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- Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty
is our most ambitious show to date
with approximately 180 garments
from Lagerfeld's remarkable 65-year career
as the creative director for multiple design houses,
including Fendi, Chloé, Chanel,
and his eponymous label.
The exhibition is inspired
by William Hogarth's concept, the line of beauty,
an S-shaped curved line appearing within an object
or as the boundary line of an object.
For Hogarth, S-shaped serpentine lines represented
liveliness and movement
in contrast to straight lines,
which signified stillness, inactivity, and even death.
Lagerfeld was much too magnanimous
to hold such aesthetic judgments.
For him, the straight line and the serpentine line
were just as beautiful, exciting,
and engaging his imagination in equal measure.
These two lines are physically and conceptually manifested
in the exhibition
with the serpentine line representing
Lagerfeld's historicist, Romantic, and decorative impulses
and the straight line signifying
his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies.
The exhibition focuses
on Lagerfeld's practice of sketching,
a critical aspect of his design process
that made him unique among his peers.
While other designers sketch
as part of their creative process,
Lagerfeld's sketches were a combination
of a detailed technical drawing
and an expressive fashion illustration.
We've included a video of Lagerfeld drawing
and the desk he used to sketch his designs.
Sketching was not only Lagerfeld's primary mode
of creative expression,
but also his primary mode of communication.
To the untrained eye,
his sketches seem spontaneous and expressionistic,
but to the skilled eyes of his premières
who were responsible
for translating Lagerfeld's two-dimensional drawings
into three-dimensional garments,
they convey precise details
and almost mathematical instructions.
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Adjacent to the introductory gallery
is a room dedicated
to the premières at Fendi, Chloé, Chanel,
and Lagerfeld's eponymous label,
with whom Lagerfeld
had a long established working relationship.
In a series of interviews,
they discuss how they decoded his encrypted drawings
to transform them into finished pieces,
which are displayed in the gallery on dress forms.
As you continue through the exhibition,
each gallery explores the serpentine line
and the straight line as dualities.
Bridging these dualities are what we call explosions,
garments that represent moments of convergence
in which the competing aesthetics
of these contrasting dichotomies
are resolved and reconciled.
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For example, the garments in the romantic line
are shown embedded in a curved wall
and those in the military line
are shown alongside a straight wall,
or rather, two straight walls
with the garments arranged as a pyramid.
The Romantic era, beginning in the late 1700s
and lasting through the 1850s,
was a constant source of inspiration for Lagerfeld,
especially its idealization of nature
as reflected in fashions
that celebrated pastoral lifestyle.
This pastoralism permeates the garments
in the romantic line,
which prioritizes two revivalist silhouettes:
the 1830s, with its distinctive gigot
or leg of mutton sleeves,
and the 1850s,
with its characteristic dome-shaped crinoline skirt.
In Lagerfeld's imagination,
the costumes of romantic heroines coexisted
alongside the uniforms of military heroes
whose severity and sobriety stand in stark contrast
to the sentimentality of Romantic era fashions.
As reflected in the garments in the military line,
Lagerfeld's borrowings of war's fiery raiment
are more formal than symbolic,
such as braids inspired by Hussar uniforms,
tabs simulating the closures
on 18th and early 19th century uniforms,
and large pockets with scallop flaps
referencing World War I uniforms.
For Lagerfeld, the hand and the machine were creative
rather than contrasting or contradictory tools
in the production of fashion.
This gallery shows how Lagerfeld strove
to problematize the associative values
that traditionally have been applied
to the hand-machine dichotomy.
The hand signifying
exclusivity, spontaneity, and individuality,
and the machine signifying
inferiority, dehumanization, and homogenization.
This ensamble is entirely hand embroidered
with tiny paillettes and seed beads
that involved 700 hours of workmanship.
For Lagerfeld, embroidery is not mere lux augmentation,
but capability intrinsic to the garment.
The ensemble was part
of Chanel's spring/summer 2009 haute couture collection,
which was an ode to paper, Lagerfeld's favorite material.
Apart from the color white,
the papery quality of the ensemble
can be seen in the crispness of the squared off shoulders
and the symmetry of the A-line skirt
with inverted V-shaped pleat,
which is crafted with scissored precision.
In this suit from Chanel's
autumn/winter 2015 haute couture collection,
Lagerfeld purposely challenged
the cultural and symbolic meanings
behind the hand-machine dichotomy.
Made by the Belgian company Materialise,
the suit was created using selective laser sintering,
a manufacturing technique that employs a laser
to sinter a powdered material together one layer at a time
to create a solid structure.
The top, however, as well as the lining
and braiding of the suit's pockets and perimeters,
were embroidered by Maison Lesage,
entailing almost 1,800 hours of hand work.
This complex amalgam of hand and machine techniques
results not only in unraveling the mythologies
of the hand-machine conundrum,
but it also produces a garment
of exceptional conceptual originality
and technical ingenuity.
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One of Lagerfeld's most enduring
and distinctive stylistic interests
was the post-modern combination
of the traditional proprieties of the couture
and the transgressive provocations
of the edgiest and wildest street styles.
The garments in the canonical line and countercultural line
represent the dueling stylistic forces
behind this gleeful confrontation
between the establishment and the anti-establishment,
simultaneously asserting and enhancing
their refined elegance.
All the pieces in the canonical line were shown
in the rarefied context of a salon,
this ambience of privacy and exclusivity.
Several incorporate trompe l'oeil details
that reference Gabrielle Chanel's penchant
for wearing real and artificial jewelry,
which in its day was a radical challenge
to accepted notions of good taste and bad taste.
This ensemble from Chanel's
autumn/winter 1996 haute couture collection
represents a different kind of simulation.
The coat is made from black organza
applied with strips of silk tulle
gathered, crocheted, and dyed
to resemble a mink fur coat,
the erstwhile sartorial symbol of wealth and power.
Lagerfeld's duplicity is calculated.
His intention is to draw attention
to the hidden value of the haute couture
and to highlight
the extraordinary workmanship of the metiers
in service to the couture.
In this case, Maison Montex
and the 250 hours spent on creating the illusion.
The coat presaged Chanel's announcement in 2018
that it would stop using fur
and exotic skins in its fashions
and instead focus its research and development
on textiles and leathers generated by agrifood industries.
While the canonical line represents
the trickle-across movement of fashions moving horizontally
between individuals of similar social and economic standing,
the countercultural line represents
the trickle-up movement of fashion trends
that start from the street
and move upward into high fashion.
Lagerfeld reveled in this reversal of fortune.
This ensemble from Chanel's spring/summer 2011 collection
was inspired by punks
and, specifically, the punk practice of deconstruction
expressed in torn, ripped, and slashed clothes,
which were visual symbols of disaffection
encapsulated in the punk clarion cry of no future.
Lagerfeld's interest in punk's rips and tears, however,
were for their decoration
rather than for any political associations.
The jacket is a tour de force of workmanship,
with each laser-cut hole carefully positioned and finished
to prevent fraying.
In Lagerfeld's hands, the aesthetic of poverty
has been transformed into the aesthetic of luxury.
Lagerfeld's synthesis of the salon on the street,
good taste and bad taste,
high culture and low culture,
is exemplified in this ensemble
from Chanel's autumn/winter 1991 collection.
Lagerfeld described the look as Nouveau rapper,
a reflection of his belief
that modern dressing entailed a complete rethinking
of the established standards.
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This gallery explores the duality
between the ornamental line and the structural line.
Lagerfeld was the consummate connoisseur.
His collecting practices were as eclectic
as his fashion inspirations.
Lagerfeld's greatest affinity, however,
was for the arts of the 18th century,
especially for the style of Louis XV,
which he regarded as the epitome of elegance and restraint.
This passion is evident
in the garments in the ornamental line
inspired by a diverse range of 18th century decorative arts.
The flowers that bloom on this 1950s style dress
from Chanel's spring/summer 2019 haute couture collection
were inspired by ceramic flowers produced by Vincennes
in the mid 18th century.
Each flower petal is cut from foam
or molded in ceramic powder
and then hand painted and enameled.
In total, the dress entailed 1,650 hours of workmanship.
In contrast to the Rococo flourishes of the ornamental line,
the structural line reveals a modernist exactitude
expressed through Lagerfeld's approach to tailoring.
Featuring a series of suits and coats
from his Chanel collections,
they reveal a fundamental difference
between the designer and the founder of the house.
Whereas Gabrielle Chanel was chiefly interested
in tailoring finishes,
Lagerfeld was more concerned with tailoring construction.
The garments also highlight
two of the designer's anatomical obsessions,
the shoulders and the side of the ribcage.
This tweed suit
is from Chanel's autumn/winter 2016 haute couture collection
entitled Graphic Cuts,
which was a study in angularity.
The jacket's shoulders are extended
and flattened into two dimensions
without any internal padding,
an effect achieved through a technique called biseauté.
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Lagerfeld held the strong opinion that fashion was not art
and that fashion designers were not artists.
For Lagerfeld, fashion was intensely practical
and irrevocably commercial.
But despite being skeptical
of the confluence between art and fashion,
he often looked to fine art
for both inspiration and information,
as the figurative line and the abstract line demonstrates.
Lagerfeld's figurative tendencies
were most fully expressed
in his designs for Chloé and Fendi,
the latter manifested
in his autumn/winter 2016 haute couture collection,
which was inspired by Kay Nielsen's illustrations
for the 1914 book, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
This dress from the collection
is titled Lassie and the Prince
and features an image
that references one of Nielsen's drawings
for the story, "The Lassie and Her Godmother,"
and was created by the British illustrator Kate Baylay
especially for the collection.
The image is both printed and hand-painted on silk gazar
to reflect the fine lines, delicate colors,
and tonal variety of Nielsen's original artwork,
which incorporates the influences of Art Nouveau
filtered through a chilly Nordic modernism.
This ensemble from Chloé's spring/summer 1971 collection
was hand-painted by Nicole Lefort
and was inspired
by Sonia Delaunay's Rhythm and Color paintings,
which express her concept of simultanism,
a mode of art that rejects the representation of figures
in favor of the simultaneous contrast of colors.
The exhibition concludes with the satirical line,
which consists of two parts.
The first includes garments
that reflect Lagerfeld's razor-sharp wit,
and the second features ensembles
that mirror Lagerfeld's self-presentation
through various representations
of his iconic black-and-white uniform.
In this dress from the autumn/winter 1985 collection
of Lagerfeld's eponymous label,
the embroidered candlestick becomes a surrogate
for a woman's body,
speaking of metaphor and metamorphosis.
It also invokes the somnambulant world of surrealism,
suggesting nocturnal reverie
and the transition from day to night,
from the real to the imagined,
and from the conscious to the subconscious.
Lagerfeld arrived at his black-and-white uniform
after years and years of self-study.
As with Gabrielle Chanel,
he looked to the dandy for his self-styling.
Lagerfeld's globally recognized uniform
was a cloak of invisibility,
making it possible for him to hide in plain sight
and pass incognito on the world stage.
To deepen this deceit,
Lagerfeld deliberately lent himself to caricature.
Channeling Andy Warhol, another dandy,
Lagerfeld presented this caricature
as a commercial experiment
through various representations of his black-and-white look
primarily in collections for Chanel and his eponymous label.
The apogee of this Warholian experiment
was his 2004 collaboration with the high-street chain H&M.
This ensemble from the H&M collaboration
includes the cornerstone of the collection,
a white T-shirt printed with a graphic representation
of Lagerfeld's face and shoulders
signed by the designer,
fulfilling his infamous comment, "I am a living label.
My name is Labelfeld, not Lagerfeld."
This echo chamber shows footage from Loic Prigent
documenting an impromptu moment from 2011
when Lagerfeld was filming a special feature
for the French-German television channel Arte.
The footage shows Lagerfeld dissolving into laughter
as he confuses his French, English, and his native German.
The space reveals the centrality of his iPhone
to his creative process
and presents his epigrams or Karl-isms
in a dynamic installation
conceived by the British director Baillie Walsh,
granting Lagerfeld the final word.
The exhibition ends with a collage
of Lagerfeld's dandiacal black-and-white uniform,
which was paradoxical
in its modernist and historicist aesthetics.
Adjacent to this collage
is a video of Lagerfeld drawing himself,
beginning with the lederhosen he wore as a child
and ending with the Karlito charm
from Fendi's autumn/winter 2014 collection,
which represented Lagerfeld as a dolly or puppet,
reduced to the elements of collar,
tie, sunglasses, and ponytail.
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