HIS CHOSEN PROFESSION and massive fame were the perfect mask for this impish, elusive artist. The designs were for his loyalists, the costumes for himself, to keep even his most intimate followers at bay, allowing this master of reinvention to evolve and disappear behind a creative curtain. Except from Choupette, the elegant Zhivago-like Birman cat, the pampered kitty who was the keeper of her master’s secrets, and his closest confidante. Karl’s gloved and jeweled hands were the instruments that magically expressed ideas, and the hands that lovingly held and stroked his beloved Choupette. Choupette famously arrived at chez Lagerfeld in 2011 as a visitor whose owner was away on two-week holiday. Lovingly seducing Mr. Lagerfeld, it was an immediate forever match. Never far from Karl’s side during his life, Choupette adapted to her new glam lifestyle with ease, flying private, with her own Goyard china, two maids, and a bodyguard. Like Karl, Choupette showed an impressive work ethic, sitting for photo shoots, developing her own accessories line, and keeping up with her Instagram following. If art imitates life and Choupette imitates Karl, you can almost hear her purring his words from the 2007 documentary Lagerfeld Confidential: “I don’t want to be real in other people’s lives. I want to be an apparition. I appear, then disappear. I don’t want to have reality in anyone’s life, because I don’t want it in mine.”
Karl’s gloved and jeweled hands were the instruments that magically expressed ideas, and the hands that lovingly held and stroked his beloved Choupette.”
