Trust Your Style: 'Normal people think I'm insane'

'Normal people think I'm insane'

Sunday, June 3, 2007

If you like reading about brilliant creative types the way I do, then you'll want to check out 'You'll Think I'm A Madman', an extensive feature in the Guardian Unlimited about Karl Lagerfeld. It picks up where last year's New York Magazine's article, Karl Lagerfeld, Boy Prince of Fashion left off.

I am a huge admirer of Karl Lagerfeld, and have long been in awe of his prodigious creative output--here's an excerpt:

"Until recently, Lagerfeld produced eight collections a year for Chanel, five for the Italian luxury label Fendi, and several for labels under his own name - a staggering workload. In 2002, he added an extra Chanel show to his schedule: a high-end ready-to-wear collection designed to profile the work of the Paris metiers d'art - the ateliers that create, by hand, the embroideries, beading, tulle flowers, hats and shoes on which couture designers rely. The first of these so called 'satellite' collections was shown in 2002, in Paris, and it was such a commercial success that Chanel decided to give similar shows a permanent place on its calendar and to stage them in different cities.

Lagerfeld's ability to create so much clothing for three different labels makes him unique among fashion designers, but he is also a photographer whose work appears in glossy magazines around the world. He shoots the Chanel press kits and catalogues that accompany the collections, as well as fine-art photography, which he periodically displays in galleries. (He recently had a solo exhibition in Berlin.) An avid reader in four languages - English, French, German, and Italian - Lagerfeld also publishes books; his imprint, a division of the German house Steidl, is called Edition 7L, and a few years ago he opened a bookstore, also called 7L on the rue Lille. Edition 7L has published 41 titles, on subjects that range across his many interests, which include (besides fashion and photography) literature, humour, advertising, music, mythology, illustration and architecture. Some have a bracing impracticality: an anthology of the first 10 years of the magazine Interview weighed 43kg and was packaged in a wooden trolley of Lagerfeld's devising.

In 2002, however, Lagerfeld published a best seller, The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, which he co-wrote with his physician, Jean-Claude Houdret.