walked beneath,’ he told Wallpaper*. Photography: Antonio Camera; Film: Courtesy of Fendi

INFORMATION

Fendi Roma, $195, published by Assouline. For more information, visit the publisher’s website. Photography courtesy of Fendi

Critics who've forgone the Florentine trade show Pitti Immagine Uomo in recent seasons were clamouring for invitations for S/S 2017. Having recently been held back by schedule clashes following the ascent of London Collections: Men, the fair was back on form with its best line up in years.

The guest designers were two of menswear’s buzziest names; the new kid on the block, Russia-born Gosha Rubchinskiy, and the original innovator, Raf Simons. If one were searching for a uniting theme across proceedings it turned out to be the relationship between old and new.

That’s something that’s already central to Simons’ work. For his show, he looked back both at his own archive – filling Florence’s Stazione Leopolda with hundreds of vintage mannequins sporting highlights from his archive – and the photography of the late great Robert Mapplethorpe. The show, a collaboration with the Mapplethorpe Foundation, was a tribute to the artist’s life and work – his images of flowers, nudes and muses decorated the pieces, while models looked like mini Roberts with their black leather separates and caps.

If the clothes were a tribute to a great artist, the set up was more of a Simons retrospective – fitting given that just over 10 years ago, in 2005, the designer held his 10th anniversary show at the fair. It was hard not keep in mind the rumours that Simons will shortly be heading to Calvin Klein and consider this a watershed moment and turning point for his eponymous brand.

Rubchinskiy is also obsessed with old and new; with the history of his native country, the highlights of style culture and the aesthetics of those young boys around him (many of who walked in the show following a casting call on Instagram). He paid tribute to Italy’s sportswear heritage through collaborations with Italian brands such as Fila, Kappa and Sergio Tacchini. They’ll fly off the shelves. The designer also used the opportunity to debut a Pasolini-inspired film and new limited edition book of his photography, both titled The Day of My Death, hammering home his multifaceted approach to the creative process.

Also showing were Japanese label Visvim, who presented their first ever proper runway show. They used the opportunity to focus on spectacle rather than clothing, offering a show full of ‘Instagramable moments’ for the fashion pack – see the retro dancers, flags and vintage motorbikes. Fausto Puglisi has enough spectacle in his clothes themselves – he used the occasion to debut a menswear offer full of Anicent Greek inspired emblems, heavy prints, slogans and embellishments. He described it as ‘fearless’ – the wearer would definitely have guts.

Elsewhere, in keeping with the notion of past and present, Gucci unveiled fresh additions from the Tom Ford-era into their museum, while Karl Lagerfeld, a man who’s usually always looking forward, offered a retrospective of some of his recent fashion images in the imposing setting of the Palazzo Pitti.

INFORMATION
Pitti Immagine Uomo ran from 13 - 17 June 2016. For more information, visit the Pitti Immagine Uomo website

In the years that this page has recorded the recipes of the world’s leading artists and designers, this is the first time we’ve heard from a creative polymath whose wide range of endeavours actually includes a book of recipes. In 2005, art-fashion colossus Karl Lagerfeld published The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, which was notable for including quail and wine and for the honesty of its author, who admitted he lost weight to look good in clothes designed by Hedi Slimane. It was a bestseller in France, where they also like to look good in clothes. For his favourite recipe of stuffed peppers, Lagerfeld follows the strictures of his diet book and the focus is on lean protein and plenty of vegetables. And if you really want to do things the Lagerfeld way, have your personal chef prepare the dish for you.

Ingredients
4 carrots
½ celery
4 courgettes
20 button mushrooms
olive oil
2 slices sandwich bread
1 large chicken breast
2 slices Parma ham, finely cut
1 egg, beaten
1 clove garlic
2 large tomatoes, diced
2 tbs light cream
small peppers
small tomatoes

Method
Chop the carrots, celery, courgettes and mushrooms into a brunoise (very small cubes of about 2mm). Fry the vegetables in a little olive oil. Add salt and pepper.

In a blender, turn the bread into breadcrumbs, then grind the chicken breast and add to the vegetables with the Parma ham and the beaten egg.

Fry the garlic and diced tomatoes in olive oil, then add the cream.

Mix all the ingredients together and stuff the peppers and tomatoes. Bake for 30 minutes at 180°C.

As originally featured in the March 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*204)

The diverse photographic oeuvre of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is on show at the Pinacothèque de Paris. As the title suggests, the works offer a comprehensive overview of the iconic 82-year old’s world from portraits and predictably glamorous fashion shoots featuring Anna Ewers and Jessica Stam, to the first showing of a nude series of French male model Baptiste Giabiconi, followed by a beguiling collection of architectural and landscape images. 

At the core are two enormous installations, Daphnis and Chloe and The Journey of Odysseus, the latter an arresting black-and-white fresco-style installation of 15 glass panels portraying Ulysses' journey as imagined by Lagerfeld. These should be the exhibition's showstoppers but instead it is the more understated abstracted images - a soft-grey silkscreen showing part of the Eiffel Tower, for instance, or a sensuous curve of a wall on the Tadao Ando-designed Vitra House, that steal the limelight with their unaffected style.

Initially the eclectic range of images, including a life-size Lagerfeld floating in a surreal luminous blue glow, appears disjointed but according to long term collaborator and publisher Gerhard Steidl - who co-curated the show along with Chanel Fashion director of image, Eric Pfunder - this simply reflects the extraordinary wide range of things that interest the designer.

'Karl's passion for photography is unlimited.  He is known for his fashion photography but in his private time walks through the streets or countryside constantly scanning for interesting things.’

It was Pfunder who is credited with starting Lagerfeld's photographic career when in 1987 he challenged the designer to provide his own photographs for a press kit. A lack of professional training in photography is unlikely to have deterred Lagerfeld from then continuing to shoot his own advertising campaigns - he had no formal training in fashion, starting his career at the couture house Jean Patou and then designing for Chloe before going on to revitalise Chanel.

Fashion may have preceded photography for the designer but what this exhibition highlights is how he continues to employ his inquisitive mind to discover beauty whether it is a couture dress or tree. Interestingly, none of the monochromatic architectural and landscape images have been 'retouched' in stark contrast to the colour-saturated glossy fashion photographs.

‘They are not different works,’ explains Steidl. ‘This is Karl Lagerfeld. You see what he sees.’

INFORMATION
’Karl Lagerfeld, A Visual Journey’ runs until 20 March, 2016

ADDRESS

Pinacothèque de Paris
8 rue Vignon, 75009 Paris

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Dior: For A/W 2015-16, Raf Simons invited us into Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights reimagined by Bureau Betak. Referencing the Adam and Eve tale of innocence and temptation, Simons' fashion vision was executed through the gaze of the Flemish and French masters of both art and couture craft, and all housed within a geometrically paned greenhouse-cum-church-cum nightclub that was painted with pointillist dots

Dior: Juxtaposing themes of depth and light, richly draped Vermeer-esque cape coats and billowing, smock-like embroidered sheaths looked like they'd walked off an Old Master's canvas. This flowing chiffon silhouette was later chopped into hand painted baby doll dresses jewelled with 'cannage' gilets, offering a modern spin on archaic chain mail.

Dior: Under the illustrated panes, red carpet dressing took a similarly charmed approach, as side-less gowns - secured to the body with gilt gold chains - appeared as if an offering to king or master. 'I was intrigued by the idea of the forbidden fruit, and what that meant now,' Simons explained in his show notes, 'The idea of purity and innocence versus luxury and decadence and how that is encapsulated by the idea of Dior's garden - no longer a flower garden but a sexual one.' 

Fendi: Set against the imposing backdrop of one of Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico's most famous works, Karl Lagerfeld presented his first Haute Fourrure collection for the Roman furrier, courting quiet controversy at the Theatre des Champs-Élysées and marking the designer's 50th year at the house. The Art Deco building lent a particularly theatrical stage upon which to flex Fendi's masterful fur pedigree; the house even provided Fendi-issued opera glasses to offer a more intimate viewing of the collection's finer details (fur corsages included).

Fendi: With both the Arnault and Fendi families watching from the venue's boxes, sable, chinchilla, lynx and mink pelts were finessed into myriad graphic patterns and sumptuous swirling combinations. Each exit, some festooned with feathers, others spliced with transparent panels, was a testament to the furrier's unparalleled expertise and warranted arrival on the couture calendar.

Chanel: Karl Lagerfeld transported his A/W Chanel couture show to a private casino within the Grand Palais, complete with a live high-rollers blackjack mise en scène (decorated with celebrity friends of the house), roulette tables and even Chanel branded slot machines. As chips changed hands, Lagerfeld's 'neo tomboys', parading about the card tables in 3D printed skirt suits, debuted the house's new high-tech 'selective laser sintering' technique, utilised in unison with Chanel's petites mains to fashion the collection.

Chanel: Also circumnavigating tradition was Lagerfeld's 2015 couture bride, resplendent in an off-white silk tuxedo and finished with a simple tulle veil, which spoke more of a Vegas-style elopement than the current trend for gala weddings that are littering our Instagram feeds

Viktor & Rolf: With their models donning gilt framed canvases, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren reprised their very first 1998 haute couture show's Living Art concept, taking to the stage for a performance piece that saw the designers undressing and hanging their works live within the Palais de Tokyo.

Viktor & Rolf: Titled Wearable Art, the morphing collection, grounded by blue smocks, blurred the baroque with action painting techniques, resulting in a fittingly unhinged presentation that was surreal to behold. Just as art imitates life, a piece from the collection is soon to be hung within long-standing Viktor & Rolf collector Han Nefkens' Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Schiaparelli: New creative director Bertrand Guyon (an alumnus of Valentino and Givenchy) looked to Elsa Schiaparelli's early years for his debut collection, which saw its founder's iconic motifs liberally lavished throughout. Schiaparelli's ES initials were monogrammed onto a frilled ivory blouse, just as her preferred iris bloom was patchworked into hyper-hued fur coats. The founder's Dali telephone powder compact was furthermore reinvented as a clutch bag

Schiaparelli: Jewelled brocade made up much of the show's strong tailoring offering, while Elsa Schiaparelli's riding culottes were re-cut in fringed plaid as Guyon's eveningwear ranged from a jewel strapped black plunging velvet column to a suitably 'shocking' pink diaphanous gown that will no doubt be swiftly snapped up for future red carpets.

Giambattista Valli: The Roman designer only conceives dresses that make an entrance, from his ruffled tulle gowns with two-metre-plus trains (this season in electric orange) to his baby doll minis patchworked with jewelled, laser-cut lace. This season was no different.

Giambattista Valli: That said, it was A/W's quieter tunic and Capri pant looks - one fringed in feathers from the knee, others entirely jewelled - that offered an intriguing break from the season's hyper sweetened, fairytale flou, which saw experimentations with volume via puffball hems and Regency-era trailing gowns. 

Jean Paul Gaultier: The French designer tripped back to his marinière striped signature and the sandy shores of Brittany for A/W - no doubt in response to the retrospective exhibition that has finally arrived back in Paris after a four year world tour. Gold thread embroidery emboldened velvet admiral's jackets, as Breton striped hosiery and knitwear anchored the season's particularly theatrical collection, that concluded with a bagpipe salute.

Dice Kayek: Turkish designer Ece Ege presented a 1970s spin on tuxedo dressing - from her show's opening Le Smoking tail coat to a backless bib top and bow-tie mini skirt - before rainbow hued crystals covered a disco's worth of mini crini dresses, which epitomised the collection's hedonistic theme.

Dice Kayek: Winter's nocturnal rhapsody recalled scenes from Paris' late night Warholian den Le Palace, as Ege revived the eras stroboscopic spirit - all the way down to the models' 1970s issue platforms and a show backdrop that saw a giant mirror ball hanging from the ceiling of Les Arts Décoratifs.

Elie Saab: Nirvana's Come As You Are is as far from an obvious choice for a couture show soundtrack as it gets, especially for a designer overwhelmingly known for high voltage glamour and femininity. That said, Cobain's strained lyrics made for a satisfying contrast to Saab's regal, gold dipped A/W collection, that saw his models crowned with molten Byzantium headpieces as their waists were nipped into glittering goddess dresses. The show was actually a personal nod to the gold wedding dress that Saab had himself designed for his wife Claudine, 25 years ago to the day, which made for a poetic quarter-century love letter.

Armani Privé: This season, Mr Armani was thinking pink - Schiaparelli's shocking pink, even - with a collection that, in addition to colour, was dominated by a exploration of texture; tinsel-like filaments electrified cocktail dresses, while bugle beaded fringes finished bustiers, gowns and tassel belts, reinforcing the rebellious theme.

Ulyana Sergeenko: The Russian designer loves to weave a story from her homeland into her collections' narrative and this season that meant a tale of post-Revolution Soviet communal living, which saw multiple families sharing rooms within the once-grand subdivided apartments of Saint Petersburg. The lawn of her A/W presentation space, Paris' Mona Bismarck American Center, was decorated to loosely reflect this eclectic union of mismatched tastes and levels of society.

Ulyana Sergeenko: Here, the designer's A/W muse found herself awake and listless in the early hours of New Years Day 1937 - the only celebratory day in the Communist calendar that didn't mark a victory or the glory of work. In general, there is something innately nostalgic in Sergeenko's designs, and this collection built upon boudoir-inspired, albeit slightly unhinged, tea dresses and busty sheaths, accompanied by three-quarter-length sleeved furs that could of come from a great aunt's closet. Best in show was a Yelets bobbin lace dress (named after the Russian town where it was made) that took a village of local artisans four months to fashion.

Atelier Versace: This season, Donatella Versace interlaced the house's insatiable air of sexuality with a more romantic, free spirited approach. The designer played with volume and deconstruction, primarily patchworking jewelled lace and hand frayed chiffon sheaths held together with vines of beaded flowers or metal couture 'staples'. From the girls' floral headpieces to their pleated and teased apart gowns, there was an unravelled 'festival' freedom felt throughout. But being a Versace show, there was also an abundance of chain and crystal mesh bustier dresses mingling with her encrusted fil coupé sheaths, floating from their velvet boned corsets and bell sleeves.

Nicolas Ouchenir is a self-taught calligrapher whose talent surfaced while he was director of a contemporary art gallery in Paris. Obsessive to detail, he hand-addressed exhibition invitations in typefaces he created based on artists’ signatures. It made a big difference. ‘Receiving an invitation with your name beautifully handwritten on the envelope makes you feel desired,’ he explains.

Ouchenir began receiving commissions from Carine Roitfeld and Karl Largerfeld to design Fashion Week invitations, and private commissions to handwrite love letters for Russian and Middle Eastern clients.

An insatiable bookworm, Ouchenir was reading Michel Tournier when he received a call from his friend, Thomas Erber, curator of the Cabinet de Curiosités. ‘I’d just that moment read Tournier's phrase, “danser fou de désir en silence, les corps enlacés”, that evoked Thomas to me.’ Erber was ringing to request a portrait, which he needed immediately. Ouchenir took Tournier’s words and wove them into an intricate calligraphic portrait. It became the first of a series of 100 intimate portraits in cipher drawn from literary quotes researched and selected by the artist.

Twenty of these are on show in the Colette concept store in Paris. Twenty more portraits will be appearing as a road show in London, New York, Los Angeles and in an as yet unannounced destination in Africa.

ADDRESS

Colette
213 rue Saint-Honoré
75001 Paris

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The sleepy town of Hyères in the South of France underwent a high fashion take over this past weekend for the 30th edition of its namesake style and image fair.

With Karl Lagerfeld charged as the event's creative director and a fashion and photography jury helmed by Chanel's creative studio director Virginie Viard, and image director Eric Pfrunder, the somewhat bohemian affair which champions new creative talent, became a charged design think-tank. 'It's very sympathetic,' explains architect, designer and fashion juror India Mahdavi who first visited the event two years ago when she was asked to curate an exhibition space, 'There's a family of people who come back every year.'

'I wanted to create a platform that would foster good relations between professionals and young designers,' explains founder Jean-Pierre Blanc, adding that this year's festival received 400 fashion and 770 photography applications, which were whittled down to 10 by the organisers and each jury at various stages. And while Chanel may have set the tone for this year's high profile celebration, the luxury house did not interfere with the cult festival's indie charm, naïveté or authenticity.

In fact, Lagerfeld's ties to the event relate directly to the festival's spiritual and physical heart - Villa Noailles. In 1995, the photographer captured the raw beauty of the then dilapidated building, which was designed by Rob Mallet-Stevens in 1923 and inspired by the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Originally owned by Viscount Charles de Noailles and his wife Marie-Laure, the couple were serious supporters of the creative disciplines, inviting Man Ray to shoot his 1929 film 'Les Mystères du Château de Dé' on site, while also being patrons of Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau.

'When the building was finished,' continues Blanc of its 1997 restoration, 'we felt that we had lost something with its new perfection after so many years in the destroyed building.'

This year the villa and its grounds (Noailles was president of the French Horticultural Society) hosts a wide range of activities from Lagerfeld's 'Three Worlds' exhibition that includes his 1995 portfolio of the villa, to works by French artist Arnold Goron who has collaborated with Isabel Marant on her shop windows for many years. Also on the programme: a roundtable discussion on Instagram, a talk by designer Simon Porte Jacquemus, an exhibition of last year's photography winner Lorenzo Vitturi, and this year's 10 photography finalists' work.

'The criteria was to give the award to the person who was doing something new, seeing into the future,' explains publisher Gerhard Steidl who sat on the photography jury. 'The idea here at Hyères is to give some food, physically with award money, to one of these young people to build up the artistic sculpture as I see it - to build a lifetime's creative model.'

Tellingly, this year's finalists, nominated by a jury that also included Anne Cartier-Bresson, André Saraiva and Sølve Sundsbø, were all art photographers. Netherlandic winner Sjoerd Knibbeler took home the euro 15,000 prize for his multi-medium proposal that included a book and film and explored the conceptual notion of shapes that cannot be seen - like the wind.

Also of interest was the realism of Brit Polly Tootal's urban English landscapes of 'in-between' spaces, and Evangelia Kranioti who was awarded a 'special prize' from the jury for her nine-year, cinematographic series that told tales of her native Greece and the solitude of its sailors.

Pfrunder summed up the quality of talent on offer: 'Gerhard Steidl is going to make a book with somebody, Jean-Luc Monterosso is making an exhibition… everybody will do something on the side, because it was difficult to say that one is a winner.'

The fashion award, helmed by a jury that included Carine Roitfeld, HRH The Princess of Hanover, designer Anthony Vaccarello and producer Caroline de Maigret, was given to 28-year-old German designer Annelie Schubert. Schubert's tactile, sculptural shapes boldly combined traditional and techno fabrics like tweed and Neoprene. And in addition to the prize money she will also receive tutelage within Chanel's Métiers d'Art.

Dutch designer Wieke Sinnige got the fashion jury's 'special award', while Anna Bornhold won the Chloé Prize for her ombré jumpsuit that was entirely handcrafted. Also of note: menswear designer Sophie Harand's gender neutrality theme, which was on trend with the A/W 2015 runways. 'What I could see with these kids is that it's a lot about texture,' continues Mahdavi. 'In my discipline I really feel that textures are becoming more important as a reaction to this world that we are living in that's so digital. Everything that has to do with your senses is exaggerated. Because of these screens we can work from anywhere in the world and so spaces are becoming hybrid. This hybrid thing is becoming more and more important - seasons are hybrid, even genders are becoming hybrid - we could see it in the collections.'

Not only did the event showcase a new breed of talent, it also continued to lure a pilgrimage of creatives from around the world, enticed by its casual interactions with both the jury members and finalists. 'I spent these last few days chasing the people I was most interested in,' says French-American photographer David Luraschi. 'The festival is an opportunity for many to gather in a more relaxed environment than a metropolis.'

Luraschi has turned his back on fashion's street style epidemic quite literally… or rather his subjects have on him: 'I enjoy collecting people and their silhouettes,' he explains of his photographs of subjects walking away. 'This is something I practice in Paris where I live. Photographing environments and architecture there is something that has been done a hundred times and hundred years ago by the likes of Eugène Atget. I've always been interested in characters and realised that they are an element, which remains original and inexhaustible.'

However, without doubt, the festival's main event was Karl Lagerfeld's masterclass that touched on everything from his 300,000 strong book collection to his favourite architects of today: 'Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid,' began the polymath, 'there is nothing more opposite. I wanted to built a house by Tadao Ando and I never got it done because they always thought it looked too much like a temple of a sect. Three times I bought locations and three times they turned it down. My only frustration in life is that I could not build a modern building in France.' Adding, 'It is easier to live in a geometric compilation, it's where my brain works better.'

On the subject of his design process he continues: 'I don't want to be pretentious, but every decision is a refusal. I see something… and electric flash…  and then I'm lucky that I can put it on paper and people can immediately see it and make the dress without asking too many questions. I don't change my mind because before I present an idea I throw 20 into the garbage bin.'

His advice to the festival's young designers having won a similar Woolmark contest in 1954 that spearheaded his own career: 'I believe only in careers built on no rules.'  Adding, 'I hate that idea of "young designers". You are a good or bad designer.' Although he says that they better be able to draw: 'When people present me their books with computer sketches I throw them in their face. I don't even look at them. It all looks the same.'

The fashion designer picked up photography in 'nineteen hundred and eighty seven' as he likes to term years, when 'Eric tried three times, and each time I said "arrgh" and so we rented a camera and I started. Our first picture was Ines de la Fressange. Six months later I was doing editorial. I was always very interested in photography. I collected it but never thought that I could do it.'

And on why photography is important to him he explains (after a swig of Diet Coke), 'It's the only thing that reflects what we did.' Adding, 'My fortune teller told me something very strange, "for you, it really starts when it stops for the others".' And with that the icon is off to the next event socialising into the wee hours with the festival's creatives both 'young' and old.

ADDRESS

Villa Noailles
Montée Noailles
83400 Hyères

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

15,000

Tons of steel used to create Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation, the new site for the French brand’s fashion shows

6

Artworks that Miley Cyrus glue-gunned together from toys and stage debris for her exhibition 'Dirty Hippie' with V Magazine

54

Storeys that showgoers ascended for Jason Wu’s fashion show for Hugo Boss at 4 World Trade Center

75

Number of arches on Fendi’s runway, designed to recreate Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana

32

Models’ heads shrink-wrapped into flat plastic helmets at Junya Watanabe

1,000

Different poses by model Coco Rocha in a leotard in her book Study of Pose, shot by Steven Sebring with a 360-degree photography rig

35

Golf ball-sized rivets on a single Marc Jacobs woman’s jacket

34

Models with black patent face braces at Alexander McQueen

5

Outfits that may, or may not, have been put through a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style blood bath at Comme des Garçons

1

Life-sized Barbie who roller-skated down the Moschino runway

15

Models in stripes and oversized wigs that danced in white stilettos and socks for Jean Paul Gaultier’s farewell to ready-to-wear fashion

6

Claws forming the soles of Rick Owens’ cave girl/Grecian platform sandals

42

Bicycle wheels spinning on the Antonio Marras runway

6

White sails billowing on the Lacoste runway

32

Fashion editors who left New York Fashion Week early to fly to Cupertino for the Apple Watch presentation

6

Women’s hats in the form of a man’s suit at the Thom Browne show

130

Length in metres of Chanel’s life-like street, created inside Paris’ Grand Palais, featuring seven-storey buildings, pavements, potholes and protesting models

10,000

Size in square feet of the Pepto-Bismol pink house on the runway at the Marc Jacobs show

16,000

Precious gems that encrusted the $2m ‘Fantasy’ bras worn at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show

5

Cement skateboard ramps on the runway at Kenzo

7

Dancers from British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance Company who sizzled on Gareth Pugh’s runway

2

Years that Farida Khelfa trailed and filmed Christian Louboutin for her first documentary

150,000

Number of copies of The Karl Daily, Karl Lagerfeld’s satirical newspaper distributed during Paris Fashion Week

9.7

Millions of page impressions generated by 89 fashion bloggers during Calvin Klein’s show - a fashion week record

300

Stuffed elephants waiting on the guests’ seats at Oscar de la Renta’s show

15

Age in months of North West, who secured her own gold chair with calligraphed nameplace at the Givenchy women’s show. She wore a sheer black lace top for the occasion

28,000

Fresh flowers for sale at Marni’s pop-up market at Milan’s Rotonda della Besana

130,000

Flowers planted on Tommy Hilfiger’s sprawling golf course-cum-music carnival runway

6

Giant red cherries inscribed with skulls loitering at Jun Takahashi’s Undercover show

5

Enormous purple sand dunes constructed for the Prada show

4

Weeks it took Argentine artist Alexandra Kehayoglou to create Dries Van Noten’s mossy runway

4

Cost in euros of a box of limited-edition Kellogg’s Fashion Flakes designed by Anya Hindmarch

14

Number of oversized metal rings piercing the eyebrows of each model at Rodarte

7

Number of former supermodels on stage to tell stories for Olivier Saillard’s performance art piece ‘Models Never Talk’ during New York Fashion Week

10

Length in minutes of Polo Ralph Lauren’s 3D movie, projected on a 60ft-tall wall of water in New York’s Central Park

30

Length in minutes of a one-act fashion play written by Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill for the Opening Ceremony show

20

Number of gold safety pins holding together one of Anthony Vaccarello’s dresses for Versus

30

Types of brocade replicated by Prada from centuries-old textiles for its women’s collection

12

Cream-filled, penis-shaped cookies served on each tray before the Acne show

If we build it, they will come... It's a common business supposition that quite nicely applies to Dubai: the Middle Eastern city that rose out of the desert a mere 30 years ago, and currently boasts the world's tallest building and busiest airport. It's a grandstanding manifesto that also sits rather well with Chanel's latest resort export, which cruised into the UAE this week for a show appropriately themed from 'the Orient to the Occident'.

While previous seasons have seen creative director Karl Lagerfeld transport the world's fashion coterie to his preferred summer vacation spot of Saint Tropez, seaside Antibes, or a sub-tropical fling in Singapore, come Cruise 2014-2015 the designer went a little further than taking over a local landmark. He inhabited an island, or The Island, to be more specific, offering a billionaire's view back over Dubai's sparkling, skyscraper-filled skyline.

For one night only, Chanel transplanted running water, electricity, shelter, palm trees and some 300 of the world's international fashion press to a reclaimed plot of sand, surrounded by turquoise water. The result was part engineering feat, part show spectacular. Not that Lagerfeld has ever been short of a grand idea (who can forget Edinburgh's Linlithgow Palace or the giant iceberg trucked in from Sweden?), but this one was 'settled' in a mere six weeks.

Arriving in traditional wooden boats from the mainland, guests were first ushered through a path of palm trees and flickering torches to pillow-laden Bedouin tents, complete with Hookah pipes. The inevitable search for air-con soon led them to the main show pavilion, decorated inside and out with traditional Mashrabiya carved wooden panels, which - on closer inspection - fittingly etched out the brand's iconic double C logo. The majlis-style lounge space offered guests the comfort of either a springy cushion or sunken seat, as suspended lantern lights illuminated them from above.

On the salon-style catwalk, this excursion was a similarly contemporary affair, showcasing Lagerfeld's vision for a modern city and Chanel's global nomads, rather than a folklorique history lesson. He kept the mood light - both through breezy fabrications and a little Lagerfeld wit (A/W 2014's chain shopping basket was turned into a quilted jerrican for Cruise), as the show's big name models sported wild manes crowned with crescent moons.

Proportionally speaking, the collection was dominated by all matter of tunic tops, blousing harem pants and 12th century tile prints that were woven into transparent trousers or printed onto billowing dresses. Elegant Aladdin slippers and an exotic floral print that bloomed under architecturally latticed dresses completed the Arabian Nights dream sequence.

And for the finale? The show closed with a guest appearance by Hudson Kroenig, the toddler of Lagerfeld's main muse Brad Kroenig, who's fast becoming a Chanel catwalk regular. This was after all a family affair, with many of Chanel's impeccably dressed clientele attending with multiple relatives from their extended families. European designer trunk shows are common practice in the Middle East, however they are usually presented behind closed doors, so this show presented a very different message to the Sheiks and Sheikas who filled Chanel's temporary residence.

Indeed, leaving a lasting impression on a city that grows multiple floors in a single day is a tough task, but Chanel certainly came and conquered – even if all that remains of its grandiose desert mirage is now a pristine mound of sand.

Don't be fooled by the historic Flemish-style terracotta and brick façade of Fendi's New Bond street maison. Past the storefront's classical pillars, the brand's Roman roots have been laid down in Travertine (Italy's 'monument' material of choice), together with plenty of bronze accents and stone 'paving', to round out the palazzo feel. The three-storey concept has been masterminded by the French-born, Japan-based Gwenaël Nicolas, using a chromatic architectural style, which centres around a spiral staircase and waterfall chandelier, designed by the Fendi studio and composed of 5,600 pieces of Murano glass.

'A Million Times 72', a digital 'clock' by Humans Since 1982 (featured in our May issue, W*182), greets patrons on the ground floor, and from there the art focus extends in all directions with a range of furnishings designed by the Campana brothers, French architect Thierry Lemaire, artist Massimiliano Locatelli and designer Marc Newson. Many of these pieces in fact feature in either Nicolas or Silvia Fendi's own homes.

The flagship also debuts the brand's new gentleman's apartment concept that houses Fendi's entire menswear collection for the first time. Other unique features include a dedicated fur salon, VIP dressing room, made-to-order bag service, and Baguette Wall installation, composed of some 30,000 bronze spikes. Elsewhere on the walls, photographs of Roman fountains, taken by creative director Karl Lagerfeld for the 'Glory of Water' project, complete the grandiose residence.  

ADDRESS

Fendi
141 New Bond Street
London
UK 

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Aside from the Saint Tropez pop-up, it is rather unusual for Chanel to incorporate a garden into its retail space. But then this is Australia, and a rooftop event space was central to the brief presented to acclaimed architect Peter Marino. The stucco, arched exterior on Flinders Lane, the city’s most renowned shopping laneway, emulates an elegant Parisian maison, Marino having enlarged the windows and added balconettes to the first and second storeys. He also added an additional floor, along with the rooftop garden, and a central atrium staircase that links the departments.

Inside, the 620 sq m boutique transplants Karl Lagerfeld’s Parisian savoir faire - from ready-to-wear to handbags, shoes, fine jewellery, timepieces and fragrance - right into the heart of Melbourne. Following a traditional Chanel palette of black, white, gold and beige, the salons maintain a residential feel, alluding to the luxuriously layered interior of Coco Chanel’s rue Cambon apartment with tweed sofas and a 19th-century antique fireplace. Specially commissioned artworks include ‘Karlangu’ by Indigenous artist Dorothy Napangardi, ‘Gather’ by Liza Lou and ‘Pearls’ by Peter Dayton.

ADDRESS

Chanel
140 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, Victoria 8009 Australia

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It is said that the ruins of the Scottish 15th-century Linlithgow Palace, the royal abode to the Stewarts and birthplace of one of history's most colourful (if unfortunate) characters - Mary Queen of Scots - is haunted by the eerie apparition of her mother, Mary of Guise. That ghostly gloom has now be eclipsed; last night fashion royalty was given its place in the castle's history as King Karl Lagerfeld commandeered the castle, creating a fairytale setting for Chanel's annual Metiers d'Art fashion show.

The event was arguably the most impressive, opulent and audacious of Chanel productions to date. Said Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Tony Chambers: 'Karl illustrated once again how a luxury brand should be communicated in the 21st Century: craftsmanship and innovation, heritage and modernity, good taste mixed with a healthy dose of ostentation. Money well spent on a spectacle that will leave an imprint for years to come.'

A platform for Lagerfeld's most prodigious haute-couture fantasies, the now legendary Métiers d'Art (a French term coined to encompass the Arts and Crafts) is Chanel's annual pre-fall range. Since 2002, Lagerfeld has used it as an arena to flex the creative muscles of the house's specialist craftspeople - artisans who create the feathers, shoes, hats and the like for Chanel's haute-couture collections.

Given the location, last night's fantasy was unapologetically Scottish. Sitting around an atmospheric medieval catwalk circling baskets of bonfires within the roofless ruins of Linlithgow, guests (whose seats were supplied with Chanel blankets to shield the chill, no less) were whisked away on a highland fling that saw tweeds and tartan, Fair Isle knitwear, sporran-inspired bags and argyle tights steering a collection that was also in part dedicated to Mary Stuart herself - one couldn't miss the oversized feather ruffs and the regal white gowns.

Chanel may be a modern house, but its very foundations are built on old-world artistry. At a time when fashion is being outsourced and mass-produced, the brand has cleverly ensured the preservation of the ancestral skills its artisans bring to the table with Paraffection, an umbrella set up in 1997, which now houses the likes of costume jeweller Desrues, feather maker Lemarié, embroiderers Maison Lesage and Atelier Montex, shoemaker Massaro, milliner Maison Michel, goldsmith Goossens, glovemaker Causse and floral finery maker Guillet.

Over the past ten years, the Metiers d'Art shows have been staged in Paris' Palais Royal, London's Phillips de Pury, and against a backdrop of Shanghai's skyscrapers on the Bund. Lagerfeld's decision to bring Metiers d'Art to Scotland is a timely one. Chanel recently added Barrie knitwear to its Paraffection family in October. The Hawick-based cashmere business has been an integral part of Chanel's knitwear output, producing the yarns for the likes of its iconic two-tone cardigans. The acquisition of the Scottish artisan house, which secures the jobs of the 176 employees, was unrelated to Lagerfeld's decision to show in Edinburgh this year, but it certainly bolsters the Scottish flavour of the collection.

Take a tour round Barrie Knitwear and see the process of Chanel's knitwear unfold

This season's collection, 'Paris-Edimbourg', was of course no coincidence; Lagerfeld has always made it his point to present this annual showcase in a country that is part of, or will to leave its mark on, the history of the brand. Gabrielle Chanel's long-standing relationship with the Duke of Westminster, who introduced her to Scotland through various trips to estates around the Highlands, heavily influenced the brand's famous tweeds and knits. It was only a matter of time before the spotlight shone on Chanel's introduction of the Scottish strand to the brand's DNA in the second half of the 1920s, and last night's affair was a fitting reminder.

Watch the full show here

As the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ (5 May – 16 July 2023) sees the fashion world celebrate the late designer’s oeuvre, we revisit a Wallpaper* collaboration that called on another side of his creativity. In 2012, Paper Passion perfume – a joint endeavour between perfumer Geza Schoen, publisher Steidl, Karl Lagerfeld and Wallpaper* – bottled a scent dear to book lovers.

Read more in our article from the time, first published in July 2012…

Wallpaper’s 2012 Handmade issue – showcasing one-off collaborations between master designers, craftsmen and manufacturers – may have just hit the shelves but last year's edition is still bearing fruit. The Paper Passion perfume conceived for Handmade 2011, which bottles the seductive scent of a freshly printed book, has been produced and made available to buy.

The perfume was inspired by a throwaway line by German publisher Gerhard Steidl in the film How to Make a Book with Steidl, which suggested his favourite scent was a 'freshly printed book'. We asked him to work with avant-garde perfumer Geza Schoen, founder of Escentric Molecules, to try to bottle that scent. Into the mix came Steidl's friend and long-time collaborator Karl Lagerfeld, who designed the packaging and chose the name Paper Passion.

Paper Passion perfume by Geza Schoen, Steidl, Wallpaper* and Karl Lagerfeld

Schoen worked on capturing the scent and sourcing the necessary ingredients. 'It was hard,' he says. 'The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with.' He eventually managed to create the perfume with just four or five ingredients, including ethyl linoleate and a selection of woody components to add dryness. Most perfumes contain between 20 and 100 ingredients, but Schoen stuck to his vision of simplicity.

Meanwhile, Steidl turned to Lagerfeld for advice on a packaging concept. Lagerfeld instantly visualised a real book with pages and a hidden cut-out compartment to house the perfume bottle in the middle. In the front of the book are short essays on the subject of paper by Lagerfeld, Schoen, German author and artist Günter Grass, and Wallpaper*.

‘Beautiful paper is for me the top of luxury,’ writes Lagerfeld. ‘I am a paper freak. It's a physical passion. I cannot live without paper. Touching perfect paper has something sensuous about it.’

Geza Schoen
Schoen is the iconoclastic perfumer behind Escentric Molecules, whose career took off like a rocket when he isolated and identified Iso E, the first molecular scent to grab the fashion world's olfactory attention. He has gone on to specialise in conceptual scents. His is the nose behind Wode by Boudicca, Diesel and Intelligence & Fantasy in The Beautiful Mind series. escentric.com 

Lagerfeld, Steidl, Druckerei Verlag
LSD is the imprint of German publishing house Steidl and Karl Lagerfeld, established in 2010. The latter's passions (fashion, art, music) drive the programming and content, while Steidl brought his publishing prowess to the mix. A publisher of high-end art and photography books, Steidl consistently combines a disregard for production costs with a fierce attention to detail, technical innovation and quality control. steidlville.com

Article first published in 2012, details correct at the time of publication.

Paper Passion Perfume for Booklovers was available online, in concept stores, bookshops and perfumeries across the world. Now sold out, it remains a collector’s item.