This is the story of how Karl Lagerfeld revived the House of Chanel
, a total work of art. As he says himself: 'It was incredibly special. It was everything: the place, the design, the light and the weather. It was a mix that was met by miracle.' The totalising blueprint that he helped to formulate is the one that is now predominantly followed by the global fashion industry. He realised very early on in his career that it was the entirety that mattered: how something was designed, made, photographed and staged, and even how it sounded.
As he points out, unlike her younger self, maturity brought Coco Chanel an obsession with status: 'When she was an old lady things were different for her. She wanted to be a distinguished lady in the end. But what I think was the interesting thing about Chanel was her past. Even in the Twenties some society ladies would not speak to her– but she was always food with men. Those French girls from the Belle Epoque were really quite something. Afraid of nothing.
And when asked if he ever thought there was some sort of destiny at play for him from childhood, he finds the notion frankly ridiculous: 'Noooo. Fashion was never that glamorous when I started. My mother thought that was quite a good thing because "it proves you are not a snob, otherwise you would not do a job like this". What she wanted for me was to be happy and leave Germany.
He also has an ingenious method of dealing with the vicissitudes of fame and making sure he can get on with what he needs to do in his working life, one borrowed from Catherine de Medici. 'When she was queen of France she liked to have handsome people at her court – even if they were stupid because they attracted everybody. As I am so busy with my own thing I like to have handsome people around.
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