"Many Photos" - Karl Lagerfeld dies aged 85 in France

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has died in Paris, aged 85, Chanel sources have confirmed. 

The artistic director for Chanel had looked increasingly frail in recent seasons, and had reportedly suffered ill health in recent weeks.

For the first time in decades Lagerfeld did not come out to take a bow at the Chanel's couture show in Paris in January, something the company attributed to him being tired.  

Rest in peace: Karl Lagerfeld has died aged 85 in France, according to Paris Match magazine

Lagerfeld - dubbed 'Kaiser Karl' and 'Fashion Meister' - enjoyed the stature of a god among mortals in the world of fashion, where he stayed on top for well over half of a century and up to his death.

The Hamburg-born son of a German mother and Swedish father, left his home country for France and the capital of fashion - Paris - in his early 20s and is best known for his association with Chanel, dating back to 1983. 

But Lagerfeld, who simultaneously churned out collections for LVMH's Fendi and his eponymous label - an unheard of feat in fashion - was almost a brand in his own right.

Sporting dark suits, white, pony-tailed hair and tinted sunglasses in his later years that made him instantly recognisable, an irreverent wit was also part of a carefully crafted persona.

'I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that,' runs one legendary quote attributed to him, and often recycled to convey the person he liked to play. 'It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long.'

His artistic instincts, business acumen and commensurate ego combined to commercially triumphant effect in the rarefied world of high fashion, where he was revered and feared in similar proportions by competitors and top-models. 

The designer mingled with the young and trendy until the last, pairing up with 17-year-old catwalk darling Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford, for a collaboration released by his Karl Lagerfeld brand in 2018.

His cat Choupette moved with the times too: the white-haired Birman, described by her social network minders as 'daughter of Karl Otto Lagerfeld', has more than 100,000 Instagram photo-network followers and a publishing deal.

Yet Lagerfeld also stood out as a craftsman. An accomplished photographer, he drew his own designs by hand, an increasingly rare phenomenon in fashion. Behind the facade, he was known for his erudition and penchant for literature, and he devoured the world's leading newspapers daily.  

Though he long enjoyed befuddling interviewers by citing different years of birth, the one deemed the most reliable is Sept. 10, 1933. 

He spent early childhood tucked away from war in the 1,200-acre family estate in Bavaria and had a French tutor.

The big breakthrough came shortly after a move to Paris when, in 1954, he drew a wool coat that won a prize and landed him an apprenticeship with designer Pierre Balmain.

Yves Saint Laurent, who went on to found his namesake label, won the dress prize. The two became fierce competitors and even rivals in love at one point, chasing the affections of late Parisian society figure Jacques de Bascher.

Saint Laurent, who died in 2008, became the enfant cheri of high society and Lagerfeld leader of a wild-child younger group.

He first found real success in the mid-1960s with Chloe, the fashion label now owned by Switzerland's Richemont and to which he was connected off and on until 1997.

But it was Chanel that propelled him to rock-star status, as he sexed up the brand and lifted its profile with grandiose runway shows. In the past year these have featured a full-scale beach and an enormous replica ship. 

Lagerfeld was as harsh with his fashion models as he was searingly critical of anyone he considered 'not trendy'.

He fired his closest female friend, former Chanel model Ines de la Fressange, in 1999 after she agreed to pose as Marianne, France's national symbol, without asking him first.

Occasionally his sharp tongue has stirred controversies, though he also had a flair for a good soundbite.

'I'm a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm,' he said in 1984, asked about what he felt after a fashion show. 

In 2012, he said about singer Adele: 'She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice'.

After the 2011 Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, he said Kate has a 'nice silhouette', but that sister Pippa Middleton 'struggles'.

'I don't like the sister's face. She should only show her back.'

When offering his thoughts on Russia he said: 'If I was a woman in Russia I would be a lesbian, as the men are very ugly.'

Lagerfeld, who moonlighted as a cartoonist in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, took a dig at Chancellor Angela Merkel's pro-refugee stance in a 2017 sketch that blamed her for helping a far-right party gain parliamentary seats. 

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