fashion designer/icon Karl Lagerfeld, dead at 85

Iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has died at 85. Creative director for Chanel and Fendi, Lagerfeld’s persona and personal style was as well known as his clothes. From The New York Times:

A self-identified “caricature,” with his dark glasses, powdered ponytail, black jeans, fingerless gloves, starched collars, Chrome Hearts jewelry and obsessive Diet Coke consumption, he achieved such a level of global fame — and controversy — that a $200 Karl Barbie doll, created in collaboration with the toymaker Mattel, sold out in less than an hour in 2014.

He was variously referred to as a “genius,” the “kaiser” and “overrated.” His contribution to fashion was not in creating a new silhouette, as designers like Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel herself did.

Rather, he created a new kind of designer: the shape-shifter.

That is to say, the creative force who lands at the top of a heritage brand and reinvents it by identifying its sartorial semiology and then wresting it into the present with a healthy dose of disrespect and a dollop of pop culture.

Not that he put it that way exactly. What he said was: “Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.”

Karl was also a music lover, and in the mid-’00s worked with Cat Power, Devendra Banhart and more, and even put out a two-CD compilation, My Favorite Songs, that included tracks by The Fall, LCD Soundsystem, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Stereolab, Xavier Cugat, The Free Design, and more.

Rest in peace, Karl.