It all started at Café de Flore. On a picturesque corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the onetime postwar intellectuals’ hangout is filled with designers and editors, trading Fashion Week gossip year-round. Three summers ago during the couture shows in Paris, Stacey Caldwell had popped by for a glass of champagne, when she spotted a familiar white powdered ponytail and fingerless black gloves—Karl Lagerfeld, of course, stopping to pick up his morning paper.
Caldwell, vice president of global wholesale at Thakoon, had made a game of spotting Lagerfeld on her frequent trips to Paris—Karl browsing the racks at Colette, for instance—but on that particular day, she paid more attention to the giddy fans approaching the Kaiser. “They would act like they were the only ones lucky enough to spot him, and then two minutes later someone else would do the exact same thing,” she says.
Conferring with her longtime friend Ajiri Aki, a fashion video producer based in Paris’s Eleventh Arrondissement, they decided to write a fashion-forward children’s book parody, starring the industry’s most iconic living figure. Where’s Karl?, out next month from Random House, follows a fictional blogger named Florence de la Sabine, or Fleur, as she chases Karl and the international fashion flock through fifteen cities in twelve months—from Chanel’s Grand Palais show in Paris to Art Basel Miami Beach, even on Christmas vacation to Tulum. “That tells you a lot about the psyche of the industry,” Aki says. “Everyone claims to be tired of it, but secretly, they love it.”
Each scene was drawn from thousands of reference photos that the two shared on Pinterest boards with illustrator Michelle Baron. There’s Thakoon and Lily Aldridge raiding the cash register in Karl’s Hong Kong pop-up, while Phoebe Philo and Riccardo Tisci pose next to Hello Kitty in Shibuya. In New York for the Met Gala, you’ll even find the Olsen twins wearing the exact vintage ballgowns they sported at last year’s Charles James–themed event.
“That’s the real fun—you think you’re looking for Karl,” Caldwell says, “but you’re recognizing all these fashion people along the way.”
For more information, head to Where’s Karl?‘s website or follow along on Instagram.
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