The cat is out of the bag.
The late Karl Lagerfeld’s beloved cat, Choupette, has been formally invited to the Met Gala, the Post can exclusively reveal.
“She got the invitation,” Lucas Berullier, Choupette’s agent and owner of My Pet Agency, which specializes in pet influencers, told The Post by phone Friday from Paris.
“It’s an event in honor of the legacy of Karl, and Choupette is obviously a central part of the legacy,” Berullier addd.
The theme of this year’s Costume Institute exhibition is Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty. It will celebrate the iconic German designer, who worked for Chanel, Fendi, Balmain and myriad other fashion houses before his death in 2019.
Some are speculating that Choupette could be the star of the red carpet at the annual gala, which is overseen by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, on May 1.
“[I’d imagine] her entering with a big entourage — maybe Anna, or Grace Coddington. I think the way to show stop would be [entering] by herself, or with the biggest celebrity, maybe Beyoncé,” Michelle Baron, an illustrator who worked on the 2015 coffee table book, “Where’s Karl?: A Fashion-Forward Parody,” told The Post.
“Or maybe she’ll be escorted by Karl’s old bodyguard, Sébastien Jondeau,” she continued.
Born a Leo on August 15, 2011, the blue-cream tortie Birman fur ball was originally owned by French model Baptiste Giabiconi. He received the kitten on his birthday from friends and named her for the “common nickname in French for cute girls,” according to the New York Times.
That year, Giabiconi asked Lagerfeld to cat-sit around the holidays. The designer was initially reluctant but quickly fell in love.
“It became clear to me that Choupette brought Karl great joy,” Giabiconi told the Times. So he decided to let Lagerfeld keep the kitten.
The rest is fashion history.
The pretty kitty went viral in early 2012 after V Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, tweeted out a photo of Choupette, introducing her as Lagerfeld’s “new kitty.”
In 2014, Choupette secured her own makeup line by Shu Uemura, and the cash cat went on to rake in over $2 million doing a campaign for a German car.
News outlets called the cat “the most famous feline in the world.” When she wasn’t strutting down the runway, she was by Lagerfeld’s side in a custom $3,000 Louis Vuitton handbag.
“The two of them, they were larger than life,” said Baron.
Lagerfeld even endearingly called models Vanessa Paradis, Lily-Rose Depp, Kaia Gerber, Adwoa Aboah and Cara Delevingne his “Choupettes.”
“[Karl] used to say ‘In my life, my priority is Choupette over everything else,’” Berullier said. “She was everything to him. He said, ‘I’d like to be reincarnated as Choupette.’ People believe Karl is around when Choupette is around, which is kind of magical.”
Fashion industry experts say perhaps the most endearing thing about Choupette isn’t just her bushy tail and bright blue cat eyes — it was her ability to soften her owner.
“Choupette was a phenomenon. Karl Lagerfeld wasn’t really perceived as a warm and fuzzy person, so it made it incredibly ironic that he basically fell in love with Choupette and she did become his furry muse which kind of humanized him which was sort of lovely,” Kathlin Argiro, a fashion designer professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, told The Post.
“It’s something that the fashion industry, pretty easily feed into. She’s a beautiful cat. She’s very elegant, she’s jet setting — what’s not to love?”
In 2018, Lagerfeld told French magazine Numero that he had named the cat as one of the heirs to his estate.
Lagerfeld died in February 2019 at age 85, it was rumored that he left his fortune to Choupette.
Berullier said the exact details of Lagerfeld’s estate as the related to cat are unclear.
“It’s still a mystery. He [Karl] was a very generous man [he wanted to make sure] she’s [Choupette] never in need.”
In the years since Lagerfeld’s death, Choupette has been ably looked after by his former housekeeper, Françoise Caçote.
“She’s very spoiled by products and gifts,” said Berullier. “Most of them end up being donated. She still has a very luxurious lifestyle.”
The cat continues to work on occasion, doing campaigns for the Karl Lagerfeld brand, luxury pet line LucyBalu and L’Oréal.
Berullier stages occasional shoots with the cat on a parked private jet for Instagram, where the pampered pet enjoys over 132,000 followers.
The posh kitty is also giving back, via her new namesake charity organization the Choupette Fund, which aids stray cats.
While Berullier remains tight-lipped about whether the cat will attend the gala — and both Vogue and The Met declined to comment for this article — there’s no question that Lagerfeld’s muse is living well.
“At the end of the day she’s a cat — she needs good food, to be looked after and loved. She’s eating well,” he said.
“Obviously she’s not flying private jets and having 10 people working for her every day, but Françoise is working for her full-time. That’s what Karl wanted for her.”