Karl who?

Interviews with Karl Lagerfeld are always a treat. His latest, with Vice Magazine, does not disappoint. Firstly, I just love the accompanying portrait of Lagerfeld, in his private library, standing in front of (part of) his legendary book collection. Wow. Secondly, his answers are brilliant. Here are a few choice extracts from the man himself:

[On his omnipresent sunglasses] “They’re my burka… A burka for a man. I’m a little short sighted, and people, when they’re short sighted, they remove their glasses and then they look like cute little dogs who want to be adopted.”

[On being asked to remove his sunglasses by an interviewer] “I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, “It’s impolite; remove your glasses.” I said, “Do I ask you to remove your bra?””

[On charity] “Do it, be charitable, but don’t make a subject of conversation out of it because then you bore the world to death. It’s very unpleasant. But I don’t go out a lot so I’m not so exposed to people.”

[On homosexuality] “When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said—and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded—“It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.” This was a very healthy attitude.”

[On meat-eating] “I don’t like that people butcher animals, but I don’t like them to butcher humans either, which is apparently very popular in the world.”

[On Andy Warhol] “I shouldn’t say this, but physically he was quite repulsive.”

It’s hard to know how much of what La Lagerfeld says is part of a carefully cultivated public image and how much is natural, but either way he really is funny, and clearly is a genius in a number of different ways, not least of all expressing himself. An entirely fashionable guru, some might say.