Pier Paolo Righi - Karl Lagerfeld | From Runway to Hospitality

Absolutely. Interestingly enough, it was not like this moment where you get up in the morning and say, 'Oh, okay, we do hospitality now.' It actually was an evolution, and it goes a bit back to what I said before in terms of the points of interest from Karl himself. He was very much interested in architecture. He put a lot of time, effort, love, and passion into making his habitats wonderful places. It was also a journey through decades, from the Lou Cur to the Bow House to all the different eras, and he did that with a lot of passion and a lot of love. That led people he was friendly with to ask him whether he could do the same for them, like, 'Oh, could you help me create my habitat in that city or on that island?' Which he did privately. That then developed for Karl into some projects in the hospitality area, which was more like, 'Oh, not a branded hotel or a branded residence, but more like, can you creatively help us design the lobby of the place?' So it was somehow engraved in what we were doing as a house, respectively what Karl was doing himself. Then the real proper branded project came along, still when Karl was alive. It must have been, I would say, in 2016. We were approached by a developer, a family from Macau, that is doing their amazing hotel project and running amazing hotels. They were asking us, 'Would Karl be interested to design their new hotel project? It should be a Karl Lagerfeld hotel.' When I discussed it with Karl, he immediately didn't think about, 'Oh, should we do it or shouldn't we do it?' He basically came with the answer and said, 'Oh, Macau has such a rich history. It's so amazing, and this blend with Europe. Imagine how we could play that and how we could blend the European influence with the Macau influence and the Chinese and all that together. I love the idea.' So he was looking at it from a totally creative angle and from a cultural relevance angle and what it meant. That was literally the first project we started: the Karl Lagerfeld hotel in Macau. Karl entirely ideated and designed it, and it opened a few years ago, and it looks amazing. What you will find with that project is it's very bespoke, very true to the history of the landmark and the country, and I think that makes it special. From there, a lot of projects did evolve, but always with the same idea of making them really relevant for the people that would be living there or going there, and very much bringing together the culture and history of the place with the influence and attributes of the brand as such.

Absolutely. I think to your point, 'Is there a wrong chair or isn't?' I think the definition of wrong or right is probably not the right definition, because Karl has meant and means different things and feelings to different people. It is not a cookie-cutter approach. For one group of people, he is the kind of black-and-white rockstar chic. For others, he's the... 'People who wear sweatpants have lost control of their lives.' Exactly. For others, he was the witty intellectual with reference to the 300,000 books that he owned. For others, he was the photographer that basically shot photographic artwork better than nobody else. So this is also what we're trying to bring to the projects that we are working with. We have an amazing fundus, if you can say so, of ideas and reference points of Karl. As an example, Karl has been working with so many different artists that have been making different interpretations also of him as a persona or of Choupette in a very artistic way. So there are residential projects where this architectural angle finds its place. If you imagine a bespoke residential project where you want to really dial into some areas of interest of Karl in a very specific way, imagine there are 300,000 books in his library. The book library that you were referring to in the Macau hotel is basically referring exactly to the books that he owns or owned. So it's not made-up books; it's these books. So if you're saying, 'Oh, I'm into a certain country,' then you will find the books of that country that Karl had in his stack in his library. In the library of the residential project, or if you're saying, 'Oh, I'm very much into the photography work of Karl in that period,' then that is bespoke photography work that you can find in your residences that nobody else can have because it's the private collection of Karl.