MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. The fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld steered the Chanel fashion house out of a crisis, Russia’s renowned fashion designer Vyacheslav Zaitsev has told TASS, paying homage to the iconic couturier, who died on Tuesday.
"He was a very talented and remarkable person," Zaitsev said, crediting Lagerfeld as the person who "steered Chanel out of a crisis".
The Russian couturier said he had met with Lagerfeld when he was in Germany to visit his photography exhibition. "Lagerfeld was not only a remarkable couturier, but also a photographer," he stressed.
The fashion designer was born into a German family in Hamburg. His mother was German and his father had Swedish roots. In 1952, he moved to France and graduated from a design school in Paris. He later became an assistant of famous fashion designer Pierre Balmain, with whom he worked until 1958. Then he started working at the Jean Patou fashion house.
Lagerfeld became an independent designer and worked simultaneously with four fashion houses. In 1983, he was invited to work as creative director of French fashion house Chanel. At that time the Chanel brand was not very popular, but Lagerfeld managed to quickly create several collections, which were a success and revived the old fashion house.
In the past decades, Lagerfeld became a passionate photographer and organized several successful exhibitions of his photos, and also released albums.