Lady Amanda Harlech is the long-term creative collaborator of Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi in Rome and Chanel in Paris. She previously worked for a decade with British designer John Galliano, prior to which she was a stylist and Fashion Editor at Harpers & Queen. She is known as designer and photographer Karl Lagerfeld's 'eye outside Paris,' and has been his personal and professional muse and collaborator for a decade. She is often described as Karl Lagerfeld's 'muse', which she herself seems to find inappropriate. 'If I do have a gift, it is as a map-reader, a pathfinder,' she says. 'I don't think I'm a muse. A muse inspires - but Karl is inspired by a lot of other women, men, books, a piece of furniture, a piece of music'. Lagerfeld himself has described her variously as his collaboratrice, an adviser whose vision he trusts as much as his own.

Harlech divides her time between Paris, Rome and Shropshire and is currently working on her first fictional novel, due to be published by Pushkin Press in 2012.