Karl Lagerfeld (Hamburg, 1933 – Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 2019) used to regularly visit the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, according to Andrew Bolton, the director responsible for this wing of the famous museum located on New York’s 5th Avenue, For the ‘Kaiser of Fashion’, paradoxically fashion was not Art. “Karl never gets tired of telling me that fashion doesn’t belong in a museum. When we worked together on the Chanel exhibition, [en 2005]was incredibly generous with what they lent us, but paid little attention to the exhibit itself. “Fashion is not art; fashion should be on the streetin women’s bodies, men’s bodies’”.
Considered one of the most influential figures of the second half of the 20th century and masterfully managing important houses such as Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel and his own brand, the creator will return to the main theme four years after his death. From the classic exhibition that opened on the first Monday of May. We don’t know if the ponytail and black glasses fashion designer will turn upside down in his grave, but definitely. yes he would enjoy the arrogance parade to its greatest glory At the MET Gala, where the most important faces of the fashion world will attend as the guest of ‘Vogue’ powerful boss Anna Wintour.
From sketch to dress
Longtime collaborator with Lagerfeld, Amanda Harlech will also act as creative consultant for the show, ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, based on William Hogarth’s aesthetic theory in his book ‘Analysis’. Beauty’, 1753. The exhibition will focus on the relationship between the designer’s sketches and the creations he completed throughout his career, and how his ideas evolved from two dimensions to three dimensions. “Each of his designs started with a sketch”, Bolton commented on the working method that conceived the drawing as breathing.
“They may look glamorous and expressive to the untrained eye, but for their ‘premiere’ they were. almost mathematicalit’s almost like a secret language between Karl and the workshops,” Bolton said.
The exhibition, which will be opened to visitors on May 1, will feature some names. 150 out of five past signatures Lagerfeld: Its namesake brand alongside Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, and Chanel. It’s a pharaoh project as some private collectors and the MET archive will have to choose between the ‘5,000 to 10,000 pieces’ they have compiled from the different archives of each ‘maison’, in addition to those held by the MET archive. . Each outfit will be accompanied by its own sketch and a video featuring interviews with the main people in charge of each workshop, edited by iconic French filmmaker Loïc Prigent, who worked with Chanel on a documentary in 2005.
Other creators who also have their own shows on the MET are Rei Kawakubo (2017), Charles James (2014), Alexander McQueen (2011), Paul Poiret (2007), Gianni Versace (1997), Christian Dior (1996), Yves Saint Laurent (1983) ) or the Spanish Cristóbal Balenciaga (1973). Owned by Prada and Schiaparelli themselves, but in parallel.