It’s been four years since Lagerfeld died at the age of 85 but zingers,such as “if you don’t want your pants pulled about,don’t become a model”;“these are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television,saying that thin models are ugly”;“I’m against it (gay marriage) for a very simple reason:In the ’60s,they all said we had the right to the difference. And now,suddenly,they want a bourgeois life”,still reverberate. In 2017,he made comments on a talk show against Germany welcoming refugees:“One cannot — even if there are decades between them — kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place.”
Online activists,includingactor Jameela Jamil,raised the alarm when the Met Gala theme was announced in September,with an Instagram post highlighting Lagerfeld’s lack of remorse for his comments.
Despite the thrusting of fingers on the cancel button,the party and accompanying exhibition,Karl Lagerfeld:A Line of Beauty,is marching ahead with the relentless determination of Naomi Campbell on the runway. “You can’t cancel Karl Lagerfeld,” says formerVogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements,who collaborated with the designer on the magazine’s December issue in 2003,currently available on Ebay for $470. “He is one of the greats.
“You have to separate the work from the person. He represents that jet set era of Dior,Valentino and Saint Laurent that we won’t see again.”
Clements adds:“I am not an apologist for his comments. But you can’t apply the present attitudes onto how the fashion industry used to be. When it came to weight,he was just saying the quiet part out loud. That’s how the fashion industry,at large,thinks.”
Lagerfeld started work at Chanel in 1983,just 10 years after the death of its founder,Coco Chanel,who survived attempts at cultural cancellation,despite her relationship with Nazi officer Hans Günther von Dincklage during World War II and accusations of being a Nazi informant and antisemite.