Karl lagerfeld dead at 85

Nexolaris

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Having worked as a fashion consultant in a very high end fabric store, I loved this man's work.

I had many clients who would bring me their Lagerfeld's to recreate in other fabrics. Getting to see in person what I'd only seen in the high-end fashion magazines was just a huge treat.

We'd frequently get the mill ends from his and other designer's couture collections once a particular design was no longer being produced. And they'd be gone with a day or two of our receiving them in store.

He produced some of the most opulent and drop-dead gorgeous fabrics I ever had the pleasure of handling. Some of his fabric, IMO, was just pure art!

Ever the fashion icon and visionary, I will miss him. RIP Mr. Lagerfeld!
 

Nexolaris

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Having worked as a fashion consultant in a very high end fabric store, I loved this man's work.

I had many clients who would bring me their Lagerfeld's to recreate in other fabrics. Getting to see in person what I'd only seen in the high-end fashion magazines was just a huge treat.

We'd frequently get the mill ends from his and other designer's couture collections once a particular design was no longer being produced. And they'd be gone with a day or two of our receiving them in store.

He produced some of the most opulent and drop-dead gorgeous fabrics I ever had the pleasure of handling. Some of his fabric, IMO, was just pure art!

Ever the fashion icon and visionary, I will miss him. RIP Mr. Lagerfeld!
What you described sounds like it was a really interesting work. I've never had the chance to inspect a Chanel garment in person. However I'm sure their quality must be impressive considering what I've seen from more common brands.
 

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I have no love for the man, he was a monster and a tyrant, but he ran the house of Chanel like Mme would have wanted. I am not overly wowed by the Chanel garments but they are well made and impeccably tailored and finished. Valentino's collaboration with Metis artist Christi Belcourt, Alexander McQueen's third to fifth seasons especially (technically ready to wear), Iris Van Herpen (again ready to wear but...), Galliano at Dior, some of those gowns were truly miracles of fabric arts and craft, Lacroix's Russian Arts collections, Issey Miyake's pleated fabrics (not couture but) and Giorgio Armani's atelier...some truly perfectly cut and sewn garments. This video shows how couture is assembled first in the ateliers, each dedicated to one fabric art.

 

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I have no love for the man, he was a monster and a tyrant, but he ran the house of Chanel like Mme would have wanted. I am not overly wowed by the Chanel garments but they are well made and impeccably tailored and finished. Valentino's collaboration with Metis artist Christi Belcourt, Alexander McQueen's third to fifth seasons especially (technically ready to wear), Iris Van Herpen (again ready to wear but...), Galliano at Dior, some of those gowns were truly miracles of fabric arts and craft, Lacroix's Russian Arts collections, Issey Miyake's pleated fabrics (not couture but) and Giorgio Armani's atelier...some truly perfectly cut and sewn garments. This video shows how couture is assembled first in the ateliers, each dedicated to one fabric art.


DE MORTUIS NIHIL NISI BENE!!!
 
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Having worked as a fashion consultant in a very high end fabric store, I loved this man's work.

I had many clients who would bring me their Lagerfeld's to recreate in other fabrics. Getting to see in person what I'd only seen in the high-end fashion magazines was just a huge treat.

We'd frequently get the mill ends from his and other designer's couture collections once a particular design was no longer being produced. And they'd be gone with a day or two of our receiving them in store.

He produced some of the most opulent and drop-dead gorgeous fabrics I ever had the pleasure of handling. Some of his fabric, IMO, was just pure art!

Ever the fashion icon and visionary, I will miss him. RIP Mr. Lagerfeld!

So Karl would typically do the colour palette for the new knits (I assume this is the bulk of the discussion as knits are what built Chanel), some of the outlines of proportion and the fibers used but the real work was always in the archives with the production samples that they would use as inspiration for the next season of suits, jackets, skirts and coats, the bulk of what the house sells in clothes I think even still. But he wasn't ever the designer of the fabric, which for the last 17 years has been the responsibility of this woman, Kim-Young Seong. For example:

#CNILux: Chanel’s Material Girl | British Vogue

Ads I said already, he ran the house brilliantly and made very good decisions about most everything they did. The design work (after all, for the bulk of the last 30 years he was doing Chanel, Fendi and his own label Lagerfeld, that is several hundred pieces a year plus two couture shows) was not done by him but by his team of assistants. Typically, he would finish sketches for two or three signature designs in a collection, plan out the rest and give broad strokes which the teams would realize. I bring this up because his legend (to his credit, he shows all this in the Chanel documentary) implies things he didn't do. If you loved those fabrics do yourself this huge favour. I added one of the videos about the ateliers that do the piecework that makes couture what it is, the brodeur and plisseur footage is breathtaking, these women are in some cases, one of three of four left with the knowledge to do the work. Watching them work with fabric is mesmerising. The mastery of accuracy, economy of motion, precision and automatic control is simply awe inspiring. If Karl has one legacy, one that I will give him with no reservations it is that he made collections and ran a business in such a way as to keep these artists in business and thus the knowledge and skill. If Chanel hadn't stepped in when they did with two or three other investors, the bulk of the couture ateliers would have vanished.
 

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So Karl would typically do the colour palette for the new knits (I assume this is the bulk of the discussion as knits are what built Chanel), some of the outlines of proportion and the fibers used but the real work was always in the archives with the production samples that they would use as inspiration for the next season of suits, jackets, skirts and coats, the bulk of what the house sells in clothes I think even still. But he wasn't ever the designer of the fabric, which for the last 17 years has been the responsibility of this woman, Kim-Young Seong. For example:

#CNILux: Chanel’s Material Girl | British Vogue

Ads I said already, he ran the house brilliantly and made very good decisions about most everything they did. The design work (after all, for the bulk of the last 30 years he was doing Chanel, Fendi and his own label Lagerfeld, that is several hundred pieces a year plus two couture shows) was not done by him but by his team of assistants. Typically, he would finish sketches for two or three signature designs in a collection, plan out the rest and give broad strokes which the teams would realize. I bring this up because his legend (to his credit, he shows all this in the Chanel documentary) implies things he didn't do. If you loved those fabrics do yourself this huge favour. I added one of the videos about the ateliers that do the piecework that makes couture what it is, the brodeur and plisseur footage is breathtaking, these women are in some cases, one of three of four left with the knowledge to do the work. Watching them work with fabric is mesmerising. The mastery of accuracy, economy of motion, precision and automatic control is simply awe inspiring. If Karl has one legacy, one that I will give him with no reservations it is that he made collections and ran a business in such a way as to keep these artists in business and thus the knowledge and skill. If Chanel hadn't stepped in when they did with two or three other investors, the bulk of the couture ateliers would have vanished.
Wow, you are a wealth of information! Thanks for sharing with us. Fascinating for sure! I had no idea of anything other than his fashions.

I did enjoy his and so many other designers when I started working in 1980. And being able to sell their patterns and their mill end fabrics was a way for my customers to get that certain designer for less money. Even those who paid a dressmaker on top of the fabric purchase.

I had no idea about what you posted. I learned something I didn't know today. Once again right here at LPSG. Thanks!
 
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85 is a pretty good innings. Goes to show creativity is possible at any age... it's our bods that let us down. Bloody gravity.

From a life of creating, back to the beginning again. Good stuff Karl.
 

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Wow, you are a wealth of information! Thanks for sharing with us. Fascinating for sure! I had no idea of anything other than his fashions.

I did enjoy his and so many other designers when I started working in 1980. And being able to sell their patterns and their mill end fabrics was a way for my customers to get that certain designer for less money. Even those who paid a dressmaker on top of the fabric purchase.

I had no idea about what you posted. I learned something I didn't know today. Once again right here at LPSG. Thanks![/QUOTE

You were so enthusiastic and happy and my eulogy at first was reflecting the way Karl treated some of my designer friends and models while at Chanel, and his well publicized quotas on Black models in fashion (he was not the only one behind it) were first on my mind, and I realized you would probably want to know about the inner workings of the house because it is no less and maybe more interesting and Karl did make great contributions there. Ahh the days of the fashion pattern that was a big market in the US...1980 was a heady time for fashion.
 

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I'm quoting @Nudistpig here because his response was embedded when he quoted my earlier post: "You were so enthusiastic and happy and my eulogy at first was reflecting the way Karl treated some of my designer friends and models while at Chanel, and his well publicized quotas on Black models in fashion (he was not the only one behind it) were first on my mind, and I realized you would probably want to know about the inner workings of the house because it is no less and maybe more interesting and Karl did make great contributions there. Ahh the days of the fashion pattern that was a big market in the US...1980 was a heady time for fashion."

Indeed the 1980s were quite the times for a number of fashion looks. Some of my best memories include:

Shoulder pads. The nighttime soap "Dynasty" seemed to put them on the map. Joan Collins and Linda Evans rocked some serious shoulder pads in their couture daytime and evening TV clothes. And, the beauty pageant runways were rampant with shoulder pads. Very seldom would you see a natural shoulder line. I remember putting together 2 or 3 different pairs of pads to make the *ultimate* in shoulder pads. It was all about the shoulder construction, lol. There were times shoulder pads were used as bust pads. As butt pads. Shoulder pads were everywhere!

Bows and more bows. Yves St. Laurent comes to my mind. Nothing like a good power suit with that gorgeous silk charmeuse jacquard high neck blouse adored with the long tie one fashioned into their "neck" bow. Usually tied asymmetrically. It was a look that had quite the number of followers. Customers would question me why they needed more fabric than a normal long-sleeved blouse. Because you need to cut the bow on the bias! That was the *secret*.

Prints. Silk prints from Italian and Swiss mills. Yummy to look at and the feel was so scrumptious. Usually paired with a solidish Chanel-type tweed. Then Emmanuel Ungaro came along and we started seeing prints and patterns mixed into the same garment. I had one customer who regularly brought me her Ungaro magazine clippings and we would recreate the look, again for pennies on the dollar compared to the cost for the real designer outfit.

Buttons. Buttons became part of fashion design rather than just another way to secure a garment. I had customers who would have me design garments around a particular set of buttons. I had one specific customer who bought St. Johns knitwear. Pricey. It was nothing for her to bring me two or three new purchases and walk out with $300 or $400 worth of replacement buttons for her new knits. We starting offering her store credit for the buttons she was discarding because they were actually quite nice, but, evidently for her, not nice enough! Win win.

One of my favorite times working in the fabric store was when the salesmen would stop by with their sample cases. We'd spend hours going through all the buttons and look at swatches of literally hundreds of different fabric iterations. Checking existing stock to see if it might coordinate with something we had; or coordinating between salesmen to get that unique one-of-a-kind look a lot of our customers seemed to crave.

Yeah, the '80s were indeed a heady time in fashion. For sure!
 

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@teddybaerli1 @Nudistpig and everyone else:
The following video is worth watching. Karl Lagerfeld actually called himself a monster at 35:10! :)


He knew what he was. There's a horrible video of him and a Parisian doyenne just cackling over all the evil they had done.
 

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Having worked for PeTA for many years I can tell you Karl was a monster and I danced with delight when I found out the old bastard was dead. His use of fur in his designs topped many around the world. My colleagues and I, wrote letters, held protests outside his offices, and pied him many times. Anna Wintour and Vera Wang are next. :imp:
 

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Having worked for PeTA for many years I can tell you Karl was a monster and I danced with delight when I found out the old bastard was dead. His use of fur in his designs topped many around the world. My colleagues and I, wrote letters, held protests outside his offices, and pied him many times. Anna Wintour and Vera Wang are next. :imp:
Not saying that keeping conditions of furry animals aren't often problematic, but I fear that the use of other animal products (especially meat) or plastic poses a more serious threat to the future of our planet.

At least, you're trying to change something that you deem worthy fighting for. That's admirable. :)
 
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Not saying that keeping conditions of furry animals aren't often problematic, but I fear that the use of other animal products (especially meat) or plastic poses a more serious threat to the future of our planet.

At least, you're trying to change something that you deem worthy fighting for. That's admirable. :)

Factory Farming is also awful, but wearing a fur coat or having a wedding dress made of 800 hamsters is another. After being with PeTA it all exhausted me so that I've really given up on all social causes.
 
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I'm quoting @Nudistpig here because his response was embedded when he quoted my earlier post: "You were so enthusiastic and happy and my eulogy at first was reflecting the way Karl treated some of my designer friends and models while at Chanel, and his well publicized quotas on Black models in fashion (he was not the only one behind it) were first on my mind, and I realized you would probably want to know about the inner workings of the house because it is no less and maybe more interesting and Karl did make great contributions there. Ahh the days of the fashion pattern that was a big market in the US...1980 was a heady time for fashion."

Indeed the 1980s were quite the times for a number of fashion looks. Some of my best memories include:

Shoulder pads. The nighttime soap "Dynasty" seemed to put them on the map. Joan Collins and Linda Evans rocked some serious shoulder pads in their couture daytime and evening TV clothes. And, the beauty pageant runways were rampant with shoulder pads. Very seldom would you see a natural shoulder line. I remember putting together 2 or 3 different pairs of pads to make the *ultimate* in shoulder pads. It was all about the shoulder construction, lol. There were times shoulder pads were used as bust pads. As butt pads. Shoulder pads were everywhere!

Bows and more bows. Yves St. Laurent comes to my mind. Nothing like a good power suit with that gorgeous silk charmeuse jacquard high neck blouse adored with the long tie one fashioned into their "neck" bow. Usually tied asymmetrically. It was a look that had quite the number of followers. Customers would question me why they needed more fabric than a normal long-sleeved blouse. Because you need to cut the bow on the bias! That was the *secret*.

Prints. Silk prints from Italian and Swiss mills. Yummy to look at and the feel was so scrumptious. Usually paired with a solidish Chanel-type tweed. Then Emmanuel Ungaro came along and we started seeing prints and patterns mixed into the same garment. I had one customer who regularly brought me her Ungaro magazine clippings and we would recreate the look, again for pennies on the dollar compared to the cost for the real designer outfit.

Buttons. Buttons became part of fashion design rather than just another way to secure a garment. I had customers who would have me design garments around a particular set of buttons. I had one specific customer who bought St. Johns knitwear. Pricey. It was nothing for her to bring me two or three new purchases and walk out with $300 or $400 worth of replacement buttons for her new knits. We starting offering her store credit for the buttons she was discarding because they were actually quite nice, but, evidently for her, not nice enough! Win win.

One of my favorite times working in the fabric store was when the salesmen would stop by with their sample cases. We'd spend hours going through all the buttons and look at swatches of literally hundreds of different fabric iterations. Checking existing stock to see if it might coordinate with something we had; or coordinating between salesmen to get that unique one-of-a-kind look a lot of our customers seemed to crave.

Yeah, the '80s were indeed a heady time in fashion. For sure!

My favourite buttons were made in the 90's and 2000's for Prada men's shirts. They matched mother of pearl in a range of shades and shell in other colours for all their men's basics. I went to the factory in Montevarchi, and for 50 CAD a shirt bought in every colour I liked. It was the detail of the colour matched buttons of shell that I found irresistible (and the tailoring and use of some synthetic to structure the shirts. They were for Prada suits and had no logos or labels you could see. No one knew but me, if someone noticed the buttons, it was one, maybe two. I saw the buttons before the shirts.
 
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