Kaia Gerber Completely Lost Her Cool the First Time She Met Karl Lagerfeld

From Harper's BAZAAR

It's the last day of New York Fashion Week and despite having walked an impressive lineup of shows, Kaia Gerber is full of energy and enthusiasm, ready to talk about another big milestone in her career: her first collection, designed in collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld, no less.

At 17 years old, the supermodel-in-the-making's first foray into design comes just one year after making her runway debut, but with Karl as her teacher, she's managed to learn a lot her first time around. "In this particular field, there aren’t many people who know as much as Karl knows about design. So learning from somebody like that, I really couldn’t have asked for a better experience," Kaia gushes.

The end result was the Karl x Kaia collection, a streamlined range of pieces that manage to perfectly blend the model's West Coast upbringing with the designer's Parisian roots. "We really wanted to have both our worlds meet and both of our personal styles come together," the model explains.

But before the collaboration came to be, she wasn't always so at ease working with the legendary designer. "I first met him at a Fendi fitting a year ago," Kaia recalls, "It was my first season doing shows and I didn’t know that he was going to be at the fittings because seeing how much of an icon he was, I was like ‘there’s no way he’s actually that involved!’ So I show up and walk out in my look and immediately see Karl in front of me and I was like [gasps]. It just immediately took my breath away. He said ‘Hi Kaia,’ and I was like ‘Me?!’ I was looking around like, 'is there someone else named Kaia here?! He can’t be talking to me, oh my god!'"

Fast forward to a year later and both Kaia and Karl have been transformed into little cartoon balloons spotted all over the streets of SoHo, where the model celebrated the collection's launch during NYFW. "It's so crazy," Kaia reflects, looking up at the balloons that fill her hotel room. "I’ve always loved fashion, but personally I just wanted to be comfortable and growing up I was always a tomboy, so I never thought people would look up to what I was wearing. And to be able to actually design something? It’s just been really cool."

Of course, it's hard not to bring up Kaia's mother, Cindy Crawford, in all of this. When I ask whether her supermodel mom has inspired her style, she credits the outcome of the collection partially to Cindy's influence: “My mom has always focused on the classics of style and I think she passed that onto me, where less is more. Karl also does an amazing job of not letting the clothes overshadow the woman, so with this collection we really wanted to focus on the classic pieces like a leather jacket and a little black dress and just things you can wear every day.”

It should be noted, however, that there's much more to Kaia's personal style than comparisons with her famous mom. When I ask who her other style icons are, she warns me with a laugh, "Okay, this is a weird one, but have you ever seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?" I nod, not sure of where she could possibly be going with this, and she excitedly continues, "Okay so Raoul Duke, Johnny Depp's character in it, is my style icon. I’ve always just been so obsessed with his look in the movie. Also David Bowie, I have really random style muses, but those two are mine. They’re fun and don’t take it too seriously."

And suddenly I'm reminded that I'm speaking to the coolest teenager, as if her first collection with Karl Lagerfeld wasn't already reminder enough.