Fashion Designer Karl Lagerfeld Has Died

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Iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld dies, was longtime creative director of Chanel


By DAVID BOROFF
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
FEB 19, 2019 | 7:35 AM

Iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld dies, was longtime creative director of Chanel
Karl Lagerfeld died on Tuesday. He was believed to be 85.


Lagerfeld had been battling health issues and had missed Chanel’s spring 2019 haute couture show last month. He was believed to be 85, but his exact age has always been a mystery.

Known for his trademark white ponytail, high-starched collars and dark glasses, he dominated high fashion for the last 50 years.

"I design like I breathe,” Lagerfeld once said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “You don’t ask to breathe — it just happens.”

Lagerfeld held down the top design jobs at LVMH-owned luxury label Fendi starting in 1977, and Chanel starting in 1983.

Lagerfeld was known for his verbal barbs, earning the nickname "Kaiser Karl" in the fashion media. He said in Marie-Claire magazine that former French President Francois Hollande was an "imbecile" who would be "disastrous" for the country, and he told The Sun that he did not like the face of Pippa Middleton, Kate Middleton's sister.

"She should only show her back," he said.

He was heavily criticized for telling France's Metro newspaper that Adele was "a little too fat."

Despite this behavior he was known to be kind to his staff at Chanel and for giving long interviews after fashion shows.

Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany. He said in interviews that early on he wanted to become a cartoonist, an illustrator or a musician.

"My mother tried to instruct me on the piano," he said in the book "The World According to Karl." "One day, she slammed the piano cover closed on my fingers and said, 'draw, it makes less noise.'"

His age has always been in question. He reportedly had a birth certificate dated 1933 and another dated 1938. Lagerfeld told French magazine "Paris Match" he was born in 1935, but in 2019 his assistant still didn't know the truth, telling The Associated Press that he liked "to scramble the tracks on his year of birth — that's part of the character."

He lived in his Parisian mansion with a Siamese cat called Choupette.

With News Wire Services

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