LAGERFAN.com

Photographer: Karl Lagerfeld

Director: Johan Renck

Models: Eva Herzigova, Brad Kroenig

The opening party for Karl Lagerfeld’s photography exhibition in the Postfuhramt in Berlin-Mitte. The celebrities were out and about, including the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.

In Metamorphoses of an American, Karl Lagerfeld traces the physical and emotional development of Brad Kroenig, once an unknown but now the world’s most sought-after male model. Lagerfeld discovered Kroenig in 2003, took his first photographs of him in Biarritz, and since then has observed him through his photographic lens, month by month. In hundreds of photographs Lagerfeld explores Kroenig’s evolution from a young “All American Boy” into a professional model conscious of the subtleties of facial and corporeal expression. These photographs are however not simply documentation; rather Lagerfeld and Kroenig work together to create a new persona, one which Kroenig expresses without losing a sense of his own self.

Lagerfeld selects a spectrum of literary and cultural references for Kroenig to interpret: we see him as James Dean, as Rudolph Valentino, as a Gatsby-like figure from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and as Lieutenant Pinkerton from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Yet throughout these transformations, there is never the sense that Kroenig is merely acting; instead he presents newly discovered aspects of himself through the guises of other characters. Metamorphoses of an American contains photography made both within and beyond the fashion world. However regardless of the purpose of Lagerfeld’s images, each one evidences rigorous formal principles grounded in an appreciation of early twentieth-century photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Indeed Lagerfeld refers to his work more as “pictures” than photographs, conveying the graphic processes of construction and design from which each image emerges.

Price
UK £45.00
US $85.00
EC €65.00

* Four clothbound hardcover books, foil stamped with tipped-in image on the front, housed in a handmade slipcase
* 1144 pages
* 15.2 cm x 20 cm
* Flexible Hardcover
* STEIDL Photography International
* Publication date: June 2008

KARL Lagerfeld appreciates all the Americans who buy his Chanel merchandise, PAGE SIX reports.

When a trio from the American Friends of Versailles – Jonathan Marder, Catharine Hamilton and Sharon Hoge – saw KARL Lagerfeldat the press opening of his photo exhibition “KL at Versailles,” the designer offered to donate some prints for their fund-raising efforts. “Look how many of these charming Americans are wearing my Chanel and how well they look in it. It’s an honor and a pleasure to help them,” Lagerfeld said.

Karl Lagerfeld has his own teddy bear. “Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them,” Lagerfeld tells W.

Steiff, is producing the limited-edition Karl bear, 2,500 of which will be launched in Neiman Marcus in September, for $1,500. Each boasts a signature Steiff gold button in the ear and five pivoting joints—an innovation Steiff unveiled at the 1903 Leipzig Toy Fair.

THE CUT shares Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s interview with Karl Lagerfeld for their new book Influence. Influence features interviews with designers, photographers, artists, and tastemakers alongside pictures of them, their work, and the Olsens.

AO: What do you do now to stay in shape?
KL: Nothing … I have a doctor who I made a book with that sold five million copies all over the world. Every country bought one, I think, in Russia and Italy and everywhere. But I don’t get it — I don’t know what Japan is going to do with a European diet book … Since I started my diet, which was like eight years ago, I haven’t touched what I’m not supposed to: sugar, cheese, nothing! I don’t even look at it. It looks to me like plastic.

KL: [N]owadays you start to model because you’re young. Now the girls are sixteen, seventeen, fifteen, and Russian. They are like from another planet
AO: They can look very bizarre!
KL: I hate all these tall women. They are all giants!
MKO: If only I were a little taller — that would make me happy!
KL: You are one meter fifty-one. You are taller than that?
AO: We’re five feet and one inch.
KL: Oh, I thought my office told me that you were four-foot eight or something. Not that it matters. What you need is a face. If you have a face you don’t need height or a voice. Models know this; that’s why the good ones don’t need to talk much.

KL: I like to work with models for a long time. Sometimes the girls change, but some girls I work with for years and years. With male models it is different. I hate working with male models.
AO: Ah, well boys come and go!
KL: And I hate doing castings and things like this. “oh no you’re not right” — that’s horrible to say to someone. I never do castings. Other people do them, and then I see the result of the casting. It’s humiliating for the models.

KL: I don’t have people I don’t like around me ever.
MKO: You don’t have to.
KL: …I don’t work with many men. I don’t want to ask the men about the fashion. Their opinion doesn’t interest me.

KL: I like more classic [shapes] now. Best thing to do for skinny people to wear tight dresses. Although jeans are becoming too tight.
AO: Ah! Yes, it’s becoming a problem. It’s the worst.
KL: You can kill yourself in these jeans.
MKO: Ha, I’d rather stay inside with my friends than limp out in tight trousers.
KL: Maybe you’ll stay inside with a baby. Do you want to get married? Children? Two perfect mums, yes?
[Mary-Kate and Ashley look at each other]
KL: Ah! Don’t worry, you have time. You’re young. Don’t you want to get married?
MKO: I don’t feel the need to get married. But Ashley wants children. I’ll be a great aunt or godmother.
AO: To my child.
KL: [To Ashley] Are you planning?
AO: No. I don’t even have a boyfriend. You have to plan that first, right? Figure that out first?
KL: If you get a boyfriend it doesn’t mean that! Today you can have a baby first. If you want. I never liked the idea of a family at all. If it’s a woman — it’s more fun for a woman.

MKO: It can be dangerous when you’re driving [in L.A.] particularly, because they follow you in cars and scooters. That’s bad. That’s not easy.
KL: I had two accidents where I fell asleep — after that I thought it was better that I don’t drive. I’ll get a driver. I’m a bad driver because I want to look there, there, and up there. I get bored easily — so twice I fall asleep and twice the car is destroyed … I had nothing [wrong] with me — but both cars were destroyed.

Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld believes that it is childish to discuss the use of fur in a world where eating meat was normal. Lagerfeld tells Daily Telegraph that he does not wear fur but he recognizes that there is “an industry who lives from that”.

Hunters in the north “make a living having learnt nothing else than hunting”, he said, “killing those beasts who would kill us if they could.”

He added that animals should be killed “nicely” if possible.

He concluded: “In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish.”

A spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said: “Karl Lagerfeld is a fashion dinosaur who is as out of step as his furs are out of style.”

In other news, Karl Lagerfeld reopened the size zero debate in an interview for Radio 4 programme Today. Lagerfeld said: “In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

“There are nearly 30 per cent of young people who are too fat. So let’s take care of the zillions of the too fat before we talk about the percentage that’s left.”

A spokesperson for the group Beating Eating Disorders said that Lagerfeld’s views are a very sad reflection on attitudes within the fashion industry.

She told The Telegraph: “We talk to thousands of people every year with eating disorders, who say ‘If we look like that, we are told that we should be in hospital.’ Yet these models are being celebrated.”