This year’s Met Gala theme is ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’, which sparked backlash due to the late fashion designer’s views on women’s bodies and the #MeToo movement.
Writer Saeed Jones wrote on Twitter, “People can show up on the red carpet and recite their favourite Karl Lagerfeld quotes about fat people, sexual assault, immigrants and the Holocaust. So many to choose from. Bravo, Anna Wintour.”
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Actor Jameela Jamil with almost four million followers on Instagram, was also against this year’s Met Gala theme. She posted a photo of Lagerfeld with a “Nope” caption.
She said on Instagram: “This man… was indeed, supremely talented, but used his platform in such a distinctly hateful way, mostly towards women, so repeatedly and up until the last years of his life, showing no remorse, offering no atonement, no apology, no help to groups he attacked … there was no explanation for his cruel outbursts.”
On today’s The Briefing episode, we find out why he was controversial and dive into the rising issue of cancel culture in major fashion houses with the brand consultant and editor Alison Izzo.
Lagerfeld is a well-known fashion designer. He first made his name thanks to the French International Wool Secretariat in 1954, now the International Woolmark Prize, celebrating outstanding fashion talents from the globe.
Lagerfeld was known for his work with Fendi, Chanel and his own eponymous brand.
Izzo said that Lagerfeld modernised and turned fashion into “visual language”, and he would pass it down into future collections.
And that’s where you see the huge wealth of houses, fashion houses like Chanel. So he’s incredibly influential for that reason, but is also controversial for a lot of his personal opinions,”
Izzo said.
It brings up the question of whether we should judge the art by the artist. Is the biography of the person who created the art that we are celebrating important? And sometimes yes, sometimes no,”
she added.
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