Karl Lagerfeld, who will be honoured at the 2023 Met Gala, called women ‘fat’ and ‘ugly.’ And he was a fashion genius. How much does it matter?

The theme of this year’s Met Gala — fashion’s most coveted invite of the social year — takes its cue from the Met Costume Institute’s exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” The dress code that will be followed by the starry guests on the red carpet is “In honour of Karl.”

If the late designer’s legacy is to be put in the spotlight, then let’s at least show the bad with the good.

Lagerfeld’s reputation is spotted with controversies, from his fatphobia to his penchant for calling women ugly. He was never — and clearly still hasn’t been — cancelled over any of the many times he shot off his mouth; just as the anti-gay adoption comments and culturally insensitive ads and comments about Chinese models from the designers of Dolce & Gabbana seem to have been forgiven by celebrities, Kardashians and much of the fashion press.

Lagerfeld’s very first press conference took place when he won the 1954 Woolmark Prize for coats (Yves Saint Laurent won that year for dresses). After it, he wrote to his mother that the legendary designer Pierre Balmain had complimented his tie. “Was it tasteful, I don’t know. But it was noticed, and that was the only thing that matters to me. I don’t care what people say as long as they say something.”

This anecdote, shared by Lagerfeld biographer William Middleton (author of “Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld”) with Wintour biographer Amy Odell (author of “Anna: The Biography”) for her Substack newsletter, elucidates things. Lagerfeld was a textbook provocateur.

He knew instinctively, from the beginning, that by cultivating a cutthroat fashion persona — swift to deliver a cutting remark, courting controversy without fear or favour — he would be noticed, and remembered.

Was he a nice person? Middleton found that Karl’s friends, including Wintour, loved him deeply. “I’m not excusing him for his behaviour. I’m not saying it’s understandable. I do think he went too far,” she told Odell. “But I think that when you look at it in the context of everything else he did, I don’t think those (remarks) are super important.”

So let’s look at everything else he did. At the age of 85 in 2019, the same year he died, he was still producing 14 collections a year, for Chanel, Fendi and his namesake line. He photographed the ad campaigns himself. He took the fashion show as spectacle to soaring new heights: towing an iceberg from Sweden to the Grand Palais for one show; building a life-scale grocery store for another, where the models shopped Chanel-branded fake groceries.

Lagerfeld referred to himself as a vampire, in reference to the way he absorbed what was happening in the culture and injected that energy to make his beautiful clothes perennially relevant. He was a polyglot, speaking German, English, French and Italian, a passionate bibliophile and a collector of 18th-century French antiques, but he also knew that putting a cartoon version of himself in his signature sunglasses onto a T-shirt would be a smash hit.

His personal style was a reflection of his discipline, perfectionism and rigidity. I imagine his wardrobe of identical items would have been something to see. In his later years he favoured slim black Dior suits by Hedi Slimane and crisp white shirts with exaggerated tall collars that framed his silver ponytail. He dropped the fan he had become synonymous with in 2002, when he lost 92 pounds.

The house of Chanel was in financial tatters when Lagerfeld took over in 1983, at the age of 49. According to Middleton’s book, Lagerfeld said then of the iconic label, “Respect is not creative. Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — then you get something out of her.”

Lagerfeld took all the iconic symbols of Chanel — the pearls, the tweed jackets, the spectator pumps, the quilted bags, the sport wear and masculine tailoring, the more-is-more costume jewelry — and toyed with their essence endlessly. He made the double C logo a symbol of covetability, changing luxury fashion forever. He was irreverent, offering Chanel surfboards and footballs alongside drop-dead haute couture gowns crafted by an atelier of “petits mains” artisans. His 1980s pieces seem as relevant now as the ones from his last season.

His Fendi work is having a renaissance. Rihanna — whose presence at the Met Gala is always hotly anticipated — was photographed in Paris this week in a vintage Fendi patchwork coat from 1999, setting off rampant speculation about her digging deep into Karl’s archives for a possible appearance on the carpet.

Naturally, Vogue has gone all in on the Lagerfeld theme. Last month’s cover featured 10 models in vintage pieces of his design, including ’90s supermodels such as Shalom Harlow and Amber Valletta, alongside Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner. It was Wintour’s show of force ahead of the event and the exhibit, to bulletproof it against any messy protest about Lagerfeld’s quips and cuts.

When you visited the Chanel atelier on Rue Cambon while Lagerfeld was there, staffers warned he might banish you if you caught his eye.

But in person, I didn’t find him to be the imperious figure he was made out to be. When I interviewed Lagerfeld after Chanel shows, it was always nerve-wracking, but he answered all good questions with thoughtful answers.

I choose to think he was eccentric, a quality I admire, and simultaneously something I admire less: a provocateur who shot out opinions that he wouldn’t back down on. He wanted to give off the aura of someone who didn’t care, but what I think was really true was that he cared about every detail. He couldn’t have been so prolific, with such a huge and important and lasting output, otherwise.

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