What Inspired Tadao Ando to Design The "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" Exhibition?

World-renowned architect Tadao Ando was hired to create a space worthy of showcasing Karl Lagerfeld’s designs for this year’s Costume Institute exhibit. The world-famous Met Gala, a fundraiser, celebrated the opening of the exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” by inviting celebrities and individuals deemed noteworthy in the fashion sector. Rather than being a standard historical, the show is meant to explain Karl Lagerfeld’s style of artistic expression and its relevance in the industry through a thematic and theoretical focus on his work.

©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”

It was in 1996 when Tadao Ando encountered Karl Lagerfeld; the iconic designer had requested him to open a design office in Biarritz, France. Although the work with the Met’s Design Department was never finished, it did shape the course of the project. The final idea seeks to materialize Lagerfeld’s innovative spirit by meeting linear and curvilinear elements.
The exhibition’s conceptual structure is based on Willian Hogarth’s book “The Analysis of Beauty,” which outlines the conflicting characteristics of straight lines referring to peacefulness and idleness as well as contemporary, classist, and minimalist patterns and curved S-shaped lines illustrating vibrancy and motion, but also Lagerfeld’s historicist and ornamental emotions.

©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition is structured around the dichotomy between feminine and masculine elements in Lagerfeld’s work. These elements are contrasted with those of other distinctions, such as romantic and military, ornate and classical, past and the future, decorative and fundamental, traditional and countercultural, handcrafted and mechanical, floral and geometric, and symbolic and abstracted.

Floral Line. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Decorative / Symbolic lines. ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A significant section of the exhibition is a room devoted to the designer’s premières d’atelier, the tailors who were instrumental in bringing Karl Lagerfeld’s designs to life by turning his sketches into wearable outfits. French filmmaker Loc Prigent, who tracked and filmed Lagerfeld’s collections from 1997 to 2019, also conducts a handful of on-camera interviews that delve into this artistic partnership.

Premières d’Atelier (FENDI). ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Premières d’Atelier (CHANEL). ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In preparation for Australia’s most prestigious annual architecture competition and design festival, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando was reportedly selected to develop the MPailion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. In 2021, under the architect’s direction, the historic Bourse de Commerce was renovated, giving the venerable landmark a sleek, modern look befitting its status as a national icon.