Karl Lagerfeld’s Legacy Looms Large Over This Year’s Met Gala
Apparently, most of the survivors of Titanic only realised that others hadn’t made it to a lifeboat when the piercing screams of passengers freezing to death in the sub-zero waters began to drown out the calamitous sounds of the sinking ship.
Despite many of the lifeboats being launched well under capacity, the surviving passengers (mostly those with first or second-class tickets) refused to rescue those dying in the water out of fear of being pulled in themselves. Later, survivors would describe the sound of 1500 people dying as “supernatural”, likening the high-pitched groans of shock and horror to “locusts on a summer night”.
I can hear these locusts crying at this year’s Met Gala, which has proudly curated its inaugural theme as a celebration of Karl Lagerfeld, the man responsible for pioneering the lavish commercial models for luxury fashion brands of the twentieth century. As the creative director for the ubiquitous fashion house Chanel, Lagerfeld successfully resuscitated the “near-dead” luxury retail brand with designs that would come to symbolise the ’80s altogether, ultimately forging the company into an emblem sought after by the aspirational and genuinely wealthy alike.
He also set cruel standards for those who wished to wear his clothes. Infamously fatphobic, Lagerfeld refused to let models above a size six to advertise his creations, confidently declaring “no one wants to see curvy women on the runway”. Critiquing Adele, Pippa Middleton and Heidi Klum for their looks and weight, the fashion icon was also critical of Germany’s intake of Muslim refugees — labelling them an affront to the holocaust.
After the steady increase of rumours concerning Hollywood’s rampant use of the diabetes medication Ozempic, the Met Gala’s choice to honour Lagerfeld this year couldn’t have been more apt. Famously touting his own-self control of his body, Lagerfeld jumped onto talk show panels in 2005 to promote a book outlining his own weight loss techniques which saw him lose over 40kg in just over a year. Fashion, according to Lagerfeld, was “the best motivation for losing weight”.
The Met Gala, essentially a fundraising operation for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fashion wing in New York, is a famously secretive event that carefully curates it’s guest-list to maximise the sensation as guests hit the red carpet. For all the expense spent honouring Lagerfeld’s impact on fashion, the environmental and labour legacy of all three of his associated clothing brands — Fendi, Chanel and eponymous label Karl Lagerfeld — all attract dire warnings from the ethical fashion watchdog Good On You.
On the year of his death, Lagerfeld notably resurrected the memory of the world’s most infamous maritime disaster with a runway show where he reconstructed a cruise ship inside Paris’ Grand Palais which also functioned as the site of the official afterparty. Celebrity guests reportedly recreated scenes from the titular James Cameron movie as if they were passengers on the doomer cruise liner, unironically fawning at the luxury.
“It’s hard to believe a single man made that much beauty,” director Baz Luhrmann told interviewers on the Met Gala’s red carpet today. But really, it’s much harder to believe that we’re still celebrating a man who epitomised the worst aspects of fashion’s exclusivity.
Photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images