Karl Lagerfeld is scaling back the time he spends on his namesake line to work on a “masstige” line. (Masstige products fall somewhere between mass and prestige products, naturally — so they’re much more affordable than designer clothes but still of good quality.) So the Kaiser has canceled his Karl Lagerfeld show, which was scheduled to take place in Paris on October 3; instead, the line will be shown to buyers from showrooms in Milan and Paris.
The new masstige collection, which sprang from the idea of “mass elitism,” will be sold online, a surprising move for a man who buys computers because he thinks they’re pretty, not because he wants to use them. Negotiations for distribution and production are ongoing, but it should drop for fall 2011. Lagerfeld was one of the first designers to ignite a frenzy for his H&M line, which sold out in mere hours. Lanvin also recently announced it would go mass, with an H&M line hitting stores in November. It certainly seems essential for designers to offer more than clothes for only a tiny very wealthy percentage of the population these days.
