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Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum

From May 5 through July 16, 2023, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Image: KarL Lagerfeld. Photo by Stefan Strumbel (cropped). License Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Original image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lagerfeld_(Strumbel)_1.jpg

With approximately 150 works, the exhibition explores the designer’s stylistic language through the aesthetic themes that recurred across his 65-year career. Focusing on the designer’s stylistic vocabulary as it was expressed in through lines—aesthetic themes that appear time and again—in his fashions from the 1950s to his final collection in 2019, the show will spotlight the Germanborn designer’s unique working methodology. Most of the approximately 150 pieces on display will be accompanied by Lagerfeld’s sketches, which underscore his complex creative process and the collaborative relationships with his premières.

Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met, commented: “Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most captivating, prolific, and recognizable forces in fashion and culture, known as much for his extraordinary designs and tireless creative output as for his legendary persona. This immersive exhibition will unpack his singular artistic practice, inviting the public to experience an essential part of Lagerfeld’s boundless imagination and passion for innovation.”

Drawing on the theory of art and aesthetics expressed by William Hogarth as the “line of beauty,” the exhibition is anchored by two lines: the “straight line” and the “serpentine line,” which delineate, respectively, Lagerfeld’s modernist and historicist tendencies. These lines explore different stylistic representations of themes that the designer returned to again and again, spreading in a rhizome-like configuration with intersecting moments—or “explosions”—that exemplify points of convergence. The exhibition will conclude with the “satirical line,” a section that focuses on Lagerfeld’s ironic, playful, and whimsical predilections expressed through visual puns that reflect the designer’s razorsharp wit.

Approximately 150 garments will be on view, spanning the designer’s career as the creative director of Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, as well as his time at Balmain and Patou.

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