Karl Lagerfeld, who passed away on Tuesday at a hospital outside Paris, enjoyed the stature of a god among mortals in the world of fashion, where he stayed on top for well over half of a century and right up to his death, reports FRANCE 24.
The German designer was best known for his association with France's Chanel, dating back to 1983. The brand, the legend now goes, risked becoming the preserve of monied grannies before he arrived, slashing hemlines and adding glitz to the prim tweed suits of what is now one of the world's most valuable couture houses.
But Lagerfeld, who simultaneously churned out collections for LVMH's Fendi and his eponymous label - an unheard of feat in fashion - was almost a brand in his own right.
Sporting dark suits, white, pony-tailed hair and tinted sunglasses in his later years that made him instantly recognisable, an irreverent wit was also part of a carefully crafted persona.
"I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that," runs one legendary quote attributed to him, and often recycled to convey the person he liked to play. "It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long."
His artistic instincts, business acumen and commensurate ego combined to commercially triumphant effect in the rarefied world of high fashion, where he was revered and feared in similar proportions by competitors and top-models.
A refusal to look to the past was one of his biggest assets, those who knew him said.
The designer mingled with the young and trendy until the last, pairing up with 17-year-old catwalk darling Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford, for a collaboration released by his Karl Lagerfeld brand in 2018.
His cat Choupette moved with the times too: the white-haired Birman, described by her social network minders as "daughter of Karl Otto Lagerfeld", has more than 100,000 Instagram photo-network followers and a publishing deal.
Yet Lagerfeld also stood out as a craftsman. An accomplished photographer, he drew his own designs by hand, an increasingly rare phenomenon in fashion. Behind the facade, he was known for his erudition and penchant for literature, and he devoured the world's leading newspapers daily.
Though he long enjoyed befuddling interviewers by citing different years of birth, the one deemed the most reliable is September 10th, 1933.
Lagerfeld - dubbed "Kaiser Karl" and "Fashion Meister" among a whole host of media monikers - was born in Hamburg to a German mother and a Swedish father who imported condensed milk.