Karl Lagerfeld: 50 Years At Fendi

It's a big year for Karl Lagerfeld and Fendi. Celebrating 50 years as creative director at the Italian label, his tenure is the longest collaboration ever between a designer and a luxury fashion house and to commemorate the occasion, one of the most beautiful fashion tomes in history has been created.

Entitled Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld, it is less a book and more a tangible project; a compilation of interviews, drawings, and recorded conversations with Lagerfeld spanning the last five decades. The legendary German designer talks about his earliest memories of working with Fendi, his favourite Fendi anecdotes and his first visit to the atelier in Rome. Most special of all though, are his signature collection sketches, black pen and outlined in a rainbow of crayon hues of course, which really capture the essence and the progression of the man who adopted the Roman label as his own in 1965.

As Lagerfeld leads Fendi into a new dawn of "Haute Fourrure" today at Couture Fashion Week in Paris, what better time than now to look over his ideas for the house, in this exclusive excerpt of images from the book.

Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld, published by Steidl, is available to purchase on 28 September for £100.