The monster ego’s ball: Tonight the great and the woke will honor Karl Lagerfeld at the Met show-off-athon, even though he was an ocean-going sexist, fatphobe and callous racist. How VERY stylish!
In an age which places so much importance on sensitivity and empathy, could you ever imagine the glossiest night of the social calendar celebrating a man who’d been branded racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic?
Who at time of crushing inequality reportedly left $1.6million for his pet cat and who, despite working in an industry notorious for abusing young women, once claimed that he was ‘fed up’ with the #MeToo movement and that those who disagreed should ‘join a nunnery’?
It seems impossible and yet that’s precisely what will happen in New York tonight as celebrities and fashionistas come together in tribute to the late designer Karl Lagerfeld at this year’s Met Gala.
With guests asked to ‘dress in honor of Karl’, it’s not yet clear whether The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be a sea of powdered wigs, dark glasses, fingerless gloves and fans – Lagerfeld’s inimitable personal uniform. But one thing is certain: as they did when he was alive, his fawning army of admirers will be studiously ignoring his dark side.
The notoriously private and monstrously egotistical ‘Kaiser Karl’, as he was known – a nod both to his German roots and his autocratic personality – will instead be feted for his flamboyant life and style, his brilliant and inventive mind, his extraordinary influence on fashion as creative director for Chanel and Fendi, and his astonishing financial success.
Indeed, when he died in February 2019, Lagerfeld left behind an estate valued at a staggering $223 million – but possibly worth more than double that.
As always, tonight’s ball is helmed by Vogue high priestess Anna Wintour, a long-time friend of Lagerfeld who has always been one of his most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
As they did when he was alive, Karl Lagerfeld’s fawning army of admirers will be studiously ignoring his dark side at tonight’s Met Gala.
Tonight’s ball is helmed by Vogue high priestess Anna Wintour, a long-time friend of Lagerfeld who has always been one of his most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
Lagerfeld reportedly left $1.6million to his Burmese cat, Choupette, in his will.
Following his death aged 85, Wintour announced that ‘the world [had] lost a giant among men… Karl was brilliant, he was wicked, he was funny, he was generous beyond measure and he was deeply kind’.
Maybe he was all that to her, but Wintour was his kind of person: rich, glamorous and thin. And the shameless misanthrope made only too clear that he didn’t have time for those who failed to meet his exacting standards.
He had venom to spare for almost everyone – once declaring: ‘I hate all children’. He also loathed short, ugly men and found socializing with people ‘boring, pretentious and vulgar’ (Met Gala guests take note).
But his most vitriolic abuse was reserved for women – especially those he considered guilty of the greatest sin: being fat.
Asked in 2009 about the decision by Germany’s top women’s magazine to use only ‘ordinary, realistic’ women in photoshoots instead of emaciated models, he claimed the decision was driven by overweight women who didn’t like to be reminded of their fatness.
‘No one wants to see curvy women,’ he snapped. ‘These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly.’
They were unfortunate remarks from a designer who – like his friend Wintour does in her magazines – had a particular penchant for using skinny models on the runway, but who always strenuously denied the fashion industry encouraged anorexia.
‘They aren’t deliberately skinny because they want to be models, they’ve probably had family problems or suffered from other traumas,’ he once said of his rake-thin models.
Such comments often threatened to land him in trouble. And in 2013, a French plus-sized women’s group even demanded he be prosecuted for ‘defamatory and discriminatory’ comments after he told a TV show that ‘the hole in social security, [is due to] all the diseases caught by people who are too fat’.
Lagerfeld (pictured with model Kendall Jenner) reserved his most vile abuse for women – especially those he considered guilty of the greatest sin: being fat.
‘They aren’t deliberately skinny because they want to be models, they’ve probably had family problems or suffered from other traumas,’ Lagerfeld (pictured with Cara Delevingne) once said of his rake-thin models.
More often than not though, it seemed he was untouchable.
It didn’t matter how famous you were – Lagerfeld’s acid tongue wouldn’t spare you.
Singer Adele was ‘a little too fat’ while even supermodel Heidi Klum was ‘simply too heavy, [with] too big a bust’.
And if he didn’t consider you fat, he’d find something else to criticize.
Princess Diana was ‘sweet but stupid’ – while of Pippa Middleton, the Princess of Wales’s sister, he said: ‘I don’t like [her] face, she should only show her back.’
As for Coco Chanel, founder of the couture fashion house he spent nearly four decades running, she couldn’t have been a feminist, he claimed, because ‘she was never ugly enough for that’.
In his final years, Lagerfeld also deeply offended many women with his open attacks on the #MeToo movement which became a global phenomenon after the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal erupted in 2017.
In an interview with French magazine Numero the following year, he said he was ‘fed up’ with the widespread disclosures of historic harassment.
‘What shocks me most in all of this are the starlets who have taken 20 years to remember what happened,’ he said. ‘Not to mention the fact there are no prosecution witnesses.’
He said the leggy supermodel Heidi Klum was ‘simply too heavy, [with] too big a bust’.
Lagerfeld once said Princess Diana was ‘sweet but stupid’.
He went even further; addressing the case of prominent fashion stylist Karl Templer, who’d been accused in 2018 of aggressively pulling the underwear of models without their permission, Lagerfeld said: ‘If you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent!’
He similarly attracted notoriety when he sent former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn a bouquet of flowers after a New York hotel maid had accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.
Women ‘get horny from politics, from power,’ Lagerfeld said in an interview. His friend was ‘a sweet guy’, he added. ‘As long as you’re not a woman. That’s the problem.’
Clearly, Lagerfeld was never one to sugar-coat his opinions, no matter how tactless.
Indeed, even when reality TV star Kim Kardashian suffered a violent assault and robbery in a Paris hotel room in 2016, he couldn’t resist a chance to offend, controversially claiming she had only herself to blame.
‘You cannot display your wealth then be surprised that some people want to share it,’ he said. ‘If you’re that famous and you put all your jewelry on the [internet], you go to hotels where nobody can come near to the room.’
(Ever the social-climber, Kardashian has clearly moved on, as it’s been widely reported she will attend tonight’s Gala in vintage designs by Lagerfeld – after having posted pictures of herself on Instagram at the designer’s old offices in Paris last week.)
How could a man whose admirers say was fiercely intelligent – and who, in later years, spent some $550,000 a year on books – still be so superficial and vacuous, especially about women?
Kim Kardashian posted pictures of herself on Instagram at the designer’s old offices in Paris last week.
When Kardashian (pictured with Lagerfeld and her ex-husband Kanye West, right) suffered a violent assault and robbery in a Paris hotel room in 2016, Lagerfeld controversially claimed she had only herself to blame.
A brief look at his childhood could provide some answers.
He was born in Hamburg, most probably in 1933 – though nobody can be sure as Lagerfeld was cagey about his age (and not necessarily just because he was vain but because, some believe, he wanted to minimize any connection to the Nazi years, once falsely claiming he was partly Swedish).
His father was a rich dairy tycoon, and Lagerfeld and his two siblings were spoilt rotten.
Lagerfeld, who was given to inventing tall stories about his past, claimed that by the age of four, he had his own valet. And by 11, he was wearing cufflinks daily.
His mother – a lingerie saleswoman – was glamorous, perhaps explaining his intolerance for less attractive women. Like her son, she was extremely demanding and often cruel.
When he was 14, she told him his hands were too ugly to take up smoking – a judgment that is thought to explain why in later years he regularly hid them in a pair of gloves.
Lagerfeld also claimed he was chained to his bedstead as a boy to stop him from binge eating, which likely spawned a life-long obsession with weight. He was known for often not eating in public, and spoke openly about drastic dieting – he once lost 92 pounds in 13 months.
He was also bullied mercilessly as teenager at school, where he was ostracized by other boys, instead spending his time sketching fashion designs alone.
In later life, he hid his insecurities behind dark glasses and his caustic personality, but he clearly had an issue with bodily contact.
Lagerfeld (pictured with model Lily-Rose Depp in 2017) was given to inventing tall stories about his past and once claimed that, by the age of four, he had his own valet.
Lagerfeld his insecurities behind dark glasses and his caustic personality. (Pictured with supermodels Cindy Crawford (left), Linda Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer in 1996).
He could never travel on airlines, instead flying by private jet, ‘because people stare at me, you have to be touched by people’. He also hated handmade bespoke clothes for the same reason, because being fitted for them involved physical contact with strangers.
The gay designer had only one great love, a bisexual dandy named Jacques de Bascher who died of Aids aged 38 in 1989. (Bascher was also the longtime lover of Lagerfeld’s great rival designer, Yves Saint-Laurent).
Lagerfeld insisted he and ‘Jako’ never actually consummated their 18-year relationship, because he preferred to get his sex from prostitutes.
‘I don’t like sleeping with people I really love. I don’t want to sleep with them because sex cannot last, but affection can last forever,’ he said in 2010.
He shared with Jako a lavish lifestyle that ran to various homes, including a nine-bed apartment on the Left Bank in Paris, a house in Vermont, another in Biarritz that contained three miles of bookshelves, and a hillside mansion in Monaco where he famously had one bathroom for the morning and another for the evening.
The vast property can be rented for $17,000 a night – and north of $50,000 in busy season.
Some of his defenders contend that Lagerfeld shouldn’t be judged on all he said because he didn’t mean much of it and said it largely for effect. He himself said as much in 2007: ‘I’m like a caricature of myself and I like that. It is like a mask. And for me, the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long.’
However, it’s a defense that runs terribly thin – especially when it comes to the issue of race.
He repeatedly showcased stereotypes in his work that others considered racially offensive. Most notoriously, in 2010, Lagerfeld had German supermodel Claudia Schiffer appear in blackface and made up as an Asian woman for a magazine shoot, to ‘reflect different men’s fantasies’.
In 2010, Lagerfeld had German supermodel Claudia Schiffer appear in blackface and made up as an Asian woman for a magazine shoot, to ‘reflect different men’s fantasies’.
Lagerfeld’s hillside mansion in Monaco can be rented for $17,000 a night – and north of $50,000 in busy season.
Lagerfeld (right) had only one great love, a bisexual dandy named Jacques de Bascher (left) who died of Aids aged 38 in 1989.
He also took pot shots at entire religions. In 2017, he picked a very public row with Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel, over her decision to admit a million refugees from Syria, a Muslim country.
‘You cannot kill millions of Jews and then take in millions of their worst enemies in their place,’ he said. ‘I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said: “The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust”.’
And it wasn’t the first time he’d offended Muslims. In 1994, Chanel was forced to apologize when Lagerfeld designed several dresses emblazoned with verses from the Koran.
Lagerfeld at least had one soft spot… for his beloved white Burmese cat, Choupette, who he treated like royalty.
Obscenely, she travelled by private jet with own bodyguard and two maids. Every evening, she dined out of silver designer bowls, seated across from Lagerfeld.
Since the designer’s death, she has been looked after handsomely – and her fame has only increased: she now has her own agent, coffee-table books, a skin-care line and some 160,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Lagerfeld, who reportedly regarded Choupette as the closet thing in his life, never had children. But, given that he once claimed ‘it would be difficult to have an ugly daughter’, perhaps that was just as well.
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