AFTER THEATER
The Theater, located in the central room of the exhibition space, is a kind of creative sarabande. Eighteen fur pieces are brought together in a mise-en-scène that references key influences on Lagerfeld's artistic development, including the Bauhaus theater and the performances of Oskar Schlemmer. They represent the culmination of the working process, which the exhibition transforms into spectacle through a display of mannequins in motion – a kind of ‘dance of the furs’, as newspapers at the time described it. Positioned at different heights and depths, the mannequins create a scene that unfolds both vertically and horizontally, multiplying points of view
The physical and sensorial reimagining of the Theater invites a fusion of perception, celebrating the imagination, research, experimentation and masterful execution that give rise to forms transcending the simple materiality of fur to become works of art. Some of the fur pieces on display are the same as those shown in 1985; those that could not be recovered have been replaced with similar pieces from the same period
Writing about the 1985 exhibition, Adriana Mulassano observed: “Sixteen – or perhaps eighteen? – astonishing fur pieces encapsulate the Fendi-Karl Lagerfeld working process. Rather than lying inert upon the customary mannequins, they dance, move and rotate, animated by bridges, pulleys and rails powered by exposed mechanisms that, with the same essential ingenuity as a machine conceived by Leonardo da Vinci, celebrate a finished product imbued with the very vitality with which it was first conceived on paper
(2026)
A small selection of furs represents the culmination of this creative process. Each piece has been chosen for its volume, craftsmanship and the role it plays in shaping the collection, brought to life through simple, visible mechanisms. Rather than being displayed on a rigid mannequin or worn by a model, each fur is positioned within the space and set in motion, just as it was imagined in the moment it was sketched on paper. Remarkably, pulleys, iron frameworks, and rails accentuate rather than conceal the integrity of each garment as a finished object
(1985)
