Caroline Trentini in silver-spangled Chanel Haute Couture.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, November 2007
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
“Karl Lagerfeld is a young fashion designer whose special talent is to invoke the mood, the glamour, of the 1920s and ’30s—combining it with the ease and dash of the 1970s,” noted Vogue when, in 1974, his Deco-filled Paris apartment was featured in the magazine. “The clothes he designs for Chloé . . . are enormously pretty, feminine, alluring . . . .”
Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, September 1974
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Models at the Hôtel Lutetia in Paris, wearing silk separates by Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé.
Photographed by Deborah Turbeville, Vogue, January 1975
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Chris Royer in a look by Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé.
Photographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue, 1975
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Model in a printed dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé.
Photographed by Helmut Newton, Vogue, April 1975
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Helena Christensen, Stephanie Seymour, Karen Mulder, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Cindy Crawford wear Chanel in Vogue.
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh, Vogue, September 1991
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Linda Evangelista in a sequined chiffon Chanel dress.
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh, Vogue, September 1989
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Naomi Campbell in Chanel Accessories, including peekaboo plastic camellias, iridescent bead necklaces and bracelets, and mini bags.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, March 1992
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Shalom Harlow in a midnight-blue satin confection from Chanel Haute Couture .
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, December 1995
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Audrey Marnay in a diaphanous dress by Chanel Haute Couture.
Photographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue, 1999
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Renée Zellweger, in Chanel Haute Couture, with Karl Lagerfeld at his Paris bookstore, 7L.
Photographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue, April 2001
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Jacquetta Wheeler in a pale pink embroidered chiffon Chanel Haute Couture gown and coat.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, April 2002
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Maggie Rizer in a Chanel Haute Couture black wool jacket and dress with a black wool bodice and black-and-white silk taffeta skirt.
Photographed by Craig McDean, Vogue, October 2002
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Elise Crombez in a Chanel Haute Couture organza top with jeweled buttons, floor-skimming fishtail skirt, wide patent belt, and leather gloves with snowy organza bows.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, October 2003
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
The designer with Natalia Vodianova, as Alice in Wonderland, in Chanel Haute Couture.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, December 2003
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Nicole Kidman evokes Satine, the coquette she played in Moulin Rouge, in a Chanel Haute Couture dress of feathers and satin with a black cache coeur.
Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, May 2004
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
In MoMA’s “conservation room, Matisse’s Goldfish and Sculpture (1912), Gino Severini’s Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (1912), and Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13 (1949) stand side by side with the artistry of the Chanel atelier’s expert craftspeople.” Natalia Vodianova in a Chanel Haute Couture black tulle jacket and bustier dress.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, November 2004
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Lily Donaldson wears a Lesage-embroidered Chanel Haute Couture dress, based on one worn by Coco Chanel in 1937.
Photographed by Steven Meisel, Vogue, May 2005
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
At the Grand Canal of Versailles, Kirsten Dunst, star of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, wears a Chanel Haute Couture “Petit Trianon” lace dress with tulle rosettes made for Vogue.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, September 2006
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Cate Blanchett wears a Chanel Haute Couture tweed minidress with sea urchin–inspired embroidery.
Photographed by Steven Klein, Vogue, November 2006
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Raquel Zimmermann in Fendi’s black-mink-and-white-goat-fur coat, wood-buckle belt, and suede boots.
Photographed by Craig McDean, Vogue, September 2007
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Karlie Kloss, in Chanel Haute Couture, plays catch with Gaël Monfils.
Photographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue, October 2009
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Kristen McMenamy wears a white Mongolian shearling coat by Fendi.
Photographed by Steven Meisel, Vogue, August 2011
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Stella Tennant takes things in stride in Fendi’s fox-collage jacket and jabot.
Photographed by David Sims, Vogue, October 2011
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Soarise Ronan strikes a Pre-Raphaelite pose in Chanel Haute Couture.
Photographed by Steven Meisel, Vogue, December 2011
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Kate Moss takes it easy at the Ritz in a Chanel Haute Couture flower coat and pumps.
Photographed by Tim Walker, Vogue, April 2012
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Edie Campbell in Chanel Haute Couture.
Photographed by David Sims, Vogue, September 2013
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Karl Lagerfeld, surrounded by models in his Métiers d’Art collection. From left: Heather Marks, Magda Laguinge, Joan Smalls, Stella Tennant, and Crystal Renn, all in Chanel.
Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, March 2014
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Fei Fei Sun wears a gold-embroidered evening dress is from Chanel Haute Couture’s Autumn 1996 collection.
Photographed by Steven Meisel, Vogue, May 2015
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Kendall Jenner in a Chanel jacket and skirt.
Photographed by Karl Lagerfeld, Vogue, September 2015
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Fei Fei Sun in Fendi’s leather-and-mink jacket and dress and Chanel backpack.
Photographed by Josh Olins, Vogue, September 2016
Karl Lagerfeld’s Best Looks in Vogue
Hannah Ferguson wears a Chanel top and skirt.
Photographed by Daniel Jackson, Vogue, December 2018
Karl Lagerfeld knew the power of an image, no? This German-born designer, photographer, collector, bibliophile, illustrator, polyglot—honed his own very well. Fashion is about change, but by the 2000s Lagerfeld’s black-and-white look had been refined to a point that it was iconic. Long gone were the beard, the fan, and the natty matching suits, having been replaced by pieces from Hedi Slimane, invariably worn with a high-collared white shirt and a tie pinned with a precious jewel, half gloves, Chrome Hearts rings, and always the sunglasses and the powdered ponytail. This last was a conceit borrowed from the 18th-century, the era that most appealed to Lagerfeld; nonetheless, he was a strident modernist.
In some ways Lagerfeld was ever walking a tightrope between past and present (especially at Chanel, where the ghost of Coco is ever present, fractured into bits of light by the atelier’s famous mirrored staircase). Maybe it’s this frisson that makes images of Lagerfeld’s work especially potent. Some of the best known photos in Vogue—six supers skipping across the page in couldn’t-be-shorter sherbet-colored Chanel suits for Steven Meisel; Shalom Harlow, a couture-clad peacock in repose captured by Irving Penn, who also imagined Caroline Trentini as a Casati-eyed Estrella in silver Chanel spangles. Pictures which document a many-faceted and brilliant talent.
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