Clothes in a Cold Climate

I suppose you all enjoyed the Chanel show. But many of you- including the journalists who I'm fielding now whilst telepathically writing this entry and transferring my thoughts to Enrnest in Ohio who'll write these down and post them on the blog- many of you are wondering why I did this collection.

I travelled to Antarctica last year, and the North Pole a few months before that. Anna quite enjoys clubbing all the animals there- not to mention the people who looked like animals. But nevermind that. The main thing that struck me was how demode everyone was dressing. It was impossible. And in the North Pole there's a man who calls himself "Santa Claus"- he wears red and is very overweight and has a beard. Frankly, he strikes me as some sort of pervert or homeless man. He lives there in his sleigh because the bank kicked him out because he couldn't pay his mortgage- poor guy. Beside him lives an executive from the 80s who carries around one of those giant mobile telephone devices- he lives in his Mercedes. These places exist out of time and space somewhat. But that's no excuse for demode dressing, hm? You must understand- I don't mean the normal sort of demode dressing- the kind one finds and Walmart and such. It's a special sort of demode.

The people in the picture above are a typical example of the bad dressing that goes on in these places. Just because one is in a very cold climate doesn't mean that one should dress like the Antartic equivilent of ex-Woodstock now-henchmen-for-a-bad-James-Bond-villian.

So, quite simply I thought something must be done. I consider it a favor to these poor people. The Chanel show was an instruction manual for dressing in a cold climate. It's not often I'm this charitable, but you know, I quite like the penguins- I get along well with them- and if I'm going to visit them again I'd hate for the humans to be dressed as in the picture above. It's unpleasant. People wonder why more people don't go on holiday to places like Antarctica. Yet when the inhabitants are dressing like that, who would want to visit Antarctica! Every day I get emails from people like Slim John Popeye and Dr. Faustus Pound- head of the Antarctica Tourism Board, asking why magazines I work with aren't shooting in Antarctica. And I always reply with "Because your people are dressed abhorrently. It is impossible."

Now- onto the next thing. A few of you commenters need to "step up your A-game" and start writing essays in my comments section longer than the posts themselves. Ideally you'll have names like "A.Cat.Lady" and "FDR De La Truffle". I am going to be conducting a search for these commenters, because it is not good enough simply to leave a comment like "LOVE YOUR BLOG! XO" and then link to your blog. Please email me your CVs at fakekarl@gmail.com.

Ideally, you'll either be an aging British aristocrat a or costume designer, an old lady who likes to garden and wears floral dresses, or something like that. I will revise your CVs and the qualified ones will make it into "Karl's Gang" (TM).

Karl's Little Rule Book

There's fashion journalism and then there's fashion journalism. Cathy Horyn, Robin Givhan and Suzy Menkes fall into the latter camp. Amy Odell et al fall into the former. The problem with fashion becoming a "popular mass culture" thing, with the advent of shows such as America's Top Model, Project Runway, etc, means that fashion "journalists" such as Amy Odell have a job. This isn't fashion journalism- it's writing about celebrity culture (see: The Hills) disguised as fashion journalism. What disappoints me is that she writes for New York magazine, albeit in the online arm of it- New York magazine is where Tom Wolfe started writing a lot of "New Journalism"- quality writing. And of course, Mr. Wolfe can wear a white suit and still look incredibly chic and not look like a waiter.

We've known for a long time that the New York fashion blog has been the equivalent of a half-finished meal of McDonald's given to a homeless man who Scott Schuman then photographs.
What I mean is, there's no surprise with Ms. Odell's latest travesty of an article, with comments from Eccentric and Grumpy Old Woman Ann Slowey, who is convinced that my niece Tavi has a secret team of elves writing her posts. I kid you not- Tavi, of style rookie fame, has a secret team of elves writing her posts! She's got a whole room of them- if you stand outside it you can hear the click-clack of typewriters, and Tavi yelling "GET TO WORK CATHY HORYN! GET TO WORK WOODY ALLEN! THOSE JOKES DON'T WRITE THEMSELVES! GET TO WORK NABOKOV! I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE DEAD!".
To quote Ms. Slowey, "You look at her video, and the writing doesn’t sync up with the way she talks about fashion."
Why? Because Tavi has the magical writing elves in a room, clacking out her posts! Those magical writing elves, busily writing everything out! I hope they get paid enough, hm?

That solves that question. A video, which is a few minutes long, proves that Tavi has these magical elves writing for her! Ann Slowey said so! And she's a magazine editor- she even knows what a magazine editor does: "...How does that help me distill the collections? What am I supposed to be buying? That’s what an editor’s job at a magazine is."
According to Ann Slowey, Magazine Editor, an editor- nevermind Tavi is a writer, not an editor- is supposed to "distill the collections" and tell people what they should buy. Nevermind publishing interesting photographers and fantastic writing (a la New Yorker re writing, and even Vogue had an interesting article about Comme des Garcons- in the 80s). No, the editor of a magazine has to distill collections for the idiot consumer who can't do this themselves. They're too stupid! And then the editor has to tell them what to buy. The reader, who just spent money on your magazine is too stupid to make their own choices!
And on this subject, I'll quote Roger Ebert, the great film critic: "Advise the readers well. This does not involve informing them, "You'll love this!" If I approached some guy in a restaurant and told him what he would love, I might get a breadbasket in the face. No, we must tell the readers what we ourselves love or hate. If we work for employers who think we should "like more movies like ordinary people like," we should make a donation in his name to the Anti-Cruelty Society."

Hmm. You mean that the reader of your magazine isn't stupid?! Whatever next. Maybe if you started taking this viewpoint, people would start reading writing in magazines again- especially fashion magazines, and not simply skip to pictures of the pretty models (to post them on their tumblr.)

Odell writes "It would be easy for people like us to feel a little insulted by magazines hiring 13-year-olds to do the job of a serious fashion critic, a person with years of experience who has probably toiled for newspapers to print their words or even care about what they have to say"
There's several problems here- Odell isn't a serious fashion critic, for example. Cathy Horyn, despite her love of bacon is. Odell writes a celebrity fashion blog, with emphasis of the "celebrity". Horyn writes sometimes scathing reviews, but always insightful- always placing things in context, always considering that the clothes are more than simply pretty frocks. Tavi's doing a fine job as a serious fashion critic, comparing dresses at Calvin Klein to being stained with tears. Just because she's thirteen years old- as Odell never fails to point out, doesn't invalidate what she writes.

Throughout the piece it's both said and implied that Tavi gives fashion advice. It's perhaps to grasp for some people that Tavi is in fact not doing what the fashion industry's been doing for years- telling people what to wear. This is obviously a very difficult concept for Ms. Slowley. I suspect she hasn't read Tavi's blog. Even the title implies that Tavi is giving fashion advice- "Editors Like Tavi But Don't Take Her Fashion Advice Seriously". Nevermind that Tavi doesn't give fashion advice- her blog is not kind of "ASK AUNT OHIO!" enterprise.

Yet as my niece Belle was saying to me earlier- this is typical New York Fashion Blog- the sort of publication that sees fit to devote an entire article to the relationship of my daughter (Jane) and her boyfriend (Amit). Because that's as important as Lacroix going bankrupt, of course.

This post isn't simply about the post about Tavi, or even about "The Cut". It's about the decline of fashion journalism. Long actual fashion critics such as Tavi and Horyn. Long live bacon muffins. But nevermind the "bollocks" (as the kids say)- the faux fashion journalists who attempt to pass themselves off as something more. They're demode.

Cathy's World

Love Letter to Roald Dahl (or: Fireside Stories with Karl)

This is a story I somtimes tell my Nieces, when we are all gathered around the fireplace in Vermont.

Once upon a time (in a land far, far away), there lived a group of people called the "Quiggles". The Quiggles would change what they wore every 6 months, and some of them even changed what their pets wore- one Quiggle changed their zebra's stripes every 6 months so by the end of 5 years, the zebra looked like a crossword puzzle with thinly fading lines from last season and "bold new lines" (I'm quoting a newspaper here) from this season. The Quiggles were very protective of their kingdom, and were incredibly hostile to outsiders ("Squiggles") who dared to enter their lands. The Quiggles would say "look! There goes a Squiggle! Look at how he's wearing a scarf from last season! Look at how that jacket seems like it came from a thrift store!" and they'd go "haw haw haw" among themselves, bathing in their own superiority. Because after all, they were Quiggles, were they not? Their culture was so advanced as to have a mechanism where the clothes change every 6 months- they called these "shows", and several cities had a whole week of these shows. Once the shows had been seen, the Quiggles would immediately toss all of last season's clothes into a trashbin and walk naked to the nearest boutique. The Quiggles had gods, like all cultures- the gods would bestow clothes upon the Quiggles every 6 months, as a reward for the great sacrifices the Quiggles made- fasting for long periods of time to fit into artifacts our archaeologists call "dresses", writing vast, fawning pieces about the gods, putting pictures of the god's creations in what they called "magazines"- a kind of altar to the gods. If you go into a museum you'll find some of these "magazines", where you can see the demi-gods- something the Quiggles called "models", posed in positions which presumably mean something; perhaps some sort of hieroglyphics. A "magazine" called "Vogue" had a particular fascination with "models" jumping. We don't know what the jumping means yet. Like the Egyptians, the Quiggles not only wrote in hieroglyphics, but had a Cleopatra like-figure, ruling over them all. Her name can roughly be translated to "Ana", or "Anna".

Anyway, one day in Quiggle Land, the Quiggles found a "magazine" in which there was a non-Quiggle on the cover.
"That....that is a Squiggle" said one unimpressed onlooker, who resumed combing his hair once uttering his only-statement-for-the-day.
"How could a Squiggle be on the cover of one of our precious magazines?" said another bitter Quiggle, her thighs looking like black sausages entrapped in the leggings which was the Quiggle fashion at the time.
"And look at her! She's only....why, she's only a child Squiggle."
"Outrageous!" cried a vast man in a suit which made him look like an umbrella.
"How dare she?! This magazine is an adult magazine" said another onlooker, who wore a bib because it was fashionable.
"Oh, I don't know- I just don't know. This magazine used to be adult and now it has a Squiggle on it! Not only a Squiggle, but a child Squiggle!"
-And on they went, telling anyone who could bear to listen to them that their magazine was a thoroughly adult magazine.
"What, is it like- Playboy or something?" said Woody Horyn, who stumbled onto the scene after raiding the muffin bakery.
"NO!" the entire crowd of Quiggles roared- "it is a adult magazine with adult themes like uh..."
"Well?" said Woody Horyn. The crowd turned away rather sheepishly.
"It says here", a lone voice piped up from the crowd", that this Squiggle-child has a "blog."
Now, a blog is rather similar to a treehouse if none of you know. You can find them in all good diary's.
"Ludicrous! Her Squiggle-parents must write this for her!"
"Ridiculous!"
"Squiggle-children" said a particular loathsome voice in a particularly loathsome manner. "Squiggle-children are foul and filthy!"
"They are! They are!" chorused the Quiggle-crowd, at which point I noticed the voice was coming from a woman dressed in gloves.
"Squiggle-chidren are smalling of dogs' drrrroopppings!"
"Eww!" cried the crowd, "Ewww! Ewww! Eww!"
"Ve must have only QUIGGLES on the cover of magazines!" shouted the lady in gloves.
"Only Quiggles! Only Quiggles!" cheered the crowd.
"None of zis- zis children"
"No children! No children" echoed the crowd, and I imagine it must've felt a bit like a children's television show at this point.
"Magazines are ze business of adddults! Zis....zis business is far too important to leave to ze children!"
"Magazines matter! Magazines matter!" at which point I imagine the on-looker would think they'd've stumbled upon a Conde Nast meeting.
"I do not care if vis child...vis SQUIGGLE child is creative! Fashion is very important! It is elitist! Telling you to wear umbrellas on your head is an Important Thing! What vill happen if we let children into it?"
"They will ruin it!" the crowd roared.
"Yes! They vill ruin it and burn it and stink the place out!"
"Ruin-it, burn-it, stink-the-place-out" chanted the crowd.
"You know, this Squiggle-child is actually more interesting than what most of you write", murmured Woody Horyn.
"BUT IS SHE AN ADULT?" the lady in gloves spat, projecting spit which would later land on Mars prompting David Bowie to write his hit song"Is There Life on Mars?"
"Does it matter that if she's an adult or not?"
"Of course it does!" said the woman we saw earlier, who was in the leggings which were far too tight for her- and she still is.
"Why?" questioned Woody Horyn.
"Because...because...because....she's a nobody! She's not a Quiggle! She hasn't done a pole-dance on MTV like that great role model, Miley Cyrus!"
"Well, you know..." said Woody Horyn, and he began to sing:

Karl Comic With Guest Star, Cathy Horyn (#1)

"Live Blogging", Chanel Couture

Whilst the rest of the world was weeping for Michael Jackson with their television sets tuned to one of the seven hundred and sixty eight channels that covered it, I and my seamstresses were putting the finishing touches on the Chanel couture. We don't have a television set. We were playing one of my ipods actually- Tom Waits. Cathy "Ohio" and her hag friend from Central St. Martins decided to visit us, so I had some assistants hide the sandwiches and pies- not to mention bacon muffins, whilst we entertained the two hags. They told us about the tent that they'd set up outside Paris in order to save on hotel costs- I muttered something about Brokeback mountain.

We just showed a few minutes ago, actually. So now I'm designing the next collection. The press is no doubt going to ask some questions about the collection I just showed- they're annoying like that. The hags are circling like birds in a Hitchcock film.

Transcript

Karl asked me to post this transcript. Regards, Brad II.

Bob Dylan: Cathy Horyn saw Karl in the kitchen/can't say nothing, but nothing didn't happen
Karl: Boys who wear cowboy hats end up lying on the mat.
Bob: Cathy wore her beanie/And her knee highs too/Someone said "girl, you look like a hag"/She gave them them the evil eye
Karl: How do you even know who Cathy Horyn is? She's just some hockey mom.
Bob: Karl saw his models/All in a line/Cathy said "Karl, why don't you grab something off the shelf?"
Karl: Models don't go in lines. They go in gaggles. Actually, I'm not sure if there's a proper term for a group of models. What's the term for a jar of toothpicks?
Anna: A pickery.
Karl: Oh! There you are. I wondered where you'd gone.
Bob: And Anna's getting some medicine and gin/in the infirmary.
Anna: For once he's right. "Voice of a generation", ptf. That generation was so stoned up a rock could've been the spokesman for it.
Karl: Or a pen.
Allen Ginsberg: What, you don't like Bob?
Anna: Dirty American. It takes a lot of effort to work at American Vogue, you know. But nobody reads British Vogue. God. Coco. Pynchon. You might as well work at Cat Fancier's Weekly.
Spokesman for Cat Fancier's Weekly: Hey now! Look here, we at Cat Fancier's Weekly have been getting a lot of flak- since about the beginning of time. Even Jesus used us as a joke.
Karl: How'd the joke go?
Spokesman: Erm..um..
Jesus: Oh man, I remember. It was like- "I could hardly be God's son if he worked at Cat Fancier's Weekly."
John Lennon: Oh yeah! That was a good one! Bigger than Jesus, that joke.
Jesus: Bigger than Jesus.
Spokesman: It's just not fair. We've been going as long as Christianity! Surely we're doing something right if we're still going. Right?
Sir Edward Elgar: Surely sir, you realize that you're only in existence because of the continuity of this joke? In fact, this conversation right now is keeping your alive.
Spokesman: So..?
Karl: So you would not exist if Anna hadn't made that joke about you.
Spokesman: Am I supposed to pop out of existence at the appearance of logic here?
Anthropomorphic Panda Bear: No.

"Current" Things and So On

It's not often I do a post to do with a "current" issue, because this blog is a sort of escape from doing something directly involved with fashion design and shows and all that. Designing the ballet costumes was like that too. I could easily be a full time costume designer, you know. I have this vision of pancake makeup and the deep thick fog of perfume and the velvet of the curtain; the hustle and bustle of the actors and dancers frenetically moving like trains crashing into lights. I, standing at the center of a yelping crowd of women wanting to be dressed. That's a bit like fashion, you see- yet it has that certain magic. With fashion, you need to create the magic. Everybody assumes that the magic's already there, but the fact is that my high collar does not magically come on every morning. I have to put it on. Maybe I will be a costume designer. Oh ho ho, that'll freak out the fashion people. I can't wait to read the "obituaries" the mindless magazines write, those magazines that like the look of their own ink so much (not so much the content). I suppose Ohio Horyn would write an obituary too. And Menkes. And all the bloggers, but they're not exactly Ohio Horyn, hmm?
It's like that musical, Oklahoma:

Poor Karl is dead
Poor Karl Lagerfeld is dead
All gather round his quilted coffin now and bitch
He had no heart at all
And he wasn't very old
Oh why did such a feller have to switch to costume design?

Oh, I'd love that. Reading the self-congratulatory drivel that these "journalists" write makes Yohji and I chuckle. Yohji drinks his beer. I drink my diet Coke. Here, I'll write a sentence for you:

"Fashion legend Karl Lagerfeld retired yesterday, saying he was going to design costumes. He claimed there was no more glamour in fashion, and costumes were a greater reflection of the zeitgeist than fashion."

Now, if we're Ohio Horyn the paragraph will start with:

"I was making my chicken pot-pie yesterday, after cleaning out the barn, when I heard that Karl Lagerfeld was retiring to design costumes."

I'm not going to do that, though. I have no intention on retiring because I'm a stubborn bastard, and retiring would give too many people satisfaction. Anyway, I can design costumes on the side. I always have. I'll simply have some pancake makeup installed at Chanel. An entire closet full of it. There's a wonderful TV show called "Imagination Movers". It is by Playhouse Disney- a child wearing a tuxedo introduced me to it. They have rooms full of every sort of thing you could imagine. A "cold" room, a "noise" room and so on. Most commendable.

Anyway, I remembered why I was writing this post. It is to congratulate the Rodarte sisters (Kate and Laura) on their CFDA win. I'm very proud of you, girls!

Rushing off to Chanel..

One is not born woman, but becomes one- Simone de Beauvoir. But how does one become a woman? The answer, my reader, is Chanel. One becomes a woman with Chanel.
This poses a couple more questions though- how much Chanel must you buy before you are a woman? And what if a baby has multitudes of Chanel- le Chanel baby- are they a woman, hmm?

I will not give you some hogwash about the answer being, say...blowin' in the wind. I do not go in for this sort of vague politically correct namby-pamby-wishy-washy-my-mother-didn't-breast-feed-me rubbish. It's very simple: get a measuring tape out and measure yourselves. If you're a woman, it will obviously say "woman" on the measuring tape. If you are 165 CM, it will say "165 CM" on the measuring tape and that is what you are: one hundred and sixty five centermeters. If you are a terrible person, it will say so. And so on it goes. Then you will know your place.

Today I have Frida somebodyorrather coming to see my show at Chanel. I was only aware of this yesterday, when she turned up at my studio. I asked her who she was and she said she was the woman from "Slumdog Millionaire", and invited her to come on in. She didn't look homeless or anything. I thought the people in "Slumdog Millionaire" were poor? She was wearing a Chanel jacket- and it wasn't fake. I inspected the stitching itself- licked it, whispered to it in my sensual voice that no jacket can resist. It's a real pity animated characters can't attend fashion shows- I would love Coraline to attend tomorrow's show.

Saw Cathy at the studio today, too- I was relieved to see she didn't eat anything this time! She seemed hungover from that hack Alaia's place last night. Anna was there too. She's upset about that fellow at that place. Nina Ricci? I gave up the 80's in the 80's. Dynasty does not screen in the cinema of my mind.

I suppose I'll see you all at the show anyway. Tea at Colette afterwards.

Critics

It is winter here. Wherever I am. I think it could be Paris. Is it winter in Paris? Well, if it is I'm there. If not, I'm not there. I would like to remind Tavi to go to bed at eleven thirty sharp, for several days ago. Now we can get down to the business, hmm?

The last few days I have been busy talking to Very Important Fashion Critics who I will not name, because they're oh-so very important that they no doubt would get their Lanvin-Knickers in a twist. I had to go down to the fashion ghetto, you see, where they all live. It's not the fashion ghetto where the Juicy Couture people live (I assume people still buy that. My daughter informs me it's mostly demode highschool girls.), but it's the ghetto where Rei plays her harmonica and Martin has a house full of cats (Margiela; of course I didn't need to add that- I expect my readers to be intelligent anyway). This is the ghetto where Junya is in the alley, looking for some food, and Alber's in the kitchen with the cake blues. It's a very hip ghetto.

So, I drove down to the fashion ghetto and pulled over at the fashion critics commune. You've got to wear protection before you go in, because of the vitriol that flies around-- take a step to the left at the wrong time and you might just find yourself getting hit by some, hmm? And no fashion designer wants that.
I surrounded myself with my Le Skinny Jeans society, who cloaked round me, in their jeans so skinny that they could be a shadow; and entered the commune.

Cathy Horyn was sitting out on a deckchair (Marc Jacobs, 2006), which Suzy Menkes was trying to attach helium balloons too. There was a bunch of lesser critics around- some playing with marbles (which explains why they appear to have lost the majority of them), some rapping to the beats that Tim Gunn created ("make it work, guys."), some carrying Chanel beatboxes around. It was chaos.

"Karl!" Cathy said, as she spied me under that hat she wears that makes her look like a rugby supporter (not Rugby, Ralph Lauren, Rugby as in that dreadful sport favoured by New Zealanders; but thankfully, none I know.)
"Ah, Cathy!" said I, making sure Margiela wasn't devising another one of his plans to take over the world ("By recycling!" he claims. Hippie.)
Cathy talked a bit about this and that- gave me a recipe for duc which is now in dear Alber's pockets, and I attempted to convince her to write for me.

"But I am CATHHY HORYNN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES."
"Yes, yes, I know. Armani banned you. You're a hero! Nevermind Armani wouldn't mind if his audience consisted of corpses..."

So we'll see. I spoke to a few of the other critics, too. You can't be around them for too long, or else they start to say what you're doing's art or somesuch.

Cathy Horyn shops at Walmart

Dear Cathy,

I recently read that you are now buying your clothes from Walmart. I suppose this..."recession" has hit you pretty hard. What with that Chanel dress I sent you last year, and the invites that you're sent; invites to about a million dinners which obviously cannot feed your ravenous appetite. I once let you eat a sandwich at the Chanel studio, for fashion's sake.

But then I realized what you're doing...this shopping at Walmart, is very fashion indeed. How else could you help perpetuate slav- child labour, hmm? Shopping at Walmart is really a brilliant idea for this; almost Anna-like in it's genius! So I thank you, Cathy Horyn; for continuing the evil that we in the fashion industry work very hard to maintain.

I have beside me the child you made that garment for you; the one you bought at Walmart. Her name is "Walmart #455", because in this day and age, what sort of slave needs a name, huh? It's all very efficient. It warms my heart to see this kind of evil, even more than the videos that the PETA-people send me. In fact, I would like to thank those wonderful people at PETA for the free videos. They're great entertainment, huh?

Now, I am going to send this child to you, hmm? "Walmart #455". She is very fashion, hmm? She hardly weighs a thing! I don't think she's ever eaten! I thought that maybe she could make clothes for you from now on; cut out the middle factor in your wrongdoing, no? Why not run the sweatshop yourself! So I'm very pleased with this idea of mine. I do realize this will mean that you'll have less of an excuse to go into Walmart now and feel superior because you're wearing that Balenciga sample that you somehow squeezed into. To fix this, I have designed some large posters with your face on them. They are very, very large and we will hang them up in Walmart; so your gaze will look down upon the demode ones, with their mom jeans.

So let me offer you my congratulations, Cathy. A job well done.

Love,
Karl