Cara Delevingne, Kaia Gerber and Gigi Hadid are just a handful of the fashion industry’s most well-known names to have come together to reinterpret the late Karl Lagerfeld’s legendary white shirt for a good cause.
On Tuesday 19 February, Chanel confirmed that Lagerfeld had passed away at the age of 85 in Paris.
In July, Lagerfeld’s team announced that following his death, several of his close friends were launching ‘A Tribute to Karl: The White Shirt Project’, involving them redesigning the wardrobe staple with personal tributes to the German designer.
Seven of the designs – created by the likes of Cara Delevingne, Kate Moss and Diane Kruger – will be replicated 77 times and each sold for charity at a price of €777 (£698).
Seven was the designer’s lucky number, the number of his favourite arrondissement in Paris, France (the 7th) and the address of his bookshop on the Rule de Lille (7L).
According to WWD, Delevingne’s design features prints of several of her tattoos including an etching of a lion (which is inked on her finger) and of an elephant (tattooed on her arm).
The proceeds of the shirts will go towards the charity Sauver la Vie, which funds medical research at Paris Decartes University.
‘Karl always said that with everything you do, you need to surprise people,’ Carine Roitfeld, style adviser at Karl Lagerfled and curator of the tribute project, told WWD. ‘The overall reaction has been quite fun, and Karl would have loved that.’
The publication reports Roitfeld created a built-in corset and asymmetric button front design for her body-sculpting shirt.
The shirts will go on sale on 26 September on Farfetch.com and Karl.com. The day before they go online, the designs will be displayed at the former Fendi and Chanel creative director’s Paris headquarters during fashion week. Shirts interpreted by actor Helen Mirren, entrepreneur Olivia Palermo, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele and model Soo Joo Park will feature.
Speaking about his love of the simple white shirt, Lagerfeld one stated: ‘If you ask me what I’d most like to have invented in fashion, I’d say the white shirt.
‘For me, the white shirt is the basis of everything. Everything else comes after.’
