Karl Lagerfeld: Regular Guy?
Karl Lagerfeld is drawing back the curtain on his life.
We've already seen a more casual side of the Kaiser via the teaser images of his photo shoot for French Elle. In the full spread, released today, the Chanel designer does the following "regular guy" things, in order of most to least convincing: use Facebook, drive a car, check out the latest scores in French sports rag L'Equipe, grocery shop, and cook. (He jokes to the magazine he doesn't need to set foot in a grocery store, because he never eats.)
As it turns out, this is only one arrow in his "designers, just like us" quiver. Lagerfeld has launched a moderately priced collection, simply called Karl, and debuted a multilingual website, Karl.com, today. In addition to e-commerce (currently available only in Europe), the site includes a “World of Karl” section with some of the designer’s priceless aphorisms and his tips on cultural must-dos. Also out today: Lagerfeld’s interview with Harper’s Bazaar, in which he walks the magazine through his typical day—if anything Karl-related can be considered typical. Here's what we gleaned from today's Karl media blitz.
Don’t invite Karl to stay on your futon:
“I know how annoying, impossible and hard to please I can be. I wouldn’t recommend myself as a guest to anyone.” - Karl.com
Also, don't give him a to-do list:
“If someone gives me a to-do list, I say ‘Thank you, this is nice.’ One needs things to throw in the wastebasket.” - Karl.com
Sneakers may be enjoying a fashion moment, but he's still not a fan:
"Quand on fait de la mode, il faut aimer la mode. Quand je vois ces couturiers en baskets et vieux tee-shirts qui font des robes à des prix dingues, je prends ça pour de la malhonneteté." (Our translation: "When you work in fashion, you have to love fashion. When I see these designers in sneakers and old T-shirts, who make dresses at crazy prices, I see that as dishonest.") - Karl.com
Lagerfeld has weird sleeping habits (don't we all?):
He tells Bazaar, “I wear a long, full-length white shirt, in a material called poplin imperial, made for me by Hilditch & Key in Paris after a design of a 17th-century men's nightshirt I saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum." (So much for that regular-guy cred.) On Karl.com, he writes: "The best things I've done in my life, I saw them in my sleep, this is why I have a sketch book in my bed." (By the bed, sure. But in your bed?) In fact, sleep and sketching are such a priority, that he keeps one house just for those purposes: "I have another house two-and-a-half meters away for lunch and dinner and to see people."
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We want to come back as Karl's cat in our next life:
Of the new addition to the Lagerfeld family, adorable kitten Choupette, he tells Bazaar, “The cat is like a very refined object; she doesn't go into the street, and she doesn't go to other places. She is a spoiled princess.”
We have more in common with the designer than we thought:
He reads 20 newspapers and drinks 10 cans of Diet Coke a day, and only sleeps 7 hours a night.
And there's even more Karl on offer today: he appears on the cover of i-D magazine, with an eye patch obscuring one lens of his signature sunglasses. However, readers will have to wait until the issue is out on March 22 to read Charlotte Stockdale's interview, which promises more cat talk.
