These gloves were an iconic part of Karl Lagerfeld’s personal style and fashion identity. He was often seen wearing fingerless gloves, which became a distinctive part of his look. Lagerfeld’s gloves were typically black leather fingerless gloves that he wore on both hands, and they became one of his signature accessories.
Karl Lagerfeld was a renowned fashion designer and creative director known for his work at Chanel, Fendi, and his own eponymous label. He was not only a fashion visionary but also a style icon in his own right. His choice of wearing fingerless gloves added a touch of edginess and modernity to his overall aesthetic.
These gloves served both a practical and stylish purpose, allowing him to maintain his signature look while also being functional. They became a symbol of his fashion-forward thinking and served as a unique expression of his personal style.
Karl Lagerfeld’s impact on the fashion industry was immense, and his signature gloves are a lasting reminder of his influence and distinctive approach to fashion and style.
Even Karl sometimes cheated on his dark glasses: after all, it’s not always comfortable to wear them indoors, but mittens, hardly ever. The thing is, Lagerfeld didn’t like his hands from childhood, he considered them unattractive and wanted to hide them.
“When I was 14, I wanted to start smoking to seem more grown-up. But my mother said, ‘You shouldn’t smoke. Your hands aren’t pretty enough to draw attention to them,'” he later revealed.
Lagerfeld also added that he avoided wearing hats all his life – also because of his mother’s words that in a hat he looked like an “old lesbian.”
In an interview with M Magazine, Lagerfeld also jokingly said that, according to etiquette, it’s not customary to shake hands with someone who hasn’t removed their gloves (take note if you want to avoid unnecessary contact!): “Besides, gloves visually elongate the hands. Do you know what people in France think about long hands? It means you’re influential.”
It’s worth mentioning that in Karl Lagerfeld’s collections for Chanel, gloves appeared frequently and in various styles: from mittens similar to his own to high opera gloves and fingerless versions. Gloves were also one of the key accessories in the designer Karl Lagerfeld’s eponymous brand.
When it came to selecting the supplier for his gloves, the designer was quite conservative and preferred the family-owned workshop Causse, founded in the town of Millau in southwest France in 1892. There, glove production had evolved from a craft into an art, with a week of meticulous work going into each pair. In 2012, Lagerfeld acquired the family business and made the workshop a part of the Chanel Métiers d’Art project to support artisans. Causse also created accessories for both regular and couture collections for Chanel.
After the designer’s death, many of his belongings were indeed auctioned off. Gloves, including five pairs of Chanel mittens that he himself wore, were sold at auction for nearly $55,000. Not bad for accessories that aren’t very functional.
