Lagerfeld's New Black: Twilight (NYT)

[DosViolines]

It's a couple of days old, but it wasn't posted...I think

source: nytimes.com

May 18, 2006
Front Row
Lagerfeld's New Black: Twilight

Donna Alberico for The New York Times
Karl Lagerfeld as a designer.

By ERIC WILSON

TWILIGHT may qualify as the most overrated time of day. It has moved artists, writers and poets to wax endlessly upon the ephemerality of man and hope and youth and beauty. Yet twilight, despite its brevity, is eternal, which seems to make it a credible subject for Karl Lagerfeld, who has set aside his multiple design duties for a moment to create a photo essay he calls "Farewell to Daylight."

Karl Lagerfeld, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery
A Lagerfeld photograph.

Mr. Lagerfeld, wearing a dusky green ruffled tuxedo shirt, was on the top floor of the Mercer Hotel on Tuesday afternoon assessing a model in a casual white jumpsuit from his Chanel cruise collection. It was belted with a chain of dangling enamel locomotive charms that made a choo-choo train around her waist. It was not enough. An assistant substituted a white scarf. "Too strong," Mr. Lagerfeld said in French. The scarf was replaced by a chain dripping with white and black pearls. Much better.


In between fittings for his fashion show, held yesterday at Grand Central Terminal, Mr. Lagerfeld talked about his twilight-theme photography exhibition, opening tonight at the Pace/MacGill Gallery on East 57th Street. "It is my favorite time of day because it is such a short-lived thing," he said. "Some of the places I photographed are ones that everyone has seen but most people would not recognize in this light."


Mr. Lagerfeld took the photos in Paris, where he works, of monuments and streets in near darkness. The Samaritaine department store appears to be situated before a great lawn in one photograph, the inky Seine having dissolved into blackness.


"It is like the view of an insider that is not quite inside," he said. "It is like me, an insider in a way, but I am not French."

 

[The Leviathan]

who cares. that turkey neck needs to hang up his camera already.