Middleton, who was by contrast welcomed into his subject’s many inner sanctums covering him for Harper’s Bazaar and other publications, adds fresh layers, like the snapshot of a Deauville vacation from which Lagerfeld, then working for Balmain, had Saint Laurent, his onetime chum, airbrushed out, leaving “nothing but a mound of sand.”
The degree of coziness can startle. Middleton noticed that a mover helping the designer set up a German villa was “particularly hot” and “absurdly attractive,” and was rewarded with a photo sent by Lagerfeld of the worker in his underwear. “A flex on his part,” the author decided. (Later hired as a bodyguard and chauffeur, the mover, Sébastien Jondeau, also became a generous source for Middleton.)
And the volume of aesthetic detail inherent in Lagerfeld’s life — the boldface names, the lavish settings, the excessive travel, the bounteous bouquets — can occasionally suffocate. Only in the fashion bubble, perhaps, can 2001 appear not in conjunction with 9/11 but a white Burgundy wine; a guest editorship of Interview; and LVMH buying out Prada’s shares in Fendi — where Lagerfeld, a consummate workaholic, also long designed, along with his own label.
If you have an appetite for Lagerfeld lore, “Paradise Now” will sate it and then some. But you must submit, like a child, to a candyland of escapist excess, wherein a flattered but fundamentally solitary Sun King’s Birman cat — named Choupette, nestled in Richelieu bed linens and flown around the world in a private jet — also gets, bien sûr, her own chapter.
PARADISE NOW: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld | By William Middleton | Illustrated | 480 pp. | Harper/HarperCollins Publishers | $35
