Saying Farewell to Fashion Royalty

Honouring the life and work of Karl Lagerfeld

His legacy is an indelible imprint on the fashion industry, a 70-year career and an unmistakable, personal aesthetic that would become the logo for his eponymous brand. Karl Lagerfeld was an icon of the industry, who appeared on the scene “like an apparition” each fashion week, with clusters of fashion assistants scrambling to get a glimpse of his unmistakable monochrome tailoring and chalk-white hair. The outspoken designer, who died on Tuesday in Paris, had no desire to be anything so mediocre as Instagram-story fodder, although astutely, his creations were - his boundless imagination conjuring up sand-lined indoor beaches, to-scale cruise liners and NASA-worthy rockets on the buzzy runways of Chanel.

Chanel Runway Fall/ Winter W17-18. Image via Getty.

Still designing an unheard-of fifteen collections at the age of 85, across his eponymous label and the luxury houses of Chanel and Fendi, Lagerfeld’s work ethic was unmatched. Reportedly, one of his final tasks in recent weeks was to leave instructions for Thursday’s upcoming Fendi show. “Why should I stop working? If I do I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.”

Chanel Runway Fall/Winter 2014-2015. Image via Getty.

In an impatient, social media-immersed world, he ensured two of the oldest European heritage brands remained universally relevant in 2019.

As tributes come flooding in, former British Vogue editor-in-chief, Alexandra Shulman, paid tribute to his talent today, “It’s hard to imagine the fashion world without him.”