OK, Karl Lagerfeld was not a Nazi, but he was born in Germany sometime between 1933 and 1935. What was it like living in Nazi Germany under Hitler as a boy? Was his dad a Nazi? A soldier? Was his home bombed? Invaded by Soviet troops?
And what about the gay thing? Apparently, he had a “godson”, Hudson Kroenig, who sometimes would share the stage with him at his trademark extravagant fashion shows. Hudson is, um, 8 years old, the son of Brad Kroenig, one of Karl’s favorite models. Irina Aleksander, writing in the New York Times back in 2015, firmly assured us that there was no hanky-panky involving Brad and Karl, though Karl has published four volumes of photographs of Brad. Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with being German, and nothing wrong with being gay, but it would seem that a “fair” obituary for Karl might make mention of them, instead of ignoring both, as legendary fashion critic Kathy Horn did, writing in New York magazine, or Vanessa Friedman did, writing in the New York Times, although both publications wrote much more candidly about Karl while he was still alive.
I remembered Irina’s piece from four years back, which I started reading to get a little insight into the high life, but I stopped after learning that, aboard Karl’s private jet, which was just as big as Oprah’s (very important to Karl, it seems, who definitely had his priorities in order) and thus the very largest available, there was only one bed—for Karl. Everyone else had to sit in their seat—and in their place, one assumes.
Afterwords
When Lagerfeld entered the fashion business, in the early fifties, designers were, like chefs, musicians, and jockeys, little more than highly paid servants of the rich. The great expansion of wealth and democratization of fashion that occurred in the sixties allowed designers to turn the tables on their patrons and become titans themselves, dwarfing their customers. It's no wonder that designers like Lagerfeld, working in a field whose essence was excess, often lived lives that were self parodies of self-indulgence.1
But Karl wasn't all bad, probably. Although highly praised for his "bitchy" comments about other people—very unusual in the fashion world, I'm sure—he also said "Please don't say I work hard. People buy a dress to be happy, not to hear about how someone struggled over a piece of taffeta."
1. Of course, designers were not alone in such pursuits. Steve Jobs, Mr. Minimalist himself, spent $100 million on an ultra high tech yacht, Venus, which he died too soon ever to board. Which is the more absurd, a man who spends $1,000 on a smartphone he can't afford to impress others, or a man who spends $100 million on a yacht he can afford to impress himself?
