Karl Lagerfeld’s Caroline Lebar on the Art of Tarts
QUEEN OF TARTS: The ever-disciplined Karl Lagerfeld may not be partial to pastry himself, but the designer on Thursday threw open the doors of the Saint-German flagship of his namesake brand for the launch of the second volume of tart recipes by his longtime communications director Caroline Lebar.
Fans including Nicole and Jean-Jacques Picart got in line to have copies of the book signed as Lebar’s son Louis Cussec — aka DJ Kuss — manned a set of decks at the store’s entrance.
Lagerfeld, who was on a shoot, could not attend the book signing in person but lent his support by phone, even if pies are not his thing.
“I’ve never had him try one. Besides, I only make them when I’m in the country,” said an upbeat Lebar, who confessed that she’s relatively new to the baking game. She first dabbled in pastry after buying a country house four years ago.
“Before that I had never made a tart in my life, but we had fruit in the garden and I didn’t want to see it going to waste. I would buy ready-made pastry from the local store and started posting tarts on my Instagram account for fun,” said Lebar, explaining how her photogenic hobby turned into a book project.
“I’m a total neat freak and one day a friend posted a joke comment about some of the fruit being wonky and from that point I set about making sure they were all perfectly graphic. My followers grew — I must have had 150 followers at the start, today I have around 5,000 — and then a publisher reached out to work on a book. I thought it was a joke,” said Lebar, whose personal favorite from the book’s 40 recipes is a savory version with avocado and salmon.
Titled “Une tarte pour dimanche,” or “A Tart for Sunday,” and published by Marabout, the tome, for now only available in French, will be carried in all of Lagerfeld’s stores.
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