Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses

Design writer Mauriès (The World According to Yves Saint Laurent) teams up with Kalt (The Most Beautiful Rooms in the World), the former editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest France, for this eye-popping survey of the homes of German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died at age 85 in 2019. “Lagerfeld ‘amused’ himself... by creating an interior and then casting it aside,” the authors write, highlighting the restless evolution of his taste. The earliest residence, a Paris apartment in an 18th-century mansion that Lagerfeld moved into in 1963, hybridized old and new, with an art deco fire screen, table, and sofa that stood alongside contemporary steel stools made by designer Jean Garçon. By contrast, a luxury Monaco apartment Lagerfeld acquired in 1981 was decked out in furniture from the Memphis Group, an international collective whose highly stylized creations emphasized “humour in decoration” (the sitting room featured an elevated lounge area resembling a boxing ring, bordered with neon-colored cords). Elsewhere, the authors highlight the icy interiors of a loft on Paris’s Quai Voltaire designed to look like “an Odyssey 3000 spaceship” and the Rococo-meets-neoclassical elements of Lagerfeld’s late-1970s residence in Paris’s Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo. Mauriès and Kalt offer informative background on the styles and movements Lagerfeld channeled in each locale, and the brief commentary allows the sumptuous interiors to speak for themselves. It’s a revealing look at the taste of a legendary designer. (Jan.)