Karl Lagerfeld’s final residence auctions for $10.81M

Real Estate

By Hannah Frishberg

The central Paris apartment of late “kaiser” of fashion Karl Lagerfeld now has a new owner.

Located on the third floor of a building overlooking both the Seine and the Louvre, the unit sold for $10.81 million at an auction held at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. 

No details have been released regarding the buyer. 

The designer — who was the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death, aged 85, in 2019 — lived at the flat with his cat Choupette, until his passing. 

The blue-doored, five-story building it’s located in on the Quai Voltaire dates to the 17th century.  

It was one of some 20 homes the designer owned across New York City and Europe.

Lagerfeld purchased the abode in the early 2000s and spent years extensively renovating it, replacing the existing oak parquet and intricate moldings — both typical features in Parisian flats — with a combination of concrete and resin, then filling it with early 21st-century furniture, according to the Times.

His goal, he told the New Yorker in 2007, was to make living in the house “like floating in your own spaceship over a very civilized past.”  

To achieve this, Lagerfeld also removed all color from the residence. 

“There is no color here, because I am constantly surrounded by color,” he said in a 2012 interview with Architectural Digest France. “I prefer to live in a neutral environment.” 

The time he spent in the space was strictly ordered, with certain furniture for certain uses only. There was a table exclusively designated for drawing, a second one only for writing checks and a third for correspondence alone, the Times reported. 

“There was a little sofa where he only sat to read magazines,” his longtime bodyguard and assistant Sébastien Jondeau told the publication.

The sale’s proceeds are set to be split among Lagerfeld’s seven heirs, with his muse Baptiste Giabiconi, a former French model, receiving 30%.