CFDA: Throughout his iconic career, Karl Lagerfeld has had many unforgettable moments at The Met. Never mind the Met Galas he’s attended during his inspiring career, there was the unprecedented Costume Institute spring exhibition dedicated to the house of Chanel in 2005, which Lagerfeld co-chaired, and the 2019 Chanel Métiers d’art show at the Temple of Dendur, which also became Lagerfeld’s last runway bow.

Enter Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty. Although the designer was quite vocal about never looking back and probably had some very specific thoughts on museum retrospectives, the exhibition, which is now open at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a stunning tribute to the designer’s prolific career at Chanel, Fendi, Chloe and his own namesake brand. In the process, the museum’s Costume Institute, led by Wendy Yu Curator in Charge Andrew Bolton with support from Associate Curator Mellissa Huber, also celebrates the beauty of fashion illustrations, which Lagerfeld mastered like few others, and which has, quite sadly, become a dying art. The beautiful Tadae Ando-designed exhibition design at the Tisch Galleries, and Loïc Prigent-produced videos, Baillee Walsh-conceptualized video installation, and Michel Gaubert soundscape underscore the beauty of the clothes on display which range from the 1950s to 2019.

Bolton said,  “The exhibition explores Lagerfeld’s complex working methodology, tracing the evolution of his fashions from the two dimensional to the three dimensional. The fluid lines of his sketches found expression in recurring themes in his fashions, uniting his designs for Chanel, Chloé, Fendi, Patou, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion.”

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View some of the vignettes in the exhibition, which will be on view until July 16th.

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