Controversies
In 1993, he caused US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour to walk out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show when he employed strippers and adult film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.
There was much controversy from Lagerfeld's use of a verse from the Qur'an in his spring 1994 couture collection for Chanel, despite apologies from the designer and the fashion house. The controversy erupted after the 1994 couture show in Paris, when the Indonesian Muslim Scholars Council in Jakarta called for a boycott of Chanel and threatened to file formal protests with the government of Mr. Lagerfeld's homeland, Germany. The designer apologized, explaining that he had taken the design from a book about the Taj Mahal, thinking the words came from a love poem.
Lagerfeld was the target of a pieing by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 2001 at a fashion premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City. The tofu pies hurled by animal rights activists in protest of his use of fur within his collections, however went astray and hit Calvin Klein. A PETA spokesperson described the hit on Klein as "friendly fire", calling Klein, who doesn't use fur, "a great friend to the animals", while he called Lagerfeld a "designer dinosaur" who continues to use fur in his collections.
Lagerfeld defends the fur industry and the use of fur in fashion, although he himself doesn't wear fur and hardly eats meat. In a BBC interview in 2009 he claimed that hunters "make a living having learnt nothing else than hunting, killing those beasts who would kill us if they could", and maintained that "in a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish." Spokespersons for PETA called Lagerfeld "a fashion dinosaur who is as out of step as his furs are out of style", and "particularly delusional with his kill-or-be-killed mentality. When was the last time a person's life was threatened by a mink or rabbit?"
In 2010, PETA quotes Lagerfeld, who used fake fur in his 2010 Chanel collection, on their website as saying: "It's the triumph of fake fur … because fake fur changed so much and became so great now that you can hardly see a difference."
Lagerfeld in 2009 joined critics of supermodel Heidi Klum. After German designer Wolfgang Joop called Klum, who had posed naked on the cover of the German edition of GQ magazine, "no runway model. She is simply too heavy and has too big a bust", Lagerfeld followed suit by saying that neither he nor Claudia Schiffer knew Klum as she has never worked in Paris and is insignificant in the world of high fashion, being "more bling bling and glamorous than current fashion."
Lagerfeld created an international furore on 9 February 2012, when he called the singer Adele "A little too fat". This caused instant fury throughout the United Kingdom and Lagerfeld responded with a statement of apology. Adele hit back by saying she is like the majority of women, and she is very proud of that fact. Lagerfeld later caused controversy on 31 July 2012 when he criticized Pippa Middleton, sister of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, for her looks. The comment was made when Lagerfeld was praising Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge for her "romantic beauty" before adding "I don't like the sister's face. She should only show her back".
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