The Greatest Showman

Avril Mair remembers Karl Lagerfeld’s most spectacular presentations, from the streets of Havana to the Trevi Fountain.

Cultural commentator, showman, provocateur: Karl Lagerfeld was the ultimate marketing genius. Restless and resolutely modern, he knew how to keep multi-billion-pound heritage houses in a state of constant renewal, fuelling feverish desire for decade after decade. With his unbounded imagination and singular intelligence, Lagerfeld could capture the zeitgeist like no other, even as an octogenarian. Every season he would dream up another show concept more extraordinary than the last—‘They come to me in the night,’ he claimed—and each time, his dedicated team at Chanel and Fendi would turn these fantasies into spectacular breathtaking reality. There literally was nothing like it.