Acclaimed fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld shared his own views on Greece’s financial situation through a caricature published in the weekend’s lifestyle supplement of the 350,000-circulation German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine.
The illustration depicts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, tipping coins into a wooden barrel, placed upon a classic column and bearing the inscription ‘ΕΛΛΑΔΑ’.
The scene is a reference to the Greek myth of the daughters of Danaus, who were condemned to pour water eternally into a barrel with holes, in punishment for having murdered their husbands.
The Danaides and their act of filling the barrel symbolise the pointlessness and absurdity of a task forever to be repeated but never to be completed.
Langerfeld’s handwritten caption reads: ‘The barrel of the Danaides: A Greek invention!’
It might be postulated by some that by drawing this cartoon Lagerfeld has stepped out of his field of expertise.
However, this is not the first time Chanel’s head designer has weighed in on political current affairs with his sketches.
German journalist Alfons Kaiser – employed by the newspaper where the ‘Karlikatur’ appeared – says Lagerfeld might have gained his reputation as a fashion expert, but not many people know about his professional artistic past, when he was working as a caricaturist for the pre-war satirical German magazine Simplicissimus.
