NEW YORK (AP) — Karl Lagerfeld, the person to whom this year’s Met Gala is dedicated, transformed Chanel to modernize it. He revolutionized the fusion of hip hop culture and high fashion. He dressed and befriended celebrities and transformed once-serious fashion shows into masterful theatrical displays.
He was also a self-proclaimed “gobber”, who publicly expressed his fatphobia. He spoke out against gay men who want to adopt children, immigrants, sexual assault survivors, the #MeToo movement and “ugly” people, without apologizing.
And he left behind the broken dishes of his own controversial words.
Lagerfeld died in 2019 after dominating the fashion universe for decades until he was in his 80s. On May 1, his legacy will be remembered at the celebrity-studded fundraising gala and accompanying exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. However, it is likely that his controversial tendencies will not be shown.
“She offended people left and right, making pain as great an art as a perfectly cut two-faced dress,” wrote The New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman shortly after Lagerfeld’s death.
“He judged,” Friedman wrote, “and knew he himself would be judged, but he didn’t care. Rather, he assumed it ”.
Lagerfeld’s choice for fashion’s biggest night is not without its critics, though gala visionary and close friend of the designer, Anna Wintour, is clearly not one to be against it. A request for comment on these aspects of Lagerfeld was sent without receiving a response. When some 400 celebrities from fashion, technology, politics, music, social media, film, television and sports take the Met’s Grand Staircase for the gala, Jameela Jamil will not be there.
The actress and activist was one of the rare public figures to condemn the theme chosen for this year’s gala, taking to Instagram to recognize the fashion genius that was Lagerfeld, but also denounced his “clearly hateful” comments, often against women.
“Why is THIS the one we celebrate when there are so many AMAZING designers who aren’t bigoted white men? What happened to everyone’s principles and ‘defense’? You cannot stand up for justice in these areas and then attend the celebration of someone who reveled in their own public disdain for marginalized people,” Jamil wrote.
In 2020, a group of internet friends decided to democratize the invite-only celebrity gala by creating a Twitter companion that’s open to all creators who submit digital fashions themed around the annual royal gala.
But this year there will be no High Fashion Twitter Met Gala.
“As we approach the first Monday of May, the hf twitter met gala team would like to announce that we will not celebrate this year as our values do not align with the selection of Karl Lagerfeld as the theme,” the coordinators tweeted.
Called “the living soul of fashion” by Wintour, Lagerfeld and his talents were enormous, as was his ease with which to get into trouble.
THE #METOO MOVEMENT
Speaking to the international fashion magazine Numéro in 2018, Lagerfeld said he was “fed up” with efforts to report harassment, assault, misconduct, rape and other displays of sexual violence.
“What shocks me the most about all this are the little actresses who have taken 20 years to remember what happened. Not to mention the fact that there are no witnesses to the charges. Having said that, I can’t stand Mr. Weinstein. I had a problem with him at amfAR (the AIDS gala),” she said, referring to former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
ABOUT THE MODELS
“If you don’t want your pants messed with, don’t become a model! Enter a convent, there will always be a place for you in the convent. They’re even recruiting!” he told Numéro in the same interview, when asked about the allegations against stylist and former Interview creative director Karl Templer.
Lagerfeld told the German news magazine Focus in 2009 of plus-size models: “Nobody wants to see curvy women.”
LA GORDOPHOBIA DE LAGERFELD
The man who co-authored a diet book after losing 92 pounds (42 kilograms) in 13 months has been an outspoken critic of women who exceed a size 2 throughout his career. thin.
When asked in the same 2009 Focus interview about German women’s magazine Brigitte’s statement that it would only publish pictures of “real women”, rather than professional models, Lagerfeld continued: “You have fat mothers with their bags of potato chips sitting in front of the television saying that skinny models are ugly. The world of beautiful clothes is all about ‘dreams and illusions.’”
In the book “The World According to Karl,” a collection of Lagerfeld’s own words, he once said, “I believe that for both women and men, fashion is the healthiest motivation to lose weight.”
LO “FEO” Y ANDY WARHOL
“I shouldn’t say this, but physically he was pretty repulsive,” Lagerfeld told Vice of Warhol in 2010.
In the same interview, while discussing his penchant for wearing dark glasses, he described a German journalist who once interviewed him as “a horrible, ugly woman.”
MERKEL AND THE IMMIGRANTS
In 2017, the Hamburg-born Lagerfeld criticized Merkel, then German chancellor, for opening her country’s borders to migrants during the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe.
“One cannot, even if there are decades in between, kill millions of Jews in order to bring in millions of their worst enemies in their place,” he told the French talk show “Salut les Terriens!” on Channel 8.
Some English translations of his interview included this anecdote: “I know someone in Germany who welcomed a young Syrian and after four days said, ‘The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust.'”
However, others reported the comment this way: “I know someone in Germany who took in a young Syrian man who spoke little English. After four days, do you know what he said to the (German) lady? ‘Germany’s best invention is the Holocaust.’”
Either way, the words led to hundreds of complaints for Channel 8.
SAME-SEX MARRIAGES
Lagerfeld sent two models wearing identical wedding dresses down the runway for the finale of his spring 2013 Chanel haute couture show in Paris, telling The Guardian newspaper it was a show of support for France’s law of same-sex marriage.
But in a 2010 Vice interview, he spoke out against same-sex marriage, particularly in regards to two men.
“In the 60s, everyone said that we had the right to be different. And now all of a sudden they want a bourgeois life,” Lagerfeld said. “It’s hard for me to imagine: one parent at work and the other at home with the baby. What would that be like, for the baby? I don’t know. I see more lesbians married with babies than guys married with babies. And I also believe more in the relationship between mother and son than in that of father and son. In 2013, while he supported same-sex marriage, Lagerfeld said he was “less interested” in same-sex couples being able to adopt.
