What Karl Lagerfeld’s Choice Of Muses Said About Him

Karl Lagerfeld, creative director of Chanel, has died aged 85. As well as his beloved cat, Choupette, he leaves behind a decades-long legacy of creating elegant and iconic designs shown at elaborately grand runway shows.

He will also be mourned by his many muses, who he carefully selected to represent Chanel on the runway, along the front row, at red carpets and in advertising campaigns for its bags, perfumes, ready-to-wear lines and couture. One, Lily Allen, tweeted in memoriam of the late designer: ‘I never quite understood what you saw in me but I am forever grateful for the support that you and Chanel have given me over the last 15 years’.

It’s obvious, though, what Karl, who once said ‘fashion is an attitude more than a clothing detail’ saw in Lily and all his muses. It’s a surly, disaffected demeanour, a fierceness contained within the aloof and nearly callous snarl of a woman who can’t be bothered to get fully cross because her precious time is worth more than that.

In the early 1990s, when the Chanel runway mostly presented zesty and bombastic powersuit-inspired garments, Karl cast Vanessa Paradis, the French singer, in a perfume campaign. The once-peppy popstar, who hit the big time aged just 14, was reframed in an adult light by Chanel’s surreal campaign. Unsmiling, she’s unbothered by looming danger, while Coco Chanel, played by a faceless model, balances a similar, quintessentially French vibe of misanthropic-alluring.

Paradis’s daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, now models for Chanel, and the pair recently co-starred in a campaign for the brand. Like her mother, Lily is unflappable, glowering rather than smiling, making the viewer feel like they’re lucky to even set eyes on her. And on the way from Paradis to Depp, Karl has had a lot of fun working with every other celebrity woman who embodies this Chanel Woman.

In both 1991 and 1997, Chanel dressed Winona Ryder for the Oscars. Then renowned for playing the smart, critical, anti-glam relatable heroine, and dating Hollywood’s then-legitimate kook Johnny Depp, the actress gave the appearance of someone who was totally chill with being so adored.

Kate Moss also embodied the Chanel Woman, from the 1990s all the way through to, well, now, always giving the air of a sulky schoolgirl who’d prefer to be smoking behind the bikesheds, perhaps on her own, to suffering any fools.

By the early 2000s, after Kate’s drug scandal, when Chanel, under pressure from investors, announced it would not renew her contract, Keira Knightley replaced the model as the face of the brand’s perfume. Though she’d played plucky in many film roles, the Chanel campaigns were the first time we’d really seen Keira’s edges slice through.

(There’s another time to discuss why Johnny Depp fell for so many of Karl’s early muses, or, in the case of Knightley, worked with them, but it’s safe to say that all their naturally-occurring rebelliousness has outlasted any of his contrived efforts.)

Karl’s women undid affable femininity. There’s the androgynous Agyness Deyn, or the reluctant-seeming Kristen Stewart, who was never once been reprimanded, by Karl at least, for kicking off her heels during red carpets, either going barefoot or teaming his designs with trainers. There’s also Rihanna, who gives so few shits she started off wearing sheer Chanel with no bra, and, when it comes to the red carpet, is always zero effort, maximum jaw-drop. Her inclusion in the pastel-lined S/S2014 supermarket-themed Chanel show was to subvert the contemporary perception of a Stepford Wife. Because we all know Rihanna, whose Instagram name is literally ‘badgalriri’ is anything but a programmable handmaiden.

Karl’s women were also defiant in the face of adversity. Four years afterLindsay Lohan rose to success off the back of Mean Girls, Lohan and Karl entered his 2007 Cruise show in LA via a Chanel-branded private jet. By 2010, long after she’d been effectively blacklisted by a Hollywood more eager to criminalise a woman’s addiction problems than, say, any man’s abuses of power, Lindsay turned up at Karl’s Paris Fashion week show wearing Chanel leather and heavily kohl-ed eyes, glaring at the cameras rather than deigning to crack a smile. She looked strikingly similar to Karl’s long-time friend Carine Roitfeld, who has, of course, also modelled for Chanel.

It makes sense that Karl would also go for Lily Allen, whose feminine singing voice belies a pretty scathing way with words that chip at authority figures and straight men’s inadequacies. Amy Winehouse, Allen’s contemporary in this respect, and in London’s music scene of the aughts, was honoured by Karl in Chanel's 2008 pre-fall show. It was all beehives, winged eyeliner and 1960’s East End gangers’ moll get-up - a look that Amy would later recreate at a court appearance (Lindsay would also wear Chanel to court).

By 2012 Karl would become the first international designer to put Cara Delevigne on his catwalk. Her present ubiquity means it’s now hard to remember just how wildly anti-fashion she seemed back then, but those eyebrows were a revolutionary refusal to kowtow to prevailing beauty standards. Then there’s one of Karl’s most recent muses, Adwoah Aboa, whose face is sullenness at its most beautiful, with dipped eyelids and inscrutable eyebrows that to say, to anyone other than those precious few who’re worthy of her time, ‘piss off, I’d like to get on with looking fabulous now thanks'.

Even sometimes-hyperactive Florence Welch, performing from a giant seashell at Chanel’s S/S2012 show, appeared here in ice-cold white and silver, singing What The Water Gave Me in a haunting, rather than rousing tone.

Karl didn’t reverse beauty standards. But he nudged at them, playfully, while helping promote the careers of women who dared to be different in many ways. All the while, Chanel dressed he fashion establishment’s leader, Vogue US editor Anna Wintour, herself a defiant woman who has perfected a classy distance from her onlookers. Chanel’s prestige, in spite of, or because of, the women who represented it, meant it retained classiness, despite all its rebels. Is it any wonder, after all, that when beginning to place herself as a serious designer, the smile-averse Victoria Beckham started wearing Chanel?

Much has been, and will be made of Karl’s lack of commitment to certain important facets of fashion - Chanel’s fur and exotic skins ban only came into effect in November 2018. Sending Naomi Campbell out on the runway in the early 1990s did not undo subsequent years of white bodies comprising the majority of his shows and ad campaigns. Calling Adele ‘a bit fat’ was offensive and came from a place of obvious self-loathing that popped up elsewhere, too many times. However, by working with women who, in incremental ways, inched out of their pre-packaged moulds of female friendliness, he showed a level of adoration for his muses. This attitude, this mood, this defiant anti-femininity, will continue to be built on and extended far beyond the purview of this 85-year-old man.

Read more: check our Karl Lagerfeld's most iconic Chanel moments

Chanel’s women, just like the man who lived behind his wicked tongue and black sunglasses, are cat-people, who know you like them and suffer it, rather than dog people, who just earnestly need the world to like them. In the furrow of their brows and the downturned corners of their mouths, Karl located the essence of a continental coolness, a sentiment of ‘please do fuck off, then’ that will continue to live on in his honour. In his clothes or out of them