Lagerfeld - not Lagerfield.

By

Sampson I.M Onwuka
 











There is a story attributed to Karl Lagarfeld and group of friends quarreling over wardrobe in a film shot in his apartment as proviso in Paris in 1971, that they had to wait until Lagerfeld comes. I shall quote Alice Rawthorne (1996), regarding a comparison between Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, that "Karl Lagerfeld used to put all the cloths for Chloe' on a rail in the middle of the room and the models took one or two things off them....Yves would never have let anything..." like this happen. This includes the occasional permission to let people take pictures backstage.



Here starring in an Andy Warhol's film L'Amour, Patti d' Arbanville and Jane Forth waiting her turn. How times have changed and how they remain the same. The inspiration for a book on Diet could not have from anywhere else than the industry, but it is fitting in response to personal stories, we use abstraction to define the man.  How else could be have learned how Ray Charles-Style Sun glasses was a weakness. Obviously he does not change that easily.

This above statement in the book about these two designs of interest separate their attitude to Art and to Fashion. For it seems that nearly everything we can learn about the nature of the business can learned through Lagaerfeld, where art and its design and originality speak an entirely different language.

There is something about a happy and demanding way of life that draws you Lagerfeld, perhaps to be seen from spectacles as part of the new deals in fashion, perhaps identifying with an artist has a question of loyalty and brand names.

Although Brand names was invited for personal use and consumption by Gaultier, there is no doubt that fashion involves more than wardrobes and the Run way.  You are confined to a way of life whether you like or not.  

I take that early behavioral tendencies to wardrobe do not confer any titles of success in fashion, especially for one who enter the industries from the door and through principal names such as Chloe.

This is not a story of Karl Lagarfeld - whose personal biographies are quite scarce, this is an attempt to compare the images of Lagarfeld through his fashion shows and designs over the decades in the fashion industries.

Perhaps, we can equally suggest that this a way of handing him the last grasps and final acts of his influences in fashion from New York to Berlin.



In a recent article, he was criticized of placing Paris behind modern fashion, that the French were no longer leading the field is that obvious.

Once and perhaps twice, there are names that are not French at all, but in all the measure of influences on Fashion in the last 100 year, it was clearly a French century for fashion - especially in the transforming engines of female attires and Haute Couture that ended the careers of most boutique in Paris and in other parts of the world.


It is not true that these French have finished, that their influences in Fashions and accessories such as Cars, Polo Shirts, use of bicycles which Coco opposed, the vogue magazine and Bazaar, Poinet' evolution of the Perfumes as part of the outfit for fashion and the industries, the military fashion as part of fashion and the use and abuse of models in Run Ways as opposed Vendors that do more than deliver coats and sweats, to other combination in the last 100 years were mainly derived through Paris and Parisians. 



One of those that will benefit from this culture is Lagerfeld who by necessity is arguable the engine behind Berlin's return to high economy of fashion. Perhaps - or perhaps Mercedes Benz - but no one in their right of mind can easily dispel the spell that he has in the Industries.

Perhaps the older giants; Armani, Gabbana, but their names invoke as much adoration and as perhaps the distinction that can be called Lagarfeld. 

"Worth, Doucet, Poiret, Vionnet, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Gres, Dior, Balenciaga, Courrges, Cardin, Saint Laurent, Lacroix, Gaultier, Alaia....These geniuses could boast how haute couture's precision was an architectural tool that standardized pret-a-porter industry could not offer. For several weeks - or even months - at cutting tables in secluded