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Few fashion icons are as recognizable as Karl Lagerfeld. There’s Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her exacting Dutch boy bob cut, Diana Vreeland with her distinctly bumpy nose, and designer Alber Elbaz and his bow tie and round spectacles. And then there’s Lagerfeld who famously kept his platinum blonde hair in a low ponytail, wore dark glasses everywhere, and always had a fan in hand.
There are glimpses of the fashion figure he would eventually become, but in the new six-part series “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” on Disney+, what we see is a prolific designer struggling to find his own style. Based on the novel “Kaiser Karl” by Raphaelle Bacque, the series is set in Paris in the early 1970s and stars German Spanish actor Daniel Bruhl as Lagerfeld.
When we first see him, Lagerfeld has already put in the time apprenticing at a number of top fashion houses including Balmain and Patou before joining Chloe first as one of its ready-to-wear designers and later, as the brand’s artistic director.
Bruhl is convincing as the stony-faced German designer who longs for something more: the chance to design couture and the trappings of fame that come along with it.
Lagerfeld did not grow up destitute. After leaving Hamburg, Germany, and settling with his parents in an expansive Paris apartment, it’s implied that he hones his skills alongside his frenemy, designer Yves Saint Laurent, played by Arnaud Valois.
