A Walk-through of The Met’s ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ With Chief Curator Andrew Bolton
“Fashion does not belong in a museum.”
Not so ironically, that declaration that was made by Karl Lagerfeld in 2004 greets Metropolitan Museum of Art visitors entering the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.”
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The quip was made by Lagerfeld when the now Costume Institute’s Wendy Yu curator in charge Andrew Bolton first met the multitalented designer, while working on a Chanel exhibition at The Met. How best to represent an instantly recognizable, unmatchable talent — who redefined four designer houses with a pulse on the popular zeitgeist — without abandoning the historical roots of each was no small feat.
Rather than focus on the myth of Lagerfeld, the work is the lure in the serpentine-like Tadao Ando-designed layout that wends visitors through his designs for Chloé, Fendi, Chanel and his own label. The exhibition opens to the public Friday and will run through July 16.
Prior to his death in 2019 at the age of 85, Lagerfeld remained an ever-churning creative force whose trove of talents covered fashion design, writer, publisher, photographer, interior designer, theatrical designer and collector-connoisseur. His incomparable 65-year career included tenure at Fendi from 1965 to 2019, runs at Chloé from 1974 to 1983, and from 1992 to 1997, a marquee stay at Chanel from 1982 to 2019 and stewardship at his signature Karl Lagerfeld company from 1984 to 2019. There were also stops at Balmain, Jean Patou and freelance for H&M, among others. But rather than anchor the exhibition in the words, witticisms, and myth of Lagerfeld, “A Line of Beauty” magnifies the primarily self-taught designer’s creative process.
During a Sunday afternoon preview, Bolton praised Lagerfeld’s unwavering relevance and ability to anticipate where fashion was going — becoming a polymath, impresario and a total designer.
“People are catching up with him now, but he predicted that. Will there ever be another Karl? I don’t think so. Some will aspire to it. I can’t imagine someone, who is first of all, in our industry for 65 years, worked for all of those different houses and never mind all the freelance that he did. With his output, it was always onto the next, onto the next,” the curator said.
Throughout there are peekaboo views that allow Met-goers to glance forward and back at the myriad designs Lagerfeld brought to life. The opener is a close-up video of Lagerfeld’s fast-moving gloveless hands sketching the coat that won him a 1954 Woolmark Prize and subsequently an assistant’s role with one of the judges, Pierre Balmain. Around the bend, a replica of Lagerfeld’s desk piled high with books, magazines, sketches, drawing materials, pads of papers, the actual crayons he used and other tools of the trade greet visitors upon arrival at “A Line of Beauty.”
Amid the hoarder-esque stacks are Tipp-Ex Whiteout and Shu Uemura eye shadows — traces of which can be found in the numerous sketches that accompany many of the designer garments that are displayed in the other galleries. All of the books were culled from Lagerfeld’s library and reflect the depth of his interests — constructivism, India, The Memphis Group, Bauhaus and more. A pristine white robe that the designer donned to create is framed on a nearby wall. Lest any visitors think the messy desk was staged, there is an Annie Leibovitz-shot photo of a pensive Lagerfeld seated — sans sunglasses or fingerless leather gloves — at a considerably messier desk.
Bolton considered building an exhibition around Lagerfeld while at his memorial service watching a video of the designer immersed in his sketching. Hearing his premières d’atelier describe their intrinsic understanding of the designer’s sketches reenforced that interest. Met-goers and online visitors can see clips of them describing how they decoded his work in short videos shot by Loïc Prigent. One of them, Anita Briey, was said to be moved to tears while previewing the show.
Lagerfeld’s self-described ability to see in 3D is on full display in the numerous sketches that are paired with the 200 looks on view. Lagerfeld once explained that once put on paper, “the people I work with can read the design.” Such handoffs required “relinquishing something,” Bolton said.
Along with his immense curiosity, Lagerfeld had this “benevolence of spirit. He was a snob, but a sort of democratic snob. Inspirations came from everywhere. His inspirations came from everywhere. But there was this magnality of spirit that allowed him to continue because his brain was built for everything. It didn’t have hierarchies in it. The confidence, funniness, and intelligence I knew, but this big, big benevolence of imagination was the most revealing thing to me.”
Of course, the dresses, suits, furs, gowns and sportswear are the main attractions. One of The Met’s greatest finds was a black silk faille coat that Lagerfeld designed for Jean Patou in 1958. Nearby a replica of the Woolmark Prize winning design was recreated by the house, based on existing photographs and explanations. A fall 2012 Fendi polychrome dyed mink, fox, and Kidassia goat furs and wool net; a Chanel spring/summer 2018 haute couture wedding ensemble; a spring 1977 Chloé ivory silk crepe de chine ensemble with red chinoiserie figures and landscapes hand painted by Nicole Lefort, embroidered by Chaste with red seed beads; waist-maker of red silk crepe de chine, and a 1990 fall haute couture Chanel black leather jacket and embroidered silk lace dress hint at the vastness of his dexterity. The majority of the garments were provided courtesy of their respective houses.
Whittling down the huge body of work that the chameleon-like Lagerfeld had created over a 65-year reign to best represent him was no small feat for Bolton, who pored over 10,000 possibilities before deciding on 200 objects. He said, “You think, ‘Oh, Chloé is all about romanticism. Chanel is all post-modernism and historicism. You think Karl Lagerfeld is all about minimalism and Fendi is all about minimalism.’ It’s not true. He would revisit the same themes again and again and again, and silhouettes again and again and again. What I wanted to show was the vocabulary of Karl Lagerfeld, and the perceptions and the contradictions within him.”
Throughout it all, Lagerfeld evolved and reincarnated his creations as well as himself. The gallery text hints at that, as well as his unknowable persona, with various quotes such as, “The last thing I’d do is to define myself. Tomorrow I could be the opposite of what I am today.” And, “I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives. I want to be an apparition. I appear then disappear.”
A chronological playback of his career highlights would have been easier to organize, but Bolton decided that highlighting the designer’s consistancies in each of the four houses would be more illuminating. The organization of “A Line of Beauty” hinges on William Hogarth’s 1753 treatise “The Analysis of Beauty,”where an S-shaped line represents liveliness and movement, in contrast to a straight line, which denotes stillness, inactivity, and even death. How both types of lines intersect through Lagerfeld’s work is revealed throughout the show.
Those two lines are divided into nine “sublines” that depict the dualities in the designer’s work – feminine and masculine, romantic and military, rococo and classical, historical and futuristic, ornamental and structural, canonical and countercultural, artisanal and mechanical, floral and geometric, and figurative and abstract. Each of these dualities feature figurative “explosions,” as in garments with a convergence of competing aesthetics. Imagine a showstopper creation suspended in the center of each gallery, nearly outperforming the other styles.
As for the controversies that have arisen recently criticizing Lagerfeld (for his statements about weight and the #MeToo movement, among other subjects), Bolton said, “I don’t think you can ever divorce the man from his work. I don’t believe that is something that we should be doing. We don’t include any of the offensive comments and we don’t condone them here. He said things that were sometimes funny, nonsensical and sometimes deeply offensive. What we wanted to do is to show a side of Karl that gets to the heart of the contradiction. That duality is very much about the contradiction with the man himself. Everybody is flawed, has contradictions and skeletons in their closets. No one is perfect. But the main focus is Karl the designer rather than Karl the man.”
Despite his disinterest in being featured in any museum exhibition, Lagerfeld was “very confident.” So much so, that he left the curation of the 2004 Chanel show to Bolton and his predecessor, Harold Koda. The designer wasn’t about to intellectualize his work either, Bolton said.
“He didn’t care what we chose. He didn’t care what the themes were. If we asked what his inspiration was for something, obviously he would tell you because he was so open. He wouldn’t interfere at all. That’s very rare to come across – any artist – that isn’t controlling.”
As for the ever increasing eclipse of the Met Gala from one year to the next, the celebrity-studded extravaganza sheds some light on what the Costume Institute does and is the first entry point to the spring show for “many, many people,” Bolton said. While he and Conde Nast’s Anna Wintour are “very respectful” of each other, the event’s lead orchestrater “tries to riff on some of the scenography of the exhibition into the gala so that there is always a nice synergy in terms of the design,” Bolton said.
Needless to say, many are expected to turn up in Chanel, Fendi, Chloé or Karl Lagerfeld. “The fact that it gets so many hits [on social media] is unbelievable. Hopefully, all of those people will come to the exhibition.” (Last year #MetGala racked up 9.4 billion impressions, during the pink carpet arrivals alone, according to Brandwatch.)
Interestingly, although Bolton knew Lagerfeld and occasionally had dinner with him, Wintour and Amanda Harlach, Bolton said, “Having done a deep dive into these collections and through these themes, I feel that I know him more about what was inside than the outside. He was a very generous man. If he were around today, he would have hated the show. He may not have even come to it. I think he would have hated the idea of it. He never wanted a retrospective.”
That said, Lagerfeld never ever said no to any of The Costume Institute’s requests for loans for specific shows, even if he didn’t like it. “He would give you exactly what you wanted, if he had it,” Bolton said, adding that Lagerfeld provided so many requested items that they alone could have comprised a retrospective — not that he would have allowed it.
Legacy was never a topic of conversation with Lagerfeld. “Never, never, never — he hated the idea of it. He hated the idea of mortality. I think that’s what he didn’t like [the idea of] the retrospective. He didn’t like the idea of dying.”
In one of the final galleries, a circular one is lined with iPhones playing a clip of Lagerfeld laughing while filming for the French-German television show “Arte.” Each time the white ponytailed designer claps or stamps a photo, one of 80 witty quotes or “Karli-isms” flashes on the surrounding smartphones. “It’s almost as though he is laughing at himself or laughing at us. Or we might be laughing at him, so it’s a nice circle.”
Another full circle moment is a video that flashes of Lagerfeld drawing his likeness in 2014 — as a puppet, and at the age of 6 — in lederhosen. Fittingly, that video plays on the opposite convex side of the screen at the show’s entrance. In what could be considered an exhibition that breaks down the anatomy of the ultimate fashion designer, there are such “relics” of his signature style as black sunglasses and leather fingerless gloves framed nearby. To that end, Lagerfeld once said, “When I was younger, I wanted to be a caricaturist. In the end, I became a caricature.”
Launch Gallery: Preview The MET’s ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ Exhibit
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