Karl Lagerfeld



Karl Lagerfeld (born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt on September 10, 1933) is a German fashion designer, and the host of Liberty City's K109 The Studio. He has collaborated with a variety of different fashion labels, most notably Chanel but also Chloé and Fendi. Furthermore, he owns several labels, which he launched in the early 1980s, in various industries including perfume and clothing. He has also played a role in equipping leading artists.

Biography
Karl-Otto Lagerfeld was born 10 September 1933 in Hamburg, Germany, although Lagerfeld has long asserted that he was born in 1938. The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag has quoted his former teacher and classmates as confirming the earlier date. His older sister, Martha Christiane (a.k.a. Christel), was born first in 1931. Lagerfeld also has an older half-sister, Thea, from his father's first marriage. His original name was Lagerfeldt (with a "t"), but he later changed it to Lagerfeld as "it sounds more commercial."

Though Lagerfeld has stated that his father was Swedish, journalist Alicia Drake in "The Beautiful Fall" (Little, Brown, 2006) established that Karl's father, Otto Lagerfeld, who made his fortune introducing condensed milk to Germany, was indeed German. According to Drake, Lagerfeld's mother, Elisabeth Bahlmann, was a lingerie saleswoman in Berlin when she met her husband and married him in 1930.