For nearly a decade, Karl Lagerfeld lived in one of the most unique apartments on the Left Bank. Located at 17 Quai Voltaire, overlooking the Seine, the Tuileries Garden, and the Louvre, this 260-square-meter apartment bore almost no resemblance to a traditional Parisian apartment.
After the fashion designer’s death in 2019, the property was finally put up for auction in March 2024 with a starting price of 5.3 million euros. It took just 19 minutes for the bidding to reach 10 million euros—nearly 38,500 euros per square meter.
A 260-square-meter apartment that Karl Lagerfeld had transformed into a “spaceship”
Karl Lagerfeld reportedly purchased the apartment around 2007 before making it his primary residence in 2010. Behind the historic facade of this building on Quai Voltaire, the designer had done away with many of the classic features of a grand Parisian apartment.
Instead of moldings and bourgeois decor: concrete, sandblasted glass, resin, white, and gray, in a decidedly futuristic atmosphere. Lagerfeld himself compared his interior to an “Odyssey 3000 spaceship.”
The main room measured approximately 120 square meters and featured, among other things, long backlit bookshelves. The fashion designer, famous for his impressive book collection, had also set aside considerable space for his clothing: his walk-in closet alone exceeded 50 square meters.
On March 26, 2024, the auction began at 10:00 a.m. At 10:19 a.m., the apartment was sold for 10 million euros to a buyer whose identity has not been made public.
The new owners have reportedly indicated that they plan to live there and carry out renovations. This transformation could therefore erase part of the radical interior design conceived by Lagerfeld—even though that very design made the apartment one of the most recognizable celebrity properties to recently come on the Parisian market.