Karl Lagerfeld: his last interview with ELLE<

“Choupette, there are no two like her. Given the ecstasy she causes in everyone, we can say that she is the Garbo of cats. “Karl Lagerfeld, there are no two like him. Nobody else to make fun of the character he himself created. “I laugh at myself because I find myself gaga and doting, but La Choupette is special. She speaks three languages. Karl Lagerfeld juggles four languages, plays with words. His aphorisms, "karlisms", are even the subject of a funny book, "The World According to Karl" (Flammarion), which Lagerfeld looks at with the air of someone who is not told. "The English publisher phoned to ask how the expression 'adieu Berthe' could be translated. Bye bye Berthe, it's not bad, isn't it? “Karl la malice answers everything with wit, and delivers with a sincerity that hits the mark and touches at the same time. Between me and the game, the creator talks about himself, but above all not about him. Attempt to cross the mirror.

SHE. When asking people who know you what struck them first about you, they all spoke to me about your kindness, does that surprise you?Karl Lagerfeld. What horror! With people who bully me, I'm very mean, I'm even a champion, but with others, it's true, I'm not. On the other hand, not being a Catholic, I am very vindictive.

SHE. You don't care what people say about you?Karl Lagerfeld. People can say whatever they want about me, as long as it isn't true. I am my own puppet, a cartoon character.

SHE. A movie character, even, in the Yves Saint Laurent biopic in which Nikolai Kinski, Klaus Kinski's son, plays you. Have you given your opinion?Karl Lagerfeld. No, how is this one? Can you show it to me on your computer? Ah, it doesn't look like me, but it's acceptable as a choice. Some time ago, at the "Petit Journal", I was shown another actor, who looked more Marseille. He suits me very well. Either way, I don't care, I'm beyond good and evil, which gives me immense freedom to cut heads off. And since I'm not too bad with words...

SHE. Words are more important than fashion?Karl Lagerfeld. Books are important, photography is important, images are important, and the three together is of paramount importance. My job is this mix. I love words, and if I hadn't done fashion, I would have studied languages, but I'm far too lazy. My father spoke nine, I speak only four.

SHE. You talk a lot about your mother, but little about your father, why?Karl Lagerfeld. He was very serious, much nicer than my mother, so much less funny. He always said to me, “Ask me anything, but not in front of your mother. He was a business man totally into his thing. He was born in 1880, lived several lives, in China, in Russia, in Caracas, it was another time. I didn't see it so much, I spent my childhood in the countryside in complete freedom, my parents were in Hamburg or traveling, but I never felt like they didn't love me.

SHE. In the chapter "Elisabeth and I", we discover that your mother was very harsh with you...Karl Lagerfeld. She spent her life telling me horrible things. “I have to see the upholsterer, your nostrils are too big, we have to put up curtains. “Do you say that to a child? I loved Tyrolean hats, but she said to me, “You look like an old lesbian! »

SHE. Didn't that bother you?Karl Lagerfeld. No, I was 8 years old, I didn't know what it was.

SHE. You never talk about your sorrows or your wounds, why?Karl Lagerfeld. Maybe I haven't known that many. Or maybe I have a natural armor that the blows didn't go through me. Or else it's not a topic of conversation. I love the idea people have of my life, the truth may not be relatable.

SHE. Was there a specific moment when you decided to invent a character for yourself?Karl Lagerfeld. No inappropriate gesture, it was done like that. Me, I find myself very normal, what am I wearing in particular? A tie, a shirt, a jacket, jeans.

SHE. Like Chaplin invented Charlot, Karl invented Lagerfeld?Karl Lagerfeld. But I am like that in nature, Charlot was in the cinema. By the way, I just made a film about Chanel with Géraldine Chaplin as an old Coco Chanel, she is stunningly beautiful. And without retouching. It's despicable, all these trafficked women, they look like they escaped windshields they went through in a car accident.

SHE. Who are the women who inspire you?Karl Lagerfeld. No names, I don't want to offend anyone and especially not the women who think they are on my list. Yes, Jacqueline Chaban-Delmas is my neighbor, I love this kind of face. Caroline of Monaco, the ideal woman, so intelligent and lively. Charlotte is as cute as anyone, it's not a question of beauty, I saw her born and, when she was 14, she came to help me put my library away, she's very savvy.

SHE. What is elegance?Karl Lagerfeld. I’m sorry, natural elegance is more common among Ethiopian peasant women than on red carpets. The use we make of money today is discouraging. But I take my time as it is, if I start to criticize it, I become the one who can be criticized. In Germany, a poll has just designated me as the coolest German, I think that's crazy. Cool ? In Germany, I cannot cross the street, I am property of the people! People tell me: we are German like you! It's okay, there are 80 million Germans! They want to touch me, a gentleman my age cannot be touched.

Fantastic work from a Team 3 superstar. He has been busy this week finding out how to say hello in different language… https://t.co/69IoJPRZhj

— St Bernard's Primary Fri Jun 05 12:32:27 +0000 2020

SHE. We don't know your age, but you don't.Karl Lagerfeld. It's not my nature to let myself go. Discipline comes naturally to me, I am a prize of virtue without merit. I sleep seven hours every night, regardless of what time I go to bed. I have to get up, Choupette jumps on my face, she wants her breakfast. I have a very regular life but no frustration as I have been out a lot. I've had many lives, but I don't wallow in that past because I think my current life is more in line with my nature. And complacency is not my satisfaction. I was born unhappy and I think that's very healthy. I live very well with myself, it's a household that holds. Solitude is my luxury.

SHE. Do you have any friends?Karl Lagerfeld. There's one word I don't like, it's family, because I know too many horrible family stories. The friends ? I don't make any social hierarchy, it's very bourgeois. I talk to everyone the same way, I'm just wary of short people. It is unforgivable for a man to be small. Never date a short man, he will make you pay for it. I spend a lot of time with the people I work with, there is bound to be something true in our relationship. I am no one's boss, all the houses I work for belong to others. I don't have employees, I have people who help me because I suck. I can draw, read, speak, and that's it. My mother always told me: you shouldn't know how to do anything yourself because it forces you to make the effort to have money so that others can do it for you. Me, I'm really dumb. Cooking stops for me when I open the fridge.

SHE. Anyway, you don't like to eat, do you?Karl Lagerfeld. I'm not piss-vinegar either, I don't eat sugar, no butter, no cheese, meat once a week to please my doctor. But it's divine, my food, I don't even notice what I'm not eating. My favorite smell is toast, but I don't have to eat it. Look at the tourists in the street, what do we see as “pregnant” men! Gentlemen dressed as their grandson is spoiled meat.

SHE. And that's politically incorrect...Karl Lagerfeld. Why is letting go okay? I don't feel guilty for saying that.

SHE. The only trace of guilt we find in you is reading, you talk about the guilty pleasure of reading?Karl Lagerfeld. But this kind of guilt is not punished , it does not fit into the Taubira laws yet, does it? I read all the time. I love writers' diaries, even though most are written with a view to passing on to posterity. Catherine Pozzi, I love it, Gide, I don't really like it. I'll tell you a horrible thing, I loved Houellebecq's poems. His novels, I didn't read them thoroughly, even if he described me in one of them walking on my hands at a party, which I am unfortunately not able to do. I don't really like her look, skin cleansing would not be a luxury.

SHE. You don't read contemporary novels?Karl Lagerfeld. The side “Last summer, a woman in a house in Provence…”, I don't like very much. Jean d'Ormesson, I bought his latest book because he's a friend, Modiano, I quite like it, because it's short. I have my own bad taste, in literature as in everything else.

SHE. The return of grunge in fashion, what do you think?Karl Lagerfeld. This does not prove an excess of ideas. This is probably the sequel to the punk exhibit at the Met. Today, there is no longer a fashion like in the days of Mary Quant and the miniskirt, there are fashions... and it is going out of style. I'm not against anything, I like to follow the movements, even anticipate them, because I don't want to be behind. I have a fairly optimistic and light vision of fashion, I find that pissing people off by telling them that you are a tormented artist is not elegant. Women buy clothes to be happy in them, not to carry on their shoulders the dramas of the people who make them. Saint Laurent's alcoholism did not make his dresses more beautiful. Couturiers collapsed like unwatered flowers in dirty T-shirts, that's not my thing.

SHE. We see who you are talking about…Karl Lagerfeld. Really? Fashion is invaded by sentimentality. It's contemporary silliness, people want to play sincerity. In the past, fashion people wanted to be social, today duchesses, salons, that no longer exists, so they want to make art. A colleague said to me: “In my world, the art world! “, I answered him:” Ah well, you do not make any more dresses? »

SHE. Dresses are just dresses?Karl Lagerfeld. Diaghilev was the first to say it, it's just costumes. I am not an artist, I hate self-proclaimed artists, worse, cursed artists. This way some people have of making very expensive dresses and dressing like sluts. It's a pose. Me, I don't pose, I'm naturally frozen.

SHE. You have a crazy elegance!Karl Lagerfeld. I don't know if the word is right, leave that to the Minister of Agriculture.

SHE. In his preface to “karlisms”, Patrick Mauriès calls you “The Irregular”, in reference to the biography of Chanel by Edmonde Charles-Roux, “The Irregular”…Karl Lagerfeld. Don't push me into dubious jokes… Irregular is someone who doesn't have their period? I'm flattered, I find myself so ordinary. Not compared to others, compared to me. Can do better as they say at school! And I don't have a baccalaureate, nothing. I could have passed it, but I had to wait until I was 18, I was 16, I didn't want to wait. I told my parents: "I'm going to do fashion in Paris", and it worked right away.

SHE. Did your mother attend any of your fashion shows?Karl Lagerfeld. Never. She said, “I don't go to the people my son works for. Anyway, at the end of her life, she loved only Sonia Rykiel.

SHE. And your father?Karl Lagerfeld. No, but I didn't go to his dairies either. I grew up with cows, I love cows and cowries even more. I retain what I want to retain, the rest I erase. One day, in the street, I meet someone who reproaches me: "You don't kiss me, you are my son's godfather!" I replied, “Well no, I forgot that I knew you so well. “I only like the present, what do you want?