The dress, with its removable corselet, is very pure and constructivist.”Ī dress designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Christiane Norero’s 1954 wedding. Middleton showed a photo of the never-before-seen gown to Harlech, who remarked: “It shows that Karl, even then, understood eveningwear as well as tailoring. Impressed by Lagerfeld’s “attentiveness to the client and the design that he proposed,” the 20-year-old wunderkind prevailed. In 1953, he enrolled in classes of fashion illustration and design given by Andrée Norero Petitjean at her school, known as the Cours Norero, where Lagerfeld demonstrated “natural ability as an illustrator and a sensitivity to style,” Middleton writes.Īmong Norero’s assignments for her young charges was a competition to design the gown for the upcoming wedding of her daughter, Christiane. Though he always insisted he was entirely self-taught in fashion, sometimes joking that he was quite uneducated, Lagerfeld in fact studied the year after he arrived in Paris from his hometown of Hamburg, Germany. Still, Middleton found himself surprised by many things he uncovered about Lagerfeld. © CHANEL / Photographer Dominique Issermann / Courtesy

Inès de La Fressange in a look from Karl Lagerfeld’s debut collection for Chanel in 1983. The author notes that his editor encouraged him to make readers feel like they were in the room with Lagerfeld, and interviews with his nearest and dearest - muse Lady Amanda Harlech personal assistant Sébastien Jondeau model Inès de La Fressange publisher Gerhard Steidl, and a host of Chanel, Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld brand executives among them - paint a picture of a driven, supremely intelligent and indefatigable fashion genius whose impact on the culture was vast. “Better that than the opposite, non?” was Lagerfeld’s retort.įor these reasons, Middleton took pains to portray Lagerfeld as much as an endearing human being as a towering creative figure, delving into his key relationships, both personal and professional.

Indeed, he once told the designer how flabbergasted he was by his harsh, even unpleasant public persona, given that he was actually quite warm, even touching when you got to know him. While Paris bureau chief for WWD and W magazine in the ’90s, Middleton quickly discovered the soft, gooey center underneath Lagerfeld’s hard shell. The cover of the book, published by Harper.

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