Fashion through the lens of desginer Karl Lagerfeld

Exposition inspired by literature, movies, the history of photography and fashion model

I asked my friend about the identity of this man, and whether he was a French cinema photographer or reporter, and my friend replied with a smile, “ he is the well-known German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld who charms beautiful people with his flawless creativity, beautiful female dresses, and his extraordinary capacity to absorb art, literature, culture, and high taste albeit without having obtained a secondary school degree. “ He added, “ he is a distinguished person, easy to deal with, and very precise like most Germans, but always producing good results as if things flow from his hands naturally without any effort.”

We discovered these qualities recently during a special photography exposition held in Rome this spring showing hundreds of photos taken by Lagerfeld, the talented photographer. He is better known as the chief fashion designer of Channel in France and Fendi in Italy. In fact, he started his career in Paris in 1955 as an assistant to Balman, and , with time, showed that he is a man of particular aptitude and natural talents having a rich memory of experiences and advanced education obtained through constant reading. His photos demonstrate that he recalls this memory whenever he is shooting a picture which appears sometimes like a painting inspired by a book from German literature. Some examples are an image expressing the feelings of silent movies stars, or a painting taken of a masterpiece of art. He is also a very selective artist who invokes several sources and chooses the best of various options.

We attended the excellently presented Lagerfeld exposition at Chiostro del Bramante , a Renaissance cloister built in 1503 adjacent to Santa Maria della Pace church containing some of Rafael’s paintings and frescos near Piazza Navona in the center of the Italian capital. There were 600 colored and black and white photographs selected by Lagerfeld himself some of which looked like paintings since he uses modern techniques that transform a camera photo into a painting combining classical and modern arts. It seems this is his preferred way in designing fashion, studying female and male bodies, and reverting to the old Greeks and their mythology as sources of inspiration.

Karl Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1938 and studied 3 languages at the French school there. Later he started becoming famous in Paris as a gifted fashion designer, and since 1987 added photography to his cluster of talents thus obtaining several prizes starting in 1993. He continued his multi faceted activities last year by establishing a publication house specializing in German literature and other cultural and artistic matters.

The collection in Rome included a hundred photos of one man taken from different angles one of which showed him as Valentino, the lover in silent movies. Lagerfeld let loose his imagination in a group of new pictures depicting heroes of ancient Greek mythology. We saw a crowned Apollo, god of art, poetry, music, and shepherds. Athena, the courageous goddess of war who invented the flute, was depicted as a beautiful woman wearing a flowing dress reaching her feet while covering her hair with a helmet as a sign of military victory. Other photos displayed the brave Ajax in the Trojan wars, Artemis, the nude goddess of hunting holding a bow and arrow, Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, Mars god of war, and Hermes, god of oratory and eloquence transformed into a maiden wearing laced shoes up to his knees.

Other individual photos portray fire ladders outside New York City buildings, the Versailles palace near Paris seen upside down as reflected on water, some rare shots of Monte Carlo and Paris through an artistic piercing eye that makes you feel emotional while old memories creep to your mind. More photos show the favorite fashion models who collaborated with Lagerfeld. There is a whole collection of Linda Evangelista, known for her chameleonic looks, done in a new creative style reminiscent of Andy Warhol paintings. Where does Claudia Schiffer rank on Lagerfeld’s scale of attractive divas ? Quite high. So does Christy Turlington who looks, in a large photo taken in 1997, like the perfect cover girl. All these shots indicate that Lagerfeld’s style, in fashion and photography, is in constant movement that hardly permits a pause to analyze or make a comment. His deep poetic spirit that surrounds and engulfs his photos dazzles the viewer and Lagerfeld’s gorgeous artistic mastery and inner beauty remains impressed in one’s memory.

It seemed that Lagerfeld, as a photographer with a lens, was influenced by a number of prominent photographers of the 20th century. For example, the
Hungarian-born Andre Kertesz, who lived in the United States and died in New York in 1985. Another influence can be traced to the American photographer and museum curator Edward Steichen, born in Luxembourg who died in 1973, and is known for his famous 1934 photograph of the actress Marlene Dietrich sitting on a couch. His photos of gowns designed by the early French couturier Paul Poiret in 1911 are regarded as the first modern fashion photographs ever published. Another influence came from the photographer and movie director of Swiss origin Robert Frank (born in Zurich in 1924) who produced artistic photos and critical films of American society seen through foreign eyes . Among his last films was the one on the Rolling Stones musical group in the seventies.

Lagerfeld flew to Rome from Paris to attend the inauguration of the exposition which was shown a few months earlier in the French capital at the European House of Photography. While in Rome, Fendi fashion house took care of his program as he has been working with them since 1965. It was his ideas that innovated a lot of leather products of Fendi such as the female bag in the shape of a French baguette loaf of bread, bags carrying the sign “ F “, or a new method to treat furs in such a way that maximizes their attractive look and decreases their weight. Thanks to Lagerfeld’s genius, Fendi was transformed from a small brand that had been producing leather products and furs since 1911 to a large company that owns more than a hundred stores around the world. Lagerfeld brought with him to Rome his latest designs for the fashion season of 2011 – 2012 which seem to emphasize white and red colors, as well as the publicity campaign plan for promoting Fendi products. He himself says about his photography hobby “ I could no longer see life without imagining it from a photographer’s perspective.. I came to see fashion itself through a lens.”