Humanising a fashion icon who died as a self-parody
The image of Karl Lagerfeld that is indelibly burned in the brain is the designer in his later years: a vampire courtesan with a forbiddingly blank expression, white hair pulled back in a ponytail, detachable white collars, and dark shades preventing him from turning to dust in daylight. Comedian Margaret Cho once said, such was Lagerfeld’s combination of haughtiness and inventiveness, that were he ever sent to prison he would fashion a fan out of spoons.
So it’s slightly strange to see him played by the ever winsome Daniel Bruhl – once described to me by a German film industry bigwig as “the eternal son and nephew” – in Disney’s new biopic drama, Becoming Karl Lagerfeld.
The series begins with the already middle-aged Lagerfeld, long after the interesting childhood that forged him (his mother, who Lagerfeld claimed was descended from royalty, once said to him: “Hamburg is indeed the gateway to the world, but only the gateway”). He is already 15 years in Paris, hungry for stardom.
He meets a young French dandy, Jacques de Bascher, part Bosie, part Svengali, who becomes Lagerfeld’s companion while fanning the flames of his ambition.
In the face of self doubt and a well-hidden imposter syndrome, Lagerfeld manages to electrify runways and shoehorns his name in the title of the ready-to-wear label at Chloe. But he dreams of bigger things. He wants the fame of his old rival, Yves Saint Laurent. He wants the adulation of the press. He wants, above all, to design haute couture.
The real gateway to this croaks down the phone at him in a voice like tarnished silver. It is Marlene Dietrich, the great legend of German cinema. She has heard of his reputation as an ideas man and invites him to tea. She is notoriously publicity shy – she spurns the press as she once spurned the Nazis – but even before they meet, Lagerfeld is dropping her name to the editor of French Vogue.
A five-page spread is promised – the greatest German designer creating costumes for an icon of German cinema – and behind his sunglasses, Lagerfeld’s beady eyes gleam with calculation.
Dietrich (Sunnyi Melles, who was also in the viciously perceptive Palme d’Or winner, Triangle of Sadness) receives him in the war-widow gloom of her apartment. Caked with white makeup and drawing on a cigarette, she is her own vampire in repose and she watches him sketch dervishly in front of her.
The spark of interest has been kindled but she wants something more modest than the “stage clothes” Lagerfeld imagines. She wants, more importantly, “not to look like an old woman dressed up as Marlene Dietrich”. Lagerfeld assures her that she can wear her “hardship with dignity” and tells her of the masks that he too must present to the world.
Meanwhile, Jacques is moonlighting with Saint Laurent – the man, not the label – at debaucherous soirees.
In a moment that is only just the witty side of vulgar, the young socialite’s next-morning response to the question as to what his overnight rates are, is a brief resonant fart. Saint Laurent tells him of Lagerfeld’s essential loneliness and his need for reinvention.
The tryst goads its way into daylight (or at least the strobe lights of Paris nightclubs) and lays bare the jealousy and ambition that drive Lagerfeld toward the distant peaks of Chanel and world renown.
Beneath its ruffles and lace, Becoming Karl Lagerfeld is a psychologically acute series that, despite the miscasting of the elfin Bruhl, works on many levels. It balances its myth-making – “I’m down to earth,” Lagerfeld once said, “just not this earth” – with plausible snapshots of vulnerability, such as the designer, who struggled almost his entire life with his weight, tearfully stuffing his face with birthday cake after again being humiliated by Saint Laurent.
This is a serialised portrait of pain, longing and decadence that humanises the man behind the scowl.