Thursday, July 23, 2009

A Terribly Verbose Interview

This is the full text of an interview I gave a while ago, but it seems the magazine never launched. I posted a couple of my answers here a bit back- here's all of it, in its full, monstrous entirety. I think long things are important- especially long pieces of writing. It seems recently people have became more and more ADHD and can barely read a 200 word post. It's terrible. It's foolish. Nobody's going to condense War and Peace down to 200 words for you. Nobody's going to condense Nabokov down to 200 words for you. Ridiculous. Go read a book, you lazy urchins.

..You also once mentioned inspecting a jacket to see if it was fake including licking it and whispering to it in a sensual voice. Is this something other people can do?

It really depends on how good of a lover they are. I see, these days, that most people only make love to humans, but this is a very new idea. In the 60's they made love to everything. Actually- that's not true- I see people making love to all sorts of things these days, but they're very boring things: treadmills, cellphones, spatulas. Who wants to make love to a spatula?

If there is a real Fake Karl, is there really a Real Karl?
If a is b, is c harmonica?

You wrote, “I feel like Paris is a place for lovers to watch movies in bed.” Can you tell us more what you think of lovers in Paris?

A long time ago, a friend of mine was travelling down the line- the telephone line- where he met up with a mule who carried him safely into a little town where he met a girl. The girl wore black, and she was very chic. She carried heels with her wherever she went, in a wooden luggage box. The girl was just standing there, looking over his shoulder, her scarf over her mouth but her eyes looking into his. They fell in love, once they got over the logistics of her looking over his shoulder whilst he somehow twisted his head in her direction in order to lock eyes. This friend of mine, it was another time really, he sent me postcards on the pony express, which would get to Paris about once every month, give or take a couple of days. They were madly in love. They decided to get married, and all those other sort of lover-ly things. Personally, it made me vomit quietly in my mouth; but I couldn't do a thing. They had dreams together, and dreams don't die so easily- they're about as immune to death as I. One day, the girl wasn't wearing black anymore, and she just broke his heart. A sad story, don't you think?

That's what I think of lovers. I think they're just a setup to heartbreak, hmm? It's better to have not loved at all and be a genius, than love and be mediocre. Or love someone who's mediocre- that's just as bad.

But what about these lovers in Paris? Are they any different? Oh, I wish they were. They just make my heart freeze the more. Yes, those with their little berets and such; their little trimmed moustaches and little black dresses. Yet it happens all again- somebody drinks some medicine, and their heart changes, like an old grandfather clock. It's a very ineffective piece of equipment. And it's very fragile.

You wrote, “Diet Coke, of course, goes with everything. It is the new black.” Is diet coke food? Can you eat anything that doesn’t have calories?

I'm actually convinced the very act of eating creates calories in itself. And of course, Diet Coke is not food. Food implies eating and eating implies calories.

Do you have a cookbook and where can I buy it?

What sort of things does one cook in a book? Expect figures, of course. Figure skaters are very good material for a cookbook. You can buy it at all good bookstores (which these days seem like a dying breed. You'd better catch one before they're all dead.)

If you don't like fatties, how come Chanel offers big sizes (2, 4,....6)? Do you think that is why Margiela puts spandex in everything (complete with face cover), because they like fatties?

Chanel does have a ultra-ladylike drag-queen clientele, and the larger sizes cater to them. Margiela is just lazy. He's about as active in his company as Colonel Sanders is in KFC.

Were you ever a German Ja-men before you were King Karl? Maybe when you worked at Balmain? In reference to your recent autobiography “King Karl, Better Than Yves”

Non! I was born before Germany even existed. I was born in Prussia. Let us not talk about Balmain...I would hate to traumatize you, child.

Was there ever a time when you were not King Karl?

What about King Kong? Was there any time when he wasn't King Kong?

I noticed you were a rap-artiste before rap was invented. Can you tell me more about this?

It's very simple. I speak so fast it ends up sounding like a rap, and one day I was walking down hell's kitchen and Bob Dylan heard me, as well as Louis Armstrong. That ended up being the geniuses of rap, before it was desecrated by the so called "rappers" of today. Gosh, back in Germany we used to have fast-talking competitions (when I was a child), and I would always win. Nowadays one would call it a "Rap Battle" or something equally inane.

You mentioned, “Dressing well is better than being a good person, anyway. I know celebrities.” Can you tell us more about the celebrities you know?

Most of the people I know are not so unknown, hmm? I could spend all day talking to you about the celebrities I know. They all are part of a secret clubhouse, though. It's in the biggest tree in the world, and requires a silver-plated invite (we got rid of the gold plated invites when we heard about this crunchy credit thing. They're in a dumpster somewhere, I imagine.)

Where can we send money to support ex-models who got fat and now need bras?

I actually suggest sending them directly to the models themselves. For instance, you could buy Kate Moss a bra or two- I hear she's a b-cup now. There's also the "Cindy Crawford Time Travel Foundation", which is a foundation Cindy created to transport the models who require bras to the 80's and such, where models were allowed breasts. Thus, many of the models of today are also yesteryear's models.
You wrote, “It's like one of those useless parts of the body- like the heart or some such.” If you don’t use your heart, how do you make love?

Personally, I find the heart redundant- the ancient Mayans used the heart to make love to their gods, yet these days that sort of practice is frowned upon- the ripping out of hearts out of human beings. I can't imagine why.
I make love by whispering sweet nothings into the wind, when the evening is spread out against the sky.

“Karl has just informed me that this morning he promoted himself from "demi-god" to "Kaiser H. "Coco" Lagerfeld ", a bit redundant, would you say?-- well I wouldn't... don't feel like getting slapped)” I believe that was written by Anna. Does this mean there will soon be a Kaiser H. “Coco” Lagerfeld label? Where can we buy?

Yves wrote that, actually. I give him a good slapping every now and again. You know, I think it's a brilliant label without actual clothes. I could just have a store with no clothes, that people pay to come to. I would do that if there wasn't already stores like it- "Margiela" comes to mind.


Why do you let that American girl Anna blog for you sometimes? She’s not Paris ( Note: Bob Dylan we are sure has no address, or passport)

Her therapist says blogging's good for her. She's convinced alcohol's good for her. The two go together, as I'm sure many a blogger will inform you. Anna's a little friend of mine, if you know what I mean.


Speaking of...you wrote, “Maybe give him a record deal- Jesus and the Stoners (everybody must get stoned, hmm?). “ Are you implying Bob Dylan the second coming? Explain.

Am I? Maybe I'm the second coming. Maybe Bob Dylan's the fourth coming, or the sixth coming. Maybe John Peel is the seventh coming and Steve Albini is the 12th coming. There's all these comings and goings, you don't really know who's supposed to be the messiah and who's the tea boy. Perhaps the tea boy is the second coming.

Where is Brad these days? Why doesn’t he blog for you?

Brad who?

Did you ever find out what Jealousy was? Did it end up being from the middle classes?

I started looking down a suburban street for jealousy. I saw mothers in zoot suits, and fathers in polo shirts, and children in brown suits and flowery dresses. Over the road the family wore the same thing- zoot suits and such. Yet each family looked over the road at the other family like the had something the other didn't have. This confused me. I walked to the next house, where a 40 year old woman with blonde hair trailing down her back had her dress unzipped by a fat man with grey hair. I felt like I was in some TV series. I went to the city with it's metropolitan metal, and I found lawyers hanging off highrise towers: I asked them if they knew what jealousy was, but they just shrugged and directed me to the nearest white house. So I got into the white house, where they were serving sixteen white horses on white plates, and all smiled. I had heard that people who smile are not jealous, and I went elsewhere, toward the heart of the middle classes- the workplace. Yet, I saw people smiling here too. I wondered to myself: Is jealousy something which people pretend not to have? After this...epiphany, I wandered over to the Met ball, where I finally found jealousy by lifting up the wigs of the ladies who go there.

Can you confirm Martin has an Eskimo designing his last collection?

A corporate Eskimo. He wears a very warm suit to work.

You wrote, "Fashion is not a translation of the street, nor is the street a translation of fashion." By fashion, do you mean Chanel? Also, have you ever been on the Internet?

Non, I don't just mean Chanel. I also design Fendi and my own line, Karl Lagerfeld. I don't go on the internet; I hear it places your tracks in concrete, and I always tread in snow. With a big stick.

Do you think Carine is a part of a secret plot to replace the classic Chanel jacket with the new Balmain jacket? Do you think Emmanuelle Alt is a decoy robot of this movement who has been built to take some of the pressure off Carine?

For a very long time I was confused to who this Emmanuelle Alt is. I would be at parties, and if they were in France one of my people would tell me that this Alt person was also there. Yet I was never sure what this person looked like- are they are boy or a girl? Emmanuelle sounds like the name of a bad Spanish chef. Eventually I saw Emmanuelle's photo on a dart board in Anna's office at Vogue- "who's that?", asks I, "Oh, that skunk Emanuelle" Anna told me- or rather spat at me. Now, I am still not sure whether Alt is a robot or some sort of brainless, trend-following moron. The terms are not mutually exclusive, of course.

Carine, she is one of the "cool kids" who thinks she is oh-so-chic in her Balmain jacket. One wonders whether she was stoned out of her mind for the entire period of the 80's- it's not hard to imagine. She's trying to replace the Chanel jacket, it's clear- but the Chanel jacket is timeless, something nothing by the horrible smelly homeless man can only dream of. Frankly, I'm not worried- French Vogue is only read my American French students, anyway. Everybody in France reads a magazine which is far too chic to dictate here. But it exists.

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