Kristen Stewart may be a teen icon thanks to her role as Bella Swan in the “Twilight” movie series, but when it comes to her personal life, she’s hardly a Disney princess.
The often sulky actress is defiant on the red carpet, and in the summer of 2012, she made headlines for cheating on her A-list boyfriend and co-star Robert Pattinson with her married director, Rupert Sanders (whose wife Liberty Bell subsequently left him). And while her relationship with Balenciaga (she starred in the brand’s fragrance ads) was quickly put in jeopardy after the romantic upset, it didn’t stop Chanel and Fendi creative director Karl Lagerfeld from striking a partnership with Stewart.
It was just announced that she is the face of Chanel’s Métiers d’Art pre-fall collection, which premiered during a fashion show Tuesday night in Dallas. The campaign images will be revealed in May (or when someone leaks them on the Internet).
It’s not the first time that Lagerfeld and Stewart have paired up. During a photo shoot in January 2012, a behind-the-scenes image was revealed of Stewart giving the finger to someone while standing behind Lagerfeld. It’s the Mona Lisa of fashion images, in that we’ll never quite know if it was directed by the Kaiser or someone else.
Even so, would it really turn Lagerfeld off?
The fashion celebrity runs his own eponymous label and adds countless other credits to his name (Shu Uemura beauty collaborator, famed photographer, and author, to name a few). But he’s also adept in being one of the first to call out the next It girls.
Here, we’ve rounded up six more of Lagerfeld’s most famous bad-girl muses.
Miley Cyrus
Just one week before Miley Cyrus whipped a rolled joint-like cigarette out of her giant Chanel clutch on stage during the MTV European Music Awards, Lagerfeld posed on the red carpet for Museum of Modern Art’s Film Benefit holding up a copy of her new album, “Bangerz.”
This silent declaration of admiration prompted Cyrus to change her Instagram profile photo to that image. And while Cyrus sports a new Anna Wintour-esque bob and is often seen wearing Chanel on the red carpet, she’s hardly the epitome of Gabrielle Coco class.
The 20-year-old sings about taking party drug Molly (MDMA), fondled her lady bits during a photo shoot with Terry Richardson, and, of course, famously shook her derriere against Robin Thicke’s pelvis during the American MTV Video Music Awards.
Regardless, the Nashville native looks damn good showing off her abs in a crop top, and her music is undeniably catchy (her “Wrecking Ball” video broke a 24-hour record for Vevo by bringing in 19.3 million views in one day). So is Lagerfeld’s taking to the pop star so undeserving?
Cara Delevingne
The bushy-browed British beauty and younger sister to socialite Poppy Delevingne is perhaps the most social-media-savvy model in the biz (with over four million Instagram followers to date). She gets frisky with other women on the photo-sharing site (locking lips with Sienna Miller at this year’s Met Gala and fondling Izabel Goulart’s bum at the recent Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show) and continues to get tattoos against her agency’s requests to lay off the ink.
But that certainly didn’t stop her from catching Lagerfeld’s eye, as she became the face of Chanel’s 2013 Cruise campaign, posing as a topless Marie Antoinette figure — and then she walked in Chanel’s colorful spring 2014 Paris fashion week show.
After the runway, she posted a photo on Instagram kissing Lagerfeld’s cheek with the caption: “Love you @karllagerfeld you are the one and only!!!” Nonetheless, Lagerfeld famously quipped: “I hate when people say [Delevingne] is the new Kate Moss. Kate is unique. Nobody wants to be the second anything. Kate is beyond anything.”
Kate Moss
The fashion icon and original badass of British modeling certainly has some things in common with Lagerfeld, such as severe dieting habits. The size-zero model has famously said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” while Lagerfeld’s book “The Karl Lagerfeld Diet” explains how he lost 90 pounds by subsisting on 900 calories a day and drinking approximately 10 cans of Diet Coke daily.
Chanel dumped Moss as the face of its fragrances in 2005 after she was photographed snorting cocaine.
Still, she has made a comeback, resuming her spot as a top model and even as a fashion designer in her own right. “Kate Moss is an enduring source of inspiration because she is totally genuine, always authentic and never pretentious,” says Simon Doonan, Barneys New York creative ambassador-at-large. “And yes, there’s those cheekbones. She is a natural beauty.”
Cat Power
Indie singer-songwriter darling Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) has had some substance-abuse flags in her past (heroin, alcohol), but they didn’t keep her grunge-rock style from inspiring names like Lagerfeld and Hedi Slimane. In October 2006, she scored a Chanel jewelry campaign after a serendipitous encounter with the fashion director.
“I was outside waiting, sitting on a pile of Louis Vuitton luggage, drinking water, with an apple and a cigarette in my hand, my cell phone and two guitars, and out comes Karl,” she told WWD. “He walks up, looks at me and says, ‘Only a woman can look glamorous when smoking.’ And I lowered my glasses and pointed to [the shadows under my] eyes and said, ‘With these?’ ”
The rest is history. Lagerfeld later asked Power to sing during his spring 2007 fashion show and got behind the lens to shoot her for a Purple magazine story.
Lily Allen
After taking a break from her career as a musician in 2009 to become an actress and promote her own fashion and jewelry labels, the outspoken British pop star entered the fashion scene. Allen met Lagerfeld at a party in Paris later that year, where an admittedly intoxicated Allen asked Lagerfeld about a pair of green-heeled shoes she fancied. “I asked how they worked,” she told Elle UK. “He drew a diagram explaining the physics of making the shoe. I’ve still got the drawing. A week later, I was asked to do the campaign.”
Said campaign involved being the face of the Coco Cocoon bags. Doonan understands why Lagerfeld was attracted to her, as he told us, “Lily Allen is unconventional and irreverent. The mod cool girl who wears sneakers with a maxi when her feet hurt.” Just last month, it was just revealed that Lily’s labels have gone under, so perhaps she’ll be in need of work. Paging Lagerfeld!
Alexa Chung
While the British cool girl is mostly known as a TV host than fashion muse, she modeled in Chanel’s Spring 2014 show during Paris Fashion Week. It didn’t surprise us, as she’s has been seen on the red carpet posing with Lagerfeld and wearing the label. She was also part of the book and touring exhibit, “The Little Black Jacket: Chanel Classic Revisited,” in which Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld gave Chung an androgynous makeover.
“Alexa Chung is a fashion insider who is also able to view the fashion world from the outside,” says Doonan. “She also has that Tilda Swinton ability to look good in a packing blanket.”
In May, Chung tweeted: “Whoa I just had a strange (sexy) Karl Lagerfeld dream. I don’t want to talk about it.” Could they be, uh, more than just ‘ole pals?