Karl Lagerfeld is a German fashion designer, artist and photographer based in Paris. Let’s see some amazing facts and trivia about him!
1.He was born on September 10, 1933.
2. His middle name is Otto.
3. He is the head designer and creative director of the fashion house Chanel as well as the Italian house Fendi and his own fashion label.
4. He is well recognized around the world for his trademark white hair, black glasses, and high starched collars
5. Karl Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany and is the son of businessman Otto Lagerfeld, and his wife Elisabeth Bahlmann.
6. His father owned a company that imported and produced evaporated milk, while his grandfather Karl Bahlmann was a local politician for the Catholic Centre Party.
7. His family belonged to the Old Catholic Church.
8. When she met his father, Lagerfeld’s mother was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin.
9. Karl Lagerfeld is known to misrepresent his birth year, claiming to be younger than his actual age, and to misrepresent his parents’ background.
10. His older sister, Martha Christiane “Christel”, was born in 1931.
11. Karl Lagerfeld has an older half-sister, Thea, from his father’s first marriage.
12. His family name has been spelled both Lagerfeldt (with a “t”) and Lagerfeld. Like his father, he uses the spelling Lagerfeld, considering it to “sound more commercial.”
13. His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father’s business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH.
14. His father was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.
15. After attending a private school, Lagerfeld finished his secondary school at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he majored in drawing and history.
16. Karl Lagerfeld was hired as Pierre Balmain’s assistant after winning the coats category in a design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat in 1955.
17. In 1958, after three years at Balmain, he moved to Jean Patou where he designed two haute couture collections per year for five years. His first collection was shown in a two-hour presentation in July 1958, but he used the name Roland Karl, rather than Karl Lagerfeld.
18. His skirts for the spring 1960 season were the shortest in Paris, and the collection was not well received.
19. For his late 1960 collection, he designed special little hats, pancake shaped circles of satin, which hung on the cheek.
20. In 1963, he began designing for Tiziani, a Roman couture house founded that year by Evan Richards (b. 1924) of Jacksboro, Texas.
21. It began as couture and then branched out into ready-to-wear, bearing the label “Tiziani-Roma—Made in England.”
22. Karl Lagerfeld and Richards sketched the first collection in 1963 together.
23. Elizabeth Taylor was a fan of the label.
24. Gina Lollobrigida, Doris Duke, and Princess Marcella Borghese were also customers while Lagerfeld was designing the line.
25. He was replaced in 1969 with Guy Douvier (1928–1993).
26. Karl Lagerfeld began to freelance for French fashion house Chloé in 1964, at first designing a few pieces each season.
27. In 1970, he also began a brief design collaboration with Roman haute-couture house Curiel.
28. It’s head was Gigliola Curiel, who died in November 1969.
29. From 1972, he collaborated with Italian fashion house Fendi, designing furs, clothing, and accessories.
30. Since the 1970s, Karl Lagerfeld has occasionally worked as a costume designer for theatrical productions.
31, At the time, he was maintaining a design contract with Japanese firm Isetan to create collections for both men and women through 30 licenses, had a lingerie line in the U.S. produced by Eve Stillmann, was designing shoes for Charles Jourdan and sweaters for Ballantyne, and worked with Trevira as a fashion adviser.
32. In 2002, Karl Lagerfeld asked Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, to collaborate with him on a special denim collection for the Lagerfeld Gallery.
33. The collection, Lagerfeld Gallery by Diesel, was co-designed by Lagerfeld and then developed by Diesel’s creative team, under the supervision of Rosso.
34. It consisted of five pieces that were presented during the designer’s catwalk shows during Paris Fashion Week and then sold in highly limited editions at the Lagerfeld Galleries in Paris and Monaco and at the Diesel Denim Galleries in New York and Tokyo.
35. During the first week of sales in New York, more than 90% of the trousers were sold out, even though prices ranged from $240 to $1,840.
36. Karl Lagerfeld designed the costumes for the Carmen sequences in the 2002 film Callas Forever; in 2004, some outfits for singer Madonna for her Re-Invention tour, and recently outfits for Kylie Minogue’s Showgirl tour.
37. Karl Lagerfeld collaborated with H&M, which, on 12 November 2004, offered a limited range of Lagerfeld clothes for men and women, in certain outlets.
38. Karl Lagerfeld is also a photographer. He produced Visionaire 23: The Emperor’s New Clothes, a series of nude pictures of models and celebrities.
39. He also personally photographed Mariah Carey for the cover of V magazine in 2005.
40. In addition to his editorial work for Harper’s Bazaar, Numéro, and Russian and German editions of Vogue, Lagerfeld photographs advertising campaigns for the houses under his direction—Chanel, Fendi, and his eponymous line.
41. In the 1980s, Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was published with drawings by Lagerfeld.
42. The designer was also the subject of French reality-TV series “Signé Chanel” in 2005.
43. It covered the creation of his fall/winter 2004–2005 Chanel couture collection and aired on Sundance Channel in the United States during the fall of 2006.
44. He has also supported and encouraged the work of up-and-coming designers including Philip Colbert of Rodnik.
45. On 18 December 2006, Lagerfeld announced the launch of a new collection for men and women dubbed K Karl Lagerfeld, which included fitted T-shirts and a wide range of jeans.
46. Karl Lagerfeld has signed a deal with Dubai Infinity Holdings (DIH); an investments enterprise that focuses on first-of-its-kind projects in non-conventional growth sectors, in line with its mandate[vague] to fulfil unmet market needs.
47. A feature-length documentary film on the designer, Lagerfeld Confidential, was made by Vogue in 2007.
48. Karl Lagerfeld is the host of fictional radio station K109—the studio in videogame Grand Theft Auto IV.
49. In 2008, he created a teddy bear in his likeness produced by Steiff in an edition of 2,500 that sold for $1,500 and has been immortalized in many forms, which include pins, shirts, dolls, and more.
50. In 2009, Tra Tutti began selling Karl Lagermouse and Karl Lagerfelt, which are mini-Lagerfelds in the forms of mice and finger puppets, respectively.
51. On 10 September 2010, the Couture Council of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology presented Karl Lagerfeld with an award created for him, The Couture Council Fashion Visionary Award, at a benefit luncheon at Avery Fisher Hall, New York.[27]
52. On 10 November 2010, Karl Lagerfeld and Swedish crystal manufacturer Orrefors announced a collaboration to design a crystal art collection.
53. The first collection was launched in spring 2011, called Orrefors by Karl Lagerfeld.
54. Karl Lagerfeld’s apartment in Paris was published in the French issue of Architectural Digest in May 2012.
55. He also revealed his vast collection of Suzanne Belperron’s pins and brooches and used the color of one of her blue chalcedony rings as the starting point for the Chanel spring/summer 2012 collection.
56. In 2013, he directed the short film Once Upon a Time… in the Cité du Cinéma, Saint-Denis, by Luc Besson, featuring Keira Knightley in the role of Coco Chanel and Clotilde Hesme as her aunt Adrienne Chanel.
57. In 2014, an auction house in Florida announced that many of Lagerfeld’s early sketches for the House of Tiziani in Rome would be sold.
58. In 2015, the first Karl Lagerfeld store opened at Lagoona Mall in Doha, Qatar.
59. In June 2016, it was announced that Karl Lagerfeld would design the two residential lobbies of the Estates at Acqualina, a luxury residential development in Miami’s Sunny Isles Beach
60. In 1993, he caused U.S. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour to walk out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show, when he employed strippers and adult-film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.
61. There was much controversy from Lagerfeld’s use of a verse from the Qur’an in his spring 1994 couture collection for Chanel, despite apologies from the designer and the fashion house.
62. The controversy erupted after the 1994 couture show in Paris, when the Indonesian Muslim Scholars Council in Jakarta called for a boycott of Chanel and threatened to file formal protests with the government of Mr. Lagerfeld’s homeland, Germany.
63. The designer apologized, explaining that he had taken the design from a book about the Taj Mahal, thinking the words came from a love poem.
64. Karl Lagerfeld was the target of a pieing by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 2001 at a fashion premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City.
65. The tofu pies hurled by animal rights activists in protest of his use of fur within his collections, however went astray and hit Calvin Klein.
66. Karl Lagerfeld is a supporter of the use of fur in fashion.
67. He himself doesn’t wear fur and hardly eats meat.
68. Karl Lagerfeld later caused another controversy, on 31 July 2012, when he criticized Pippa Middleton, sister of Kate Middleton, for her looks.
69. The comment was made when Lagerfeld was praising Kate Middleton, for her “romantic beauty” before adding: “I don’t like the sister’s face. She should only show her back.
70. When Lagerfeld lost 42 kg (about 92.6 lbs.) in 13 months in 2001, he explained: “I suddenly wanted to dress differently, to wear clothes designed by Hedi Slimane…. But these fashions, modeled by very, very slim boys—and not men my age—required me to lose at least 40 kg. It took me exactly 13 months.”
71. The diet was created specially for him by Dr. Jean-Claude Houdret, which led to a book called The Karl Lagerfeld Diet. He promoted it on Larry King Live and other TV shows
72. Karl Lagerfeld had a long-term relationship from the early 1970s with socialite Jacques de Bascher (1951–1989) until his death in 1989.
73. Since 2007, Lagerfeld has owned a 1820s house in Paris in Quai Voltaire decorated in modern and Art Deco style.
74. Karl Lagerfeld owns a red point Birman cat named Choupette, which, on 1 June 2013, he indicated he would marry, were it legal.
75. His height is 1,78!
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