Karl Lagerfeld, fashion’s greatest showman, reinvented the catwalk as an entertainment channel. His Paris catwalks featured a supermarket selling Coco “Chanel” Pops, a replica Eiffel Tower and a spaceship that blasted from the ground in a blaze of smoke.
Likewise, the annual Met Gala has transformed the fusty tradition of black-tie museum fundraising dinners to become the most spectacular night of the fashion calendar. Forget little black dresses; think Rihanna as the pope, Kim Kardashian in a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe and Katy Perry wearing a cheeseburger.
This Monday evening the two will come together in what is set to be a perfect storm of red-carpet theatrics on the steps of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The dress code for this year’s Met Gala, hosted by Anna Wintour, Michaela Coel, Penélope Cruz, Roger Federer and Dua Lipa, is “dress in honour of Karl”. The night celebrates the opening of Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, a sweeping retrospective of the 65-year career of the designer, who died in 2019.
Some commentators have predicted a sea of sunglasses, fans and powdered wigs in a “night of the thousand Karls”, but Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition, hopes they will be proved wrong. “I would love to see lots of beautiful vintage pieces – Chanel, Chloe, Fendi, maybe even a bit of [Jean] Patou [where Lagerfeld worked in the late 1950s] if they can find it. I’d much rather see that than lots of black-and-white Karl lookalikes.”
Bolton’s exhibition wrestles with how to celebrate a genius with a spiky legacy. Lagerfeld famously said of Princess Diana that “she was pretty and sweet, but she was stupid” and described Adele as “a little too fat”.
“If Karl was at the peak of his career in today’s landscape he would be called out for some of the problematic comments he made, and rightly so,” said Hattie Brett, the editor-in-chief of Grazia. “But I also know that I would be curious about his take on today’s world. Would we have seen the man who said sweatpants were a sign of having given up on life embrace them in the pandemic, I wonder?”
Lagerfeld, a champion surfer of the zeitgeist through his lifetime, has been posthumously beached by a cultural shift. The decades either side of the millennium when Karl was in his pomp were an era when rude and reckless behaviour was widely tolerated in creative industries, a sharp contrast to a present-day culture that demands and expects that sensitivities be respected. But while his fat-phobia marks him as a man out of his time, Lagerfeld is keenly relevant to a generation of modern creative directors. Tom Ford, the designer turned film director, and musician-slash-designers Virgil Abloh and Pharrell Williams have all been creative polymaths who followed a blueprint forged by Lagerfeld, whom Bolton describes as “a Warholian modern-day god of commerce and communication”.
“He was very clever. I became fascinated by him,” said Michael Waldman, the director of the recent BBC film The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld. “I had this idea of his world as one of decadence and frippery, but he was the opposite. He drank Diet Coke, didn’t take drugs, worked incredibly hard. His great extravagance was spending €500,000 a year on books, which brought to his work a breadth of reference which he applied with the lightest touch.”
Modern exhibition audiences crave an emotional connection, which makes a man who used dark glasses and a sharp tongue to keep the world at arm’s length a curatorial challenge. But Bolton believes there is emotional power in examining why it was that Lagerfeld manufactured such an air of mystery. “People think he lied about his age to seem more youthful, but I believe he pretended to have been born in 1938 rather than 1933 because he didn’t want to be associated with Germany at that time. By making his birth date five years later he placed himself outside of that experience,” Bolton said. The curator also noted, in relation to Karl’s flamboyant public image, that “one of Karl’s biographers has written of how gay men of his generation reinvented themselves as a way of keeping their identity to themselves, and deflecting criticism”.
“I can’t wait to see all the Karl ‘Easter eggs’ on the red carpet,” said Brett. Red-carpet television commentator Melissa Rivers tips co-host Dua Lipa as a potential show-stealer, “because she’s not afraid to take risks. At the Met Gala, you don’t want to see people take the easy way out. What really works at the Met is when you don’t just go for glamorous, you go for jaw-dropping,” she said. “This is a night to flex your creativity, and your deep understanding of fashion.”
“I’ve heard that Kim Kardashian has confirmed,” added Rivers, “but how does she top last year? A vintage Chanel dress is not going to have the impact of Marilyn Monroe’s dress.”
The best and worst of the Met Gala
The highs
Cher, 1974
Designed by Bob Mackie, Cher’s look kickstarted the naked dress trend.
Rihanna, 2015
The singer’s yellow gown from Chinese designer Guo Pei launched a plethora of viral omelette memes.
Lady Gaga, 2019
During a 16-minute entrance, Gaga undressed to reveal four different outfits nailing the Camp: Notes on Fashion theme.
Stella McCartney and Liv Tyler, 1999
Embracing the “rock style” theme, McCartney and Tyler gave a wink to their nepo baby roots.
The lows
Kim Kardashian, 2022
Conservators accused the reality TV star of damaging Marilyn Monroe’s 1962 “Happy birthday, Mr President” dress, although the owners of the dress said they were confident she had not done so.
Katy Perry, 2019
“It’s turned into a costume party,” quipped the designer Tom Ford upon seeing Perry’s layered burger look.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2021
On the night the American congresswoman faced criticism for attending the $35,000-a-ticket event in a “tax the rich” dress. Last month it was revealed she was under investigation for allegedly breaking house ethics by delaying paying for her gala expenses.
Chloe Mac Donell
