Karl Lagerfeld on Working With Carine Roitfeld and Why He Prefers Cats to Children

By Erin Donnelly 06/06/12 at 10:00 AM

Photo: Patrick McMullan

Karl Lagerfeld.

Can we please, please, please come back as Karl Lagerfeld's cat in our next life?

In a new interview with Women's Wear Daily's Marc Karimzadeh, the designer reveals the luxurious lengths he goes to in keeping his "very famous" white Siamese cat, Choupette, happy.

"She is a famous beauty," he says of his pet. "She is nine months old. [Model] Baptiste [Giabiconi] gave her to me for Christmas to watch for two weeks when he was away but then I refused to give her back. I thought she was too cute. She is like a kept woman. She has a strong personality. She has lunch and dinner with me on the table, with her own food. She doesn’t touch my food. She doesn’t want to eat on the floor. She sleeps under a pillow and she even knows how to use an iPad. She has two personal maids, for both night and day. She is beyond spoiled."

No kidding. And while Lagerfeld is happy to play godfather to four-year-old runway model Hudson Kroenig, he doesn't "like the idea of responsibility."

"I don’t want any children," he tells WWD. "A cat is already a lot to manage for me."

Indeed, the ILOVEDUST collaborator is quite the busy man. When he's not catering to Choupette's every whim or appearing in music videos, Lagerfeld is keeping busy with his Fendi Pre-Fall, Lagerfeld Summer 2013, and Chanel couture collections. And let's forget his promotions for his "The Little Black Jacket" traveling exhibition with Carine Roitfeld.

"There are different cuts, shapes, and proportions, but the basic thing is timeless," he says of the project's sartorial subject, which was inspired by an Austrian lift boy uniform seen by Coco Chanel.

"There are not that many designer items you can say that about. We don’t know who did the tank top; we don’t know who did the white shirt, but we know who did the little black jacket."

For the exhibit and a companion book set to be published in the fall, Lagerfeld photographed various notables wearing the little black jacket, with a makeup-free Madame Micheline Chaban-Delmas standing out as his favorite subject.

"She is the widow of the [former] French prime minister and mayor of Bordeaux for 30 years," he says of Chaban-Delmas. "She is a great woman, and I think it shows. Some of the others play a part. I love the photo of Uma Thurman [in Marlene Dietrich mode], but she is not like this in life. We made Anja Rubik Japanese. She doesn’t look like this either and is playing a part. The idea is the portrait of the personality, or the personality playing a part."

Not surprisingly, he says working with longtime pal Roitfeld was a dream.

"It’s very stimulating to work with Carine, because there aren’t so many gifted stylists, and nothing is more exhausting than to work with an ungifted stylist," he says. "That makes a job very difficult."

Lagerfeld also weighs in on France's new First Lady Valérie Trierweiler (he doesn't vote but wasn't impressed by the bag she gave to Michelle Obama), keeping a diary of Choupette's activities, and why dressing animals in clothes is "circuslike."

Sorry, kitty. Guess that means no Chanel for you!