MARRIOTT BUZZ NO. 15 - 2019

23 to-wear paid off, as he took the helm of a brand that came to define him nearly as much he it. In the early 1980s, Lagerfeld took on the creative directorship of dying label Chanel, struggling for relevancy in the wake of founder Coco Chanel’s death. To say that Lagerfeld revived Chanel would be an understatement; he catapulted the brand to the pinnacle of the world of haute couture, revamping its ready-to-wear line and conceiving and integrating the interlocking “CC” monograph and quilted motif into the now instantly recognizable style pattern for the house. Lagerfeld’s creative flair was matched by his astuteness as a businessman, who was vastly ahead of his time in appreciating the eventual globalization of luxury goods. He envisioned Chanel as a multinational mega brand, channeling this ideal through a combination of runway hits. Amongst them, the iconic 90s tweed blazers, fashioned in organic airy fabrics and accentuated by the now-emblematic unraveled seams and hems. As time would tell, Chanel’s success surpassed Lagerfeld’s own lofty ambitions. Like most artistic geniuses, he was a workaholic, and in true fashionista manner he was said to have always feared not being part of the moment as a death in itself. Ironically however, even in his actual death, Lagerfeld will now remain eternally an inseparable part of countless moments in fashion’s past, present and future. Lasting Legacy Far from the sticking impression of superficiality and snobbery that his often-infamous reputation garnered him, Lagerfeld was actually a major proponent in his later years of mixing high street fashion with high fashion, declaring that; “today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes.” Lagerfeld giving his invaluable blessing to such a trend proved to be a major factor that helped usher in this ultra-modern era of designer fashion that has become virtually indistinguishable from the comforts of casual, funky street wear. “Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress,” he decreed, and this evidently became the lived-out reality that we are witnessing today on the coveted runways of London, New York, Milan and Paris. Lagerfeld will be remembered even more for his wise words than his familiar image, and that says a lot. “Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality,” he said, and he was the loving artist who painstakingly consummated these creations. “There is no beauty without strangeness,” he also believed, and one can’t help but wonder if he said so primarily with himself in mind. What Lagerfeld’s legacy tells us whether intentionally or not, through his even-enduring cult of personality, is that true fashion is more about who you are than what you wear. After all, it is the former that determines the latter, and this unforgettable icon’s irreverent, unapologetic, and fiercely original character will always stand as a testament to the notion that absent individuality, there can be no real style.