Art-à-Porter: The ageless, eternal fashion designer

For a very long time, almost nobody in the fashion world knew the true age of the legendary German designer, Karl Lagerfeld. This halo of timelessness surrounding his persona easily translated to his designs, whether these were Chanel suits, Fendi fur coats, Chloé gowns or accessories for his eponymous brand. Part of the reason Lagerfeld has been able to stay relevant for so long in this ever-changing, fast-paced industry is his capability to draw inspiration from both pre-modern and contemporary art.

The influence of pre-modern French artist Paul Gauguin was most evident in Lagerfeld’s Chanel Spring-Summer Couture collection of 2015. In addition to many of the classic elements that have made Chanel the brand it is today, such as the tweed suits and below-the-knee-length skirts, Lagerfeld featured interestingly poufy silhouettes embellished by tropical flowers. The color palette for the show was also atypical for the Chanel woman. Lagerfeld included reds and oranges, which were enhanced by the runway backdrop, consisting of warmly colored paper orchids and other exotic-looking flowers. When the models started populating the catwalk, the set animated itself and the flowers started blossoming. This mechanical set was a clear self-reference to a previous show in which Lagerfeld adopted a carousel to display the collection. With this show, the German fashion designer highlighted an ironic tension between people’s willingness to inhabit a utopic natural world filled with beautiful flowers and the need for this fantasy to rely on machinery. The fact that he underlined this contradiction of our time by referencing Gauguin’s fascination and idealization of Polynesia was simply spectacular.

Lagerfeld, when designing for Chanel, was also clearly inspired by recent trends in contemporary art. For instance, for Chanel’s Ready-to-Wear collection of Fall-Winter 2014, he decided to host the show at “Chanel Shopping Center.” The German designer made the venue resemble a gargantuan supermarket, in which models pushed carts around and carried their purses in wire baskets. In that occasion, Lagerfeld clearly put himself in dialogue with the work of the first superstar artist, Andy Warhol. The venue was clearly referencing Warhol’s “Campbell Soup Cans” (1962) and the American artist’s fascination with mass-produced goods. The venue of the show also spoke to the supermarket aesthetic that artists such as Han Seok Hyun are fascinated with. The Korean contemporary artist, who recently made an installation for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ “Megacities Asia” exhibition, is interested in the contradiction created by 'green' commercial products. The fact that Lagerfeld referenced mass production during a fashion show is also quite significant. By doing this, he raised questions on the current state of the fashion world. He used an entity that acts like a supermarket, where clothes are designed to be commercial, so that fashion 'maisons' can make the biggest profit out of their collections. Could one of the biggest fashion moguls of all time have critiqued the very system on which he constructed his whole identity?