Karl Lagerfeld’s pampered cat Choupette has confirmed that she will not be attending Monday night’s Met Gala in honour of her late owner.
On Monday, the designer’s beloved pet revealed via a post to her Instagram that she would not be walking the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 1 May 2023, where Lagerfeld will be honoured through the theme: “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.”
“Many people invited me to walk the red carpet of the #METGALA2023 in tribute to Daddy, but we preferred to stay peacefully and cosy at home,” the Choupette Lagerfeld account said in an post shared to her Instagram, where she has more than 165,000 followers, on Monday. “We pay tribute to my Daddy every day since his parting and we are very moved to see one more day dedicated to him.”
(Choupette is represented by a pet marketing agency, which likely penned the post on her behalf.)
The announcement came just days after Kim Kardashian posted a selfie with Choupette in Paris, with the reality star revealing that she was visiting Lagerfeld’s pet while gaining some inspiration for the Met Gala.
The white Birmin with blue eyes and creamy markings was born 15 August 2011. At 10 weeks or so, she was given to Baptiste Giabiconi, one of Lagerfeld’s model friends in Paris.
It was Giabiconi who named the cat Choupette, a nickname in French for “cute girls.” Giabiconi asked Lagerfeld to care for the cat for two weeks while he was on holiday. As Lagerfeld described to New York magazine in 2018: “When he came back, I told him that the cat was not returning to his house, and I kept it, this kind of genius creature.”
“I think Choupette made me a better person,” Lagerfeld told the Scottish author Andrew O’Hagan in 2015. “Less selfish.”
Lagerfeld later turned Choupette into an international star in her own right, with the pet boasting her own maids, bodyguards, custom Louis Vuitton carriers, silver bowls and a jet-set lifestyle. She also had her own jewels and nannies.
Choupette, which literally translates to “sweetie,” also travelled often via private jet with Lagerfeld, who died in 2019.
In addition to her pampered lifestyle, the cat also served as a muse for Lagerfeld, who published a book of her images, created clothes in “Choupette blue” for Chanel and put out a line of handbags with the cat’s face on them for his own eponymous brand.
Choupette also appeared in photo shoots and advertising campaigns for Chanel, the German carmaker Opel and the Japanese cosmetics brand Shu Eumera.
Following his death in 2019, Lagerfeld left the beloved feline to her most prominent caretaker Françoise Caçote.
In June 2021, Caçote told Lagerfeld biographer William Middleton that Choupette was doing well living with in Paris:“She is happy. And I tell myself that if Monsieur sees us from above, that he can be happy because this is just what he wanted for Choupette.”
On social media, the news that Choupette would not be attending has been met with disappointment from fans of the cat, with one person writing: “You will be missed tonight. Stay cosy.”
However, others assured Lagerfeld’s pet that she had made the right decision. “We understand Choupette, a beautiful cat like you needs her beauty rest at home, plus the flight from France to New York is a long one,” someone else wrote.
Additional reporting by AP.