New documentary explores the life and legacy of Karl Lagerfeld

Culture

Credits: Stéphane Feugère, Karl Lagerfeld

Paris (dpa) - If anyone understands the craft - or rather, the art - of documentary filmmaking and celebrity portraits, it’s Gero von Boehm. In a small but sophisticated film, the 71 year old now gets to the bottom of the man, myth and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019).

‘karl - the man behind the mask’ (60 minutes) was broadcast on 3sat at 8.15pm GMT on Saturday, May 24, and is also available in the media library.

The filmmaker secured a number of prominent voices for the documentary, including US ‘Vogue’ editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, model and muse Nadja Auermann, actor and ‘becoming karl lagerfeld’ actor Daniel Brühl, designer colleague Wolfgang Joop, and F.A.Z. journalist and biographer Alfons Kaiser (‘karl lagerfeld - a german in paris’).

“Karl was like my magic fairy dust and my mentor,” said Claudia Schiffer, who was his favourite model for years. “He transformed me from the shy German girl into the supermodel.”

End of life

Sébastian Jondeau, his closest confidant in his final years, provided insight into the hours before Lagerfeld’s death in February 2019. He also revealed that something very specific was supposed to happen to the ashes at the designer’s request, and why there is neither a gravestone nor a memorial.

Many small stories about his early years in Paris paint an exciting picture of the man who almost perfectly understood how to stage himself, talking a lot but saying little (at least nothing private). Lagerfeld claimed that he did not belong to any generation or milieu and that he fitted in everywhere.

Glamour

There are anecdotes from his childhood friend Peter Bermbach, such as how Karl Lagerfeld, as a young German in Paris in the 50s, was said to have strutted around the swimming pool in tight swimming trunks, or how he liked to park his Mercedes convertible in front of the ‘café de flore’ or the ‘deux magots’ in the quartier saint-germain-des-prés in order to be seen.

At a fashion competition in the mid-50s, he won first prize for a coat design, but the more important award for the best dress went to the then 18 year old Yves Saint Laurent, who remained a kind of rival in the decades that followed.

Much later, Lagerfeld was the first big name from the world of haute couture to collaborate with a fast fashion brand like H&M.

Origin

The documentary also speculates and analyses, but with good reason. Lagerfeld was probably ashamed of his year of birth, 1933, which was associated with the nazi seizure of power, and which he liked to conceal or change.

He is also said to have made up stories as a young man about being descended from a Swedish baron.

The fact that his entrepreneurial parents were both members of the nsdap did not fit in well with the CV of a man of the world who wanted to make an international breakthrough and, above all, be accepted in his adopted home of France.

Love

His only great love, the dandy Jacques de Bascher, died of aids in 1989 at the age of just 38. Caroline Lebar, Karl’s head of communications, revealed that Lagerfeld had to confront the hated themes of illness and decay at that time, that he spent the last days with Bascher and then immediately continued to work in a highly disciplined manner, for example at fittings.

The documentary also has original quotes on this dark chapter: of course he took care of his friend at the time, he wasn’t ice-cold, said Lagerfeld. “The better you live with yourself, the better you can take care of others.” Those close to him say that Lagerfeld gained weight in the years that followed, probably out of grief and sorrow.

Icon

Around the turn of the millennium, Lagerfeld reinvented himself again. He changed his appearance, lost 42 kilograms in 13 months with a radical diet, also to fit into the narrowly cut clothes of designer Hedi Slimane.

Lagerfeld increasingly turned himself into his own brand - and finally became the global star that many young people can still remember today.

Finally, he was struck by prostate cancer. Lagerfeld almost died as early as 2015, but the Hamburg native ignored the disease for as long as he could. Work, work, work - that was his life.

He did not want to accept death. “I don’t want to be seen when I’m dead either, I think it’s terrible - cloth over it and away. In the bin. Done. Over.”(DPA)

This article was translated to English using an AI tool.

Karl Lagerfeld