TY - JOUR
T1 - Baroque and Bildung in the Creative Practice and Personal Style of Karl Lagerfeld
T2 - - Towards a Biographical Reinstatement of the Individual Designer
AU - Langkjær, Michael Alexander
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - German-born, Paris-based Karl Lagerfeld was one of fashion's most remarkable figures. Lagerfeld's great versatility provides us with a unique opportunity, within fashion studies, for inter-disciplinary researches. For the elucidation of essential qualities of Lagerfeld's individual creative practice and personal style, we consider the value of a biographical approach and "intellectual" and "existential" varieties of biography. We then analyze Lagerfeld's predilection for the eighteenth century, as manifested in his statements, material surroundings, fashion design, photography, and personal style, for evidence of what had primarily influenced him, intellectually, conceptually, and esthetically. Particularly pertinent are the dual strands of Lagerfeld's mind-set, which we have termed "Baroque" and "Bildung". Thus, we look into the significance for Lagerfeld of Baroque allegory and folds, and Rococo Zweiseitigkeit (two-sidedness); and of Bildung self-formation with the acquisition of new cultural knowledge as a wellspring of Lagerfeld's fashion historicism and future-orientedness. Where it concerns Lagerfeld's historicism, we note some correlations between "Baroque" and "Bildung". We conclude that an intellectual/existential interplay of his "Baroque" and "Bildung" strands had translated into an esthetic holism marked by allegorization and historicism on the part of Lagerfeld.
AB - German-born, Paris-based Karl Lagerfeld was one of fashion's most remarkable figures. Lagerfeld's great versatility provides us with a unique opportunity, within fashion studies, for inter-disciplinary researches. For the elucidation of essential qualities of Lagerfeld's individual creative practice and personal style, we consider the value of a biographical approach and "intellectual" and "existential" varieties of biography. We then analyze Lagerfeld's predilection for the eighteenth century, as manifested in his statements, material surroundings, fashion design, photography, and personal style, for evidence of what had primarily influenced him, intellectually, conceptually, and esthetically. Particularly pertinent are the dual strands of Lagerfeld's mind-set, which we have termed "Baroque" and "Bildung". Thus, we look into the significance for Lagerfeld of Baroque allegory and folds, and Rococo Zweiseitigkeit (two-sidedness); and of Bildung self-formation with the acquisition of new cultural knowledge as a wellspring of Lagerfeld's fashion historicism and future-orientedness. Where it concerns Lagerfeld's historicism, we note some correlations between "Baroque" and "Bildung". We conclude that an intellectual/existential interplay of his "Baroque" and "Bildung" strands had translated into an esthetic holism marked by allegorization and historicism on the part of Lagerfeld.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Karl Lagerfeld 1933-2019
KW - Baroque
KW - Rococo
KW - Bildung
KW - Biography
KW - Allegory
KW - Historicism
KW - Fashion historicism
KW - Fashion and Art
KW - Emblematics
KW - Cultural history
KW - Fashion design
KW - Fashion theory
KW - Fashion history
KW - Biographical methods
KW - 18th century
KW - Theories of Bildung
KW - Bildungsroman
KW - Historicism, historicity, philosophy of history
KW - The Fold
KW - Adolph von Menzel
KW - Baroque art and fashion
KW - Rococo art, interior design and fashion
KW - Biography and fashion designers
KW - Goût Rothschild
KW - Post-modernism
KW - Fashion culture
KW - Fashion photography
U2 - 10.1080/1362704x.2019.1646558
DO - 10.1080/1362704x.2019.1646558
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1362-704X
JO - Fashion theory: the journal of dress, body and culture
JF - Fashion theory: the journal of dress, body and culture
ER -