Living Lagerfeld

Photo by Francois Lacour, courtesy Chanel

Zaha Hadid's Contemporary Art Container for the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, here in its Tokyo iteration.

For more on Karl Lagerfeld and the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, click here

Constantin Brancusi Elie Nadelman James Turrell Jackson Pollock Nobuyoshi Araki Peter Behrens Erwan Bouroullec Daniel Buren

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I had beautiful Old Master paintings; I sold them all. But now I have a collection—it’s not on the wall—that I really love, of German posters from 1905 to 1915. They are the beginning of modern advertising, like huge Pop-art paintings, with unbelievable colors and modernity. They show the strangest products: AEG electrical equipment, coal, chocolate, sometimes fairs, or exhibitions. But they are divine, and they are impossible to find. 

Where do you find them?

I get all the catalogues, and I have people who buy for me. The other day, one of them said, “You cannot pay $50,000 for a poster.” I bought it for nearly $80,000, and a week after, at a sale in New York, a poster by the same artist—not as good—went for $120,000.

But you don’t hang them on the wall.

I want to put them in my place in New York. They don’t work in France; it’s not a French style at all.  I will do the New York apartment in the style of the [Deutscher] Werkbund, the architectural movement that had designers like Bruno Paul, Hermann Muthesius and Peter Behrens, who taught Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. They did modern things differently, in 1910, before the Bauhaus. I have a collection of furniture bought 20 years ago that is stunning, very colorful, in bright red, yellow, green and gold. Suddenly people are discovering Werkbund. Everyone knows Vienna Secession, but there is not much left. Werkbund is Germany for me, a Germany that I can identify with.

Why did you choose these things for New York?

My apartment is in Gramercy Park. I like it because it’s very German and very New York at the same time—the New York of E. B. White.

Your current enthusiasm is contemporary design, the work of people like Marc Newson and Zaha Hadid.

I have known them for years. I bought the first piece of furniture Zaha ever made, for Sawaya & Moroni—a sofa 5.5 meters long—20 years ago in Milan. If you ask me what genius is, I would say Zaha Hadid.

You started collecting Marc Newson at the Galerie Kreo, in Paris.

Most of the furniture in my Quai Voltaire apartment is from the well-made limited editions of the artists of Kreo: Marc, the Bouroullec brothers (Erwan and Ronan) and Martin Szekely. Everything Martin does is great. The last thing I got from him is a real piece of art, a mirror made of a silicium-carbide-based ceramic that is more expensive than gold. For Quai Voltaire, he made two three-meter-long tables—one for writing, one for sketching—in white Corian with metal stripes. They face each other in the over-20-meter-long space that I made from three rooms.

What else is in this vast room?

There is also a huge sofa by Amanda Levete and two of the most beautiful coffee tables I’ve seen in years, from Established & Sons, the British-based design company that Stella McCartney’s clever husband, Alasdhair Willis, heads. He does expensive limited editions like Kreo but also cheaper versions.  One version of Amanda’s sofa costs £80,000, the other £10,000, and they are both beautiful. And I have chairs by the English designer Tom Dixon, two sofas by the French designer Jean-Marie Massaud and my favorite statue, Serenity, by Elie Nadelman.

What is the appeal of all these pieces?

We live in a period of revivals—post Bauhaus, post ’70s, post ’60s, post whatever. What I like about the things I’ve bought from Kreo is that they have a voice only from now. The art that I think is genius is Conceptual art, Land art. My favorite artist is James Turrell, and that’s not for the living room.

So you enjoy contemporary art, too?

I love it, but not at home. At home I want only books.  Not even photography.

You’re not going to put any of your Versailles photos on your walls here in Paris?

There are no walls, just glass walls, glass windows, glass doors. It’s a glass box. You push one button and 50 doors—25 on each side—open at the same time and you have the library. On one side there are reading books, on the other side art books. It is like a flawless spaceship flying over Paris, because at the end you have these big windows with a view of the Seine, the boats and the Louvre.  It’s a very strange feeling, like life is short and the day is nothing because it is so enchanting. You get dressed and undressed and the day is over.