March 26, 2015 |
Retrospectives, like Michelle Obama’s bangs, ugly people and selfies, are something that Karl Lagerfeld isn’t a fan of. “I don’t think it’s a good thing when you dive into your past,” he explained to WWD. That being said, an exhibition of the designer’s work, spanning his illustrious 60-year-long career, is opening in his homeland, at the Bundeskunsthalle museum in Bonn, Germany. But it’s not a retrospective. No, no. “[Karl] is a man of the present and the future,” explained the exhibition’s curator and Lagerfeld’s long-term creative collaborator Lady Amanda Harlech – something that his career and his most recent collections for Chanel and Fendi are marked by. Suzy Menkes, who has just flooded our Instagram feeds with 22 posts from the exhibition has described it as, “A journey over 60 years in fashion includes his 50 years at Fendi, the light hearted period at Chloe, his own KL designs and the fabulous story unfolding at Chanel.” Perfect summation. Thanks SuMez. And it does more than simply show the designer’s work from his Chanel tweeds and to his Fendi furs. It shows his work process too, like these sketches for example, giving us an insight into how he works – there’s even a replica of his working desk, strewn with books, pencils, crayons and scrunches of paper. We need to go to Bonn. STAT.
Mar 27-Sept 13, 2015; The Bundeskunstalle Museum, Bonn
By Ted Stansfield
