Memories of Kaiser Karl

Karl Lagerfeld at one of his Chanel shows recreating a French bistro

Towards the end of dinner this evening, my friend looked at her phone and saw a news alert that designer Karl Lagerfeld had died at the age of 85.

It was a shock to hear the news -- I remember watching him on Fashion Television in the late 80s and early 90s talking a mile a minute about how he made fashion relevant or how women wanted strong-looking clothes in the office or how they wanted to be feminine looking or how women wanted clothes to make them feel comfortable.

Back in the early 1990s with supermodels wearing Chanel

These sound bites rattled off his tongue and fashion correspondents lapped it up because he was considered the genius to reinvented Chanel from 1983 into the power fashion house it is today, while keeping Fendi still relevant despite the trend of moving away from wearing fur.

When I first started watching him on TV he already had greying hair -- and yet he kept working 30 years later, averaging a staggering 14 collections a year. How do you come up with so many ideas for so many collections?

That didn't seem to be a problem for him when it came to Chanel, as he continually riffed off the boucle fabric, the interlinking "Cs" and the multiple strands of pearls. He made the iconic boxy jackets into biker ones, or harked back to Coco Chanel's days or paired them with tulle skirts or leather minis.

I was just in awe of the myriad of combinations he would think of and yet each piece would have some kind of Chanel DNA in them.

Lagerfeld recreated a beach for his spring/summer collection

In the last several years he came up with more grandiose ideas of how to present his collections. One time he recreated a bistro in Paris, a supermarket even with Chanel-branded food products on the shelves, or what about trucking in tons of sand to recreate a beach...

Meanwhile Fendi is a brand I am not so familiar with, but he has had a long association with it since 1965! He would experiment with fur, shaving it, dyeing them, creating new textures and colours with them. Customers lapped it up, along with the baguette bag, which has made a comeback in different sizes.

Fashion never really changes, but just enough that you're lusting for the latest one...

He even made a Chanel-themed supermarket for a catwalk

Lagerfeld introduced me to the world of fashion -- it seemed glamorous and beautiful to a young person -- and how the clothes, particularly haute couture were made. He gave me a new appreciation for this art form and that it was important to keep couture alive.

While the German had a quirky personality, he anchored fashion for decades and has left behind a giant hole of creativity. Lagerfeld will be missed.

Chanel Up Close

A beautifully encrusted Chanel haute couture dress

Tonight after dinner, my friend and I happened to be near PMQ or Police Married Quarters on Aberdeen Street above Hollywood Road, when I remembered there was a Coco Chanel exhibition there. Lucky we caught it because it closes tomorrow!

When we arrived there wasn't much of a line, though we had to scan a QR code and tediously register online in order to get in free of charge. The first part of the show featured local artists' interpretation of the legendary Paris-based designer.

This white wedding top is completely beaded

While it's nice to have these kinds of overseas shows invite local artists to participate, the pieces themselves seemed forced... perhaps because the local artists have no affiliation with a brand that makes zillions of dollars from fashion slaves.

Then we walked inside a room where you could smell the different essential oils that go into making Chanel No. 5 perfume and when we walked out we wondered if that was it. But thankfully it wasn't, though it meant walking up several flights of stairs to get to an exhibition showing a few select haute couture pieces up close.

They were presented behind several sheets of muslin (white fabric used to make the first draft in tailoring) and a rectangular hole cut through them for viewers to "peek" inside the atelier.

Some of them had very intricate beading like the top underneath a white wedding jacket, or a dark navy dress encrusted with sparkles. There was also a selection of little black dresses that revealed the outer shells to show fashion fans how intricate the sewing was, but also indicate how many man hours went into each outfit, which was in the hundreds.

890 hours of work went into this black dress

It's almost as if Karl Lagerfeld wants to challenge the haute couture staff into doing the most tedious work to deadline, but in reality fashion is a business and these pieces are a way to lure clients to order these one-of-a-kind dresses.

One that I liked required 890 hours of work into it. Thin organza black strips were carefully sewn either horizontally or vertically -- definitely a daunting task not everyone would have the patience for.

There were also some high jewellery featuring lots of small diamonds to create glittering pieces that would turn heads, including one of a carved lion signifying the leo constellation that stands on top of a shooting star.

At the end there is a very short film that Lagerfeld made in 2015 featuring himself and Geraldine Chaplin as Gabrielle Chanel. She wakes up in her Paris salon and goes upstairs to find Lagerfeld there and the two have a feisty debate about how things have changed since she died, but she still doesn't approve of what he has done with the label.

Chanel's favourite leo on a shooting star

It's a funny finish, but then we are handed a cloth bag and a poster -- of Lily Rose Depp -- Johnny Depp's daughter with a tiara on her head... what does that mean? Hardly a souvenir we want to keep!

Mademoiselle Prive Hong Kong

Until February 10, 2018

PMQ

35 Aberdeen Street

Hong Kong