Karl Lagerfeld, 1933-2019

Karl Lagerfeld has passed onto a more chic mode of being. I wrote this blog roughly from the ages of 15-21. I lived in a small town and high school was dull and boring -- it's not an exaggeration to say that Karl was in some ways my teenager-hood. I woke up this morning to a bunch of emails in my inbox -- I kept reading 'was' and it was clear that Karl was dead.

Karl had a sense of the absurdity of fashion. He loved books. He hated the past. He literally mined his entire aesthetic from the past. He was a delightful contradiction. His mother, who bore a more than a passing resemblance to him (she used to say to him "you look like me, but not as good") died at 82. Instead of bed rest, she went to get her hair done. 

When you are a certain age you grasp onto myths: I had an obsession with William Eggleston, Truman Capote, Rei Kawakubo -- myth-like people -- characters who can be defined by a few lines. Karl was always the most mythic. I watched Lagerfeld Confidential and read The Beautiful Fall and became entrenched within this world where it's perfectly sane to buy a thousand dollar shoe-horn, because of course. That world feels gone, largely -- billionaires are tacky and boring -- a thousand Patagonia vests won't make up for a well-made Chanel cardigan. Yves Saint Laurent is dead. Warhol is dead. Issy Blow is dead. Karl knew he was the last -- he was a remnant of the Weimar Republic -- of decadence and the imagined Berlin of Lou Reed's Berlin. He had three hundred ipods. He had silver rings strewn about in bowls, like metallic candy. 

Karl probably would've found death the end and moved on. This is the man who wrote, "I have no human feelings." Karl's mother didn't tell him about the death of his father for weeks -- she said to him "you don't like funerals, why should I tell you?" -- his image, like Warhol's, was so fixed in the last two decades (the 'skinny Karl' era, let's say) that at some point he ceased to become human - this was the joke, of course. I always smirked at news outlets that tried to court outrage with his often ridiculous comments -- the ridiculousness was the joke, they weren't in on it. The point was never to take what he said seriously - the point was his continued elevation of a character, the ultimate act of fashion; utterly superficial and sincere.

Miuccia

-Miuccia Prada is a genius! says Diane, who owns more than her fair share of Prada’s clothes

-Oh, she just does the opposite to everyone else, says Eartha

-No, no, says Diana, pursing her lips together. Diana’s lips are a marvel: they are plump and shiny like one of those blow up sculptures that were hip in contemporary art ten years ago. They are Eartha’s first encounter with botox. They don’t have botox where Eartha comes from.

Diana frowns, and the whole table frowns with Diana.

-But she’s so much more than that! says January,

-I know, says Diana, I know. –She’s a genius

-I know, says Eartha. She drinks her wine. It is red wine. Diana’s assistant makes sure they have both red and white wine at the table. It saves ordering.

-But that’s what she said in the New Yorker, says Eartha again

Diana has already moved on from the genius of Miuccia Prada. She is now considering the genius of others. Gareth Pugh, for instance, who nobody will care about in years to come. Her lips move upwards, forming a blow-up sculpture smile.

-Excuse me? she says

-Oh, I read a profile of her, where she said she just does the opposite, says Eartha

-Oh! Journalists! says Diana. She knows Miuccia Prada, personally. She knows the genius of Miuccia Prada. She is also a little scared of Miuccia. Nobody understands the female zeitgeist quite like Miuccia. Nobody except Phoebe Philo, perhaps, who is less scary but she doesn’t know personally.

-It kind of is opposite, though, isn’t it? says Diana

-Look at my shoes, says January. They are chunky and have little birds printed on them. –Is that just opposite?

New Yorker, Misspent youth, etc

The most money anybody ever spent on me, whilst this blog was a popular and happening thing, was POP magazine. I am unsure if POP magazine exists anymore. It probably does. I never liked magazines very much (even when this blog was a happening thing)- I couldn’t get used to the ads and the terrible and inevitably breathless prose. The only magazine I read is the New Yorker. For years I would go to whatever library happened to be nearest to where I was living at the time and religiously read it, paying attention to all the current exhibitions and goings-on and the delightfully snarky comments hidden between lines of holier-than-thou well-fact-checked reporting. The library nearest where I lived in 2010 had a pile of old New Yorkers dating back to 2005: I took all of them. I carried them up the hill (like Kate Bush, but not running) in plastic bags and they ended up as a vast stack beside the toilet of the place we were living. The house was a depilated Victorian villa, which at some point during the 60s had been cut-up randomly into two flats. The fellow in the flat behind us lived somewhere else, and used his flat almost exclusively to brew beer. He made weed beer once, and gave me some to try.

-Weed beer! I said

-Yeah,  dock weed he said

-Oh, I said.

Dock weed, you see, contains a good quantity of vitamin C and as such was brewed by sailors to prevent scurvy. It tasted like one of those vitamin C pills people take around winter (you see them advertised in health shop run by women who smell like incense). It tasted suspiciously healthy. It probably would be worth marketing to people who eat kale (I realize kale jokes are old by now, but will there be any vegetable more iconic than kale is to the first two decades of this century? Coconuts, though not a vegetable, are perhaps a contender but kale is to our generation as turtle soup was to the Victorians).

I read most of the New Yorkers with great vigour. Outdated New Yorkers are great- especially reviews of restaurants which have no closed and profiles of things which are not a thing anymore (zunes, ipods, etc). One can gather a similar thrill from reading old NY Times fashion reviews of houses which do not exist anymore, or exist in a mutilated state. Now I subscribed to the New Yorker and I do not go to the library anymore. The only good thing at the library is the New Yorkers. Each week, a nicely packaged magazine comes, and I throw away the shrink wrap and I am up to date on the soylent situation or whatever. The library near where I lived has been changed somewhat, and the reading there is no good anyway.

My short digression on the New Yorker (and my love of it) is mostly to reflect on how absurd it is that I, one who is indifferent to magazines, was paid for to go to London and make some kind of pull-out poster zine with a bunch of other people. I don’t hate magazines. I was simply raised to believe they were too expensive, much like café food, and buying things “full price”. It is hard to rid myself of this nature, but I am progressing. I have spent around two hundred (NZD) on an alarm clock, and a hundred dollars on a candle (the candle smelt nice). The only magazine I ever purchased was the POP magazine I was in, because they never sent it to me. Logistics, etc.

Tavi was invited to go to London, and she ended up being on the cover of said magazine. Tavi invited me to tag along, and her friend Laia, and her friend Arabelle, who couldn’t come, so Elizabeth came along instead (now Elizabeth makes amazing ceramics: I know because of facebook).

I was sixteen and wore t-shirts and jeans and everybody dressed better than me. A driver in a black car took me from the airport to the POP magazine offices, which were down a nondescript street near a storefront with scale models of luxury yachts (they probably couldn’t fit the full-size yaughts in, ha ha) and one of those ubiquitous sandwich shops with a star logo. Several years after London I lived in the UK, and those sandwich shops were still around. The British must really like sandwiches.

We sat on a rooftop balcony and bottles of Evian seemed to aperate before us. We met a photographer named Jamie J! who had long hair, the kind Sirius Black might have if he were a hip! happening! fellow, and a similar squint to Marco Pierre White. Later googling would come to show that Jamie J! had a hit single (and only released one single). It was a cover of Walk on the Wild Side. Thereis a fantastic video which goes with  it. Jamie J! used film and had a nervous assistant who put new film into his cameras for him. He gave us each a copy of Buffalo, a book of photos from the 80s almost entirely of young attractive men. Perhaps he thought of this as his CV, because nobody else had heard of him. He said “punky funky” a lot. A few days later Jamie J took photos of us in a studio. I wore a Chanel cardigan worth too much money with the interlocking “C’s” as buttons, and big glasses.

-You look so handsome! said Elizabeth

-I mean, really? I said

-Yeah! said Elizabeth. I blushed inwardly. Elizabeth has a lot to answer for: she introduced me to Lauderee macaroons. That’s like, Big City Life, right there.

I kept the polaroids in my old violin case, along with a typewritten letter from a friend and a postcard from another friend. The polaroids made me feel less like a greasy, socially cumbersome teenager- they were like a reflection of an idealized self. A self who, obviously, could afford Chanel cardigans and big glasses.

the author, brooding and malcontent, a la Nick Cave circa Boatman's Call, circa 09

On (failing) to ask Rei Kawakubo what her favourite book is

I had the opportunity, once, to ask Rei Kawakubo a question. My question was "what are your favourite books?" and her answer on the sheet provided (her husband translated) was written as NO ANSWER, in caps (all her answers were written in caps, because Rei Kawakubo did Kanye before Kanye). This is partially due to my incompetence as an interviewer- is "what are your favourite books?" a good question? and partially due to my star-struck-shell-shocked self at being given the chance to ask the famous Ms. Kawakubo a question. I still think "what are your favourite books?" is a good question, because it seems so harmless. Most candidates will answer one of the hundred or so 'classics' which litter best-of lists with the reassuring predictability that best-of movie lists declare Citizen Kane the best film, like, ever, even though I am quite sure the number of people who have actually seen Citizen Kane decreases with every day, as the people who have seen it progressively die off. In twenty years the best-of lists will declare Fargo to be the best film ever. They are probably right.

There are multiple possible reasons we can gleam from Ms. Kawakubo's refusal to answer: perhaps she does not even read, per se, at all, merely absorbs the content of whatever book she is interested in by some form of osmosis, and in a library is confronted by the sheer bulk of knowledge that it all blends into some ultra-book, where Joyce meets Atwood meets Mahy. Perhaps she refuses all forms of media, in order to incubate herself from outside forms of interference (a more sophisticated version of wearing a tin-foil hat). Perhaps she thought my question was stupid and pointless and not worth answering. I am certain it was the last answer.

It is a banal question, though unintentionally revealing. Yohji Yamamoto has talked about The Family of Man being one of his favourite books. Once you connect Steichen to Yamamoto, all kinds of connections begin to appear: the worn-in, 'dusty' everyday feeling Steichen captures so well. Yamamoto's coats, with their odd proportions and heavy duty fabrics take on a logic beyond their stylistic lexicon. It's as if grandpa Yohji is trying to capture the broadness of the whole world. Or as Steichen puts it: "If the human face is “the masterpiece of God” it is here then in a thousand fateful registrations."

I don't know if I knew what Yamamoto's favourite book was when I asked submitted the question. Yamamoto's answer helped me understand his clothes better; in the same way, Kawakubo's answer did too. NO ANSWER explains Kawakubo's mindset perfectly, just as Family of Man explains Yamamoto's. I should've asked what her favourite pizza was.

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.

A Fine Tradition

I like to spend mornings in bed with a dictionary, of which I cut out all the ugly words with a small golden guillotine I have named Jean Rameu (pronounced John, of course). John Rameu and I do enjoy cutting out such words as "moist" and "spit" and "phlegm" and so on- I think of it as a kind of act of beauty for the world. If one eradicates ugly words, how can one express ugliness? Well, one can dress badly or be ugly, but it does cut down on the word pollution one can hear going into any supermarket that doesn't have a valet of it's own. When I am done I wil release the dictionary into the wild and perhaps the tongues of everybody will turn silver. It's linguistic eugenics, really.

In any case as I lay in bed with Jean Rameu and Chopette (who you will recall is my cat, of course), I was notified of the unfortunate news regarding the Italian fellows Dolce and Gabbana. Though I certainly cannot claim any affinity for their work, I did raise my perfectly formed eyebrow somewhat. Jail is for hooligans and the uncouth (though I have long contested that The Unabomber is the chicest man in prison and plan to do a ready-to-wear collection inspired by him one day- survivalist chic, if you follow). "Why are they going to prison?" I wondered, til an assistant told me they had evaded a billion dollars or so in tax. I clapped my begloved hands together, my mercury rings clinking against one another (I wear mercury so nobody can copy my rings). "Aha!" I said. "They are continuing a great tradition, hm?" I recalled my great friends the Medicis, who were fantastic art collectors and happened to be Italian also. They managed to evade all the tax. I said to Chopette "Domenico and Stefano weren't so lucky", a line that seems redundant. As I have often said, luck is a more vulgar word for nepotism, and the Italian fellows clearly did not have enough nepotism. Do you know what the secret of the Medicis was? Nepotism. I sighed a great galaxy-creating sigh and telephoned Martha Stewart, who also happens to be a more recent friend than the Medicis. I like Martha: she is tough. You must be tough to be perfect. Diamonds are tough. Marshmallows are not. I solicited some advice on behalf of the unfortunate Italians, because as I said, they aren't quite hooligans. She said to ask for the cotton jumpsuits. Fair advice, I said, inquiring whether the prison had linen jumpsuits, and which seamstress was making them?

Lagergraph

See, I think the best way of doing an internet blog these days is to update as little as possible, because now we are in the instant generation of all the tweeting and so on- everybody updates their blog a billion times a day- so clearly, the logical thing is not to be instant. To release an album every 20 years and have it acclaimed as a Masterstroke of Genius, for instance.

I propose a new system of the social media: the anti-twitter. I call it The Lagergraph. Various friends- mostly despicable Germans- have pointed out that it has an unfortunate connotation to the popular drink of the lower classes, "Lager". I told all of them that the Lagerfeld name is undoubtably older, and who in fashion would know of lager, anyway? Lager is what they use to advertise football with, non? Champagne is what they use to advertise fashion with. Martinis, perhaps, but generally one will find they are for ugly Washington power brokers in terribly fitting suits. Hence Lagergraph.

The idea behind Lagergraph is this: you can send a message to an assistant, who will receive your message and then place it in a safety deposit box. It will sit in the safety deposit box- and I can assure you that the safety deposit box is well-made by artistans who previously made deposit boxes for Dictators in Questionable Positions (I believe some are even still living in said safety deposit boxes)- and then, after a period of time- perhaps two years, perhaps five years, they will tie the message onto the back of a pigeon who will carry it to the recipient. Is the recipient twitter? Then it will give it to twitter! Is the recipient to an email? It will give it to the email! So simple, hm? Yet so perfect.

The future is not fast. The future is slow. Slow is the new fast. The future is The Lagergraph.

Bound on Unicorn Skin Paper

This morning (it's always morning, isn't it? Never evening- unless you're the president or dictator of a country, in which case the news comes to you first so you can vet it. I did this myself during my term as the President of The Land Of The Chosen- a small island I created sometime in the mid-2000s where only the truly beautiful could live- eventually we closed the island after being mistaken for "God's chosen people", which is not the same thing at all as Karl's chosen people. God is a small fry. Buddha is the Yamamoto of religion, no? Yet the weight problem-)

Where was I? Well. I received an email from a young man named "Kevin" and the general gist of his email was that he has made my novel vanish from the popular web-site "Smashwords". I rang him up. I even dotted in the numbers myself.
"Hello", I said.
"Hello" said Kevin.
"You have made my book vanish"
"Well, sir, your book was improperly formatted"
"It was formatted to how I wanted it"
Kevin sighed. "Sir, your books must be formatted according to the Smashwords guidelines. Imagine if men wore skirts! And women wore pants!"
"The only reason I do not wear skirts is because I would look like my mother", I said. "But not all men look like their mothers. Do you look like your mother?"
"I don't believe so, sir. I have a beard"
"That is irrelevant"
"I think it's fairly relevant"
"Is it relevant if you put the emphasis on the first beat or second beat of your walk?"
"I don't think I understand the question"
I sighed. "Don't you understand?" I said. "The point is, some people put the emphasis on the first beat of their walk- CLIP-clop, and others on the second- clop-CLIP. Do you discriminate toward the clop-CLIPers?"
"No-" said Kevin, stroking his beard like the answer might perhaps be in it, somewhere.

I hung up. I cannot tolerate stupidity. I called Henerana, my Swedish assistant. She is very tall, Henerana. I asked her to bind the pages of the novel on the unicorn-skin paper I had made and make a cover out of the remnants of her soul.
"Of course" she said. I tossed her the remaining half of the novel- my mother always told me that Ms. Wharton would do this- tossed her assistant the pages of the novel in no particular order. I thought it was a marvelous idea.

So, perhaps it was me

Here is a confession that'll surprise none of you: it was actually I who planned the Yves Saint Laurent name change, from Yves Saint Laurent to Saint Laurent Paris. I do not mind the young chap who formerly designed there, he was a good designer but didn't have the hip-to-the-minute thing that Hedi does. I'm sure he'll do fine at Bill Blass or somewhere like that. Hedi, as you know, is a good friend of mine and has been doing next-to-nothing for the last few years. "Hedi!" I would tell him, putting my best exclamation mark I'd had custom made for me by Fitzgerald. "Hedi! You must stop being so lazy! You haven't designed a spic of clothes in years! What if you die tomorrow! Everybody will think, what a failure, but couldn't he have been OK?", and then I would walk away with my ponytail down, and he would do that shrug all young men of a certain generation do.

As I told Yves in 1974, I take a while to get to my revenge. But I get there eventually, when nobody expects it. But my plan involves not only revenge- it is also to get Hedi working again, and to stop being a lazy do-nothing-all-day. Anna tells me this was her plan with Olivier Theyskens, and I said, how well did that work out? She gave me the shrug all women of a certain generation do and tilted her bob away from me.

Kittens

There's been reports of I, Karl Lagerfeld, getting a kitten, and mostly these reports have been planted by me. I can confirm that they are true and that right now Choupette is sitting on her pillow beside me, as I dictate this post to the famous musician Bonnie Prince Billy. When I say famous musician, I say it with regret because for some time I heard the name "Bonnie Prince Billy" and believed he was some kind of German prince from around 1820, stepped with romanticism, wearing a small felt hat and riding a white pony named Ludwig. Of course, I am not as foolish to believe that it is still the 1820s, but I did believe that Bonnie Prince Billy had somehow transplanted himself here from another time and place. That sort of thing happens all the time.

In any case, I took it upon myself to lure Mr. Prince Billy into my Paris apartment by creating a trail of very expensive embossed paper, much like Hansel and Gretel, but in reverse. Obviously it worked, as his rather un-princely hands that resemble more of a lumberjack (again, Hansel and Gretel- the world is a fairytale) than anything else, are typing this post right now.

The truth about Choupette is that I'm no longer content with the everyday business of spying- spying on people in restaurants, in bistros, in cafes, in saunas. This is how I know everything that has ever happened. I have footage of Jesus being nailed to the cross, accompanied by The Tiger Lilies singing Banging In the Nails. Of course, the music came afterwards. But it makes for much better viewing that agonized screaming and all that- of his fans, of course. Mr. Christ himself looks rather smug. I am drifting away from the topic at hand. My point is, is that one day I realized that all my careful monitoring had only been of the human world. Yes, I know the truth behind dozens of assassinations and the moon landing and whatnot, but what were the ants thinking? What were the birds thinking? This has alluded me, and during my conversations with Choupette, who I met when she materialized one day at my doorstep in a Hermès hat-case, I realized that with her network of contacts I could start to monitor what all of nature thinks and does.

I am not calling myself a Dr. Doolittle. This is simply an exercise to further my knowledge of the world in a way I couldn't do with humans. It is also part of my plan- in my ten year plan, as a politician would say, to build an army of cats who will attach all the substandard fabric in the world and rip it to shreds until there is no my substandard fabric left. All in the ten year plan, hm?

Impostors

It is not often I post anymore, and many of you will be wondering why this is. Well, dear readers, the reason is because a Karl Lagerfeld imitator and his cohorts- socialists and exiled dictators of island nations- imprisoned me inside a chamber consisting of non-ironic tropical print shirts and beige shorts. The very ugliness of the clothing weakened me, eating away at the very fabric of my twelve thousand dollar suit. My high collars (I carry a spare two on me at all times, as a proper gentleman should) were a vestige of the past, and my unicorn-leather shoes simply fell off my feet and shrank like a dehydrated tomato. I have spent the last four months clawing my way out of the chamber, resewing the tropical shirts into the finest vestments of couture and the beige into sari wraps Ms. Vreeland would've been proud to wear. It has been a long journey. It has been painful. To be honest- to be perfectly honest with you, dear readers, I feared for my survival. The beige was that particular shade of beige found in cheap hotels and hospitals that is so hard to work with that it has exterminated whole nations of dessert-dwelling citizens.

Anyway. I am out of that particular quagmire, and the sari wraps and tropical shirt dresses have been sold to very wealthy women with more money than cocktail glasses (or champagne), and I have reasserted my authority as The Actual Karl Lagerfeld. The impostor is apparently trying to launch a collection of low-cost garments under a line called "Karl". I do not do low cost. I do high cost. He has convinced a fair few people, though- he has had the plastic surgery and powerful people are funding him. However, these powerful people dress badly. This is the clue that this "Karl"- one could even call him "Fake Karl", if one wanted- is a fraud. His powerful funders wear shoulder pads. They own a lot of polyester. They own whole closets made out of polyester. What was my solution? Well, it was to string up this Karl impostor in black silk, while I imitated a spider and then put the Karl impostor inside a large dehydrator we obtained from El Bulli, and then- here is the brilliant part- we raised the prices of the "Karl" line. Then everything was OK. I had solved the problem, and I sat back in my Karl Lagerfeld designed chair and read my Karl Lagerfeld designed book of Karl Lagerfeld-taken photographs.

MASTERS.

My Dearest Borrowed Constituency,

I have spent several weeks walled in the lining of Karl's libraries. His libraries, you see, are mere facades created largely to conceal the books that he has behind them. Karl himself has no interest of the particular matter that has intrigued me but has occasionally a wisp of Chanel No. 5 would mist under the door and materialise into his form.

We acknowledging each other only with the gentlest movement of our noses. I put the kettle on, which was leant to me by my dear friend Cecil, brew tea from the colour Umber and speak in utters.

you can hear him think

ing, it sounds like an old house in a high wind or a crotchet

y clock that refuses to strike 12 - making Cinderella dance forever and never turn back to rags.)

I have discovered such a thing called University. There are many of them, almost like a franchise that specialises in selling Very Little. Some more than others, I'll admit. It is the perfect farce.

I myself never particularly had the need for University. I was approached about working and I thought I might try it for a lark. Apparently there are even entire places that specialise in teaching one how to create. Not just garments and the like, which I could understand as they have some sort of technical know-how that I imagine would be harder to absorb by diffusion. One can garner a Master of Writing from such a place, as though the accreditation is an actual thing.

Part of my perusing of said places I stumbled across one of these supposed writers. She was half a lay-about, catatonic apathy had passed over her and she described it as "musing". She waved a limp hand at a pile of scrap paper, covered in half thoughts.
- Writing is easy - she said - Mondays and Wednesdays I work on my novel, Tuesdays I tutor, Thursdays... -

- Goldfish - I muttered under my breath as I ran my scatter claws through her scraps. I found one piece of writing that had been created by cellotape and half thought thoughts.

If I still had a functioning oesophagus or tearducts then I... I don't know what would have happened, but it wouldn't have been FASHION. I am lucky I had them removed at a young age.

Masters.

The lord giveth

Question: Is Karl's new novel ready yet?

Answer: Yes, it it. Part one is ready to be purchased, for two dollars- the price of bourgeois person's soul, if I believed in such things. When part two is ready, the novel will be updated and you will find yourself with part two glaring at you on your ipad or kindle or whatever you read with, if you are one of those heathens who use digital. A better idea is to have your book binder bind a copy for you. And bind a new book for "part two", and "part three" and so on.

Question: Where can I purchase this fine book?

Answer: here.

Art, I suppose

One must remember that to be in the art world is to be pretty (gorgeous is even better- but not too gorgeous, otherwise you are regulated to the zoo of models). I made this observation when I was looking at photos my agents in Venice dredged up, from this Venice art fair that goes on there. Everybody looked exactly the same- as if they were transplants from the hair of the fashion world, and everybody knows that fashion has no heir, so everything is particularly stark and boring. There is a reason Anna only attends fashion world parties for 15 minutes- they are simply insufferably boring events filled with so many patting each other on the back that one begins to suspect one is in some sort of modern dance instillation (the most terrifying aspect of this being that you're surrounded by all these modern dancers, slapping each other on the back- not too hard as to damage their finely-sculpted skin, and that getting out means moving around them and through them).

I said to my assistant, "you know, the problem with art today is that there's too many pretty people, and they all look so similar, so the art they produce is so similar and everything's boring. Andy Warhol was never pretty. It's his mistake, though, probably- the Edie mistake. Now everyone wants to be an Edie and nobody wants to be an Andy".

"Oh."

"And that's the problem- nobody wants to be ugly anymore. Too many good looking people. Make a note of that. I only want to hire conjoined twins and circus freaks from now on- hire the entire Diane Arbus range of people. Is there a place that sells them? Buy them in bulk. Staff them in the stores. Give a few stickers that they can stick on themselves and say "artist".

"Is that what makes an artist?"

"Of course. I have a label sewn into this suit that says "dressmaker".

A bit later, when the assistant was gone, I started talking to myself.

"The collectors used to be odd looking too, you know- bulbous New York men in Italian suits and women wearing colours that'd make Matisse blush. The collectors are boring looking as well, now. Is it because of boring looking art? Does boring looking art breed boring looking people?" I started throwing some Picassos out the window, in the hope that some women would look at the painting and give birth to an interesting-looking, interesting-thinking child. I put the Jeff Koons I was sent as a gift into the deepest darkest depths of my closest, hoping nobody would be able to see it ever- dull art is a dangerous thing, you know. I threw several Cartier-Bressons out the window beside the first window, and out the third window I threw several volumes of a Lee Friedlander book, in the hope that somebody would give birth to a child who doesn't follow the terrors of the Düsseldorf school of photography, and those hideous Becher people- I met them once and they made their cups of tea exactly the same way, every time. I asked them if they ever got bored and they smiled tightly.

And While None Of You Were Paying Attention

Loyal Readers,

By now you will think that I have grown bored of this blog thing, that I have perhaps obtained a tumblr where I post pictures of macaroons with my portrait on them, or that I have decided to leave the world of the world wide interweb entirely and sculpt men I find beautiful and desirable out of materials such as chocolate or coffee. This has all been a rouse, as the more onto it of you will have realized. You who saw the symbols I wrote in the sky, and the smoke signals I made at the Vermont property, and the little encoded bits of information I've placed in the last few Chanel collections. Your savior has not left you, your savior has just reached the stage where he prefers to be perverse and cryptic to wheedle out all the chaff and find out who my True Followers are. This is important. I do not believe in a democratic system of any sort, and nor do I for these web-blogs. True Believers would've noticed the way I wrinkled my nose last Saturday at the Charity Function For Rich People With Too Much Money And Who Cares What The Cause Is Anyway? and they would've went to their special-edition Karl Lagerfeld decoder books, and matched up the nose wrinkle with their deluxe-edition Karl Lagerfeld mood ring, and then consulted the length of the grass outside, and known "ah! it is coming!"

And what is coming, dear readers? What is coming is a novel which I have written. It is in digital form, because digital is more in the moment than print anyway, and it will come out in installments. It will be like playing Waiting For Godot, the book. Or it will be like living in Victorian England and waiting for a new installment of Dickens' latest novel about social injustice and all that rubbish. Or it will be like waiting for one stone tablet at a time. Except this is essentially the greatest novel since Ulysses, and will be more influential than The Bible.

Look out for further signals. Pray often (and don't even think about praying if you're not well dressed).

A-R-T

Contemplating the word lackadaisical - I have decided is the drunk on the footpath of words - I, quite appropriately, stumbled into a little art gallery.

I say art gallery, when really those two words need capitals. Art Gallery. Capitals imply intent, which is why all countries have them. Art. Gallery. There was a Photography Showing on. The place was filled with those types of people who Look Down Upon Fashion and simultaneously Aspire To Be Fashionable. Have you seen them? I suppose you have. They have a long lost love affair with bowler hats, men and women, almost as though they are reconnecting with someone else’s roots. Bowler hats were in fashion when I was a chit.

Can one even do that? By the by, Mr. Steinmann, could I possibly reconnect with you? I do so like those curly sideburns you flaunt. They are very Fashion.

My word, I spun, or rather, my assistants turned the pedestal I happened to be standing on at the time, Who are You?

Me?! He said, brandishing his arms in a manner that implied my question was not worth answering. Who are You! He answered

My dear –

I don’t want any patrons of the arts! – he cut me off – I don’t want your approval! Go and buy your Hirst’s and Tillman’s, I don’t want any of your type there. You… you are too shiny!

That would be the gold I dust myself with each morning.

It is shiny!

I turned, or rather, my assistants turned me.
It is shiny - I conceded – but that was my intent.

Intent, PAH! – he threw his arms up in the air once more – you are just like every other burgeoning excuse for a photographer with your digital cameras and your photoshopping images to make them look as if they’re not digital and the way that you look at your camera after every shot. PAH! You don’t know ART. You don’t know what ART is!

My dear – I raised an eyebrow and began making icicles form mid-air – I was alive when Art was INVENTED. I have followed Art with Great Interest! What is this picture? It is a cloud.

It is MORE THAN JUST A CLOUD.

It is a cloud. In a sky.

IT IS ART. IT IS AN ABSTRACT PAINTING. LOOK AT THE COLOUR BLUE.

That is precisely the colour blue from the cover of my first editorial.

IT IS AN ORIGINAL COLOUR BLUE.

I believe it was then stolen from me by Chanel herself.

LOOK AT THE COLOUR. IT IS AN ABSTRACT PAINTING.

Yes, I conceded, growing tired. It is an abstract painting. Of a cloud. I can tell what is going to happen now - I said to this person, turning on my pedestal, looking for any lying lackadaisicals - The end is going to just arrive like someone unwanted at a small party.

I IMAGINE IT WILL.

In which I deem you worthy of hearing my thoughts

You know, I've been busy. I've been busy filming things like Magnum commercials, commercials for detergents, and commercials for washing machines. It is all quite a serious business! I designed the last few collections in my sleep, whilst planning out the Magnum commercial (why is she eating the Magnum? Who is she eating the Magnum? What is Magnum, when I fondle my jackets and observe the world for the imported room of no-decaying ice I had imported from Antartica?) I've come to the conclusion that Magnum is possibly more important that fashion in the world, right at this very moment. It is of the moment, hm? This clothing business is so- well, it is so overexposed, as the Californians say.

-Why do you bother wearing clothes? I asked my assistant

-How would I be fashionable without clothing? he said

-How would you be fashion without clothing? I corrected

-How would I be fashion without clothing? he said

-Fashion is inside where your heart used to be, I told him. Do you still have your heart?

He tried to look shocked at the mere suggestion that he still had his heart and hadn't sold it for a piece of couture, or a drink at a hip bar in Paris.

-Of course not! he said. How could I store fashion (he pointed to his heart) there, if I still had a heart?

-How would you still be alive, my dear boy? I said

-With...with the power of fashion? he said.

-Fashion does not power you, I said. Power fashions you.

-You are so wise! he said. I could hear his little heart ticking away at an accelerated pace. I could smell the blood pumping through it.

-Poland fashions you! I said

-Poland fashions me?

-Fashion you Poland! I said

The assistant looked confused. I had another assistant cut his heart out, with a silver pair of scissors designed by Tadao Ando. His little heart continued to beat as it sat on a silver platter with "Chanel" engraved on it.

-Oh, dear, I said

-Oh dearie me, said the other assistant

-His heart is far too red

-Far too fleshy, said the other assistant

-Far too...meaty said Cathy Horyn.

-Lost cause, said nobody in particular.

This is the thing with the Magnum. It is an object of beauty. It must not be consumed, of course. Does one consume a Van Gogh or a plate of caviar? Of course not. Both the painting and plate of caviar sit there to be admired, as a challenge.

"I must not eat the Van Gogh", a lady in her nightgown might say to herself, as she wanders off to be- tempted as she is to eat it.

The Magnum functions on the same level. It is to be place with the Van Gogh and the caviar, as a kind of democratic challenge to every person who passes it. The fattie will eat it right away, as will anybody who is uneducated. I do not mean in the sense of someone who has not been to university. I did not go to university, and I am the greatest person on this planet at the moment. I have met plenty of sniveling little youths who come to my door and plead for an internship.

-Oh, please Karl! This is the job a million girls would kill for! I have a degree in ethnoeuropean social sciences involving the chronology of western counterpoint, specifically in relation to how Russian composers effect Russia's economy!

What I mean by educated is dressing well. If one does not dress well, nobody will bother hiring you. Nobody will want to look at you, because you are an eyesore. And how can one deal with people if they are dressing terribly? Here is a good thesis, for all the students who read this web-blog: How does bad dressing effect a nation's economy? The answer, of course, is 42.

Melbourne, My Word!

K darling.

I was out on my nightly stroll just now and found myself the subject of birds. Not in an entirely Hitchcock way as they weren't attacking so much as nestling in my hair. I had paused to contemplate the colour red (and came up with Brimstone) but by the time my thoughts had settled, I had become the subject of several crows.

My word, I thought, as my assistants avidly scrubbed the nearest shop window so I could admire myself in it - THIS is couture. Just as this realisation passed me, a girl in a polyester floral top and the suggestion of shorts (I would repeat the word "short" to illustrate the style of the item in question but I have a contract with Vogue that disallows me to speak or acknowledge that which is not Style.) It was disenchanting enough that someone who is not invisible decided to interrupt my musing, but to her discredit, she snorted in laughter as her thighs (designed by Ed Hardy in the style of Roast Hams) rubbed across my vision. Do not pretend to hide behind your hands. Those claws cannot hide your unworthy disdain.

This is not the first instance of the unlooked judging those in power. As I have been in the vaults so long, it did take me by surprise. Does this city of Melbourne, in which I visit, sincerely exist outside the realms of couture? Surely not all of these people are so uncultured?

I am almost certain that somewhere close there will be a tattoo parlour here that only tattoo stars and butterflies. I can see it now, the person behind the counter is tall with jet black hair. Perhaps scattered with sailor tattoos. If one wanted to get a tattoo of a butterfly, why not live in a museum and pin one's wings to oneself every day? Or hire assistants to collect the coloured butterfly dust and use that to make dye in which to stain a silk patch in which you sew to yourself? This is fashion. This is Style.

I may have to make arrangements so that I wont be here much longer. In the meantime I will speak to the authorities about keeping the general constituency locked in discount marts where they can spend their hard earned money on excess floral and perfume so heavy in chemicals it burns slightly on the skin.

Warmest,

x D

Affairs

Welcome to the Roaring 30s.

You know what was chic in the 30s? Not dying was chic, although with World Wars flying all over the place, sometimes it was difficult to avoid this. It is still chic to be not dead, although while I was well known to be dead it briefly came into fashion. People would turn up at parties all the time looking like death. But what was really chic was affairs. Torrid, vapid, rampant affairs right across groups in your social strata*.

I imagine a lot of you down there exist in small towns so there really only are three or four people that you could have an affair with whose ancestry was far enough away from yours not to be considered incest.

Even then you would run into the problem of people always knowing your business, or being related to too many people. Or even worse, being forced to become a swinger - which was only coined, popularised and desecrated much later.

You say swinger to a Danish person and they'll think it's someone who dances well. I remember the scandal erupting in Copenhagen where someone walked in on passionate the love making of a man and his wife.

- HOW ODD! - People sent by silent morse code to each other, wondering what their own wives would be like in bed.

The Danes are so beautiful they can get away with this, though. Someone with my nose needs to be more careful with how they perceive the world.

No, it has always been chic to have affairs. I had one in the 30s that lasted 3 years. Just the one affair, one tryst that just never ceased. 3 years to the day I decided that red heads would not be chic again for another 70 years.

How glorious it was in those days. You would see your husband or respective partner with hislover and have a great big row - despite the fact you were on your way to see yours and your lover had just come from seeing theirs. Alcohol and torrid affairs - champagne for breakfast and lovers for lunch.

I guess what I am saying, my dearest readers, is that the imminency of life and the departing of this world has been taken from us and as a result we are forced to live dull, unexciting, quiet lives. To add insult to injury, with the abundance of education on offer, we can be acutely perceptive of this dullness to the point of articulating it perfectly.

I say "we" but I assume you understand I mean "we" excluding myself. The vaults of the museum I had purposely perfectly preserved a party from the 1930s so as I never get un-lived. Every museum has one, although the Natural History museum preserved a dinner party from the 1950s and that one is a gods-honest bore.

I say, might I ask, if one doesn't live in my perpetual party, what is it that one does these days to live up there?

D

*So long, of course, as you kept to your social strata. Scandals are so unabashedly un-chic.

D's Arc

Dearest Readers,

I am creating an Arc. I say Arc because it will be far more akin to a Corbusier chair than the monstrosity Noah created. It occurred to me that with the imminent and exponential expansion of populations across the world (people do insist on breeding so voraciously, don't they?), the increase of unlookers may, too, exponentially increase.

More to the fact, with this large expansion in population, clothes from Chanel, LV, Commes de Garcons, will all rise sharply in price. Good clothing is like any precious stone or metal, there is only a set amount of it and the higher the demand, the more the price. This means that more and more the unlookers (sometimes confused with the Unwashed - though I fear for the inter-breeding of the two) will become more and more Unlooked. But also there will be a greater margin of them.

Those who can afford to float like the cream of the ever expanding population - and our numbers will dwindle slightly, too, for not everyone has the stamina to maintain such wealth - will be the only ones who can afford such style.

Eventually the waves of unlookers will become a sea of unwashed hair and dowdy blouses that will rise up against their Fashion Gods with a vengeance to rival that of a Napoleonic sneeze (I'm told, they too, are voracious). Their attacks on their beloved Fashion Gods have already commenced with the susurrous around Model weight (which is ridiculous, because a good model don't have a weight) and body image (which is also ridiculous as everyone knows that ones body image exists only in photographs and thus can be altered).

I am collecting Worthy People to join my arc. K will be first on board, he will be blessing everyone after who boards with a Chanel logo in No. 5 upon their forehead. Anna Wintour will be next, who will thusly judge everyone, silently, on what they wear. She will whisper to me the rumours or sightings that anyone has seen of those who wear Track Pants or clothing made from mixed blends. These people are spies for the unlookers. Only an unlooker could be fooled into buying something so cheaply made and highly priced as Juicy Couture.

Once inside, they will be met with collections from all the designers onboard. They will be provided with internet so as to be still in touch with the world at large, if only to remind unlookers of how much less privileged they are and to erase the trails of how they became so privileged.

Then, not unlike cream on the top of fresh milk, we will float away on this sea of unlookers in search for the Promised Land. Once arrived, K will place a single flag made entirely from silk so fine you can only see it when the sunshine hits it at 9am. It will be declared New New York.

I do hope you can make it.

D