Karl Otto Lagerfeld (; 10 September 193319 February 2019) was a German fashion designer.
Lagerfeld began his career in fashion in the 1950s, working for several top fashion houses including Balmain, Patou, and Chloé before joining Chanel in 1983. As the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death, he oversaw every aspect of the fashion house's creative output, from designing collections to overseeing advertising campaigns and store displays. He was instrumental in revitalizing the Chanel brand, helping it regain its position as one of the top fashion houses in the world. He was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, as well as his own eponymous fashion label. Throughout his career, he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.
Lagerfeld was recognised for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high-starched detachable collars.
Early life
Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg on September 10, 1933, to Elisabeth (née Bahlmann) and Otto Lagerfeldt (spelled with a ‘T’). His father, coming from a well-off family of wealthy wine-merchants, was an illustrious businessman and polyglot, speaking nine languages; his father owned an import company (Lagerfeldt & Co.) specialising in evaporated milk, leading him to work with the American dairy company Carnation. During his travels, his father was present during the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, escaping unharmed. A fluent speaker of Russian, his father had even attempted to gain citizenship to the country at the start of World War I, leading to an accusation of espionage and a three-year prison term in Vladivostok, eventually returning to Germany after the Russian Revolution in 1917. His maternal grandfather, Karl Bahlmann, was a local politician for the Catholic Centre Party. His family belonged to the Old Catholic Church. When Lagerfeld's mother met his father, she was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin. His parents married in 1930.
Lagerfeld was known to misrepresent his birth year, claiming to be younger than his actual age, and to misrepresent his parents' background. For example, he claimed that he was born in 1938 to "Elisabeth of Germany" and Otto Ludwig Lagerfeldt from Sweden. These claims have been conclusively proven to be false, as his father was from Hamburg and spent his entire life in Germany, with no Swedish connection. There is also no evidence that his mother, Elisabeth Bahlmann, the daughter of a middle-class local politician, called herself "Elisabeth of Germany". He was known to insist that no one knew his real birthdate. In an interview on French television in February 2009, Lagerfeld said that he was "born neither in 1933 nor 1938."
In April 2013, he finally declared that he was born in 1935. A birth announcement was, however, published by his parents in 1933, and the baptismal register in Hamburg also lists him as born in that year, showing that he was born on September 10, 1933. Bild am Sonntag published his baptismal records in 2008 and interviewed his teacher and a classmate, who both confirmed that he was born in 1933. Later, his death record confirmed the same. Despite that, Karl Lagerfeld announced publicly that he was celebrating his "70th birthday" on September 10, 2008, despite actually turning 75.
His older sister, Martha Christiane "Christel", was born in 1931. Lagerfeld had an older half-sister, Theodora Dorothea "Thea," from his father's first marriage. His family name has been spelled both Lagerfeldt (with a "t") and Lagerfeld. Like his father, he used the spelling Lagerfeld, considering it to "sound more commercial."
His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father being a member of the Nazi party and his business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH.
As a child, he showed great interest in the visual arts, and former schoolmates recalled that he was always making sketches "no matter what we were doing in class". Lagerfeld told interviewers that he learned much more by constantly visiting the Kunsthalle Hamburg museum than he ever did in school.