Karl Lagerfeld: The Boy Who Left Hamburg and Rebuilt Fashion in His Image

Karl Lagerfeld: The Boy Who Left Hamburg and Rebuilt Fashion in His Image

Karl Lagerfeld spent his life turning himself into a character, but the most revealing version of him may have been the boy who left Hamburg with a stack of drawings and an almost unnerving certainty that he belonged somewhere else. Born in Hamburg in 1933, according to birth and baptismal records, Lagerfeld grew up in a prosperous family, with a businessman father and a mother, Elisabeth, whose sharp wit and even sharper standards became one of the defining forces of his personality. He would eventually work at Balmain, Patou, Chloé and Fendi before taking over Chanel in 1983. But the extraordinary part of the story is not simply that he became one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. It is that, from adolescence onward, he behaved as though becoming Karl Lagerfeld was not an ambition but an appointment.

Karl Lagerfeld's Early Life in Hamburg

The mother who taught him not to be sentimental

Lagerfeld's childhood was unusual long before fashion entered the picture.

His father, Otto Lagerfeld, was a successful businessman whose company dealt in evaporated milk. His mother Elisabeth was the more vivid presence in Karl's recollections. He described her as intelligent, funny, demanding and frequently merciless in the way only a parent who knows exactly where to aim can be.

Lagerfeld repeatedly returned to her comments in interviews. When he was around eight, he wore Tyrolean hats and she reportedly told him, "You shouldn't wear hats. You look like an old dyke." Lagerfeld's response, decades later, was characteristically amused: "Do you say such things to children?" Then came the verdict that she was funny.

She also discouraged him from smoking when he was fourteen by telling him that his hands were not beautiful enough for cigarettes. The remark stayed with him. More importantly, it reveals something about the environment in which his aesthetic judgment developed. Even a cigarette was not simply a cigarette. It was a question of line, gesture and presentation.