The renown of Chanel was such that in 1969 Katharine Hepburn played the designer in a Broadway musical, Coco, costumed by Cecil Beaton. In 1983, when Karl Lagerfeld was hired to direct the house, fashion was obsessed with supermodels and starting to flirt with Hollywood. By the time of his death, in 2019, he was world famous. As Brown writes, in a time of “celebrity-led culture, Lagerfeld himself became an icon.”
“A sleeping beauty,” is how the German designer described Chanel when he first arrived. In awakening the brand he normalized what Vogue at the time called a “renegade mixing of high and low.” Brown describes the juxtaposition in the magazine of Chanel clothes by different photographers allowing for the coexistence of “historical elegance and youthful rebellion,” which also defined Lagerfeld’s approach.
More elaborate runway shows and celebrity-filled front rows coincided with the expansion of media outlets. American Vogue was founded in 1892. The magazine started to go global in 1916 when a British version was launched, followed by a French one in 1920. From 1999 to 2020, 15 editions of Vogue were launched, extending the reach of the magazine and of Chanel.
Reflected in the glossy pages were not only ever changing trends, but an evolving roster of contributors (Annie Leibovitz joined in 1998) whose work reflected changes in visual culture. These artists had access to technology Steichen could never have imagined. The portrait of Karl Lagerfeld in Vogue’s famous 2003 “Alice in Wonderland” portfolio, for example, was facilitated, Brown notes, by Photoshop. The designer was photographed alone at 5AM. (Stylist Grace Coddington, who had a cat named Coco, stayed up all night in anticipation.) A shot of Natalia Vodianova (Alice) holding a pig was added.
