The Rise and Fall of Karl Lagerfeld

karlagerfeld is arguably the world's best modern designer having a career spanning decades and Reviving many brands single-handedly in the process but why then did his own namesake brand go the way that it did a shell of its former self and by far the least respected of his work by the time Carl began his namesake label in 1984 with this Autumn winter 84 ready to wear collection that was produced under a licensing deal with biederman he was already one of the most respected designers in the world having seen enormous successes through the last decade at Chloe before that at Jean part 2 now Fendi and had just shown his first collection at Chanel his namesake debuted with this collection to apparent great success as it was an offering very different to his loose 70 Centric looks at Chloe harder looks at Chanel and fur heavy looks at Fendi this was inspired by Carl directly featuring lots of suiting details and a closer fit to the body that at the time read as racy from here the brand had hit after hit in their collections it was a genuinely well received addition to the Fashion Week circuit that was taken as a strong creative expression with an early obviously very 80s aesthetic the collections became known for their mostly just black and white color palette very signature car colors and their focus on shirts and dresses with the odd showpiece or different garment here and there for cultural context obviously because of Carl's work at the other houses he was a very very visible designer there's no doubt about that but his work at Chanel and at Fendi and still his past worker Chloe far surpassed the fame of his own namesake in the public despite how extremely well received it was by the fashion press in my head this is a little bit like how Jonathan Anderson's Mainline JW Anderson is just not as famous or as discussed as loyves but still maintains a very strong following that's to say though it may have been eclipsed by his groundbreaking Revival of all the Chloe Fendi and Chanel houses and platoon to a later extent it was still very successful and by 1987 the car lagerfell brand began looking outwards for licensing collaborations to capitalize on his popularity this came with a collection with refi Yong who would produce Furs under the Carl Lagerfeld name to make the most of his success with the Fendi brand this came along with this fashion show in the winter along with the ready to wear show that he was already producing for his main line in the spring according to the New York Times the car lager failed Forever Young show was the absolute standout for the whole season specifically for his fur manipulation techniques which were already famed from his 20 years at Fendi which we talked about in this video at this point had also been a massive influence in fashion for many years even as far back as 1839 when they were founded but they'd previously gone defunct in 1982 and were under new ownership hence why I think Carl Caroline Herrera and Louis Faroe were bought on for their own lines in 1987. that included at least both ready to wear and fur collections likely as a way for them to regain some relevance within the Fashion World seemingly went very well together they were stopped by Saks Fifth Avenue and were really considered amongst the luxury brands in fuzz at a time when at car lagerfeld's namesake brand his designs were growing to a more 90s aesthetic slowly but surely in his own manner of course never really doing anything groundbreakingly new but making genuinely good quality clothes for each season that also related very well to the Brand's image in this case being shirt and dress heavy in a white and black and maybe a pop of color color palette quite a lot of hats though they were less and less as the seasons progressed and they had a decent emphasis on jackets this was relayed through a storyline individual to each collection as was the fashion at the time with one developed with influence from biker culture another one from 18th century France just as some examples each to a receptive audience never really having a bad collection it was considered to be a very strong luxury design house and often discussed in fashionable circles specifically because it was Carl lagerfeld's namesake brand and that carriage heft the partnership with Rebellion lasted a respectable five years until eventually the brand or the rights of the Carl Lagerfeld name was sold in 1992 with a licensing deal to a then Dunhill Holdings PLC that would merge to become Vendome in 1993. and Dome was the parent company to Cartier Montblanc Alfred Dunhill and importantly Chloe who Carr had just signed to become the head designer of once again after so famously Reviving The Brand in the early 70s it was in this deal that lager felt insisted that they purchased the rights to the name Carl Lagerfeld back from River young which then saw that vandom began to produce closed shoes Handbags and jewelry for the brand Under a licensing deal however sales soon began to stagnate which in my opinion is because of lack of creative curation yes Carl is a phenomenal designer but looking through these many collections that is online it's hard to realize a real through line that one could come back to for customers even the best artists in the world needs a curator to bring their Creations into a marketable place to sell to customers so without this honestly it felt like these designs were just a little more directionless than his work at the other houses it also seems that this was Carl's takeaway too because he claimed that they didn't really have the correct leadership from a business perspective and that he was dissatisfied with the way the company was run even Ralph toledano the man at the business Helm of the car lagerfell brand since 1985 left the company in 1995. so it's safe to say that it wasn't a great relationship between the two and the brand and partner had a less than amicable parting as Carl's five-year Chloe contract came to an end the rights were sold directly back to Carl for a singular Frank as a sort of burn for them having this bad divide because they were claiming the brand was so worthless to them as a partner Carl then took this for fuel as they really took an unexpected turn by rebranding the whole company as Lagerfeld Gallery in 1998 and I think though I may be wrong they signed a licensing agreement with staff International for production of clothes and perhaps the marketing side as well as the sources are a little unclear I find this particularly interesting because he has always said in many interviews that he is not a marketeer he leaves that to other people he only does the design it's just not his job hence why I think a licensing brand was perfect for him for his company they dealt with all of the things that he didn't want to deal with and he could be left to do the design that being said it was at this time that the structure of the business seemingly was put into question as they as part of this rebranding I believe stopped showing at Fashion Week briefly and evolved the company into a more Lifestyle brand with the opening of a shop also called longer felt gallery on 20 route sen in Paris that opened also in 1998. never intending The lagerfell Gallery Brand to be a big business here he would sell books Prince of his own photography Fendi clothing including Fendi first in the winter and the aforementioned Lino clothing which unfortunately I couldn't find pictures of so this really became a change for the namesake it continued to be his design in the purest form but now totally undeterred by the sales or marketing side that of course affected his work at Chanel Fendi Chloe Etc that was until staff International was purchased by the OTB group the company that owns diesel in 2000 it seems that they saw more potential in the business to be this extremely exclusive label and so still in the year 2000 they opened a slightly larger Lifestyle brand store in Monaco set to sell men's women's children's fashions in both ready to wear and Couture accessories Fashions shoes and bags from what I'm assuming is multiple Brands not just lagerfell gallery they also took the brand back to the catwalk in Spring 2001 with this collection that reintroduced the Brand's shirts and ties but in a significantly younger fashion with much less black to also suggest a joyfulness of the brand and sunglasses as an obvious nod to Carl this collection effectively redefined the Brand's vision for now a third time in a way that both differentiated it from his other brands and yet was still very commercial it of course was a hit and through the next few collections it was clear that the lagerfell Gallery Brand had a footing in the industry even showing a clear predecessor to the information now hoop bag in 2002 11 years before the Chanel bag debuted in Spring 2013. by 2002 they were once again a force in the industry and thanks to Renzo Rosso the man that owns the OTB group they were about to come into massive influence with a collaboration with diesel at the absolute height of their Fame and influence in the denim World which if you do want more information on I have a whole video about diesel here this collaboration was really huge at the time featured heavily in the Autumn winter 2002 collection which as it came into stores in just the first week alone had sold 90 of the clothes both have spoken positively on the collaboration and it was really the big introduction of the Lagerfeld Gallery Brand two audiences that weren't as fashion Savvy as those that knew of the brand already in a way that commodified car lagerfeld's designs to the masses really for the first time ever before this he was a very high fashion designer and now everyone could get their hands on a little piece of Carl in this interview he explains that he wanted a line to be more accessible to people not too expensive and as he is a popular designer something for people to get into that world without having to pay what they cannot afford here is really where we see the birth of the Brand's ethos that we know of it today no longer was it beautifully made clothes at the absolute Tip Top highest quality now this was a brand for everyone effectively this partnership transformed the brand again from high fashion to a diffusion line without actually being a diffusion line of anything carlaga felt the brand didn't exist anymore it had transformed into the Lagerfeld Gallery Brand they had just decided to position it this way from here the brand would go on to have many collaborations including one with Disneyland Paris in 2004 in which Carl transformed his iconic look onto Donald Duck which actually is the first time for the brand that he was characterized in this way something that would also go on to be a signature of the label but more notably in 2004 his biggest collaboration of his career the collaboration with h m this further commodified his work to the masses in what was at the time a really shocking move this was before h m had done any of their really famous collaborations he was literally the first successful designer to have a down Market collaboration in fact two decades before this in 1983 Holston and JC Penney had had a collaboration and it completely ruined his career butoff Goodman dropped him overnight and Horseman's company fell hard so for Carl to do these seemingly impossible a down Market collaboration from a high fashion designer was groundbreaking The Collection sold out within two days and secured lagerfell gallery's place in fashion as well as popularizing this whole down Market collaboration Trend that is still dominating this decade of High Street fashion so it's clear that now what he wanted to do for his namesake was something that was accessible to the masses he wanted this commodification of his work however h m didn't quite do it in the fashion that Carl wanted h m ran with a limited run ensuring only a few in major cities around the world would actually have access to his work he was really not happy about this and said it was both embarrassing and snobbery created by anti-snobbery which unfortunately wasn't really the end of Carl having a very different vision for his own brand than the people doing the business side in December of 2004 the same year the company along with the rights to the Carl Lagerfeld name was purchased by the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation for only 30 million US dollars but seemingly the relationship did not start off on the right foot in multiple interviews David Dyer the CEO of the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation stated that they wanted lagerfell gallery and the Carl Lagerfeld Brands to be a more up Market offering for the company quite exactly the opposite of what Carl wanted even in this same interview from before Carl says the people that ran the business wanted to compete with Fendi Chanel lvm age but he did not want that and unlike all of his other lifelong contracts he was actually only offered a five-year contract with the lagerfell Gallery Brand his first show after the acquisition was Autumn winter 2005. and as you can see it's now the fourth version of the company aesthetic definitely up Market lots of fur leather that shows visuals are much more on a high fashion side and so it seems that his CEO's wishes were adhered to and it wasn't long before things had to change in 2006 they restructured the entire company this time with the Carl Lagerfeld name as the higher end offering and Lagerfeld Gallery staying on as the diffusion line a fifth version for the company now the first collection of this new Luxury Line was actually shown along with the longer fell Gallery collection in the same show automated 2006 which showed in New York his first show in New York in fact and was meant as a more glamorous offering to the brand like a new energy it featured both men's and women's leather and fur but surprisingly no bags for what was meant as a luxury offering they began a confusing partnership with Macy's and for the Cosmetics line a partnership with Sephora which if you would like more information on the Cosmetics line next week to go along with a video that will be on this channel there will be a rise and potential four of Carl Lagerfeld Cosmetics so do make sure to subscribe over on underskin for that so despite the fact that this was going against what Carl actually wanted Tommy Hilfiger clearly had huge plans for the brands they'd evolved into having several lines now including Lagerfeld Gallery which was now supposedly their diffusion Boutique line call logaville their glamorous line they also created Lagerfeld for the Contemporary man and woman and the KL Lagerfeld label in Asia as well as countless licenses across the globe the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation featured them heavily through their 2005 financial report and it was clear from the amount of lines that they had with Tommy Hilfiger that they had big Calvin Klein or Marc jacobs-esque plans for the label along with this in 2007 they would also launch their first denim brand K car loggerfeld that specifically made jeans and fitted t-shirts so they were willing to put quite a bit of money into making this work but this now sixth iteration of the company was not anywhere near as successful as it seems that they planned here is really a plateau for the company that to be honest saw them not do anything interesting at all yes they released catwalk collections until Autumn winter 2010 that were well received by magazines but then Bogue was always going to Champion the Carl langafell collections it was a huge influence in fashion in general and they obviously would want to keep on his good side it's just no one else was talking much about them at all the clothes were just average and weren't really worth talking about but on top of that the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation was in real turmoil they were already struggling when they acquired Carl Lagerfeld in 2004 but things had gotten quite rough and eventually the Tommy Hilfiger Group which was owned by Apex Partners was sold to Philips Van Heusen the parent company to Calvin Klein the car lockerfield was actually not part of the deal and was left with very few Brands who are now failing Apex Partners I personally think this is when Carl Lagerfeld either stopped designing for the brand or significantly reduced his role in 2011 when this Source says that Apex Partners relaunched the company as it's now seventh iteration Tommy Hilfiger the man said that they would rely heavily on the design team anyway because Carl was so thinly spread and honestly from this point onwards the design at his name's sake really takes a turn creatively and is undoubtedly the start of the fall of the company creatively because clearly money was spent for this relaunch creatively we can see from their Instagram that this seventh iteration had begun to rely quite heavily on this image of Chibi Carl that characterized him in a very juvenile way which would be fine if it was a children's brand or even targeted towards a different Market but for a brand that had always tried to be Chic this was an odd mascot to choose their marketing told us that this was a brand for children or perhaps the child in all of us such as Disney products deliver but their actual retail offering was black strict and more hard Edge effectively there was a heavy disconnect between the actual garments which had fallen heavily in quality to Simply a high street level and the way that they were promoting slash marketing this company however I am assuming that at least the business financially was still Fair because honestly this Evolution seems like it would have come just following consumer demand they launched a web brand call in 2011 they were planning a different kind of luxury store in Paris in 2012 under the name Carl Lagerfeld Paris they launched Neta Porter in 2012 for a diffusion line they launched their own perfume separate to the other Carl agveld perfumes in 2014. they named Han Kim as a new head designer in 2014 they were also opening a fair few stores around the world including one on Regent Street in 2014 in 2015 they launched Carl Lagerfeld Paris in a joint venture with G3 remember that name for later a kids line in the same year and by 2016 they had amassed a real number of discount retail outlets of the world over including eight in America alone with more on the way so the brand was genuinely growing Carl was still the front man for the business even though Han Kim was the head designer as I mentioned before Carl still shot their ad campaign so it still had his seal of approval perhaps not in the way the fashion crowd would have expected but there was clearly a market for this car Lagerfeld merch line especially evidence when in 2016 G3 apparel the owners of Donna Karen and a few other mid-tier labels but a 19 stake in the business as a co-enterprise with Apex by 2017 sales at car Lagerfeld had doubled Revenue had reached 80 million in the U.S alone and the company planned to open a further eight stores in the U.S in what they clearly saw as a developing Market by 2018 both car Lagerfeld and Lagerfeld Consolidated into one car lockerfeld line yet again though with the same visuals as the seventh iteration the chibi iteration and debuted in a show in pitywomo though it's surprisingly hard to find footage of this even their own YouTube page doesn't have footage of them at pityomo from here they continue to open more discount outlets and really the whole brand has just continued as selling calls celebrity merchandise more than anything else they have their chippy logo they have the ship head cat imagery who if you don't know is Carl lagerfelt count they've got their mostly black and white color palette and his name which In fairness are all solid identifiers but it's just a very strange Evolution for a house that once started as his pure form of artistic expression in my opinion what the brand lacked was a strong curation someone to pull together all of the parts to One Vision instead of going through now seven iterations of what the company could be Carl was not interested in the marketing side and that would be fair if he had the proper people behind it to do the marketing and the business side so I'm honestly just surprised that Carl would allow his brand to be bastardized in this way even if the brand didn't have his full attention clearly for the marketing side there was enormous disconnect the closed versus the marketing is one but also it seemed like no one really looked at who he was and thought how they could best portray a car log of bell brand instead of thinking how they could just milk the already established name it seems like they never really did a value proposition for the company and it really feels like there was not one person that sat down and thought what is our product what are we known for what is the car Lagerfeld name known for and how do we deliver that and instead somebody just decided to slap Carl's name on a bunch of t-shirts sweatshirts and blanks and call it a day so instead of decent fashion offerings we got delivered garments that truly don't give the consumer any semblance of Carl whatsoever and honestly are just expensive printed blanks that have no relevance to the Carl lagerfell personal brand at all which is obviously very confusing to the customer honestly I don't understand why they ended up going in this sportswear loungewear route at all to be honest because when you think of sportswear you think of it as something that is cool it has that edge to it Carl Lagerfeld is not cool he was never cool he was Chic it's a totally different vibe that clearly this brand just wasn't getting I know that's fairly harsh and there are a lot of decent businessmen in the history especially Renzo Rosso I think was doing a phenomenal job back in those days but since then it just clearly didn't have the right leadership to succeed and so it fell into this utter shell of what it once was all up until Carl's death in 2019 which you would think would be the end of the brand really few people seem to consider what would even happen to the company after his passing simply because it had lost its artistic Merit a really long time ago and now with Carl dead no one expected it to be financially viable enough to continue but that's not where the video ends they just kept pushing out honestly really tacky collaborations like their continued effort with Puma that began with this campaign in 2018 that at least seemed to boost the bottom line even Carl in 2019 said it was doing pretty well in this podcast interview and if only financially it was I suppose doing better in 2022 G3 acquired the remaining stake in the Carl lagerfell business for 210 million US dollars a huge jump from the 30 million Tommy Hilfiger Corporation had paid and a world apart from the symbolic Frank that Carl had paid they even claimed to have a 2 billion US dollar sales plan for the company so you would think they would have very large plans for expansion to get back a return on investment but so far we haven't seen much in the way of effort for this only the launch of car lager Found Jeans in 2022 the main line though is still pushing this merchandise-esque design that the brand is now mocked for and honestly I have no idea what they can do to revive the brand now I can't see it becoming the new Calvin Klein that market is already so heavily saturated I can't see it turning into endless car merchandise like it is now simply because Through Time Of course his likeness will become less and less marketable and the only other option is having another designer come in to revive the brand to being a high fashion or maybe even a High Street brand again just with less of a focus on Carl himself which I know technically could happen I just really doubt it honestly I would imagine that the business will be kept open if only to sell the perfumes which do continue to this day to be profitable and perfumes unlike garments tend to have a lifelong customer base that could perhaps make the purchase of the company worth it for the parent company usually in a video I say I'm excited to see where our company will go but honestly I'm not I think perhaps the company should be put to rest or at least close the fashion side of the company because it simply cannot be the way that Carl wants to be continued after death thank you so much for watching this video make sure you like it and subscribe to see next week a first for this channel I will be doing a full life and death of the designer Carl Lagerfeld so far the script is long long so I've got a lot of scripting a lot of editing to do but I am really excited for it there is just so much that I didn't know before researching that I'm planning on including about him as a person and it is so fascinating so it's a must see if you'd like to subscribe for that check out my beauty Channel too for videos like this one but about Beauty Brands and check out my patreon if you'd like to support further

Channel: understitch,

Views: 64,273

Keywords: fashion marketing, fashion branding, fashion retailing, retail marketing, karl lagerfeld, karl lagerfeld namesake brand, karl lagerfeld brand, choupette lagerfeld, choupette cat, lagerfeld gallery, lagerfeld, KL Lagerfeld, coco chanel

Id: oQty1InlIik

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023