Karl's women, all the women of Karl Lagerfeld

Text by FABIA DI DRUSCO

If it is impossible to think of Yves Saint Laurent without thinking of his female coterie, made up of inspirers/collaborators/confidants, from Loulou de La Falaise to Clara Saint , from Paloma Picasso to Talitha Getty to Catherine Deneuve , when not real alter egos like Betty Catroux , Karl Lagerfeld has also lived surrounded by women who were instrumental in the evolution of his career and his style. Starting from the mother, cold and detached, severely judgmental, somatized to the point of deciding never to give up the gloves so as not to show the hands that she found ugly, and so impatient in her childhood memories that she left him the habit of talk very fast to be able to tell her everything before she left the room. A mother whose story he reinvents countless times for journalists, transforming her from a saleswoman in a Berlin linen shop into a bohemian aristocrat capable of playing the violin and flying monoplanes at the time of the First World War. There are women who help him expand his imagination, like Andrée Putman who instills in him the passion for Art Déco , women who have a propulsive effect on his career, like Gaby Aghion when she calls him at Chloé , fashion visionaries like Anna Piaggi and Amanda Harlech who will help define the style of Chloé and Chanel and Fendi respectively, models to whom he assigns the embodiment of Chanel , such as Inès de la Fressange and Claudia Schiffer , pupils such as Virginie Viard and Silvia Venturini Fendi who owe him their training of stylists and creative directors.

Among the most affectionate descriptions, that of Amanda Harlech at the 2019 CFDA Awards . The fashion editor who until 1996 had been John Galliano 's closest collaborator recalls "the profound and mercurial way of thinking" , the ability to organize the his mind as "an enfilade of rooms where each room was different from the others" , never confusing the identities of the different brands he worked for, in the belief that " Paris was radically different from Italian cities, more delicate, less sensual, visceral and colourful" , for which "Chanel could never be an Italian maison or Fendi a French maison" According to Harlech Lagerfeld , "Lost in the vast horizon of his imagination... he was energized by the energy of the attention of others" , " combined Le Corbusier and the baroque, Versailles with punk, ancient Egypt and New York" , had "the impatience of the visionary" and in translating his sketches into clothes he demanded from his team "leaps of faith which t he rewarded me with absolute loyalty and kindness."

Karl's team included Eric Pfrunder , his image director, and I was quickly included in their family. Another campaign of which I have a very special memory we shot in Vienna, with Karl who at one point started dancing the waltz laughing in front of us» . The supermodel defines him as «incisive, very quick to work, full of energy, endowed with a sharp wit and sense of humor» , she recalls his encyclopedic culture, his ability to absorb any kind of influence, his generosity in sharing aesthetics and ideas: «It really opened my mind» . Vittoria Ceretti , favorite model of recent seasons, and last bride (in a silver sequined swimsuit) to close one of his shows, remembers him as «a mentor, a teacher, a grandfather... Extraordinarily dedicated to his work and incredibly kind» . An initiatory figure also for Karen Elson : "She educated me, she taught me the photographic techniques she used, she gave me books on artists I had never heard of" . Cara Delevingne , another model of choice, creative mind of the Cara loves Karl capsule launched last September, says that "Karl taught me the importance of embracing one's weirdness" .

Karo Lebar , responsible for the image and communication of his signature line, began working with him in '85, remaining by his side for 35 years. He remembers him as «Extremely intelligent, intuitive, fast, curious, open to everything, with a particular and often atypical point of view» . A revealing episode of his character? “One day I told him I was furious because my 11-year-old son Louis had painted graffiti in the elevator of my building, and it had taken forever to erase it. He asked me if they were beautiful… and the next day he commissioned him to design them for a collaborative project with Macy's» .

Among the most sensational breakups, the one with Paloma Picasso , the only socialite to have managed for years to frequent both Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent , despite the heated rivalry between the two, which normally made it necessary to side with one or the other other clan. A true virtuoso of acrobatics, to the point of marrying in 1978 dressed as YSL by day and Lagerfeld by night, Paloma, who also appreciated Paloma's virtues as a storyteller and the bulimic vortex of curiosity ("it was as if she transported you in a whirlwind of glamor and of fantasies of the past, the present and the future") will break definitively with him a few years later due to his incessant attacks and déplacés towards Saint Laurent, commenting: "It's a real pity that he hasn't found any other way to have relationships with people than in owning or destroying them" . Own them: Lagerfeld's strategy of seduction is always the same: to fill with gifts, books, flowers, voyages in the Concorde, Fabergé diamond brooches, Chanel jackets and bags, Fendi furs, suites at the Ritz, the chosen one or the elected of the moment, to then dismiss them once the interest has run out or following an error (an affirmation of freedom?) judged unforgivable.

It happens with Inès de la Fressange, who Lagerfeld immediately imposes as the face of Chanel of which he became creative director in September 1982, 49 years old and 11 years after Mademoiselle 's death. Inès opens her debut fashion show, that of haute couture in January '83, signs an exclusive contract, is the face of all the campaigns. "It was said that I was his muse (muse), rather I was his buffoon (amusement)" she wrote in her autobiography, Profession mannequin . For five years their relationship is daily, from the afternoon to the early hours of the morning. But in 1989 Lagerfeld "banned" her, officially because she agreed to pose for the bust of Marianne , the allegory of the French Republic, in fact, according to the model, because she was jealous of her love story with the future husband Luigi d'Urso. In her book, Marie Ottavi reports that Victoire de Castellane , who began designing bijoux for Chanel at the age of 17, when she left the maison to go to Dior in 1997 did not warn Lagerfeld: "If I had told him, he would have tried to harm me. Why not Karl abandoned himself. When some assistants from the studio naively told him they were leaving, he phoned the companies in question and blurted everything out about them, so they weren't hired." For Gaby Aghion , the founder of Chloé with whom Lagerfeld broke up amid a thousand controversies in '83 after almost twenty years of collaboration, these repeated breaks "are her form of freedom" . The same need to make a clean slate that characterizes the relationship with the furniture in his homes: each change of apartment corresponds to a radically different style, which involves the complete elimination, through auctions, of the former furnishings, passing total Art Deco to 18th century furniture to the Memphis group.