Karl Lagerfeld’s House of Provocation A final conversation with the man behind Chanel.
by CARL SWANSON
“Yes, that’s fun,” says Karl Lagerfeld, not quite convincingly, waving a fingerless-gray-gloved hand toward the bookshelf in his office at Chanel’s headquarters on the Rue Cambon, when I point out a sign next to his desk that reads I LIKE BORING THINGS. The outfit is a vestige of his peculiar youth, when he didn’t have any idea how to be young and so dressed and spoke like an aristocratic adult. He has outlived almost everyone in his circle, his bohemian peers, his lovers, his friends, his would-be rivals. “Now they’re all dead. There is not so much left,” he says. “I’m born to survive.” He counts off to me the stats; it appears that many of his relatives lived for a century, or more.
You said once that was because you understand how they think:
“Yes, that’s fun,” says Karl Lagerfeld, not quite convincingly, waving a fingerless-gray-gloved hand toward the bookshelf in his office at Chanel’s headquarters on the Rue Cambon, when I point out a sign next to his desk that reads I LIKE BORING THINGS. The outfit is a vestige of his peculiar youth, when he didn’t have any idea how to be young and so dressed and spoke like an aristocratic adult. He has outlived almost everyone in his circle, his bohemian peers, his lovers, his friends, his would-be rivals. “Now they’re all dead. There is not so much left,” he says. “I’m born to survive.” He counts off to me the stats; it appears that many of his relatives lived for a century, or more.
At the Métiers, they told me that by law they have to all be feathers from birds that have been eaten. Even the ostrich—
I’m not sure they are. [PR person: “They are.”] I don’t eat chicken birds.
You don’t eat chicken?
I only eat what doesn’t look anymore like what it was when it was alive. I can only eat hamburgers. I am not inclined to steakhouses.
How do you stay engaged with the world if you’re too famous to go out?
Today the world comes to you. I read every magazine and everything. There are very few people as informed as I am.
Do you scroll your smartphone for information?
No, no. I think it’s great, but I have assistants who inform me [about] what I have not seen. Personally, I have no time. I don’t do internet, I don’t do Facebook. I have to sketch, I have to play with Choupette, I have to sleep. The day is too short for that.
Chanel’s Instagram account has 31 million followers.
I don’t even know how it looks. It’s self-assured, not thirsty for attention. That shows the power of the brand. Well, I can tell you, when I took over the brand, oh, there was not power.
You moved to Paris when you were quite young, leaving Germany behind.
I’m very drawn to Germany, but to a Germany that doesn’t exist any longer, [that] died in 1933. If they became Nazis again in Germany, I’d throw my passport out of the window … My mother said Germany without Jewish people is like a dish with no salt.
Your mother seems to have been an incredible influence on your life.
Yes. She was strong, funny, mean, and exactly what I needed, because as a child, I had a head like this. [He holds his hands outside his head, like a beach ball.] I was beyond pleased with myself, beyond.