On Thursday, September 10, 2026, Karl Lagerfeld would have turned 93. Born in Hamburg in 1933, the fashion designer died on February 19, 2019 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, at the age of 85, after a cancer. Behind the runways and Chanel’s collections, another battle occupied a long stretch of his life. The fight against the French tax authorities. A decades-long war, never fully won.
For fifteen years, Karl Lagerfeld declared himself a resident of Monaco. This move allowed him to dodge income tax as well as French VAT. A strategy that earned him several heavy tax reassessments in the 1990s.
A passionate and serious collector, the designer nonetheless accumulated a substantial fortune in parallel. Antique furniture, eighteenth-century artworks, rare books, and fashion artefacts. A taste for luxury that would eventually turn against him.
Bernadette Chirac, a heavyweight ally at the pinnacle of the state
In 1995, faced with a colossal tax debt, the designer leveraged his networks. He enlisted Bernadette Chirac, wife of the president, a personal friend whom he regularly dressed and who was often invited to dinner.
Thanks to this intermediary, Karl Lagerfeld secured a 50‑million‑franc relief. It was approved by the Budget Minister of the time, Alain Lamassoure. A first victory, but far from enough to definitively close the file.
Four years later, in 1999, his tax attorney Alain Belot, a former associate of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, obtained a meeting with the Economy Minister. The tax demand was then reduced from 200 million to 43 million francs.
This decision caused a stir. The inquiry revealed that Alain Belot had, during that meeting, handed Dominique Strauss-Kahn a tape containing the confessions of Jean-Claude Méry, an opaque financier linked to the RPR, fueling serious suspicions of influence peddling.
“I indeed knew from the media that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was being talked about as a candidate for the Paris mayoral office,” would later admit Alain Belot before a judge, without confirming any link to the tax decision.
700 artworks sold to wipe out the debt
Despite these various abatements, the situation remained untenable. In April 2000, Karl Lagerfeld was forced to sell the entirety of his art collection housed in his Parisian townhouse.
Thus, seven hundred master paintings, along with eighteenth-century French furniture and art objects, were dispersed by Christie’s in Monaco. The sale stands among the most famous of its kind in the 20th century.
Estimated at 180 million francs, the collection was ultimately sold for 139 million. The couturier also had to cede, in just twenty-four hours, his château de Penhoët, in Brittany’s Morbihan. Its price: eight million francs.
Yet this patrimonial sacrifice did not end the star’s fiscal troubles. In 2016, L’Express revealed that Karl Lagerfeld was suspected of concealing more than 20 million euros in additional assets, routed through schemes involving Ireland and the British Virgin Islands.
A search was carried out that same year at his Parisian bookstore 7L, then chronically in the red. The tax authorities suspected this entity of masking part of the photographer and designer’s actual activity.
An inheritance still pursued by the taxman
The designer’s death in February 2019 did not put an end to this saga. His eight heirs, including model Baptiste Giabiconi and his former bodyguard Sébastien Jondeau, inherit also an unresolved tax dispute.
“Karl Lagerfeld might have left behind a fortune of 200 million euros if he hadn’t been so generous!” explained in 2024 the court-appointed administrator charged with untangling this inheritance, designated by Monaco’s court.
Several auctions have been held in recent years to honor this claim. Across Paris, Monaco, and Cologne, they have already brought in more than 22 million euros, without fully extinguishing the debt sought by the authorities.
In 2025, another Sotheby’s dispersal, covering his last personal effects, brought in almost a million euros. According to the will, Baptiste Giabiconi is slated to receive 30% of this inheritance, alongside Sébastien Jondeau and Chanel’s former artistic director, Virginie Viard. A final twist that, six years after his death, underscores the scale of the tax battle waged by the designer. Even his cat Choupette, world-renowned, features among the beneficiaries of this complex estate, alongside his former housekeeper Françoise Caçotte.
