Le Mystere Lagerfeld
Where raised his mystery, his fascination?
This one is a great question answered clearly by the author: in his look of course, but also in the historical period he lived him.
He was forged by what he saw and breathed during the Second World War; rebellious years that ones, where, also during the nazism he didn't cut his hair when he went at school. When his teachers asked him of cutting the hair, he replied: "I see that you are still a nazi, teacher."
He was a reserved boy born in a rich family. His dad spoke nine languages and had a big collection of religious books; her mother was a lady of culture as well. Little Karl was fascinated by her library plenty of philosophic books. Three sisters with which he didn't create strong relationship and a strange, absolutely unpleasant relationship with his mother Elisabeth. If his dad motivated him, his mother put him down all the times.
Fascinated by fashion, he decided to leave his homeland for Paris. He hadn't yet clear what it would have done of his life, but he understood that the end of the war meant also the end of a world and that Germany couldn't be the proper place for building an existence or a creative world where to develop his geniality. Plus, it was a sad world.
His mother Elisabeth told him that he would have been simply a common teacher of design. But Lagerfeld didn't teach at all.
A man plenty of culture, with wagons of books of art, philosophy, photography, read in three languages he said about reading once:
He wasn't light in his choices and he was a pretty wise man. He remarked he didn't smoke, he didn't drink, he didn't use drugs; as sedative when necessary the Mandrax. What touches the most of this man was his being always gentle; he had a great simplicity. His same house, in one of the first chapters of this book, is described by him "as a place for sleeping, working and have some baths." He lived in this time but he wasn't a man of this time. Karl Lagerfeld was a man who would have preferred to live in the XVIII century. He searched for that shades, that atmospheres; he searched for that dimension of peace and ideal way of living most of his life, and in particular where after a drama experienced with his man Jacques, Yves Saint Laurent, the companion of Saint Laurent, and a girl, decided of buying a castle. Distant from the frenesy of Paris.
His fascination didn't just pass through the XVIII century, but followed also all his readings: places visited by Marcel Proust, an example, and the Ritz, the favorite hotel where Coco Chanel loved to stay at long.
After all adds Laurent, Lagerfeld was like a german baron ; he considered the biggest civilization experienced since there the age of Empress Elizabeth, known as Sissi, and Ludwig II, Sissi's cousin.
He searched for the past, for revisiting it in the present, or just for being immersed by that. A reassuring place where no one can be anymore harmed.
It's also a story of a painting: the one portrayed by Adolf von Menzel: The Round Table of King Frederic II at Sans-Souci. He fell in love for that painting and he will always have that one in his mind during his existence.
Once in Paris Lagerfeld became friend with Yves Saint Laurent and Victorie, a model with which he spent most of his time together, in particular during the nights. They mainly went in locals for homosexuals; Saint Laurent is portrayed as a young man in search of boys for having wild sex; Lagerfeld tried to search for his soulmate.
He will find his soulmate in Jacques, a dandy in every sense. He was his opposite and maybe for this reason they stayed together 'till the premature departure of him.
His treats in grade of conquering people were his sensibility and morality.
He loved to spend a lot of time at the Café de Flore with his beloved magazines, newsmagazines and books.
He observed in the while the street, people, smells, perfumes, colors.
Karl Lagerfeld built his iconic creative dimension not just thinking "the present" but also reading this world as conceptually the world he would have wanted to live in; the ideal one.
Karl Lagerfeld has always developed his strong and personal style everyone recognized everywhere. In particular his glasses with black lenses.
When in 1957 Dior died, it was the turn of Yves Saint Laurent in the prestigious maison. Lagerfeld was still waiting his occasion; he signes with Chloé a long contract of collaboration meeting along his way an American photographer and various models in grade to make the difference, with which he became friends with, and with which he spent a lot of time at La Coupole and other locals; his house included, where his mother was living after the departure, premature of his beloved father. A mother, Elisabeth still upsetting the son, as you will read, in grade of throwing away passages of the mortality of her son (a journal) just because she was too reserved.
After Chloé, he didn't sign with his name the collections, he preferred in this way, the arrival of Chanel. The owners were searching for someone in grade to keep alive and vital the legacy left by Coco Chanel, so someone in grade of respecting the maison and that creative still missed so badly.
Lagerfeld with the time will create and distribute material to the press in occasion of big events; created his own brand; with a strong diet he lost more than 40 kilos, changed look again, and continued to re-invent his world and the world of people connected with him continuously.
The cover of this book introduces to the readers a mysterious Lagerfeld: someone undefined, hidden by his same name, destiny, fame and myth; he said when he was 6 years old that everyone would have known his name in the entire world; reading this book Lagerfeld will start to become chapter after chapter always more clear and impressed in your soul. The picture at the end of this book will be vivid, real, not anymore distant but I would want to say: mortal and friendly.
Lagerfeld was a rigid man under many ways. There will be a moment in which he will prefer a profound austerity, living without too many objects around for removing traces of the past spent with his friends; a past he wanted to forget because gone.
I confess I would want to tell you all this book. It's amazing. Laurent has had the priviledge of spending a lot of time with Karl Lagerfeld and has had a great sensitivity: to entering in the soul of Lagerfeld, for let you discover nit the big stylist, not the myth, but, the man.
This book is fresh, sunny, sincere; the king is naked in these pages, because his story has been told, and because now, more than in the past, we can understand the mystère behind his being a Myth.
Laurent Allen-Caron's writing style is engaging and will capture your interest in every page.
I thank Laurent with all myself. This one is the first book I read in french after decades. Laurent presented me a lot of trust, like also the french publishing house Fayard.
I thank them a lot.
I hope that I haven't deluded their expectations.
Anna Maria Polidori
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