Karl Lagerfeld’s personal legacy isn’t matched by his brand

“They’re not that bad,” said the woman motioning towards her feet. Her husband looked down, inspected his luggage and shrugged. The wife pushed hers back and forth for a few seconds and then looked back up. “What time do we arrive?” she sighed.

They were in front of me. Waiting to board a little plane in a crappy airport for a short flight. I looked at their matching luggage, which they had obviously just purchased. The cases were plastic. A faint pink. And covered with cliched images of Paris. The Eiffel Tower jostled next to the Arc de Triomphe across from le Pont Neuf. ‘Love from Paris’ was scribbled between each image. It came with two red kisses. And the signature ‘Karl’.

Of course, there is only one Karl. Well, only one who can be identified just by those four letters. Karl Lagerfeld was – by some distance – the world’s most famous Karl. And the most successful fashion designer of the 20th century.

From early award-winning designs, his impact on Chloe, his revolution at the creative helm of Fendi, and then the single-handed resurrection of Chanel, the Kaiser was an extraordinary man who achieved extraordinary things. Somehow, he aligned the esoteric world of high aesthetics with the quotidian challenges of commercial demand. And made the join between these two things as seamless as anything on one of his couture dresses.

For those who knew his work, Lagerfeld somehow managed to exist at the cultural crossroads between past and future. He was a student of a brand’s history – never more clearly than when he voraciously absorbed Chanel’s back catalogue after taking over design duties in 1982. But he was merciless in his application of modernity, once describing the brand as “une belle au bois dormant qui ronflait”, a sleeping beauty that snored.

Lagerfeld somehow managed to exist at the cultural crossroads between past and future.

And unlike other designers, he was not awed into paralysis by the legacy of Madame Chanel. “Ask the women that worked for her,” he once explained. “They will tell you what kind of a bitch she was, hmm.” That feline purr at the end of his quote was as much a hallmark of Karl has his turn of phrase. As deadly in English as it was in French or German. My favourite ever Karlism was his brutal assassination of body art. “I think tattoos are horrible,” he once said. “It’s like living in a Pucci dress full-time.” Ouch.

I met him once. At a Fendi show that one of its executives had invited me to. I was bemused by the whole thing and when we approached to congratulate Karl on his latest success his delight at my utter incomprehension was, ever so briefly, palpable. The dark glasses turned my way and the tiniest of cracks appeared in the corner of his implacable mouth. I amused him. And he was gone. Led off to meet more obsequious mortals.

A question of taste

It was a nerve-trembling moment. Coming so close to the red-hot surface of the fashion sun. I sighed as I ran the numbers while waiting in the check-in line for my flight, and realised that happened almost 20 years before I arrived at this crap airport. I looked down at my fellow passengers’ two pieces of luggage and let out another sigh.

It wasn’t because they were a hundred quid each. Lagerfeld was always as comfortable with accessible price points as he was with couture madness. When he kicked off the famed co-branding collections between H&M and big-name designers in 2004, the launch was met with initial ridicule. He was famously accosted by an indignant Parisian in a restaurant who yelled, “Is it true?” across other diners.

“Of course it’s true,” Lagerfeld coolly replied as he sat down.

“But it’s cheap,” yelled the man.

“What a depressing word,” Lagerfeld responded. “It’s all about taste.”

And therein lies my problem with what’s been happening with the Lagerfeld legacy: taste. Like him or loathe him, no one can challenge the idea that the Kaiser was not only a master of taste but also someone who evolved that mastery across six tumultuous decades of fashion. In the five short years since his death, his brand name seems to have lost all connection with fashion and any resemblance of good taste. It has become a bastard of the brand that Lagerfeld would have wanted.

There are actually two brands doing the damage: Karl Lagerfeld, which offers cheap, discounted fashion clothing and accessories; and Karl Lagerfeld Paris, which offers even cheaper products, at even steeper discounts across a wider range of categories with even more disappointing outcomes. The creation of two lines does make marketing sense. But because the supposedly more premium Karl Lagerfeld line has collapsed into cliched discount territory, the approach fails to do anything other than echo the dismal state of the Lagerfeld offering.

It’s all there in glaring, repeated detail. Every failing that befalls all the badly run, soon-to-be-dead fashion brands. We have poor product. Made from second rate materials. Sold through inane channels. At badly judged price points. With no advertising support. All with extra-steep, commodifying discounts. With more discounts on top. And everything – and I mean everything – is emblazoned with crudely exaggerated brand codes, because no one can quite believe this really is the kind of stuff Lagerfeld would have ever sanctioned. His face. His silhouette. His initials. His cat. His glasses. His cat in his glasses. Across every available inch.

A short-termist approach

And all of this is quite surprising. Since 2022 both brands have been wholly owned and operated by G-III. And G-III are not your usual gang of private equity dummies looking to make a fast buck while they blunder about in fashion for a while. Run by Morris Goldfarb and with a market cap more than a billion dollars, G-III owns or licenses more than 30 mid-tier fashion brands and does a pretty good job with all of them.

Vilebrequin, which it has owned for seven years, has been masterfully managed, for example. Textbook stuff. And the company is the trusted licensee for some of the biggest brands on the planet. When you see stuff from Champion or Calvin Klein it’s really G-III doing the business. And they do it well.

So why is Karl Lagerfeld being run like this? There are a few possible explanations.

The first is that the holding company simply does not believe the company has the legs for the long term and is cashing in and out as quickly as it can with an eye on five years of profits rather than 50 years of brand growth. The Lagerfeld empire cost G-III around $250m to acquire in total. That’s a lot of money. But with a foot on the revenue pedal and plenty of interest from licensees, the short-term cash opportunity by 2030 could be as much as $3bn or $4bn in revenues. In its financial year to March 2024, the Karl Lagerfeld brand did $475m in global sales. That’s already a fantastic return.

To be clear, this first explanation is not criticism. While it’s true that many companies take a myopic approach because they are stupid and short-term at the expense of the business, that’s probably not what G-III are doing here. I suspect it might be taking a deliberately and absolutely correct short-term position on the brand. The company may well think that Lagerfeld and his attraction will quickly fade from prominence during the 2020s. If that is the case and his half-life is relatively short, making the most of any opportunities now at the expense of longer term profitability does make strategic sense.

The second explanation is that, shorn of its titular founder, the brand is struggling to maintain itself and falling foul of a lack of direction. When fashion founders expire, they leave a giant vacuum as most of the product design ethos, strategic direction, marketing muscle, editorial appeal and leadership style evaporate overnight. Many great brands from Chanel to Dior struggled in the immediate aftermath of their founder’s demise and took years to rebuild their fortunes. Ironically, Lagerfeld was brilliant at brand restoration because of his ability to blend brand heritage with contemporary fashion. His own brand now suffers from the problem he once so brilliant solved for others.

Lagerfeld’s work in his own name was a playful sideshow squeezed in beside his real job – working until his death on Chanel and Fendi.

But there is a bigger, third explanation for the curiously quick demise of Karl Lagerfeld’s legacy and brands. As much as the man was a genius, he was also only a servant of bigger fashion brands. Lagerfeld made his name at Chloe, Fendi and Chanel by being a cypher for each of them. He came in, understood the brand, moved it forward and became – in essence – its greatest employee. But these brands were someone else’s. He fixed Chanel. He revolutionised Fendi. And he deserves immense credit. But not the original credit.

Without these big, top-end fashion brands, the Lagerfeld name is curiously lower-tier and empty. Lagerfeld’s work in his own name was a playful sideshow squeezed in beside his real job – working until his death on Chanel and Fendi. These brands have moved on and what is left of him is not as much as we might imagine. The sideshow business is all that remains and it’s not enough to sustain a proper global brand for long.

That leaves the Lagerfeld legacy in a precarious state. In the short term its two brands will surely prove an immense money maker for G-III. In the longer term it would appear we have a Pierre Cardin for the 21st century. As memories fade and fashion moves on, a vague salience for the Lagerfeld name and fleeting associations with luxury will live on. But only on $40 earrings and makeup bags discounted by 70% for Mother’s Day.

It’s hard to know what the Kaiser would think of all of this. When asked about his nationality he would frequently tell people he was German but from “a Germany that does not exist anymore”. Perhaps he will remain one of the great designers but from an fashion era that now no longer exists.

Mark Ritson is an award-winning columnist and marketing professor, currently teaching on the Mini MBA. His 12-week, 100% online courses run every April and September and are designed to help busy marketers feel more confident and effective in their role. Learn more and book your place here.