Karl Lagerfeld going back home to Hamburg with Chanel’s Métier’s d’Art

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Oct 4, 2017

Karl Lagerfeld will return to his hometown of Hamburg, Germany, to present Chanel’s next Métiers d’Art collection on December 6 of this year.
 

For a location, Lagerfeld has chosen the city’s spectacular Elbphilharmonie, a giant work of architectural distinction conceived by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The controversial philharmonic is actually a dazzling crystalline structure with three auditoriums perched on top of existing giant warehouse, and situated in the heart of the Port of Hamburg. Opened last year, it took almost a decade to build and cost overruns meant the final budget was 860 million euros.
 
“Whatever the story construction, it is really the most amazing building imaginable. Once I had seen it I knew where I wanted to go next with the Métiers d’art,” Lagerfeld told FashionNetwork.com.

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Even for a designer noted for his iron-will, the show should mark an emotional moment for Lagerfeld, returning to a region he quit in his early teens to study in Paris, and begin his stratospheric career. For Chanel, Hamburg marks the latest exotic location for the Métiers d’art collection, which has staged shows everywhere from Edinburgh to Salzburg, Rome to the Ritz Hotel in Paris last year.
 
For the past decade, the Métiers d’art show has marked the culmination of world’s runway season, with its uniquely sophisticated approach to fashion. The collection contains elements of luxury ready-to-wear and couture, though it is above all a unique manner to present the unique savoir-faire of a series of luxury suppliers, which are part of the extended Chanel group.
 
“Through the virtuosity of Karl Lagerfeld, the Chanel Métiers d'art collection honors the exceptional savoir-faire of the Chanel Métiers d'art, among which the embroiderers Maison Lesage and Atelier Montex, feather-maker Lemarié, shoemaker Massaro and hat-maker and milliner Maison Michel,” Chanel said.
 
Lagerfeld’s triumphant return comes some 65 years after he first left for France. His first years of childhood were spent in the leafy suburb of Baurs Park in Blankenese in Hamburg; thereafter the family moved 40 kilometers  north east to Bad Darmstadt. So, the December show will be seen as bringing full circle his remarkable career as the planet’s most instantly recognizable designer and the arguably the greatest illustrator ever in fashion.