Known for his iconic hairstyle and sunglasses, Karl Lagerfeld is one of the fashion designers who had a great impact on the industry. She died in 2019 at the age of 85, but even though her life was full of glamor and Hollywood celebrities among her friends, she was full of sadness. The only man she loved cheated on her with her biggest rival, and there are also many stories in her childhood that may have further contributed to the fact that she became particularly brittle as an adult. He hated children, yelled at older women, was bored by people, and in his last years he was only concerned with his cat, Choupette, and his then $300 million fortune. The biggest traumas of his life, which will be released on June 7 on Disney+, Becoming Karl Lagerfeld viewers can get to know him from the six-part series, in which Daniel Brühl appears in the role of a fashion designer. And there was a lot of it to work to the makers.
Throughout his life, Karl Lagerfeld did everything to prevent information about his family from coming to light. He has always been tight-lipped when asked about his childhood, and has often lied about his year of birth and his parents’ origins – for good reason. In fact, he sued biographer Alicia Drake in 2006 for The Beautiful Fall in his book, he tried to delve too much into his past. Perhaps the most surprising piece of information that the author came across is related to the German fashion designer’s father, Otto Lagerfeld, who was a dairy farmer. In 1914, during the First World War, he lived in Russia, where he planned to open factories to expand his company even further, but in the end he was suspected of espionage and arrested. He was sent to an internment camp in Siberia, where he spent four years and had to survive in the freezing cold of -45 degrees.
After the end of the First World War, he was able to return to Germany, where he met his future wife 12 years later, from whom the fashion designer was born three years later. As writer Alfons Kaiser reported in a 2020 biography, Lagerfeld and his wife became members of the Nazi Party in May 1933. According to some information, at the time of the Anschluss, i.e. the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich, in 1938, the couple even planted a swastika flag on their property to demonstrate their loyalty. It is known that they may have lied to the commission set up to eliminate the Nazis. The father scolded the government, while the wife hid the fact that she was a party member, so they escaped punishment. It’s no coincidence that the fashion designer never liked to talk about his younger years, including his parents.
She was tied to a bed
Lagerfeld had a very turbulent childhood, partly because of his mother and partly because of his fellow students. He grew up in a castle in Hamburg before moving to France with his family. The family lived a very lavish life thanks to the fact that the fashion designer’s father ran a cool business. As Lagerfeld himself previously reported, he was only four years old when he already had his own butler, and by the age of 11 he was wearing cufflinks every day – which was synonymous with luxury at the time. His mother, on the other hand, made everyday life particularly difficult for him: she chained him to the bed, thereby preventing him from eating too much, and she considered his hands too ugly to get used to smoking. The latter could explain why Lagerfeld wore gloves so often.
Apart from his mother, his schoolmates did not make it easy for him either, who ostracized and bullied him. His childhood was not a happy one for him, and he spent most of his time alone. Even then, he spread his wings as a fashion designer – he created blueprints. He entered the fashion industry in 1955 as an assistant to the French fashion designer Pierre Balmain, then in 1957 he became the artistic director of Jean Patou, and from 1962 he began to follow his own path as a freelancer. Among others, he worked for brands such as Valentino during this time. Then in 1965, he joined Fendi, followed by a year at Chloé, where he worked for more than ten years. In 1983, he became the creative director of Chanel, which at that time was in a major crisis after the death of Coco Chanel, but Lagerfeld pulled them out of the mess with his unique design solutions. The fashion designer then launched his own brand in 1984, which has been very successful ever since. Back in 2015, he said in an interview that he would work until he died, which he did anyway.
He couldn’t get over it
Karl Lagerfeld had only one love throughout his life, the French aristocrat Jacques de Bascher, who chose the then 38-year-old Lagerfeld in 1971 and decided to get close to him. Finally, a year later, in a club in Paris, he called her, which was followed by a conversation that lasted until dawn. Lagerfeld saw Bascher as his muse, and for a long time claimed that they had no sexual relationship – which his friends found difficult to believe. The fashion designer tried to pamper his partner: he bought him an apartment and also financed his spendthrift lifestyle. By the way, Bascher tried to help his partner, he organized some fashion events himself – although the 1977 Moratoire Noire drowned in an orgy.
I don’t like sleeping with people I really like. I don’t want to sleep with them because sex doesn’t, but love can last forever
– he said in a 2010 interview.
Not many people know, but the rivalry between Lagerfeld and Yves Saint-Laurent can also be partly linked to the model. Bascher had a relationship with the latter for about half a year starting in 1974, when the two fashion designers were already competing. During this time, the model was so infatuated with Yves Saint-Laurent that after their breakup, he sent white lilies to her apartment and fell on his knees begging her to let him in. In fact, he kept a picture of him in his jacket pocket, near his heart. Nevertheless, Lagerfeld remained loyal to Bascher, with whom he was together for 18 years, until he died of AIDS in 1989 at the age of 38. In his last months, he could not even get out of his hospital bed, so Lagerfeld slept in his room at night and eventually died in his arms. He could not get over the loss of Bascher, so he never married anyone, nor did he have any children. She lavished all her love on her Burmese cat, Choupette, who at the time traveled by private jet, had two maids and her own bodyguard, and ate from a silver plate every night, sitting across from Lagerfeld. The cat’s daily life can be followed on his Instagram page since the fashion designer’s death.
A lot of mishaps are associated with it
Although Lagerfeld undoubtedly did a lot for the fashion world, he gained fame not only for his innovations related to the profession, but also for his controversial comments. Some branded him a racist, and strong sentences about fuller women also left his mouth. In 2009, for example, he was asked what he thought about the fact that a German magazine decided to use more ordinary models instead of thin ones, to which he replied: the decision could have been made by overweight women who don’t like being reminded of their fatness.
No one wants to see fat women. These are bloated mummies who sit in front of the TV with a bag of chips in hand and say thin models are ugly
– he blurted out even then, and he spoke relatively often in the same way about women’s looks and weight.
In 2013, an organization even wanted to sue him for defamatory and discriminatory comments after he claimed, “the hole in Social Security is due to all the diseases people who are too fat get.” The fashion designer has attacked several celebrities during his life, including Adele, whom he called a little too fat, and supermodel Heidi Klum, who he thought had too big breasts. He called Princess Diana kind but stupid, while Princess Catherine said about her sister Pippa Middleton: her face is not very pretty, so she should only show her back. What’s more, he didn’t even spare the creator of the Chanel fashion house that served as his home for four decades, Coco Chanel, who he thought couldn’t be a feminist, since she was never ugly enough for that.
He argued with Merkel
Lagerfeld also pulled the plug on the MeToo movement after Kim Kardashian was attacked in a Paris hotel in 2017, and Lagerfeld claimed he only had himself to blame. However, his statements became an even more global phenomenon after the scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein. He declared more than once that he was fed up with the movement, and anyone who thinks otherwise should join a nunnery. Lagerfeld was also on war footing when it came to religions, in 1994 Chanel was forced to apologize after designing a dress decorated with verses from the Koran. And in 2017, he had a public debate with Angela Merkel, then Chancellor of Germany, after accepting one million refugees from Syria.
You can’t kill millions of Jews and then take in millions of their worst enemies instead. I know someone in Germany who took in a young Syrian and after four days said: “The best thing Germany invented was the Holocaust”
he declared at the time.
Lagerfeld spoke what was in his heart, but he was able to offend an entire community of people. He once mentioned that he hated children and found socializing with people too boring. He refused to travel on any other plane, only a private plane, otherwise he would have been stared at and he would have had to interact with others. This can also be blamed on the fact that he hated hand-made, custom-made clothes, as it would have involved physical contact with strangers. To pay tribute to the fashion designer’s work, it was chosen as the theme of the 2023 Met Gala, which caused mixed feelings. With his hateful comments, Lagerfeld could only worsen the perception of various social groups, but the fact is that what he did in the fashion industry, not many people have done it since.
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