- Hello, I'm Anna.
And this morning,
we're going to look at some of Karl Lagerfeld's
most iconic looks for Chanel
throughout the pages and history of Vogue.
[bright classical music]
This amazing trompe l'oeil dress
is from Karl's very first collection for Chanel
where there was a lot of apprehension.
Would he throw out all the CODEs of COCO?
Would he destroy the most beloved French designer?
But of course he didn't.
He took all that she did
and sort of had some fun with it and pushed it.
And I think that this dress really epitomizes that.
So this very joyful picture of Naomi Campbell
was part of a shoot that we did
for her very first American Vogue cover.
I love the combination
of the traditional Chanel pearls with leggings.
I think this is probably one of the most celebrated images
that American Vogue has ever published,
and this collection is what Karl called City Ballerina,
and I think what we called Madonna meets Brando.
And it was this incredible collection
that was really this mixture
of ball gowns and leather jackets
paired with all the accessories that Chanel is known for:
pearls, the gold jewelry, the bags.
This is March 1994 in our post-grunge moment.
And when you would visit Karl in the studio,
he would always have a huge array of colorful pencils.
And he told me at the time that this collection
was based on the colors of those pencils.
And, of course, it was at a moment
where everything went super short, super to the body,
and it was a dramatic reaction
against the layers of grunge
and the body's all being covered up.
Well, this is part of a world-famous shoot
that I believe our features director at the time,
James Truman, suggested.
And Vogue decided to bring Sean Combs
to Paris to the couture and photograph him with Kate Moss.
And this particular picture
was photographed in a paint studio
and was one of the few pictures
which actually shows Kate alone
because the dress itself was so perfect.
This is another moment
when Vogue invites an outsider, in a way,
to the Paris Couture
because this was at a moment when celebrities
were really not in attendance in the front row.
Renee Zellweger had not yet reached
her enormous heights of fame.
She won a Golden Globe that year for "Nurse Betty."
And "Bridget Jones," the first one, was about to come out,
but we flew her immediately from receiving that Golden Globe
right to the salons of Paris.
And this particular picture was taken at the Balmain Show
and she is wearing a Chanel jacket.
And the reason we decided to put those two together
is that Karl, and this is not so known about his history,
was also, for a brief moment, a designer at Balmain.
And in fact, when Olivier Rousteing joined Balmain,
I remember Karl saying to him,
"Oh, we are both Balmain boys."
So this is another moment
when Vogue brought a famous character to Paris
and shot them there.
And this was with Annie,
and I believe that Grace was the editor.
And, of course, this is Ben Stiller
at the time of "Zoolander"
and Stella Tennant wearing Chanel.
I believe that Annie's thinking for this particular image
was a sort of homage to "Funny Face"
and also to Elliot Owen.
This shoot of Nicole Kidman
in "Moulin Rouge!" inspired dresses created for Vogue
by a number of different designers.
This one, obviously, is Karl for Chanel.
Came out of a disaster.
We were planning to shoot
and had actually sent Annie all the way,
I believe to Australia,
to photograph her on the set of "Moulin Rouge!"
the great movie directed by the amazing Baz Luhrmann.
And we came away from Australia with a fantastic shoot.
And I remember being in Paris,
I believe in October,
and the phone rang, it was pre-cellphones,
and I had an extremely apprehensive
Baz Luhrmann on the phone telling me
that the film was delayed.
We went ahead and we ran the story anyway as a preview,
but then when the movie came out, we loved it so much.
We wanted to do something
that was an homage to "Moulin Rouge!"
and to the looks
that Catherine Martin, Baz's wife, had designed.
So we asked a group of designers
to create "Moulin Rouge!" inspired dresses.
Because of "Moulin Rouge!"
Chanel became very aware
of what a brilliant filmmaker Baz was,
and they asked him to make a small film of Nicole
wearing the most beautiful dress that Karl designed.
And even though it was a small film,
Baz, and Karl, and Nicole treated it
like it was an epic five-hour film.
And there were many fittings, many meetings,
many script discussions.
And the opening itself
was like the opening of "Lawrence of Arabia"
or "Moulin Rouge!"
There was a history between Grace and Annie
and all of us at Vogue
about creating magical portfolios for our holiday issues.
And I think that this one, "Alice in Wonderland,"
is probably the most magical.
And again, it was the remarkable combination
of Grace and Annie working together.
And they decided to ask a number of designers
to create looks around the idea of "Alice in Wonderland."
And Grace, in her great wisdom,
decided they all should be blue.
Then, she and Annie cooked up the idea
that all the designers would play different characters
for "Alice in Wonderland."
So Lacroix came, Gaultier came, John Galliano came.
The one kept refusing was Karl.
Annie and Grace are two ladies who never give up.
So in the end, he got so fed up with all their phone calls,
he said, "Okay, I'll come at 5:00 in the morning,"
thinking that they wouldn't be there.
But actually, they just stayed there all night
and waited for him to come.
He was shot alone.
Natalia was added afterwards 'cause they were so terrified
that the pig would disturb the maestro.
This is another example
of Annie and Grace's brilliant storytelling.
It was based on Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette"
with Kirsten Dunst playing The Queen.
And we asked a number of great French couturiers
to make dresses.
Karl was someone who was deeply immersed
in the 18th century.
It was his inspiration for so many different collections.
It's how he lived.
It was his backbone.
And this dress is photographed at Versailles on Kirsten,
and they created all these amazing images
in the dungeons, in the ballrooms,
looking out onto the garden,
and recreating what Sofia was making in her film.
So this is one of Irving Penn's great portraits.
Very Charles Dickens, I think,
in its feeling, and makeup, and the atmosphere.
And Karl was someone
who was almost impossible to give a gift to,
but he did truly admire the work of Irving Penn
and held him in the highest regard.
So I was able to persuade Irving
to give this print to Karl as a present.
And I was so proud when I saw it hanging in the studio
for everybody to see
because that truly meant,
because that's where Karl spent all his time
was in the studio,
that Karl loved it.
And I think he loved the light, he loved the mystery.
It's so evocative and strong,
but a little bit sad, I think, at the same time.
[Anna scoffs]
So this shoot
was a Tim Walker-Grace Coddington extravaganza.
It was to celebrate or recognize
the very sad closing of The Ritz Hotel
for many, many years of renovation.
We photographed the people that worked there,
we photographed the flowers, we photographed all the rooms,
and we photographed Kate,
who was, I think, a very, very faithful customer of The Ritz
here in this extraordinary room
after obviously an exhausting day of shopping at Chanel.
And I think this was particularly moving
because Karl himself spent so much time at The Ritz.
He had many shows there, many dinners, many celebrations,
and I think The Ritz was a second home, in a way, for him.
So this last image is a deeply moving picture of Karl
towards the end of his life.
And obviously, he's sitting,
working as he did every day
at this desk that was so full and covered
with every possible sort of book, things to draw with.
There are probably a million iPads in there, too.
It was just, like,
you think he was gonna disappear under it.
And in fact, years and years ago,
I was at his house one night for dinner,
and we were in the dining room,
and we heard this incredible thud.
We went next door
and we saw that the desk that he had there,
which looked exactly like this, had collapsed,
and the ceiling had fallen in under the weight
of everything that Karl had on his beloved desk.
To me, this shows the Karl that we know the best.
Yes, he was glamorous,
but when you go back to the quintessential Karl,
he would always say, "I'm just a dress maker."
And here he is, creating.
[mellow music]
Thank you so much for joining us
as we remember some of Karl's most iconic images in Vogue.
And looking forward to seeing you on May 1st
to celebrate him again.
[mellow music]