Lagerfeld’s reign at Chanel turns 25 in 2008

Posted by Helen Lee at 7:46 pm December 27th, 2007 | 1 comment

Karl Lagerfeld started working at Chanel back in 1983, a quarter of a century later he is still there and still creating new and fabulous items at Chanel.

We all love his work now, but that wasn’t always the way.

“They said, ‘Oh, [Coco] Chanel would be shocked to death!’ But they didn’t want the homage – the respectful shit – either,” he told The New Yorker earlier this year. “So to survive you have to cut the roots to make new roots. Because fashion is about today. You can take an idea from the past, but, if you do it the way it was, no one wants it.’”

He turned the classic Chanel suit into a mini skirt paired with a cropped jacket, then blazoned everything with the double-C logo, and made many quilted bags, shoes and accessories. The New Yorker says that he turned Chanel into a “bad-girl”, which was “contrary to everything that Chanel herself had stood for: dignity, restraint, and a style of clothing that allowed women to dress in as confident and comfortable a manner as men do.”

But all the negative reviews have been turned around, and we couldn’t love him anymore – even if he called Amy Winehouse a muse.

I wonder what celebrations are in store? With talk of a Chanel show in Russia next December, and the big extravaganza of a show John Galliano had at Dior’s couture show, I can’t wait to find out.