08/21/2026
In the early days of Libertine, Karl Lagerfeld would come to our studio in SoHo and buy virtually everything we had made. I remember having breakfast at the Mercer one morning after he’d been shopping with us and watching the entire Chanel crew—eight or ten people, Karl included—walk through the lobby wearing Libertine. It was completely and utterly fantastic and surreal.
Another time, Karl was meant to come shopping at the studio with Amanda Harlech, his muse. Amanda arrived, we waited about an hour, and finally she said, “I don’t know what’s keeping him, but I know what he’ll like.” So she chose what amounted to two large handled bags of clothes, which I offered to take back to the Mercer to drop at the front desk for Karl.
I walked into the hotel carrying these two enormous bags and my little dog Pocket, right into what seemed to be a Chanel cocktail party in the lobby. Making my way through the crowd I ran into Karl and told him I had clothes for him. “Come upstairs,” he said. “I want to try them now.”
Up we went. As I walked past his bathroom, I saw this absolutely divine bathtub. I love baths, and my little room at the Mercer didn’t have one, so I as I walked by the bathroom thought out loud: “Oh, you have a bath.”
“Would you like to take a bath?” Karl asked.
“I’d love to take a bath, but I couldn’t possibly take a bath in your room.”
“No, you must take a bath. We’re going to dinner, you can have the room to yourself.”
Then his assistant appeared and announced, “I’m drawing you a bath. I hope you like Chanel No. 5.”
Karl handed me a robe and said, “I have these made in London for after my baths. Take it back to your room with you.” And then, after trying on the clothes, they left me there. The door closed and I thought, Well, this is a gorgeous bath. I can’t possibly let it go to waste.
But what I remember almost as vividly as the bath was Karl’s bathroom counter. I had never in my life seen so many beauty products belonging to one human being.
Which brings me to the point of this entire story: I looked at my own bathroom counter today and realized, with some alarm, that I have become Karl Lagerfeld.