Met Gala 2023: Decoding Karl Lagerfeld's signature style

Karl Lagerfeld's legacy boasts of his extensive and immortal work with luxury giants Chanel, Fendi and his own eponymous label. His legacy also boasts of his blue-cream tortie Birman cat, fancily christened Choupette. However, above and beyond everything else, the Lagerfeld legacy stands immortalised with the unflinching image he built for himself during his expansive time in the spotlight. Decoding Lagerfeld's signature appearance is essentially a dip in to his visionary psyche.

The white

The mention of Karl Lagerfeld brings to mind a solitary image of the man typically featuring super-starched white collars, dark to tinted wide-frame sunglasses, pristine white hair, a whiter crisp shirt and everything else in black, particularly his famous finger-less gloves. Karl Lagerfeld was besotted with white. His time at home in his creative cocoon was spent dressed in the colour, often in fluid comfortable fits. His public appearances almost always featured a crisp button-down with those unmissable signature starched collars. The collars were so much a part of his identity, that his bespoke Louis Vuitton luggage allegedly had specially made compartments, about 10 cm high, to carry the precious identifiers. As Lagerfeld began to age, he started meticulously powdering his hair to maintain its bright white tone. The designer associated the colour with the essence of flawlessness. 

The black

Karl Lagerfeld balanced his undying love for white with an equally fervent passion for its antithesis, black. Though he was known to occasionally switch it up, a generous dose of bling in the form of extensive sequins being an example, he largely remained loyal to the colour which featured across his sunglasses to his coat sets complete with the ties. The finger-less gloves in particular, also black, were an ode to as well as rebellion against a childhood memory as per which his mother told him that his hands were so ugly he should never take up smoking. The finger-less gloves were the mid-way between hiding his hands but also baring them.

The fluidity

Though Karl Lagerfeld's primary silhouette of choice remained standard, he also expressed immense fluidity adapting it to the changing times and fashions. Lagerfeld was also a big fan of heirloom jewellery, often sporting brooches, vintage, designer or even brand new, on his ties. Like his artisitic influences, Lagerfeld's personal style too, was inspired by classic silhouettes which he effortlessly made fashion-forward.

The Met Gala 2023 will roll out its red carpet on May 1. This year, the ball will honour Karl Lagerfeld with their theme, 'Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty'. A recent high-profile tribute was also shot in honour of the late designer, headlined by Gigi Hadid and Naomi Campbell to name a few.