Five years after his death the Met Gala, chaired by US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, is honouring controversial fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Tonight’s yearly gala is themed around the German designer, as is the exhibition Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty currently on at the Met.
While a press release for the exhibition praises Lagerfeld’s “stylistic vocabulary”, critics of the designer have slammed the event being held in his honour because of problematic things he has said.
Karl Lagerfeld was the man at the helm of fashion house Chanel for many years.
While many remember him for his revival of the world-famous brand, others remember him better for his problematic and hurtful speech.
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Twitter users have complained. One wrote: “While his lifework is undeniably remarkable, he was an awful, problematic person(a**hole). Simply not someone you’d want to honor.”
Another said: “The glamorous M*t G*la where this year we honor a racist, fatphobic, misogynist. But he made pretty clothes, so f**k it. F*****g rich people…”
Fashion insiders have distanced themselves too. The High Fashion Twitter Met Gala stated it would not be holding its digital companion event to the Met Gala.
It wrote: “The 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.”
Lagerfeld made fatphobic, misogynistic, and bigoted statements throughout his career.
He made a number of disparaging comments about female celebrities’ looks, including the sister of the Princess of Wales, Pippa Middleton.
Perhaps worst of all, though, were his comments about Germany’s response to the migrant crises and the Holocaust.
Lagerfeld, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1933, took aim at former German Chancellor Angela Merkel for offering refuge to Muslim refugees.
He said on the French talk show Salut les Terriens! in 2017: “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.”
He then, shockingly, added: “I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said, ‘The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust.'”
The comments caused outrage, and several hundred people complained to the channel.
Many of Lagerfeld’s problematic opinions seemed to take aim at women in particular.
He claimed women should not become models if they objected to having their “pants pulled about” or expected to give their consent to going-ons on set.
He told Numeoro magazine: “I read somewhere that now you must ask a model if she is comfortable with posing. It’s simply too much, from now on, as a designer, you can’t do anything.
“If you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent. They’re recruiting even!”
Lagerfeld hired a former prostitute to appear in a lingerie campaign after she had famously been paid for sex by a famous French footballer while underage.
He said: “I’m rather pro-prostitution. I admire people who do it. It can’t be much fun. Thank goodness for it. People need relief or they become murderers.”
When it came to debate on changing body image standards for models in the industry, Lagerfeld dismissed concerns about health.
He said in a 2009 Focus interview: “These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly.”
The designer made countless comments about the appearances of famous women.
He famously said of British singer Adele in an interview with Metro 2012: “She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.”
Later, he backtracked on his comments telling CNN: “I never said that she was fat, I said that she was a little roundish; a little roundish is not fat. But for such a beautiful girl, after that, she lost eight kilos so I think the message was not that bad.”
He made unpleasant comments about the sister of the Princess of Wales, Pippa Middleton, saying: “Kate Middleton has a nice silhouette and she is the right girl for that boy…On the other hand, her sister struggles.
“I don’t like the sister’s face. She should only show her back.”
On Michelle Obama, he said: “I don’t understand the change of hair. I adore Madame Obama, I love her. But there is a news reader…which has this haircut.
“Frankly, this doesn’t suit her. The fringe was a bad idea, it’s not good.”
It wasn’t just women’s looks the designer admonished. In 2006 he said of Princess Diana, whose funeral she attended: “She was pretty and she was sweet, but she was stupid.”
Despite the litany of problematic comments and the subsequent outrages they caused, Lagerfeld was never let go from his role at Chanel, which he held until his death.
