By Amuna Wagner
The late designer might have been a genius, but he was also a bigot and should not be celebrated uncritically.
It is no secret that Karl Lagerfeld was an iconoclast. He was uniquely gifted, a fashion pioneer, a raging misogynist, and racist. Nonetheless, the 2023 Met Gala, fashion’s biggest night, was held in his honour. The House of Chanel, which Lagerfeld directed for over three decades, sponsored the event in accordance with the new Met exhibit, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”, that will feature 150 of his designs alongside his original sketches. Two weeks before the annual Costume Institute Benefit, the High Fashion Twitter Met Gala – a group of young fashion fans who unofficially cover the Gala on social media – sent out a tweet stating that they would not be holding their usual digital companion event.
“As we approach the first Monday of May, the hf twitter met gala team would like to announce that we will not be celebrating this year’s met gala as our values don’t align with the selection of Karl Lagerfeld as the theme,” the team wrote on Twitter.
Their decision echoed the many voices critiquing the Met’s choice in light of Lagerfeld’s history of discrimination and bigotry. A look at his legacy beyond fantastical fashion shows offers a grim picture of today’s fashion world and popular culture.
A controversial idol
Lagerfeld was born into a wealthy family in Hamburg, Germany, in 1933. It is no surprise that a white man of his generation would be misogynistic and racist. The real concern is that a man like him is celebrated internationally in 2023. Back in October, when the Met Gala’s theme was first announced, actor, Jameela Jamil, reminded the public about the designer’s history.
“Why is THIS who we celebrate when there are so many AMAZING designers out there who aren’t bigoted white men? What happened to everyone's principles and 'advocacy',” she asked.
Indeed, while stars like Michaela Cole and Janelle Monae dressed up “in honour of Karl”, it is worth remembering that the late designer had no inhibitions saying that he was “fed up” with the #MeToo movement and questioned the claims of victims who came forward during that time.
“What shocks me most in all of this are the starlets who have taken 20 years to remember what happened,” Lagerfeld told Numero Magazine. “Not to mention the fact that there are no prosecution witnesses.”
Why Lagerfeld’s fatphobia is anti-Black
From Islamophobia to xenophobia, Lagerfeld’s targets of hate speech were plenty. His creative work included photographing German model Claudia Schiffer in Blackface and yellowface to “reflect different men’s fantasies” in 2010. Most prominently, fatphobia became synonymous with his name, partly due to his extreme weight loss in 2001 and mostly because he often voiced his disdain for all bodies that are not skinny (he called singer Adele “too fat” and model Heidi Klum “too heavy”). Lagerfeld considered the body positivity movement ridiculous and anorexia not as dangerous as junk food and television. While many say that his views stemmed from personal body issues, it is important to note that fatphobia is rooted in anti-Blackness.
In her award winning book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, sociologist, Sabrina Strings, traces the emergence of modern hatred of fat in the historical wake of colonisation and the transatlantic slave trade. She demonstrates that our contemporary obsession with thinness is inextricable from the historical processes whereby fat was objectified as a sign of racial inferiority. In other words: fatphobia has been, and continues to be, central to the construction of whiteness. In that process, the figure of the robust Black African woman became a medicalised object of derision and fat became a sign of moral failure.
Perhaps these biases against Black bodies account for the lack of diversity in Lagerfeld’s work. Despite his claims that he saw all women as potential muses regardless of race, his haute couture shows almost always showed brides (traditionally the star of the show) of European descent. In his 35 years as creative director at the House of Chanel, Lagerfeld only ever chose two Black models as his couture brides: Alek Wek in 2004 and Adut Akech in 2018.
A toxic industry
The celebration of Karl Lagerfeld at this year’s Met Gala became testament to just how little value society places on those he disrespected in his lifetime. It showed that wealth and fame erase all else. Lagerfeld embodied some of fashion’s most toxic ideals and stood proudly in his bigotry against those who were not rich, thin and white. Regardless of whether he truly believed in his hurtful words or whether they were just a persona, the message stays the same: talented rich white men can do whatever they want at the cost of everyone else. It also tells us fashion’s true values which continue to disregard the dignity of women and Black women in particular.