If there is any recognized and indelible mark on the history of fashion across generations in the 20th and 21st centuries, then fashion design guru Karl Lagerfeld himself must be one of the hottest options. He, or his decades of creativity and output, and the classic image he uses to create, has transcended fashion, such as Michael Jackson to music, Andy Warhol to art, and Marilyn Monroe to film, becoming a microcosm of popular culture.
On February 19, 2019, the master of infinite meaning, who seems to be the embodiment of the "immortal body" for the fashion industry, like a perpetual motion machine, passed away, as he once said: "I have never been tired of my work, and if one day I stop working, then it must be my death." He worked almost to the end of his life, defending the dignity of fashion with an understatement, seeing through life and death. With karl Lagerfeld's demise, that era of radiant, star designers lost an important goalkeeper.
At 4:30 p.m. Beijing time today, Karl Lagerfeld's final season of chanel is about to open, and ELLE will bring you a report on the show for the first time. Counting down 8 hours, we would like to review with you the last in-depth interview with the French version of ELLE in August 2013 to learn a little more about what he was thinking.
Similarly, Karl Lagerfeld is unique.
Almost after the 1970s, Karl Lagerfeld was always a meticulous figure when he appeared in public and in private — Hilditch & Key's high-hard collared custom shirts, ties, antique jewelry lapels, pocket scarves, brooches, silver ponytails, sunglasses and bare-fingered gloves — he was the person who understood "image" the most in fashion, if there was a temple in fashion. Then he spent his whole life creating a statue for himself that could be enshrined in the temple.
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In this rare interview, "Galeries Lafayette" revealed a lot about himself, his parents, his interests, his outlook on life and, of course, various attitudes towards the fashion industry.
Like the one who was always there – always responding and commenting on everything harshly, while at the same time showing great sincerity and kindness.
ELLE: Did you surprise you when we asked some people who had been attacked by you before, and they all told us that you were very kind?
Karl Lagerfeld: It was horrible! I will be very rude to those who have done me bad, more than anyone. But to other people, it's true, I'm not. On the other hand, because I am not Catholic, I have a heavy sense of revenge.
ELLE: Do you care what people think?
Karl Lagerfeld: People can say whatever they want about me, because none of them are true. I'm just my own "puppet", a cartoon character.
ELLE: You're also a movie character... Klaus Kinsky's son played you in Nikolai Kinski's biopic Saint Laurent, Saint Laurent, do you have any comments about his performance?
Karl Lagerfeld: I haven't seen it, how is he doing? Can I open the computer for me to see? Ah, he doesn't look like me, but it's acceptable as an option. Not long ago, in the Petit Journal, a famous spit show in France, I saw another person playing me, but he was more like a Maasai. The man looks pretty good. Anyway, I don't care, my strengths and weaknesses are here, which gives me great freedom to do whatever I want and not be afraid to offend anyone. Because my expression is not too clumsy...
ELLE: Expression is more important than fashion?
Karl Lagerfeld: Books are important, photography is important, images are important, and together the three are the most important. My job is a mix of the three. I like to express that if I don't do fashion, I'll go and study the language, but I'm too lazy. My father spoke nine languages, and I only spoke four.
ELLE: You often talk about your mother, but rarely about your father, why?
Karl Lagerfeld: He was very serious, more benevolent than my mother, and therefore more unsmiling. He always said to me, "Ask me what you want, but don't be in front of your mother." "He's a businessman entirely. He was born in 1880, and his experience is complicated, he has lived in China, Russia, Caracas, which is another era. I rarely saw him, I had a completely free childhood in the country, my parents were usually in Hamburg or on a trip, but I never felt like they didn't like me.
ELLE: In the "Elizabeth and Me" chapter, we find that your mother is actually very strict with you...
Karl Lagerfeld: She terrorized me all her life. "Your nostrils are too big..." Would you say that to your children? I loved the Tyrolean hat at the time, but she said to me, "You look like an old lesbian!" ”
ELLE: Does that make you miserable?
Karl Lagerfeld: No, I was 8 years old and didn't understand that.
ELLE: You never talk about your grief and hurt, why?
KARL LAGERFELD: Maybe I don't have that much of that stuff. Maybe I have a natural armor to defend against that. Or maybe it shouldn't be the subject of conversation. I love the thoughts people have about my life, but the real situation may not be suitable for telling.
ELLE: Did you decide at a certain moment to create this character of your own?
Karl Lagerfeld: It's not a deliberate action, it's just natural. I think everything is very ordinary, is there anything special about what I wear? Tie, shirt, jacket, jeans.
ELLE: Just as Chaplin made Charlie, Karl made Lagerfeld...
Karl Lagerfeld: Chaplin was a character in the movie, and I was naturally like that. By the way, I previously invited Chaplin's daughter Géraldine Chaplin to play Coco Chanel in her old age in a short film, and she was so beautiful that she had not had plastic surgery. All the women who had plastic surgery were pitiful, as if they had to escape from the windshield of the crash scene.
ELLE: Which women inspire you?
Karl Lagerfeld: There are no names, and I don't want to offend anyone, especially women who thought they would be on my list. Micheline Chaban-Delmas (the wife of the former Prime Minister of France) is my neighbor and I like her type. Princess Caroline of Monaco, is the ideal woman, very intelligent and lively. Charlotte (Gainsbourg) was lovely, it had nothing to do with beauty, I watched her born and she came when she was 14 to help me sort through the bookshelf and was very clever.
ELLE: What is elegance?
Karl Lagerfeld: Sorry, there is always a more natural elegance in Ethiopian farmers than on the red carpet. The use of currency is frustrating. But I live in this day and age, and if I criticize it, I'm criticizing myself. In Germany, there was a survey that just voted me the coolest German, and they went crazy. cruel? In Germany, I can't cross the street, I have it for the people! People tell me: I'm German like you! Okay, there are eighty million Germans! They may want to move me, but a gentleman my age will not be moved.
ELLE: We don't know your age, but you won't be moved.
Karl Lagerfeld: It's not my nature not to care. Discipline is a virtue for me. No matter what time I go to bed, I sleep seven hours a night. I had to get up, and Choupette would jump on my face and want her breakfast. My life is very regular, and I don't feel anything to lose at all, because when I was younger, I didn't play less. I've had many kinds of lives, but I don't dwell on the past because I think life in the present is more in line with my nature. Self-satisfaction is not my satisfaction. I was born unhappy, and I think it's healthy. I get along well with myself, it's a subordinate relationship. Loneliness is my luxury.
ELLE: Do you have any friends?
Karl Lagerfeld: There's one word I don't like, and that's "family" because I know so many terrible family stories. Friend? I don't distinguish between any social hierarchy, I talk the same way to everyone, I just don't trust villains. Little men are unforgivable. Never go out with a little man who will make you pay. I spend a lot of time with my work buddies and there's something real in our relationship. I'm not anyone's boss, and all the brands I work on belong to other people. I don't have employees, but someone helps me with my work because I'm of little use myself. I can draw, read, talk, that's all. My mother always told me that you don't have to do anything yourself, because it forces you to work hard to earn money and get someone else to do it for you. I really didn't really use it, the function of the kitchen for me was just to open the fridge door.
ELLE: So you don't love good food, do you?
Karl Lagerfeld: I'm also not a particularly stereotypical person, I don't eat sugar, I don't eat butter, I don't eat cheese, I eat meat once a week to please my doctors. But food is sacred, and I don't even realize I don't eat these things. I love the smell of toast, but I don't need to eat it. Look at the tourists on the street, the men have big bellies as if they are pregnant! The gentlemen dressed like their grandchildren, that is, eating meat and eating bad.
ELLE: That doesn't sound politically correct...
Karl Lagerfeld: Why? Is it right to turn a blind eye? I don't feel guilty for saying that.
ELLE: You said that the only guilt comes from reading, and you're talking about the joy of guilt when you read?
Karl Lagerfeld: This guilt is not punishable, it's not written into the Gay Marriage Act yet, is it? I'm always reading. I love the diaries of writers, although most of them are written for posterity. I love Catherine Pozzi, I don't like Gide very much. To tell you a terrible thing, I love michel Houellebecq's poems! I hadn't read his novels carefully, and although at one event he described to me a story he was writing, I was sorry I wasn't able to read them either. I don't like the way he looks, and cleaning up the skin is not a luxury.
ELLE: Do you read contemporary fiction?
Karl Lagerfeld: I don't really like the story of "Last summer in Provence..." I bought Jean d'Ormesson's last book because he was my friend; I loved Patrick Modiano because his stories were short. I have my very personal bad taste, about literature and everything is the same.
ELLE: In the fashion world, grunge is back, what do you think about that?
Karl Lagerfeld: That doesn't prove anything. Probably a follow-up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's punk exhibition ("Punk: From Chaos to Fashion"). Today, there is no longer a single pop like the Mary Quant miniskirt of the past, but there are many pops at the same time... I'm not against anything, and I like to follow these movements, even push them, because I don't want to be abandoned. I have a fairly optimistic and light-hearted view of fashion, and I don't think it's elegant to surprise people by telling everyone that someone is a tortured artist. Women buy clothes for fun, not to shoulder the dramatic life of the people who made them. Alcoholism didn't make Yves Saint Laurent design more beautiful dresses. Fashion designers crumbled like unspent flowers, and that's not what I wanted.
ELLE: We understand who you're talking about...
Karl Lagerfeld: Really? Fashion has now been invaded by sentimentalism. It's a contemporary ignorance that people want to play with sincerity. In the past, fashion people wanted all the mundane things, but today, when aristocrats and salons no longer exist, designers want to create works of art. A colleague told me, "In my world, it is the world of art!" I replied to her, "Oh, you don't wear clothes anymore?" ”
ELLE: Skirts are just skirts?
Karl Lagerfeld: This is what Diagilev first said, "They're just costumes." I'm not an artist, I hate calling myself an artist, and worse, being cursed as an artist. For these people, it is a gesture to make very expensive skirts and dress them like sluts. I don't pose, it just goes naturally.
ELLE: You have a crazy elegance!
KARL LAGERFELD: I don't know if that word is accurate, please leave it to the Minister of Agriculture.
ELLE: In the preface to le monde selon Karl, fashion writer Patrick Mauriès refers to you as "l'Irregulier," echoing the name of Chanel's biography written by Edmonde Charles-Roux.
Karl Lagerfeld: Don't push me into the joke of uncertainty... Unusual? I was flattered, and I thought I was normal. Not compared to other people, but to myself. Like I said in school, I can do better! I didn't pass the high school exam, I had to wait until I was 18 to take the exam, and I didn't want to wait until I was 16. I told my parents, "I'm going to the fashion scene in Paris," and it happened immediately.
ELLE: Did your mother ever see your show?
Karl Lagerfeld: Never. She said, "I don't go to the people my son works for." In any case, until the end of her life, she only liked Sonia Rykiel.
ELLE: What about your father?
Karl Lagerfeld: No, but I haven't been to his milk mill either. I grew up with cows and I love cows and cowsheds. I remember what I want to remember, and I'll erase the rest. One day on the street, I met a man who came up to me and said, "You don't say hello to me, but you are my son's godfather!" I replied, "No, I forgot I knew you so well." "I only love now, what about you?"
Eight hours later, the Chanel Fall/Winter 2019 show is about to start, look forward to it!
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Interview: Olivia de Lamberterie
Partially written by: Hai Miao
Partial photography: Karl Lagerfeld
Partial image source: ELLE France
Edit: VIVIANE GAO