Sunday, November 29, 2009

B is sometimes for Bargains

Bargains:

In these modern times, people tend to associate Bargains with that dreadful Walmart place. I think of bargains as things to be haggled over at distant European markets. When I was a child (or as close to a child as I can get), I haggled over and purchased several fine dresses in the markets of Berlin, until I realised I looked like my mother in them. I sold those dresses and thereafter only wore suits, even in bed.

The fatties who go to Walmart have cheapened the whole word- “Bargain”. I’ve observed that there’s actually a sub-culture of the fattie in America. They probably have meetings in underground basements, stocked with fries on tap (Americans say fries, and everybody in France is offended that some call them “french fries”. We do not eat fries in France. We don’t even let fries come into France- they’re more banned than one of those terrorists that you Americans talk of.)

So the fatties are having their meetings in their sweaty, mouldy little basements; planning the next Walmart-Hijacking.
“Toilet paper will be only one dollar tomorrow!” Chomps fattie number one.
“BARGAIN!” Chews fattie number two.
The other fatties, I imagine, gather around in a sort of penguin-like huddle, discussing specifics of their plan to go to Walmart tomorrow. They squawk “Bargain! Bargain!” to one another, a sort of fattie-version of the air-kiss. Their fat little hands shake up and down with anticipation. They rub their stomachs, as if they are going to actually consume the toilet paper.
“This will annoy Karl!” says fattie one, obviously their leader.
“Oh yes, this will degrade the word “bargain”!” munches fattie three.

I am convinced this is what happens. These fatties are always busy scheming on how to make the world more ugly, how to even make words ugly. They may pretend not to know who I am, yet they are totally aware of Karl Otto Lagerfeld. They’re probably totally aware of all things beautiful- what’s the saying? “Know your enemy”

Toilet paper on sale is not a bargain, hm? This toilet paper is probably low quality! It probably has so much acid and bleach in it that one could find the entire drug supply of Cuba within a single roll. And what sort of fattie wants drugs in their body- as far as they’re concerned, drugs make you thin.
Non, a bargain is something that lasts for a very long time. For instance, I am a bargain to my mother! I’ve lasted for a rather long time- rather longer than many of my “peers.” My suits are a bargain- although I wear each one only once, the homeless I give them to are still wearing them. I just looked out my back window, and I saw the chicest homeless man ever walk past- he had on an old suit jacket of mine, and an old pair of skinny jeans. This is my sort of charity.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving


In Amerika*, the peasants- (assistant: everyone does thanksgiving, not just the peasants. Karl: Oh, really? Interesting. I don't do holidays) have a holiday called "thanksgiving", where they thank people for something- I don't really know what. But there's turkeys involved in it somewhere. Do they thank the turkeys, then eat them? Do they worship turkeys in Amerika? I thought they worshiped money over there, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the illustrator Danny painted a picture of me, surrounded by some models. I think this is a terribly divine gesture of Danny, and I thank him for it- notice neither I or the models are eating food, hm? And you know, food on a painting is calorie free- that's why Van Gogh ate paint!

Anyway, above is the portrait Danny painted of I and my disciples (there's also a colour version if you click Danny's name, but I posted the black and white version since I live in a black and white world). I wonder who's Judas! I wonder who's Paul! And I can turn that wine into water.

*Kafka is watching you, children.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Age is another A

Age:

Lamb dressed as mutton. Mutton dressed as lamb. In the end, the mutton ends up in pies and the lamb ends up on the white china plates of some London restaurant! Mutton is terrible and chewy anyway, and lambs are best used for making a delicious jacket or boots or something. Besides, both contain calories- a no-no when it comes to eating. So I will not talk about the mutton dressed as lamb thing, because I assume you people are not sheep. I hope you are not. There are some people that do tend to look like sheep, I admit. I had the displeasure of being on the street last year, where an overweight lady in a floral dress came barging through the usual barrage of photographers, trying to talk to me. She had facial hair. The hair on the top of her head resembled a cross between a toilet brush and sheep’s wool. She had jowls. Perhaps we could call her a sheep. But non non non, I hope you are not that lady. If you are, there is no hope for you.

I am not going to talk about sheep, or animals or any sort. I am simply going to tell you a terrifying story:

There was once a lady who was forty years old, or about that. She harboured delusions that she was twenty- possibly younger, maybe seventeen. Every morning, she would get up and put on the shiny black leggings which the young people wore two years ago (I still see the young people wear these leggings today, but they are not the chic youth with whom I associate.) Her fat dumpling legs looked like sausages wrapped in black foil- not that she noticed, our blind and demode woman. She would see a beautiful young twenty year old woman in the mirror instead. The woman would then put on a checked shirt, not noticing her arms jiggling because the sleeves were unflattering. She would straighten her hair to give he impression of some dead skunk, and place wayfarer sunglasses over her eyes; as if to declare her blindness to the world. She would waddle out into the street, where she would glance in admiration in the shop windows, at her imaginary-chic-figure. The shopkeepers, all stylish to the nines- in fact, stylish to the nineties, would stare at this bizarre figure of a woman who had wrinkles all over her blotched skin, wobbling arms and legs trapped in some sort of sausage roll. Ah, the delusion of being young, hmm? We are only young for so long, and there is nothing wrong with ageing. But one must dress appropriately. I hope that story terrified you enough.

On the other hand, a young person dressing as somebody more…mature, can be rather terrible as well. For instance, I see five-year-olds walk around Paris in fur coats carrying cigarette holders. I asked one of these 5-year-olds: “is there a surplus of fur coats and cigarette holders in Paris at the moment?”
The five-year-old blew just cigarette smoke at my pants (5-year-old aren’t very tall these days), and looked at me through his monocle slightly contemptuously. His date, a 5-and-a-half-year-old in her red Yves Saint Laurent dress and 7-inch heels pouted at me. I stared them down. It’s simply too young an age to be wearing fur coats- one should wait till at least 8. I told he 5 year old this, and he tried to rationalise it:
“You see, monsieur Lagerfeld, fur coats for children such as us use less material than an adult’s fur coat. It is cheaper.”
“But we’re all children, are we not?”
“Some of us are bigger children than others” he retorted.
“Ah, but since we are both agreed to be children, a fur coat should be cheap for me too.”
“But big children like to spend lots of money on things,” the 5 year old said.
“I like very cheap things and very expensive things. Fur is from dead animals, no? The value of the animal is already gone- it is dead- so that is why it is so cheap.”
“True, true, Monsieur Lagerfeld.”

Later on I was walking to the Chanel atelier where I came across a rather plumb 6 year old with a cigar and a top hat standing outside the atelier. I took the cigar out of his mouth, and stamped on it with vigour. I told him to buy gloves. So you see, it is very dangerous to dress in a mature fashion if you are young.

The final thing to say here, is that many of the people these days are getting plastic injected into their bodies. We are made mostly of water- not plastic- this is why we are not Barbie dolls and Ken dolls and Batman figurines. Some people feel that plastic surgery makes them look younger. It is a way to cheat age, they say. All they are doing is cheating themselves- we call all see if someone has plastic covering their body, just as a child can see that Batman is wearing a suit, or one of those terrible comic book villains has a metal arm and such. It is just as obvious to have a metal arm with a laser attached, as it is to have plastic attached to one’s self. Why, these plastic-people might as well attach plastic bags to their breasts and margarine containers attached to their face!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Oh, Marc.

This is quite true, you know.

IF I DIDN'T MAKE ALL OF YOU GO, IT'D BE A FREAKSHOW.
Jeremy Scott and Richie goddamn Rich would take the whole damn thing over, cover it in macrame stars and rainbow mylar and rename it 'FAUXHAWK FANTASIA.'

You'd be asked to bring your own libation, step over the go-go boys and drunk drag queens on the way in and stagger to your rented folding chair to watch Jason Preston take his shirt off and explain the moral and cultural significance of his 'MARIAH' tattoo.

So, Marc, be glad I make you go. I do these things for your own good.

xo

Anna

Friday, November 20, 2009

Daul

I'll keep this short, since I'm not prone to sentimentality. Rest in Peace, Daul Kim. You were a true muse.

Yves wants a shot at doing "A"

Editor's note: Hello. This is Karl here. Yves' lawyers have threatened to reveal decade-old secrets if I don't post his attempt at doing "A" in the little glossary we're compliling at my glorious "blog". So here it is (if you want my opinion, I think Yves does a little too mush hasheesh, no?)

Oh, hello! So nice to see you! Come in and sit by the fire!

A is for authentic style, born of adventure in your life, not Aspiring to be some one else. Aspirational is the worst, but adventure, that is chic, so very chic.

We had an intern, Tom Ford, who aspired to be young again. Plastic surgery doesn’t stop aging, he would have been better off with and acupuncture facial, it moves energy. Too much plastic surgery and soon you look like a muppet, or like you have panty hose over your face. The technical term for Tom is colonista.

OOOh, but I have an adventure to tell you about, are you comfortable? Here, grab the ottoman that goes with that chair, yes that blanket does melt over you like butter.

Soooo,I am exhausted, but in an exhilarating way!

OOOh, Pierre and I went horseback riding. I could have dressed el gaucho, but I went instead for a more Western look-plaid, denim, and a hat that I admired on some folk singer in the 70s.

And Wrangler jeans, what real cowboys wear, as the inseams are kinder. (Karl, I said kinder, as in easier when riding, not kinder, like that garcon Baptiste.)

Denim, and where does that word come from? de Nimes!

Anyway I was inspired to go riding by several things. First, I have been reading Winston Churchill’s My Early Years, This man won a Nobel Prize for literature when Nobel Prizes still meant something. In it he has the most beautiful descriptions of whirling dervishes and berbers attacking the British, on their horses, in hooded cloaks, charging across the spare rosy desert at dawn. And I learned the origin of the phrase “Hold your horses.” Apparently, when shooting at the enemy from horseback, you have an underling hold your horse’s bridle so it doesn’t startle. Oh, how I long for life before tweeker or whatever.

We rode far as the American West. We stopped in the middle of the shimmering gold and sage desert, and saw two men, in a field that went on for miles, on horses circling with ropes. They were calf roping on horseback, so beautiful in silhouette it looked like a ballet. A rugged ballet.

Of course, horses are a wonderful chance to be elegant, with colorful woolen blankets, and graceful deportment. Who compared horses to shopping? They were wrong. Shopkeepers, non. “Ooh, would you like a nice spaghetti sandwich to go with those shoes you will regret before the light bill is due?”

Save your shop money and send the maid out to look for acreage with a barn.

Of course, Karl wears his denim jeans too tight to mount a thing.

Afternoon tea around a real campfire is nice, crackling noises, and the scent of pine in the breeze, and a ninety mile view of the Cascades and Canadian Rockies.

Oooh, so is being home, surrounded by my books, carpets, furniture, zinnias, chrysanthemums, and watching the cat’s tail waiver past the window as she chases a moth out in the garden. .

Oh, lets ring for smoked salmon, and tawny port over ice! Beach! And some sweet banana nut bread with the apricot pineapple jam we made that lovely afternoon in August! The scent of it makes summer return, fleetingly!

Oh, I am so glad you came! I do look forward to our visits, ma puce!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

A- for Anna, but also for Appropriateness

Appropriateness:

I often visit libraries. It’s mainly because I enjoy observing people, stalking them through my dark sunglasses. I walk down the aisles of bookshelves, my pony-tailed-super-slim silhouette cutting a vaguely scholarly figure- I like to think to myself that people imagine if I’m real or not. On the odd occasion I’m walking down yet another aisle where I spy a children’s group reading novels- Nabokov, Pynchon, and so on. This is all fine, I think children should start reading novels as soon as they can- none of this sycophantic rubbish they teach in schools these days. The first book I ever read was War and Peace! Now it’s all “Generic character’s first day of school.” Who really cares about generic character’s first day of school, hmm? I would find this very boring, even as a child. I do not want to know about some mediocre child and their mediocre school and their mediocre lives. It is a bore, no?
Anyway, I saw these children wearing ball gowns whilst reading these authors. Shamefully, the mothers were in sweat suits. This is not my point though (the mothers are beyond help)- my point is ball gowns. It is inappropriate to wear these things in a library, reading. Does an archaeologist wear a ball gown when they are on a dig, hm? Books are very much like a dig- and one should dress appropriately. I hope you’re dressed for this book, dear reader. I hope you’re dressed for I, Karl, dear reader.

On the other side of all this, we have those poor souls (if they haven’t sold them yet) who dress like they are gardening when they are at the opera. I don’t go to the opera too much- I normally go to smirk at the nouveau riche, with their over-applied makeup and handbag-husbands. Over-applied makeup is as much of a sin as dressing badly for the opera, by the way. Anyway, when I do go to the opera there’s almost always a couple who dress like they have been struck by the flu just after they’ve been gardening. It is horrid. Worst of all, it is an insult to the performers of the opera- they take hours to get ready (days, if they are a prima donna), and these people dress as if they were just out feeding the chocks? We are not in provincial France anymore- there is no river cottage for you here. To be chic is to be appropriate (among other things), and one can never be appropriate as a farmer at the opera- even if it is one of these Philip Glass operas that go on for years. If it is a Philip Glass opera, one should dress in black and white.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

A IS FOR ANNA.

*click*

Did you turn on the recorder already, you idiotic little girl?

Well, this is what I want it to say...

The title should be something like "Anna is Ageless Always," or "Anna is Absolutely Beautiful Always" - see how we tied in the 'B' there? As in the letter that comes after 'A?' This is what being an editor is all about - it's thinking on your feet, being creative. Something you are quite incapable of achieving.

Anyway, tell Karl to halt his little ABC experiment so we can talk about my birthday. We should issue some sort of statement to the effect of:

"Hello darling admirers,

I would like to remind you that I am beautiful, radiant, and I -"

WHERE IS THE BOTTLE OF VEUVE I ORDERED HALF AN HOUR AGO? ARE ALL OF YOU DEAF MUTES? GET IT NOW. NOW.

"- and that little birthday thing I apparently had last week? Pure tabloid fabrication. You see, adoring public, I am Anna. Thus I am ageless. I wasn't born, really - it was more of a creation. I am just like those Chanel frocks, you see. A beautiful, stunning apparition. Although I must be quite clear; I didn't spring forth from Karl's head. Can you imagine the contents of his brain? I would have been crushed by visions of his mother, large format black-and-white prints or any of the 139,300 Adonis-like male models currently just "hanging out" in there. Seriously, it's like a German carnival mated with Pride and all French film from the 50s in a sick menage-a-trois. I mean, I'm sure it's beautiful. But it's also insane.

So there you have it, darlings. I have no age, no wrinkles or date-of-birth. I am simply Anna."

That's all it should say. Did it work?

I said, did it work? Did it record? Good. Now go use your stubby little fingers to post it to the blog - Karl thinks I disappeared. Also, call the Khashoggis and tell them I left the yacht in the normal slip in Monte Carlo, and thank them for letting me use it for the party. If there are any underwear models left hanging around, tell Octavia and Petrina that they can keep them.

Did that Veuve get here yet?

*click*

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A is also for Adaptability

Adaptability:

I am now at least 70, depending on what reports you have read. Some reports place me around the region of 250! The truth is somewhere in between. In any case, I have seen a great many young up-and-comers become old-maid-one-hit-wonders. One day they are young and beautiful; the next they are alcoholics doing guest appearances in small towns at women’s conventions for a cheap make-up supplement manufactured in Peru. An old foe of my, Yves Saint Laurent, is in this situation. He is dead. I imagine you understand the problems associated with being dead- it’s a rather hard situation to adapt to. Yves could never adapt anyway, so I wonder how he’s going to get out of this one. Of course, one only becomes dead when one fails to adapt. Yves stopped adapting in the 70’s. I think he died last year, but it may’ve been 20 years ago- one can never tell.

I knew Truman Capote for a while, actually. We met maybe four years before he died- you know, nobody was paying attention to him at this time. He was just a sort of imploding star, stuck in the jet set. The sort of people who are wealthy, inbreed but are not aristocracy- rather an executive of some sort, a chairman. He was obsessed with the jet set- writing a book about them. There was no jet set by then, and there is certainly no jet set now! Times have changed! When times change, one must change too or one will became another fatality, hm? But I met Truman, and he was such a sad state- stuck in a time that didn’t exist anymore.
“You won’t believe what dish I’ve found out on executive so-and-so,” I remember him saying to me.
It took me five seconds to think of a reply- a long, drawn out five seconds where I umm-ed and ahh-ed (mentally, of course. Never show a sign of indecision) between saying “nobody cares Truman”, or “how interesting.” I just ended up with an “Mm.” He continued babbling on, whilst I blocked out his words by having a conversation with myself in my head.

Adaptability is paramount. I am like some vampire-esque chameleon, always absorbing the zeitgeist like fatties absorb grease. Where those plump creatures which weigh down the earth with their dinosaur-like stomping eat those pizzas and such, devouring them as if to create a world pizza-short; I eat the zeitgeist- designing it and throwing it away when I am done. I am not immortal for the fun of it; I am immortal because I am always up-to-date! The zeitgeist is my lover.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A is for Accessories

Accessories:

Coco Chanel said that one should start with too many accessories and take one or more of them off. This is because Coco could not accessorise very well herself. When one puts on too many accessories in the first place, one risks somebody stylish walking in on them, and catching them with too many accessories on. Mon Chanel! How embarrassing! Imagine the look of this stylish person walking in on you and your overly-accessorised self, the shock in his or her face, the loss of whatever respect this person has for you. I myself sometimes do this at wherever I happen to be staying- I open every door of the hotel or castle or somesuch, trying to catch an over-accessoriser in the act. It is great fun for the catcher, but you don’t want to be the one caught!
More importantly- imagine your demode self, with one thousand and one accessories on. Imagine how trite and cheap you must look! Imagine how you might look like a goldmine to the men who may see you- not a goldmine they’re sexually attracted to; more like a goldmine where they’re going to approach the owner of wherever you’re staying at for the cost of the land rights to “that large heap of gold and silver that was laying in room one-oh-eight”. That large heap is you, over accessoriser. Non non non, that look is demode.

How is one meant to accessorise, in this case? What is this correct amount of accessories, hm?
I am not a mathematician- I’m not going to give you a formula. It is up to one’s own eye. What I do is I look at the person in question- in most cases it’s myself, occasionally a model. I observe their weight, their height, their hair colour, their favourite music and so on. Really eye this person up- is their neck particularly attractive- will a necklace enhance it? Is this person a fattie? Does this person have unattractive fingers? For instance, my own fingers are terrible- my mother used to tell me: “Don’t smoke Karl, because your hands are much too ugly for it and a cigarette will draw attention to it.” So I wear fingerless gloves and put many, many rings on my fingers. Yet if I had painterly fingers, it would not be acceptable to wear a million rings.

I choose to accessorise with high collars, sunglasses, fingerless gloves and rings- but I’m not going to tell you to wear this (I do hope you didn’t buy this book in order to justify your high collar habit- that’s your own problem.) However, I think everybody should wear sunglasses at least some of the time. Unless you are very stupid, or have very beautiful eyes, sunglasses act as a sort of disguise- a sort of eye shadow. Stupid people do not need a disguise because they’re too stupid to register anything anyway, hm? If one of the accessories you are wearing is sunglasses when your chic friend walks in on your overly-accessorising self, at least you can conceal an iota of your embarrassment.