post-script (or: why I stopped writing this, and is anybody still reading anyway)

It has been a long time, followers. It has been years! Partially because, as the saying goes, Life Goes On, and the less well known saying, When You Think You Are Above Writing As A 70-Something Germanic Fashion Designer. Here's the thing: I could keep writing as Karl 'til the cows come home and are turned into artisan burger patties, and for a while (several years) this bothered me, because it's like, how will you ever know the real me!(!) and it's like, does it even matter who I am? It probably doesn't. All this time I could've been the cleaning lady at the Vogue offices, writing award-winning judgements of ya'll whilst vacuuming impractical carpets and emptying dustbins full of rejected spreads. Or I could've been the guy who wrote the Fake Steve blog, and presumably that is why I've been so reticent in recent years- 'cause when the Fake Steve blog guy came forward he exploded into a pile of ashes from the sheer disinterest of his general readership.

In hindsight, writing a blog as someone other than myself was a slight misstep if I wanted to achieve the fame and glory that customarily comes with being a semi-successful fashion blogger. I was in the Yohji Yamamoto store in London some time ago, and let me tell you, they didn't get down on their knees and kotow to me! I said, "don't you know who I am? I am the great fake Karl Lagerfeld! I once was published in Elle magazine!", and immediately they presented me with a dozen boxes of roses, and within those boxes of roses were boxes of clothes Yohji's own mother made herself.

Another thing about me: I used to really love Bob Dylan. I met Tavi 'cause we talked about Bob Dylan (the big BD, BD-daddy-o) on twitter. I don't remember the last time I listened to Bob Dylan. I went to a concert of his a couple of years ago. He played baseball music when introducing his band. I know nothing about baseball, being a New Zealander, but it was the music you hear at baseball games on the TV. I don't know if they really play this at baseball games. I hope they do. Rest assured, I will defend Bob Dylan if ending up in one of those "Bob Dylan can't sing/is a shit musician" arguments (more often replaced these days with "Nicki Minaj is so terrible!") but I have not listened to his music in some time. The point of this paragraph is people change, etc. Didion would be proud.

I started this blog when I was 15 or 16 and a lonely high school student with no friends and a bad haircut. I researched like mad- satirising, developing a 'voice', does not come without reading every material one can obtain on Karl Lagerfeld. Yves Saint Laurent interested me as well- I read The Beautiful Fall and, amongst many NYT articles, it was probably the most valuable resource. Lagerfeld's interviews are a goldmine too, of course. I studied how he dressed. I emulated how he dressed. I went to a school halloween party as Lagerfeld: two girls knew who I was. Emulating Lagerfeld is hard work. It's about understanding a kind of futurist mindset- constantly moving forward- acting as a magpie of the zeitgeist.

Stopping writing regularly coincided with "graduating" (although in NZ, there is no graduating, there is merely an end) probably- this was inevitable, because when you are 'famous' (note the scare quotes) for being something other than yourself you develop a kind of complex. It's a very dull complex. It is mostly a if-I'm-so-good-at-this-people-must-like-my-other-stuff-too, which may well be true, but it is a combination of teenage arrogance and stupidity that makes one think one best do this starting from scratch all over again. It's like that novel JK Rowling wrote under another name, except nobody is dying to work out my identity and when people know that I have done x project or xx project sales are unlikely to go through the roof. I will be sincere again: I saw Rookie, which is fantastic and wonderful, and I saw people I'd known for a while, in the same 'circles' as me write on Rookie and progress from their blog-lives. I so wanted to progress. I studied to be a chef, which is totes logical in a twisted kind of way, and I was published in 'literary' magazines and my noisy band has had some success and rock critic Everett True likes us, and Everett True has a wikipedia, so. I don't recommend this move into the low-fi-junk-seafoam-noise sphere, fashion bloggers. It will make you seven dollars or so.

Incidentally, I tried to write for Rookie because, as I said before, I really like Rookie- I check it pretty regularly. This seemed like a 'moving into the persona-of-myself' move. My writing was awful. I tried too hard. It lacked the ease of Fake Karl and the tone of my short stories didn't match their tone. I 'expanded as a person', which is good, but to some degree I missed the blogging thing. I found myself living in the desert with only a very valuable samurai sword and a small bag of dried-out broad beans. I started a broad-bean plantation. Bono came to visit me. He said, "why don't you use these old songs of yours". I said, what songs? He said look to the sky, or your closet. I looked in my closet and there was nothing there. Bono said, there is no spoon, and I said, that's from The Matrix, and he said he hasn't seen Interstellar yet.

I'm going to continue blogging here, anyway. I am now twenty two (almost twenty three, golly goose). It is entirely possible I'm broadcasting to dead air- that's OK too. Hi.