Karl Lagerfeld

 

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Publish date:in 34 years

 

 

Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg. He has claimed he was born in 1938 to Elisabeth of Germany (1897–1978, née Bahlman) and Otto Ludwig Lagerfeldt from Sweden.  He is known to insist that no one knows his real birth date; interviewed on French television in February 2009, Lagerfeld said that he was "born neither in 1933 nor 1938" In April 2013 he finally declared that he was born in 1935. A birth announcement was, however, published by his parents in 1933, and the baptismal register in Hamburg also lists him as born in that year. His older sister, Martha Christiane (a.k.a. Christel), was born in 1931. Lagerfeld has an older half-sister, Thea, from his father's first marriage. His original name was Lagerfeldt (with a "t"), but he later changed it to Lagerfeld as, in his words, "it sounds more commercial."

Purportedly, he grew up as the son of a wealthy businessman at Carnation Company, who was introducing powdered milk. His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father's business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH. His father was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. His mother is from Berlin; according to Alicia Drake, she was a lingerie saleswoman there when she met her husband and married him in 1930.