On 23 March 2011, a series of black-and-white photographs by Karl Lagerfeld went on show at South Colonnade, Level 1, The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands. The exhibition was called Adnan Taletovich by Karl Lagerfeld. It ran until 23 April 2011, entry was free, and it was organised by Men’s Fashion Week 2011 Singapore.
The fashion week itself, the first edition of the event, ran for five days from 30 March to 3 April 2011 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre in the same resort.
Lagerfeld behind the lens
By 2011, Lagerfeld was known as the designer at Chanel, Fendi and his own label. He had also been working as a photographer since 1987. He shot advertising campaigns for those houses, and by then his photography had won him the Lucky Strike Design Award from the Raymond Loewy Foundation and the cultural prize of the German Photographic Society.
The photographs were flown in from Shanghai for the Singapore show. Most were taken in the 1990s at Lagerfeld’s homes in Paris and Monte Carlo. Alongside Taletovich, they featured the models Linda Evangelista, Helena Christensen and Patricia Velasquez. According to the organisers, the images showed how silent films and the theatre shaped Lagerfeld’s eye. Some were relaxed shots taken off set, including one of Christensen playfully tugging away a towel Taletovich had wrapped around himself.
At the launch, John Postle, then executive director of The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, described art as a core part of the integrated resort. He presented the exhibition as part of the mall’s mix of creativity and shopping. Frank Cintamani, chairman of Men’s Fashion Week 2011 Singapore and curator of the show, said fashion and photography could not be separated. He added that the works looked at the bond between a photographer and his subject.
The model in the frame
Taletovich was born in Brčko, in what was then Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina, and grew up in Rijeka, Croatia, where he started modelling. Besides Lagerfeld, he was photographed by Mario Testino, Albert Watson and Arthur Elgort. Lagerfeld used him as a model through the 1990s, especially from 1992 to 1997.
Speaking about the partnership in 2011, Taletovich said every session felt exciting and that he had caught Lagerfeld’s imagination. He also said the shoots were more like acting than straightforward modelling.
What came after
Taletovich later moved into design with his own clothing label, Adventuryx. In 2015 Lagerfeld cast him again, this time as the night porter in Reincarnation, a short film for Chanel. Lagerfeld died on 19 February 2019.
Lagerfeld’s work returned to Marina Bay Sands in a different form in 2023. The travelling Chloé by Karl Lagerfeld exhibition opened at the Chloé store there from 28 to 30 July 2023, its only stop in Southeast Asia. It showed archive designs and sketches from Lagerfeld’s years at Chloé, from 1963 to 1983 and again from 1992 to 1997. After Singapore, the exhibition was scheduled to travel to Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing in September 2023, and then to Tokyo.