Karl Lagerfeld, The Museum

As a rule, fashion designers are not overly interested in looking back. And who can blame them? They’ve got more than enough to get on with dreaming up the future. In particular, Karl Lagerfeld – the most prolific of his profession of all – moves on from any given collection to the next almost the moment it is shown. He is not, it is well known, a man to dwell on the past.

Still, the rest of us are fascinated by the size, scale and brilliance of his oeuvre which spans…