Happy birthday Karl Lagerfeld (age undisclosed)
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Version 0 of 1. 1. He created a self-image so recognisable that he is practically a living trademark – and made fingerless gloves and pompadour hairdos haute in the process. His monochrome look has precipitated a mini-industry of Karl dolls, emoticons, collars and Halloween costumes. 2. He transformed catwalk runways into Warholian spectacles. Anyone who witnessed his supermarket event, the Iceberg, the art gallery or the derelict theatre will testify to that. He created headlines around shows by other means, too, sending his three-year-old godson down the catwalk or annoying photographers in the chicest of ways in 2004, by requesting that they all wear black and white to match the collection. 3. He remains finely attuned to the zeitgeist: he kickstarted the now ubiquitous trend for H&M designer/high street collaborations in 2004 and put trainers on the couture catwalk earlier this year. 4. He mastered the compelling soundbite long before Twitter was invented – a skill developed while talking to his mother as a child. “Everything in life, you had to answer quickly and it had to be funny,” he said. “If, 10 minutes later, it was, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have said that,’ she’d slap my face.” 5. He gives good insult, keeping the bitchy reputation of fashion alive. When Stella McCartney took over at Chloe, for example, he said: “[Chloé] should have taken a big name. They did, but in music, not fashion. Let’s hope she is as gifted as her father.” Though plenty of Lagerfeld insults have been decidedly ill-judged (as when he famously caused Adele “a little too fat”), he understands the power of eccentricity – this is a man who drinks Diet Coke from a crystal goblet served by a butler during interviews – and always seems to get away with it eventually. 6. He made a social media weapon of his pet, Choupette, who is now releasing a book. In it, a life of private jet travel and Louis Vuitton luggage is revealed. 7. He brought Chanel back from the brink of ruin in the 1980s by celebrating the brand’s heritage while subverting its motifs – cropping the jackets, shortening hemlines, adding sadomasochistic overtones to the chains – in a precursor to similar turnarounds at Gucci and Louis Vuitton. 8. He has taken years off a tweed suit – and indirectly made the coat section of Zara infinitely better (£89 tweed “Chanel” jacket, anyone?) |