Partner Jacques de Bascher
Queer Places:
Chateau de Penhoët, Penhoët, 56390 Grand-Champ, France
17 Quai Voltaire, 75007 Paris, France
51 Rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris, France
6 Pl. Saint-Sulpice, 75006 Paris, France
Villa La Vigie, 06190 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
Villa Jako, Wilmans Park 17, 22587 Hamburg, Germany
Elhorria Le Domaine, 55 Rue Alan Seeger, 64200 Biarritz, France
Petit Pavillon du Château de Voisins, 78430 Louveciennes, France
Le Millefiori, 1 Rue des Genêts, 98000 Monaco
8 Rue des Saints-Pères, 75007 Paris, France
Karl Otto Lagerfeld (10 September 1933 – 19 February 2019) was a German fashion designer.[7][8]
Lagerfeld began his career in fashion in the 1950s, working for several top fashion houses including
Pierre Balmain, Patou, and Chloé before joining
Chanel in 1983. As the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death, he oversaw every aspect of the fashion house's creative output, from designing collections to overseeing advertising campaigns and store displays. He was instrumental in revitalizing the Chanel brand, helping it regain its position as one of the top fashion houses in the world. He was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, as well as his own eponymous fashion label. Throughout his career he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.
Lagerfeld was recognised for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high, starched, detachable collars.
Lagerfeld was born on September 10, 1933, in Hamburg, to Elisabeth Bahlmann and businessman Otto Lagerfeld.[9] His father owned a company that produced and imported evaporated milk; his maternal grandfather, Karl Bahlmann, was a local politician for the Catholic Centre Party.[9] His family belonged to the Old Catholic Church. When Lagerfeld's mother met his father, she was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin. His parents married in 1930.[10]
His older sister, Martha Christiane "Christel", was born in 1931. Lagerfeld had an older half-sister, Theodora Dorothea "Thea," from his father's first marriage.
His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father being a member of the Nazi party and his business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH.[20][21] As a child, he showed great interest in the visual arts, and former schoolmates recalled that he was always making sketches "no matter what we were doing in class".[23] Lagerfeld told interviewers that he learned much more by constantly visiting the Kunsthalle Hamburg museum than he ever did in school.[24][25]
Lagerfeld had an 18-year relationship with the French aristocrat, model, and socialite
Jacques de Bascher, though Lagerfeld said that the relationship never was sexual.[135] "I infinitely loved that boy," Lagerfeld reportedly said of de Bascher, "but I had no physical contact with him. Of course, I was seduced by his physical charm."[136] De Bascher had an affair with the couturier
Yves Saint Laurent; subsequently, Saint Laurent's business partner and former lover
Pierre Bergé accused Lagerfeld of being behind a gambit to destabilize the rival fashion house.[136] De Bascher died of AIDS in 1989 while Lagerfeld stayed on a cot at his bedside in his hospital room during the final stages of his illness. After Lagerfeld's death, tabloids reported that he was to be cremated and
half his ashes mixed with those of de Bascher, which Lagerfeld kept in an urn,
and the other half ith those of his mother.[137][138]
Lagerfeld lived in numerous homes over the years: an apartment in the Rue de l'Université in Paris, decorated in the Art Deco style (1970s); the 18th-century Chateau de Penhoët in Brittany, decorated in the Rococo style (1970s to 2000); an apartment in Monte Carlo decorated until 2000 in 1980s Memphis style (from the early 1980s); the Villa Jako in Blankenese in Hamburg, decorated in the Art Deco style (mid-1990s to 2000); the Villa La Vigie in France (the 1990s to 2000), a 17th-century mansion (hôtel particulier) in the Rue de l'Université in Paris, decorated in the Rococo and other styles (1980s to the 2000s); an apartment in Manhattan, although he never moved into or decorated it (2006 to 2012); the summer villa El Horria in Biarritz, decorated in the modern style (1990s–2006); and a house dating from the 1840s in Vermont (from the 2000s). From 2007, Lagerfeld owned an 1820s house in Paris in Quai Voltaire decorated in modern and Art Deco style.[139]
A spread with pictures inside Lagerfeld's apartments in Paris and Monaco was published in Vogue.[140] He also revealed his vast collection of Suzanne Belperron's pins and brooches and used the color of one of her blue chalcedony rings as the starting point for the Chanel spring/summer 2012 collection.[141]
Lagerfeld owned a red point Birman cat named Choupette, which, in June 2013, he indicated he would marry, if it were legal.[142] According to reports, the designer included the feline in his will from 2015, and is designated to receive 1.5 million dollars for its care and maintenance.[143]
Karl Lagerfeld's will was deposited in the tax haven of Monte Carlo and, according to reports in the French press, there
were seven beneficiaries, all human, who inherited millions.
Five of the contenders are called “Karl's boys', all young men who have become his muses over the years. Competing for the treasure, in first place according to the transalpine media is 45-year-old
Sébastien Jondeau, a part-time boxer who later became a model, bodyguard and chauffeur of the designer, with whom he was with for two decades. He would be the true heir and is said to have held Lagerfeld's hand at the time of his death. The most serious 'rival' is 31-year-old
Baptiste Giabiconi, a favorite model he met when he was 19, who would have sparked jealousy and disagreements between him and Jondeau. Then there's the British model from Yorkshire, 40-year-old
Jake Davies, another muse of the eccentric designer.
In the top list of those who shared his fortune there was also one of the most successful models in the world: the 41-year-old American
Brad Kroenig, originally from Oakfield, Missouri, who stood out for his nude portrait in a shooting. From 2003 he began working on a permanent basis with Lagerfeld, who boasted of the "curve of his thigh", and dedicated a four-volume book to him entitled "Metamorphoses Of An American". Among the lucky ones there
was also the son of Kroenig and his wife, Nicole Bollettieri, the 12-year-old Hudson, godson of Lagerfeld. He first appeared in a Chanel show when he was just 2 years old and was nicknamed “the little prince”.
On the female side, there are two potential heirs: 55-year-old Caroline Lebar, who worked for him for more than 30 years, taking care of public relations and as communications manager of the Lagerfeld fashion house. Finally there is Francoise Cacote, her historic housekeeper, who became Choupette's 'nanny', whose social accounts she managed and with whom she lived in Paris, satisfying her every need in Lagerfeld's apartment.
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