A place to wish for longer days
Outside of fashion and photography, Karl is passionate about furniture, which he’s collected for decades. For his office on the Left Bank of Paris, he chose a mix of early and midcentury furniture along with modern pieces such as the desk at right, which once belonged to the famous French architect Michel Roux-Spitz, who worked in the ’20s.
“The building is from 1853, 1860, but the panelling of my office was done in the ’20s and that is why I thought the Roux Spitz desk was so perfect there,” Lagerfeld explains.
Not that he feels like he ever has enough time to spend there. “With every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it. But the drama is, time is not for sale. [In Paris], they are for the 35-hour work week. In France, I am for the 48-hour day because I could take a little more time,” he says. “I just want to work in perfect conditions, live the way I live and not to have my watch to look at too often.”
Back in time
“The chairs are by José Emilio Terry from the late ’30s,” Lagerfeld says. “And the rest of the furniture is American from the ’30s and ’40s. The collage with the butterflies [behind the desk] was made by the Comte Étienne de Beaumont in the ’20s.”?
The tools
Karl is a self-professed iPad sketching champion. “It’s not easy if you don’t know how to sketch. You have to find the technique. I discovered that it’s a little like engraving, like etching,” he says. But he’s still a loyalist to good old paper. He’s rarely without a set of sharpened colored pencils.
Karl swag
Karl’s office is peppered with his mini-mes in every shape and size, including a limited edition snow globe he created in partnership with Sephora, pictured above.
