Karl Comic, no.8

Karl Comic, no.7

French Vogue

It was actually this blog's anniversary the other day. On the 23rd. I wasn't aware, because I loath the past. But a lovely assistant, Fidelio, informed me that it was in fact my blog anniversary the other day. A dusty gold star to you. By the way, I was mentioned in French Vogue the other day, in conjunction with the t-shirts we sell (to your right there). Several other so-called "bloggers" have done t-shirts as well, although I can't exactly remember their names. They're probably not very important or chic. Tavi, my niece, did a t-shirt though-it's delightful.

On Balmain (AKA: Almost a work of Literary Genius)

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A Poem

People don't like fatties;
Yet what else would we make fun of?
If there were no obese in the world to not be kissed?

People complain about Walmart,
Yet I for one salute you, Sam,
You created an underclass for all of us

Balmain surely is demode,
Yet with no demode would their be a mode?
Hip-hip-Hooray to fashion victims the world over

Love was something I found a long time ago,
I sold it for several women who could sew,
The man who bought it lost it the very next day

The religious may claim to have a soul,
But we all know what we really have is coal;
I burnt mine decades ago

Vineland

"Karl, we're in code K" says my assistant, in his whites pressed so much that they appear to invade personal space.
"Code K?" the voice of Anna shouts, in the other room indulging in...oh, do I even need to tell you?
"Code K. It appears there's a demode one in our presecne."
"A demode one, hmm?" I let off- a mere wisp of refrigerated air from between my lips. My trademark "hmm?" sends shivers throughout the entire fashion world. Down their shoulderblades and into their soulless little bodies.
"Yep."
"Yep?"
"Yep."
"Fire this man, Anna."

Oh dear, it appears we have solved who the demode one is in the first paragraph of this post! Oh no! And now I'm going all post-modern on you. I feel like Martin Amis. Maybe I am Martin Amis. Maybe, I have a split personality which does not remember a thing about the other. So during the day I am Karl Lagerfeld, genius. And during the night I am Martin Amis, writer. How ridiculous, hmm? Gosh- we'd better joke about the anorexics now. To loosen up the mood.

Knock Knock. Who's there? An anorexic!

Anna: Uh. You're meant to say "anorexic who?"
Karl: But anorexics don't have a last name. Well, they do but they're all different. It's not as if all anorexics are from the same family. So what I'm trying to say is, is that there's really no possibility for a "who" to go in there."
Anna: You just don't get it, do you..
Karl: Get what?
Anna: I'll try one on you: Knock knock.
Karl: Who's there?
Anna: Anna.
Karl: Anna who?
Anna: No, Anna Wintour.
Karl: I don't get it.
Anna: If I explain it it won't be funny.
Karl: I think we should just go back to being bitches.

As I was saying, there was this assistant that declared "Code K", which as everybody will know is the Most Serious code in the entire arsenal of codes that I've developed over the years. I did it all in one night, actually. I got home from work- and this was when boys threw themselves at me. So there was this boy- all toned, his chest a masterpiece, his lips full of ambition...you, dear reader, may imagine the rest. He was on my couch, as this was in the 60's where locks had not been invented yet. Sprawled out on there like he expected me to make love to him or something.
"Now look here, young man. I have no love to give you! I have no soul! I eat souls!"
"You have no love to give me? Sounds like Leonard Cohen."
Ah, a boy who knows something.
"Nothing like Cohen. So long, Marianne."
"Oh come on now! That was a pointed reference towards Cohen if nothing else!"
"Yeah. The fact is: I'm just not interested in sex."
"What about your lover?"
"He comes into the picture in the 70's, really. I haven't met Jacques yet!"
"You know his name is going to be Jacques?"
"I've read the history books!"
"So no sex?"
"Non, no sex tonight."

Now- the reason young men don't throw themselves at me anymore is because so many young men have done this the governments of the world had to create a breeding programme to repopulate the world with Attractive Young Men. Once a man has thrown himself at me, it is as good as suicide. After all, if you don't catch them, they simply continue falling! And eventually they go splat, which in my mind is a very vulgar way to go. Anyway, now I have rations of Attractive Young Men: a Brad there, a Brad here, a Brad over there. They're all called Brad- I simply can't be bothered remembering names. (Yes, I do realize I am not with Brad anymore. And you sure realize it, don't you Brad! Slut. Whore. Chanelface. But I can't be bothered remembering the name of the new one.)

In any case, I let the boy outside where he proceeded to climb the building Batman-and-Robin style without the benefit of the building being on the horizontal. And of course, I heard that very vulgar splat not long after. Oh dear. I went back into my castle, and started to draw up the Karl Code list. Sounds like a bad novel, no? "The Karl Code." Imagine what other sort of novels you could create with that, hmm? "The Nabokov Code", "The Klimt Code", "The Da Vinci Code." I'm sure the last one would be hilarious- some half baked conspiracy book. "The Klimt Code" on the other hand would be made up of text made to resemble images by him; which are only fully viewable by those with Synesthesia. The text itself would be written by Thomas Pynchon.
"The Nabokov Code" has already been written. It's not called that, of course.

What the Karl Code serves as is a sort of defence plan for fashion. For example, last night I was at a restaurant with a few others at Pastis. Kate Winslet, Kevin Spacey (is that man famous? I'm not sure why he was there), Isaac Mizrahi and so on. A waiter came over and asked Anna if she wanted food. I'll repeat that in caps: "IF SHE WANTED FOOD." Anna "freaked" out, as the youth say, and rightly so. I was in the corner taking photos of everybody- all those disgusting fatties eating their food. It's kind of like a perverse sort of porn. Anna started shrieking: "CODE F! CODE EFF! CODE EFFF!"
And the team went into action: two assistants apprehended the culprit (ie. the waiter) and dragged him out back, for a little lesson. A waitress who looked very thin herself- she may have been going to a Halloween party with those bones- gave Anna an avocado, because Anna was shrieking "AVOCADO! AVOCADO! AVOCADO!". The chef made the avocado look nice, and less like food. Anna looked it the rest of the night: her eyes boring into the very fabric of the avocado. I took more photos. The night was saved, thanks to the Karl code, hm?

Cheeseboard

This is the transcript of a conversation I had with my dear friend, Connie Wang.

Connie: Karl, darling, I'm having a cheeseboard!
Karl (that's me, so we'll refer to me as "me" now, without the quote marks): What's that?
Connie: Water. Diet Water.
Me: Oh, I thought it might've been food or something....you know, something that contains calories!
Connie: Karl!
Moi: What?
Connie: You've just proved that you don't trust me. Assuming that I'd eat something with Calories...
Me: Non, non, it's just that "cheese" in "cheeseboard" sounds like it contains something with calories.
Connie: HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? I'm hurt...
Me: It was just a simple mistake, darling. Really..
Connie: You don't trust me do you...
Me: I've never heard of a brand of water called "Cheeseboard".
Connie: Do you even love me?
Me: Golly goose, these are some pretty hard-hitting questions.
Larry King: And with us on the show tonight is BOB DYLAN.
Bob Dylan: Man, we're talkin' 'bout a cheeseboard here. This ain't no protesty, hoity-toity game we got goin' on. Do you trust Connie, Karl? Do you trust this chick?
Me: How was I supposed to know...
Connie: OH KARL! THE FACT THAT YOU THOUGHT I'D EVEN CONSIDER EATING SOMETHING WITH CALORIES IS BAD ENOUGH! DON'T YOU KNOW ME BY NOW?
The Lounge Singer: If you don't know me by now...
Me: Connie, I just don't know. I didn't mean to upset you or anything.
Little voice in my head: Yes you did, you sociopath.
Other little voice in my head: You're just misunderstood.
2nd other little voice in my head: You don't even have voices in your head!
3rd other little voice my head: Non! Karl doesn't even need a little voice in his head!
2nd other little voice in my head: Oh...
[All the little voices in my head pop out of existences as they collectively realize that they can't exist]
Sound effect: [Pop!]
Little voice in my head: But we were talking before! I think therefore I am!
2nd little voice in my head: Ah! But are we thinking or are we really just a by-product of Karl's thoughts, and thus actually cannot think for ourselves?
3rd little voice in my head: Good god, are we actually making people think?
Little voice in my head: What sort of blog makes people think!
2nd little voice in my head: Hurry! Hurry! Post some pretty pictures and distract them from thought!
3rd little voice in my head: IT'S ALRIGHT BLOG LAND! YOU MAY GO BACK TO LOOKING AT PICTURES OF PEOPLE DRESSED UP NOW!
Typical fashion blog reader: Honey, thank the lord-almighty-Carine-Roitfeld for that.
Typical fashion blog reader's friend: Amen.
Typical fashion blog reader: Let's go read Karla.
Fashion blog reader's friend: YES, with a capital Margiela.
Typical fashion blog reader: Aw shucks, I love that Margiela-fella.
Fashion blog reader's friend: You betcha!
Typical fashion blog reader: I wonder if that picture-man has updated yet.
Fashion blog reader's friend: Oh you mean the one who posts pictures of men in suits?
Typical fashion blog reader: Yea-up.
Fashion blog reader: Yippie yie yay!
2nd little voice inside my head: [rolls eyes]
3rd little voice inside my head: And now you're bringing up the idea that we can roll our eyes even though we're defined as "voices"
Little voice inside my head: Let's just all kill ourselves.
2nd little voice inside my head: [BANG of gun]
3rd little voice inside my head: How come we're not dead?
Little voice inside my head: Whatever...
Connie: Uh, Karl?
Me: Yes dear?
Connie: You've been blank for like ten minutes...
Me: Oh....voices inside my head.....
Connie: NOW YOU'RE IGNORING ME! YOU ASSUME I'LL EAT FOOD AND THEN YOU IGNORE ME?!!! "VOICES INSIDE YOUR HEAD". YEAH RIGHT....
Tui man: Can we take that one?
Me: No, really, I do really have voices inside my head...
Connie: Ugh. Karl....
Girl Who Calls Everybody Lover: It's always foodtime somewhere in the world...
Me: I know, mon amour, I know. It sickens me to the core. The very core of my being. EVERY MORNING, I wake up and there...bang! The thought comes to me, hmm? The fact that PEOPLE ARE EATING FOOD, SOMEWHERE. I feel the need to vomit- but I haven't eaten in decades- so I sketch. And I sketch some more. And I sketch even more than that. And I try and get rid of this feeling inside of me.....this feeling that knows that somebody's eating. It could be your grandma; it could be Michelle Obama, it could be Anna...actually, no. But it could be some homeless guy in Italy. Every-damn-quilted-second there is somebody eating. I can't do anything about it. It just goes on and on and on, and people CONTINUE eating like they need it to survive or something...

Nowhere Man

In my last post, I was telling you about the place I live when I'm in New York. I like to think of myself as a musician that records in the studio when he is in New York- call it the "New York Sessions", but what he records is silence. Loyal Readers will be aware that I made a record of silence last year, but what I'm attempting above is what is sometimes called a metaphor. Apart from I'm not quite sure if it is a metaphor, as I really do have a studio in the apartment where I live. With a recording booth and everything. Metaphor is very childish anyway, like satire. Who's interested in satire these days? Nobody! For instance, if I said that I went down the street today and it rained hard, and then Martin Margiela smoked my sunglasses, and punched my pencil; I really mean that. That did happen today, in fact. This man who was dressed like a lonesome hobo just came up to me and smoked my sunglasses. They melted off my eyes, down my nose, until it looked like Miles Davis shot at them with his trumpet during his Jazz-Fusion period. In retort, I glared at him until the hobo-clothes returned to That Horrible Prada Woman's closet, and he was rather stark naked. Let me tell you- it was not City in the Sex.
After that he made a futile punch at the pencil, which ended up injuring his hand (which, by the way, is made out of different parts of different hands. Which leads onto my next point:)

Martin Margiela is a sick, sick man. What sort of man cuts off the body parts of other people and attaches it to themselves? I imagine Mr. Margiela in his little white-clad lab, surrounded by a dozen or so adoring assistants who only speak in the dialogue of Antwerp: "Reuse! Reuse! Ann D! Reuse!" (in fact, I love Antwerp. Or rather, I like it better than the other so-called "fashion schools". I'm occasionally asked to judge at their shows- the outfits generally end up as one of those "forwarded" emails sent around the Chanel offices to laugh at. The little old seamstresses are particularly fond of them. Anyway, I will see you there, Julie Anne. And your scarf.)
Where was I.....oh yes, I imagine Mr. Margiela dissecting different bodies who he has dug up from various graveyards..perhaps found vagabonds on the streets. And he attaches the new pieces to his own body; sewing them on in a Dr. Frankenstein-fashion. Robotic parts are so much better. What I heard- I was talking to my children's book agent- was that Renzo Rosso, the new Margiela owner got a bit freaked out by Margiela's, ah, body-cutting experiments; hence why Mr. Margiala isn't around the offices anymore (and hence why a Margiela collection isn't perverted anymore. A real shame, hm? If a collection's not perverted or chic, what's the point? I've always prided my collections on having a sense of perversion, with the occasional sense of chic.)

Anyway, I remembered that my house has a bathroom today when a model visited. We ventured into it together. I forgot that I never bothered to have anything installed in there: it's just a blank space. Told the model to do her "business" somewhere else. Went back into the recording studio and recorded nothing.

50 Gramercy Park

What I love about about staying in the US is that I understand nothing about the place.

In New York, I live at 50 Gramercy Park. It's the sort of place where rich people go to die. I bought the place for entertainment. There is two kinds of residents who live here: those that live in the hotel on a temporary basis, and those that live in the apartments until they die. Those in the hotels we call the "acutes" and those in the apartments the "chronics".

It's a kind of like an elevator where the poor couldn't afford a ticket, where the middle class decided to get off at the floor where the suberbs and polo-shirts were, and where the rich fat people combusted because the altitude created by the now ridiculously high elevator was too great for them. Imagine it, all the little bits of fat flying everwhere like bacon bits. Even in writing that sentence, I feel a tiny bit of fat grow on the bones on which my skin clings to like an Alaia dress.

Only the skinny rich people survive in our elevator at this point. It is here, where they tumble out in a pile of dead man's bones, that they arrive at 50 Gramercy park. It is not the type of place that exists in the City in the Sex woman's books. There is none of this nouveau riche riff-raff that buys so many Chanel dresses these days. Just yesterday we sent ten truckloads to the North Koreans. Who knew communism paid so well? We shipped them with trucks saying "URANIUM" and "FISH", which probably explains the whole business with nuclear weapons at the moment.

Woman number one, we'll call her Madame. She's a chronic, and lives in the apartment next to mine. She's got an intense sort of blonde hair- it's either a wig or dyed, but nobody knows which because she never leaves the apartment. I saw her from a distance when she moved in at midnight (goodness me, this sounds like one of those American soaps). Everybody else was asleep or entertaining, if you know what I mean. Some people have dinner parties that run very late.
Every day a man pulls up in a limousine, and carries a mask. It is the same mask everyday: that of a well-preserved middle-aged woman. But lately, the man who carries the mask has been getting shabbier. One wonders if he'll just keel over.

In the hotel there's several residents who believe themselves to be members of the Italian Mafia. Nobody has bothered to tell them that "bonjour" is French. They wear Lanvin, because the good man at the shop assured them that Lanvin is a very Italian label. Showed them a picture of Alber- that convinced them. They're English, actually. There's several shootings each night, but nobody ever dies. They're terrible shots. When Anna was visiting me once she shot an assistant to show them how to do it. She is a good shot- better than those cowboys that exist in the rest of the states- Ron Paul and so on.

vegetables

i love you most of all vegetables
i'm going to chow down my vegetables
vacuum cleaners in the sun are delicious also

i hope you'll toss me a carrot
i love you most of all
watering the plants in spring is informing

tell me the name of your favourite vegetable?

Michelle Obama

I've been avoiding talking about this Michelle Obama woman, because I am not political. However, I notice Cathy "Ohio" Horyn has been posting about Mrs. Obama on her blog, along with the rest of the press (ie. the world).
And this is not a matter of politics anyway. It is a matter of style.

Now, don't get me wrong. Mrs. Obama can dress fine- if meeting the queen in a sweater in something you want to do. Perhaps she assumed they would go fox hunting afterwards. I do like the fact that it was a Junya sweater, but still; she should've worn the giant Yohji wedding dress or something. Maybe one of those black ready-for-camping dresses that Junya designed this season.
Anyway, this is not the problem. The problem is that Mrs. Obama is written about as some sort of style icon; as some sort of second coming of the messiah; as this Christ-like figure that somehow bestows her style upon the world.

Excusez-moi?

Excusez-moi?

I am the Christ-like figure in this world, Mrs. Obama. Who the hell do you think you are? You're going around like you're some leader or something. It is rude. You are rude, Mrs. Obama. I am not impressed. Do you see this high collar? Do you see these dark sunglasses? The ponytail? Have you heard of Chanel? Have YA'LL HEARD OF CHANEL?

Look. It's fine for you to go around wearing your pretty little clothes. But when the media starts paying attention to it, well, that's when I become a tad confused. Your style is not that great. It's what I would call, at best, "homely." Like a wife making bread- in a photoshoot. But now you're infringing on my personal space. I have a bubble-of-style, and your are getting near it. Get out of it. Get out of my bubble-of-style.

I don't understand why you media people are paying attention to Mrs. Obama's "style". You're fawning over her like she produced a collection or something. Like she's.....me. She is simply wearing clothes. In the morning, she puts on her clothes- a sweater, slacks, and so on. This is no great feat of genius. You put the sweater over your head, and lower it down whilst inserting your arms through the armholes. It is simple, non? Or is everybody naked and I haven't noticed yet?
In which case I offer Mrs. Obama my sincere congratulations for managing to get dressed every morning.

When the said "Repent", I wondered what they meant

I suppose I better address this Beth Ditto issue. People have misconstrued me as being anti-fat. Have I ever said anything of the sort? Non, it's the media that's been manipulating my words to say what they want me to say. Who do I have tea-and-diet-coke with every day? Alber. As in Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. As we all know, Alber is of....a certain size.
At the end of the day we must realize that we are in a recession, and that a fat woman has far more meat on her when we run out of cows and other animals...the fast food joints need some sort of meat, no? It's not a problem for us who don't eat; but I'm informed that in America most people eat.

I'm predicting that in this recession, when the cows go bankrupt, more people will become vegan. About 50% or so. The other half will result to cannibalism. Actually, I'm being a bit optimistic- slap on the wrist, Karl! More like 90% to cannibalism, 10% to veganism. The point of the stick being that veganism will become a less "cool" or "hipster" thing to do, which will result in the global extinction of hipsterism by the year 2015 as the hipsters realize that their parents are also vegans and as a result keel over almost immediately.

Of course, this is if we are in a recession. Which, as I dictate whilst drinking out of a 16th century goblet, it doesn't seem to be. However- if people think something is something, it becomes it anyway. For instance, when Yves Saint Laurent was designing people were so desperate to equate his sexual prowess with his "design" skills, so the collective delusion of the world created a design genius.

In any case, one victim of this supposed-recession is my pencil. I had it on me Just The Other Day, and now it is gone. Perhaps it got so depressed by the TV-box talking about all these businesses going bankrupt that it simply transported itself to the planet where pencils live. I don't blame it. That TV-box is always talking about the recession. It just can't shut up about it! I have thrown all my boxes-of-TVs out the window, but every so often there might be a TV-box on in a room somewhere else.

This blog has recently come to my attention. Karla's Closet. On her blog there is three images of her posing as a header. I must applaud her for this. I always wonder why people don't post pictures of themselves as a header. After all, I do it. But Karla does it even better, what with three poses. The first one shows her sort of hugging herself, her head high looking at us as if we might be her "homies". The second shows her looking at the ground, as if she has gum on her shoe. The third shows her smiling at us, in a fashion which does not remind me at all of a wolf. I just want to thank you Karla, and congratulate you.

Ratched

I don't know how other designers live with themselves between collections. Most designers, you see, don't do as much work as I and only have collections to design. I just don't understand that. Don't they get bored?

Anyway, today was April fools in some parts of the world. I designed an entire collection and gave it to the seamstresses, who diligently made it. I then said "April fools!" once they had made sufficient progress. I laughed. "Ha ha ha."

Anna and I- we haven't talked for a while, actually. I've got a new replacement for Brad, you see, and I've been trying to learn his name. Well, not really. I'll learn it one day. For now he answers to "Brad."
As for Brad, he went into real estate. Because that's what people do when they become fat and ugly; ISN'T IT BRAD.
So Brad does not exist anymore. Does anybody remember Trotsky? Not in Soviet Russia! Because Trotsky never existed. I do love Stalin's system of airbrushing people out of history. Who knew they had photoshop then?

But as I was saying, Anna and I haven't talked for a while. For April fools, we decided to go into the Prada store and order 100 of those wader things Cathy (Horyn) is so fond of.
The Prada store works like any other fast food outlet- KFC, Taco Bell, and so on. The product is prepared when purchased. There's a sweatshop full of Indian and Chinese children behind the facade of clothes and shoes. Behind those paper thin walls, Mrs. Prada cracks a whip as she stalks the sweat-stained wooden room; kicking the chains of the little children that prepare Anna and I's waders. A fisherman stands in the corner, cackling evilly on his pipe and dressed in fish skin. He's Mrs. Prada's new lover, and he gave her the idea of waders.
Once the waders were prepared, Anna said "Oh...no. I don't think we want those now."
We walked out. There is now a large pile of one hundred waders sitting in the New York Prada flagship store. No doubt they'll sell them to stupid people tomorrow.

In other news, happy birthday to Jules, my most favourite bunny of every bunny ever.