The popular fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (85) has passed away. He wasn’t doing well for a long time. He was one of the most important fashion designers for a long time. You may not have known these six things about the fashion king.

Uh … who? Karl Lagerfeld worked as a designer for his own fashion brand, but also for major brands such as Valentino and Fendi. He is best known for his work for Chanel, for which he worked for more than 30 years. The designer hadn’t been doing so well for a long time. He was tired and missed two major Chanel fashion shows last month.

1. Karl had his first success at the age of seventeen

At a design competition, he designed the winning jacket and that earned him a nice job. He became the assistant of the great French fashion designer Pierre Balmain.

2. The designer provided spectacular shows for every fashion season

Karl Lagerfeld knew that clothing is not the only thing that matters during a fashion show. He therefore ran his models on very special catwalks. He transformed the Grand Palais (the catwalk in Paris) into a tropical beach with a coastline. Once he also converted it into a very large supermarket. He also wanted to make a statement about how much we buy.

3. He designed an exclusive (and affordable) collection for H&M

That was back in 2004. He was the first major designer to enter into such a collaboration. H&M was very happy with it but Karl himself was less satisfied with it. He was disappointed that so little clothing was produced, so many people could not buy anything. His designs were also made in larger sizes, but according to Karl they were only meant for narrow and slender people.

4. Pepsi was Karl’s signature drink 

He loved it. Some even claimed that the designer had a butler follow him at parties with a silver tray full of Pepsi. Simply because he enjoyed drinking it a lot. Would he secretly have dreamed of designing a bottle for Pepsi? He did that for Coca-Cola.

5. He never showed himself without sunglasses

Really never! Just type it in your search bar: in the photo he has his black sunglasses on. “Black sunglasses are very flattering,” he once said. He said he felt better with them.

Karl loved his cat

His Siamese white cat Choupette (with more than 100,000 followers on Insta) was his favourite animal. He wrote a book about it and even once said that he wanted to marry Choupette.

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