Karl Lagerfeld knew the power of an image, no? This German-born designer, photographer, collector, bibliophile, illustrator, polyglot—honed his own very well. Fashion is about change, but by the 2000s Lagerfeld’s black-and-white look had been refined to a point that it was iconic. Long gone were the beard, the fan, and the natty matching suits, having been replaced by pieces from Hedi Slimane, invariably worn with a high-collared white shirt and a tie pinned with a precious jewel, half gloves, Chrome Hearts rings, and always the sunglasses and the powdered ponytail. This last was a conceit borrowed from the 18th-century, the era that most appealed to Lagerfeld; nonetheless, he was a strident modernist.
In some ways Lagerfeld was ever walking a tightrope between past and present (especially at Chanel, where the ghost of Coco is ever present, fractured into bits of light by the atelier’s famous mirrored staircase). Maybe it’s this frisson that makes images of Lagerfeld’s work especially potent. Some of the best known photos in Vogue—six supers skipping across the page in couldn’t-be-shorter sherbet-colored Chanel suits for Steven Meisel; Shalom Harlow, a couture-clad peacock in repose captured by Irving Penn, who also imagined Caroline Trentini as a Casati-eyed Estrella in silver Chanel spangles. Pictures which document a many-faceted and brilliant talent.