Baroque and Bildung in the Creative Practice and Personal Style of Karl Lagerfeld: - Towards a Biographical Reinstatement of the Individual Designer

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 - Journal of Dress Body and Culture

JF - Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture

ER -