The sale of iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld’s estate has made its way from Monaco to Paris and now Germany where auctions pulled in a grand total of €22.5 million for his collections.

Karl Lagerfeld was a legend in the fashion industry, reigning supreme as creative director at Chanel and Fendi as well as at his own namesake fashion house until his death at aged 85 in 2019.

The designer’s estates in Monaco and Paris went under the hammer in December 2021 and brought in a combined total of €18.2 million. This staggering figure was added to by the sales in his native Germany, where a Sotheby’s-run auction fetched €4.2 million, more than seven times the lowball estimate for the lots.

“This third instalment of the Karl Lagerfeld estate, like the first two sessions, has aroused the interest of collectors all over the world, particularly from Germany and the United States,” said Pierre Mothes, Vice-President of Sotheby’s France who had initiated the first of the triad of sales in Monaco. “The choice of Cologne had been decided as early as the launch of the project, as a tribute to the German roots of Karl Lagerfeld. The collection revealed his tastes as a decorator, aesthete and designer who collected in many categories, but also, which is rarer, the man he was.”

Known lovingly as “The Kaiser”, Lagerfeld’s collection included a set of German advertising posters he had gathered over three decades and which were installed in his residence in Louveciennes near Paris that fetched more than €660,000, close to double the high estimate. In Cologne, around 40 designs made by the couturier were snapped up for more than a million euros.

Sotheby’s will auction his graphic works in the summer, and again, it is expected to see record-busting sales.

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Video: Karl Lagerfeld estate auction

Photo of items at the Monaco auction by Cassandra Tanti, Monaco Life