The legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld had an immense talent and sensibility. Our friend Susan Dworski sent us this picture of him at his liberatingly messy desk, with this note:

I’ve kept it on my desktop to remind me that sometimes – often, in fact – when deeply involved in a project it’s a good thing to have piles of scrap at hand for inspiration. Ideas emerge unexpectedly from the chaos that may have been forgotten or overlooked in the rush to press forward.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour wrote that he loved reading alone:

…books used to pile madly around his workplace: At one point, a table laden with them collapsed from its own weight through the floor. It sometimes wasn’t clear, until one talked with him, that he had found inspiration in everything from the week’s news to eighteenth-century decorative arts and the philosophy of David Hume. No designer had more esoteric references, or such varied ones.

Looking back into Improvised Life’s archive, we found two articles in which we featured ideas that any of us might steal.

His extraordinary library evinces his passion for books, which are arranged in an interplay of vertical and horizontally stacks. It makes for a pleasing graphical, paradoxically UNheavy look while allowing for economical use of the space (he packs in a lot of books).

His 1970’s Paris bathroom was filled with posters and objets and includes a sitting area, making it into a sort of salon…