- It's always Karl,
it's just the whole eclectic mix of books.
I'm looking at Kant, I'm looking at Nabokov.
I think the works of Evelyn Moore.
I mean, that's Karl,
the man of everything.
Hello, Vogue.
My name is Amanda Harlech.
I'm one of Karl's dearest friends,
and I'm here today to take you on a
very, very special tour
of his house outside Paris.
So, why don't you follow me?
[quirky music]
Here we are, in the entrance hall of Karl's house.
He always called it the Villa outside Paris,
or the Villa Louveciennes.
Like his last couture collection,
he put everything into this last house
that he really, really loved.
He always called this house
"a real version of himself".
I mean, Karl created these spaces,
which made you feel like
the best possible version of yourself,
and Karl just did that.
This is the dining room.
Karl was a brilliant host.
He loved the idea that
the house would be full of friends,
and that he would have dinners here,
and everybody would spend the night.
Karl really love these chandeliers,
and he has several here in this villa.
For me, this is like a couture dress.
I think they're astonishing.
It's also like a piece of jewelry.
Both things that Karl really, really adored.
It looks like a jellyfish.
I mean a jellyfish skirt,
which is also very couture.
So, here we are in the sitting room.
Karl was about as varied as his houses,
his worlds, his interiors,
his very eclectic, likes and dislikes.
So you've got the intellectual side
and the television.
Karl loved to watch the news.
So when we had dinner,
the news was on all the time.
It literally there for three hours,
we would have the same strap lines
going underneath the breaking news.
But, he also liked to watch
"Dancing with the Stars", because,
being a champion ballroom dancer in his youth.
He also really, really loved silent movies.
So you have Dr. Mabuse, or
you have the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
all of which is very much in this house.
And something else I'd like to show you
is this wonderful Bruno Paul furniture,
which Karl was obsessed by
reupholstered in Karl's fabulous colors,
a sort of German, expressionist blue.
Bruno Paul was an architect
as well as a furniture designer.
I think Karl would love to have been an architect
and he really,
I think he would have loved to design houses.
And, here we are in the music room,
or should I say the Sue et Mare Room?
Because Karl adored their furniture
and all their designs.
We have the Sue et Mare Piano.
He always used to tell a story that he
wanted to play the piano,
but his mother said he had such ugly hands
that he wasn't going to be allowed.
And also the idea of him practicing
would drive her insane.
I mean, she was a very brilliant violinist
and a child, I think possibly
playing the wrong notes or something
would be intolerable.
[piano keys tinkling]
It's quite bad.
Karl loved the shape of pianos,
And even though he really wanted to play them,
he loved listening to piano music.
I think he really wanted the music room
to be a place where there could be concerts.
I just remembered
Steinway asked him to redesign
the Steinway Grand, which he did.
It was this extraordinary black and lacquer red
and was used for photographs.
And then after about a year,
it was sort of used as a bar
where people would put their drinks down.
And I said to Karl,
"Was he going to give it
to conservatoire, for example?",
and he didn't say anything.
The piano disappeared.
And then one, fine, Easter morning,
his two lovely furniture removers
turned up at my house and
there was the grand piano.
It's just the most wonderful, wonderful present
I could ever, ever receive.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful, inspiring, incredible
life is so dull otherwise.
And now, I want to take you to
a very, very special room.
Follow me.
This is, I think, Karl's recreation
of his childhood room,
but what's really important in this room
is the Menzel.
Here is the copy of the painting
actually by Menzel,
of King Frederick having lunch with Voltaire.
And this really set Karl on his journey
towards recreating an 18th century
intellectual, extraordinary way of life.
I mean, if anybody had a Versailles complex,
it was Karl, and it's interesting
that he kept this painting,
which he saw as a ten-year-old, I think
and wanted for Christmas.
He was so furious that his
parents couldn't get it.
But I think they went back into Hamburg
to buy it on Christmas Eve, or something.
But, I love the idea that this child,
this precocious, sophisticated child,
stood and saw this painting,
through the window of the shop and thought,
"That's how I want to live."
So, follow me and I'll take you upstairs.
Coming?
So, here we are in Karl's, this is Karl's floor.
This is totally Karl's space.
Everybody knows Karl loved books.
He was a bookaholic, a bibliophile,
a paper freak, an ink vampire.
He had book fiends finding books for him
all over the world.
And everything about books,
including their contents, Karl adored.
He lived in this paper world
and he surrounded himself, yes,
with these installations of books,
but, he knew where every single book was,
even though it looked like total chaos.
It's like a gift that he could see
the abstract x-ray of things,
almost like the essence of things.
Just as his homes were flawlessly decorated,
he, himself, was flawless.
I mean, God knows how long
it took him to get dressed,
which it might account for him
being a bit late sometimes,
but, every single detail
as to the width of the tie
or the collage of Belperron,
that would appear on the actual tie itself,
down to his mitaine, his fingerless gloves
that he had made by Causse in Paris,
meant that he could somehow recede behind it.
He could be this other person,
this private person,
and he's got this perfect uniform
to present to the world.
Always.
He sometimes called himself "the Dolly".
And he said that he's really pleased
with the dolly, this anima,
this other person, that was not him at all,
but, just how he would like
to present himself to the world.
Because, as he was reproduced,
or the dolly was reproduced,
in teddy bears, you have a Steiff Teddy Bear,
a Ken doll,
or these Tokidokis.
Actually, it looked very like him.
♪ Karl, the ken doll! ♪
So, follow me and let's see where Karl sketched.
This is where Karl would sketch.
He would sketch really fast, really brilliantly.
I mean, that is the discipline of
say a musician or a cabinet maker.
I mean, Karl sketched all the time,
night and day.
The huge wastepaper bins everywhere
because he would throw away as much as he kept.
He used the Shu Uemura eyeshadow,
actually, for colors.
And, I can just remember,
any idea would come out as a visual
and he'd just throw it,
he'd throw it across the room.
And, it also seemed collected a lot of desks.
And this is one of his favorite Szeleky desks.
I mean, he was just obsessed with great design.
It would make him really happy
and would also tap into collections,
jewelry, accessories, himself.
That was what was so exciting about Karl,
he just never stopped looking
and responding and learning
and transfiguring and transforming.
So thank you Vogue for being with us
on this very special visit to Karl's house
outside Paris.
And I know Karl is very amused
by my complete lack of historical knowledge.
And if Karl was here today,
he'd be so happy to see everybody.
And he'd be wanting everybody
to be enjoying the house just
as he always hoped he would do.
So. Thank you.
Bye Vogue!
Bye Vogue.
♪ Bye Vogue! ♪
[quirky music]