Karl Lagerfeld Lights Up

Karl Lagerfeld doesn’t do leisure time. The shape-shifting multi-hyphenate of all trades has successfully conquered each creative endeavor with aplomb. In addition to amassing iPads, having the most popular cat on Twitter, sending faxes to Anna Wintour, and doing that whole Chanel thing, Lagerfeld has found enough space in his globe-trotting schedule to launch his latest photography exhibition, “Karl Lagerfeld: Fire Etchings,” at St. Moritz’s Galerie Gmurzynska.

The exhibition, which provides Lagerfeld’s answer to contemporary portraiture, includes a series of large-scale abstractions of his current muses (models Freja Beha Erichsen and Aymeline Valade; rapper Theophilus London). Rendered in saturated colors with a graphic pixelated treatment that recalls Roy Lichtenstein, the portraits are crafted from backlit glass, with the image etched into the surface by fire. In typical Lagerfeld style, Erichsen is clad in a nun’s habit with rosaries in hand, Valade wears a deconstructed little black jacket, and London appears in what else? Chanel. The exhibition will be on view until March, so if you find yourself on the Swiss side of things, take note.