Karl Lagerfeld to Launch More Affordable Signature Collection in January 2012

Spoke to you guys briefly about this yesterday but here are more details. Karl Lagerfeld, who stopped showing his signature collection on the runway in September 2010, will be back in January with two new signature lines.

Karl, an 100-piece masstige women’s line priced at about 60 to 300 euros ($95 to $450), and the higher-end Karl Lagerfeld Paris line — priced 300 euros to about 2,500 euros ($411 to $3,425) — will both be introduced on Jan. 25 during Paris Couture Week. The Karl line will then make its debut exclusively on Net-a-Porter, with sales on KarlLagerfeld.com starting Feb. 28, while Karl Lagerfeld Paris will first be sold for Fall 2012.

Of the relaunch, Lagerfeld says: “I just want not too expensive clothes that people may like and perhaps want to wear. That was my concept for a long time, but my business partners in the past wanted to be like Chanel or Fendi without putting behind what is needed to be like that … Now I am feeling we are ready for the right job — the way to do things right in a modern, unusual way.”

The Karl line boasts a “street” and “rock” attitude, according to Pier Paolo Righi, the new president of Karl Lagerfeld, and is mainly targeted at women in their late teens and early 20s. It is rife with denim and leather, silvery jeans, and black cocktail dresses with plunging backs. The tags show Lagerfeld’s profile, complete with sunglasses and ponytail, embedded in a K.