“More than anyone I know, he represents the soul of fashion: restless, forward-looking and voraciously attentive to our changing culture,” Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, said of Lagerfeld when presenting him with the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Fashion Awards in 2015.
Lagerfeld had served as creative director of Chanel since 1983 and Fendi since 1965. He also founded his own fashion line.
The Times called him “a fashion polyglot, able to speak the language of many different brands at the same time … In his 80s, when most of his peers were retiring to their yachts or country estates, he was designing an average of 14 new collections a year, ranging from couture to the high street — and not counting collaborations and special projects.”
As he said backstage before a Fendi show at age 83: “Ideas come to you when you work.”
The Times further described him as “a self-identified ‘caricature,’ with his dark glasses, powdered ponytail, black jeans, fingerless gloves, starched collars, Chrome Hearts jewelry and obsessive Diet Coke consumption, he achieved such a level of global fame — and controversy — that a $200 Karl Barbie doll, created in collaboration with the toy maker Mattel, sold out in less than an hour in 2014.”
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