“He Was Constantly Present and Never Nostalgic”: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Andrew Bolton Speak at the Press Preview for “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”

“When I first met Karl, he told me that fashion didn’t belong in a museum.” So began Andrew Bolton’s remarks during the press preview for “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” the new show at the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art opening on Friday, May 5. “He never changed his opinion,” the head curator at the Costume Institute continued, “but he also never declined any of our requests to include his work in our many exhibitions.” Such contradictions are emblematic of the late designer, whose six-decade career at some of fashion’s most iconic houses is the subject of the exhibition. 

Bolton—who was joined by Max Hollein, the director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Roger Lynch, CEO at Condé Nast—was keen to point out that the show is not a retrospective. “We didn’t want to emphasize Karl the man, who has long been the subject of breathless mythologizing, largely the result of his own self-invention,” he explained. The curator and his team have divided Lagerfeld’s oeuvre by thematic conceptual expressions, which follow the lines of the exhibition designed by the architect Tadao Ando. “The serpentine line signified his historicist, romantic, and decorative impulses, and the straight line denoted his modernist, classicist, and minimalist tendencies,” Bolton added. 

Those lines intersect into further dichotomies, explored in particular galleries including feminine and masculine, romantic and military, historical and futuristic, artisanal and mechanical, and figurative and abstract, among others, before ending in the satirical line. That focuses on Lagerfeld himself, both through the creation of his persona and the way he referenced his own self through his work, culminating in a room where so-called Karl aphorisms, or Karl-isms, are presented via iPhone screens mixed in with the sound of the designer laughing. 

But even if the focus remains on his creative output rather than his work, the work would not be what it is if Lagerfeld weren’t who he was; and so Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the former first lady of France, delivered a touching tribute to the designer, with whom she often collaborated back in her modeling days. “Despite his charisma and his creative power, despite the energy he diffused and which animated him, despite the bewitching charm of his brilliant and sharp mind, despite his elegance and generosity, and despite his wicked sense of humor, which as you can see is so well represented in this exhibition, it is his kindness that I remember the most,” she shared. “He was a universally curious man. Everything interested him, except mediocrity. This made his creations timeless, and in the world of the ephemeral, [they] have become permanent.”

Met Gala 2023: See Every Celebrity Arrival, Read the Latest Stories, and Get Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Here

See All of the Celebrity Looks From the Met Gala 2023 Red Carpet: