Inside the many, many glamorous homes owned by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld

Featuring rarely-seen images of 13 of Lagerfeld’s properties, a new photobook provides insight into the famed fashion designer’s sense of interior design style.

Fashion writer Patrick Mauriès first met Karl Lagerfeld in 1981, after he quoted the fashion designer in a short book he had written about contemporary fashion and culture. Although Lagerfeld had by that time already designed for the luxury houses Chloé and Fendi, he was not the iconic figure he would become later in life, particularly after he joined Chanel as creative director in 1983 — a role he held until his death in 2019. As his star rose, he and Mauriès remained good friends, with the writer enjoying rare glimpses into parts of Lagerfeld’s private life and way of living at his many lavish properties over the years. “Everything was absolute luxury. Even when you went for a small lunch with him, the napkins were embroidered,” said Mauriès, recalling how Lagerfeld was one of the first people he knew to use Diptyque candles at home — but never just one of them, of course. “There would be 20 candles in the staircase leading to the dining room, and so it was a very high luxury feeling.” The full extent of this tirelessly-curated “high luxury” is revealed in the new book “Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses,” with an introduction by Mauriès and accompanying texts about each home by Marie Kalt, a former editor of “Architectural Digest France.” Featuring rarely-seen images of 13 of Lagerfeld’s properties in Europe — spanning Paris, Monte Carlo, Rome, Hamburg and more — the book reveals a lesser-known side to the designer, and provides insight into his sense of style when it came to interior design. Each property was decorated in a different, distinctive way. Lagerfeld’s early Parisian home on the Rue de l’Université — an apartment on the second floor of an 18th-century mansion he shared with his mother in the 1960s and ‘70s — was filled with Art Deco furniture and homeware, from the sofas to the cocktail glasses. In 1977, Lagerfeld moved into the 18th-century Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo in Paris, with his residence — or residences, rather, as he moved at various points between different parts of the building — evoking the grandeur and spirit of the Age of Enlightenment with ornate tapestries and gilded detailing in many of the rooms. “He was playing all the time with the spirit of the place,” said Mauriès, adding that some of the only common threads in Lagerfeld’s interiors were nods to his German heritage. In the Monte Carlo residence he bought in the 1980s, Lagerfeld was drawn to the Memphis Group design school, a collective of designers founded by Italian architect Ettore Sottsass that made use of bold colors, geometry and playfulness. Lagerfeld’s residence in his German hometown of Hamburg, named Vila Jako after his long-term companion Jacques de Bascher, was bought in the early 1990s; Lagerfeld then filled its interiors with objects including vases from the Swedish Grace design movement, which was a bridge between Art Nouveau and Modernism.