A little Karl Lagerfeld is a lot
karl lagerfeld
Antiques, contemporary art, decorative objects, 'gadgets' and exclusive designs: the last treasures of the former kaiser of fashion, who died in 2019, are auctioned at Sotheby's. A collector binge that will need several sessions, face-to-face and digital, to be dispatched
Rafa RodriguezMadrid -He did it in life, on multiple occasions, so little (nothing, really) was going to matter to him if it happened again almost three years after his death. Karl Lagerfeld could have it all —and everything, even repeated—, but he always understood that the important thing was not the possession, but the manifestation that he made of his identity through what he owned. Therefore, with the same carefree attitude and speed with which his guild discards styles and trends, he used to part with what he treasured. “I love to collect, but I don't lose my mind about owning anything. I am a fashion person, I am stimulated by discoveries, discovering things, but in the end this is nothing more than accumulation and I want to get rid of it”, he stated when he got rid of his collection of French antiques from the 18th century, via Christie's, in 2000 Two decades later, what remains of his massive personal estate has begun to be awarded to the highest bidder at Sotheby's.
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Since 10 in the morning of last Friday, November 26, it was already possible to bid on the first lots, those numbered between 1,000 and 1,182, on the website of the British auction house. They are the most accessible, although also prosaic: almost twenty drawings by Georges Lepape, one of the artists who illustrated fashion magazines at the beginning of the 20th century, which, at the time of closing this text, are paid between 800 and €4,200; some modular trays by the architect Zaha Hadid for Alessi, from 2009, which right now multiply the estimated price of 100 euros by 12; a letter from Victor Hugo to Alphonse de Lamartine, dated 1848, dating to the 1800s; an Anthony Vaccarello Saint Laurent velvet tuxedo jacket from 2016, which could fetch 4,000; a small series of three drawings in which the German designer portrayed his controversial lover in the seventies, Jacques de Bascher, who is around 7,000; and even a white worker's helmet that is listed at 500 euros. The offers of the first online bid close at 1:00 p.m. this Monday, just when the second part of this auction modality begins (until December 17), with a new selection of personal objects —clothes and suitcases, for example—and design from the creator's residences in Monaco and Louveciennes.
Sotheby's has cataloged around 4,000 items, a task that has taken more than three months. To give them an outlet, the auction house has had no choice but to convene up to five sessions: the two digital ones referred to and the other three face-to-face. The first of these began on Friday the 3rd at its headquarters in Monaco and will last -although it had to be suspended due to certain technical problems for a few hours- until this Sunday, to be repeated later in Paris, on December 14 and 15. The third will be held in Cologne, but already in March 2022. There is much identified as 'memorabilia', including those vaunted 400 iPods (each with its own playlists, courtesy of Michel Gaubert, the DJ who soundtracked the parades Chanel and Fendi in Lagerfeld's glory days as creative director of both brands), Hedi Slimane's elusive garments for Dior Homme for which the German lost 42 kilos, a Rolls Royce Phantom and a Cullinan, a set of 50 sheets and another of 270 pillowcases, dolls in his image and likeness and the whims with which he pampered Choupette, his famous Burmese cat. It is even possible to bid on Château Lafite and Châteu Mouton in 'magnum' bottles from his cellar. Also for an endless number of pieces of furniture and industrial design with signatures of the scope of Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, Liaigre, André Sornay, Bruno Paul, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec or his favorite, Marc Newson (his wife, Charlotte Stockdale, worked as a stylist for him at Fendi).
And then there are the works of art, mostly contemporary, that he acquired in galleries such as the Parisian Kreo: sculptures by Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Konstantin Grcic and Martin Szekely; paintings by John Baldessari, Takashi Murakami, Fauconnet... All from the rooms of the nineteenth-century mansion he had in Louveciennes, a stone's throw from Versailles; his grand apartments on the 19th floor of the Monegasque Millefiori Tower and the apartment and work studio he bought in 2008 on the Parisian rue des Saint-Pères where he spent much of his time. They were not the only homes of his, that he also had apartments in Rome and Berlin, an attic in Monte Carlo, the castle in Brittany, the Biarritz villa and the neoclassical mansion of Grand Isle, in Vermont, (United States). What is said to be a genuine Renaissance man —in addition to being a designer, he was a photographer, illustrator, gallery owner, art curator, bookseller and publisher—, Lagerfeld was in charge of equipping/decorating them, giving free rein to his omnivorous collecting drive. He didn't care about the Milanese Memphis Group or about the Louis XIV style, Weimar-style 'chic' and the exoticism of 1900. “I'm capable of imagining all kinds of pasts that I've never known,” he said. To jump from one period to another, he auctioned. He started doing it in 1975, when he put his art deco collection under the hammer of Drouot. He waited until 1991 to rid himself of his Memphis obsession with Monaco. And he repeated up to three times in 2000, releasing decorative and pictorial ballast between New York, Paris and again the Monegasque principality. Without sentimentality, he would be missing.
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