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The first Monday in May is fast approaching, marking the return of the annual Met Gala—and with it, the internet feeding-frenzy surrounding the Gala’s delightfully choreographed red carpet and, of course, guests’ over-the-top attire.
Attended by A-listers across industries, the annual gala raises funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, while also celebrating the opening of its annual exhibition. This year’s show, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” will pay tribute to the late Karl Lagerfeld, whose seven-decade career as a creative polymath spanned fashion, photography, film, acting, curating, furniture design, publishing, and more.
Featuring over 150 garments from Lagerfeld’s career—including designs for Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld—the show will explore the aesthetic themes that permeated Lagerfeld’s work from the 1950s until his final collection in 2019.
Lagerfeld famously disliked fashion retrospectives, stating in 2015 to the New York Times: “I don’t want to see all those old dresses.” Respecting Lagerfeld’s opinion, the exhibition pairs garments with references from Lagerfeld’s extensive catalog of sketches and cross-disciplinary influences—from Art Deco to the Memphis Group, and Renaissance-era garments to robots.
The German-born Lagerfeld spent his teenage years in Paris studying drawing and history at the Lycée Montaigne, maintaining aspirations of becoming a commercial illustrator. At 16, Lagerfeld’s path veered him toward the fashion industry when he entered and won a first-place prize in an international design competition. His winning sketch of a belted boat-neck coat opened the door for Lagerfeld to become an assistant to Pierre Balmain in 1954. Working his way from assistant to apprentice to creative director, Lagerfeld spent time at the studios of Patou, Chloé, and Fendi before finally landing at Chanel in 1983, where he remained creative director until his death in 2019.
Through it all, sketching remained a core part of Lagerfeld’s highly collaborative creative process, serving as the primary mode of communication between himself and his team of premières, or head seamstresses, tasked with bringing his visions to life.
His impressionistic yet detailed sketches were “extremely precise, almost mathematical,” according to the exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton. “His premières knew down to the millimeter what each line meant,” he said. Lagerfeld employed uncommon media in his sketches, including Tipp-Ex and eyeshadow, allowing the designer to better communicate texture and shine.
Beyond his prolific fashion career, Lagerfeld was also a filmmaker, directing and producing several short films, most notably the 18-minute short film Once Upon a Time, which starred Keira Knightley as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. An accomplished photographer, Lagerfeld shot marketing and editorial campaigns for Chanel and Fendi, while also maintaining a personal photography practice of portraiture and still-life photography, which were the subject of more than a dozen gallery shows during his lifetime. In front of the camera, he also appeared in the 1973 film L’Amour by Andy Warhol, playing a German aristocrat.
In one of his final art world collaborations, Lagerfeld teamed up with the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman to produce a line of furniture for the design gallery Carpenter’s Workshop in 2019. Constructed in black-and-white marble, the collection referenced Greek classical architecture, with proportions derived from the golden ratio, while also evoking minimalism and brutalism.
Guests attending the Met Gala have been instructed to dress “in honor of Karl,” and with the designer’s remarkably deep creative catalog to draw inspiration from, it’s safe to say we can expect much more than tweed and pearls on the red carpet.
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