Hansel and Gretel

Once upon a time there was a couple of hideous bourgeois children by the names of Hansel and Gretel. They were very fat. Their parents, who were hip German architects, said- "Hansel und Gretel! If you don't get in line with the minimalist aesthetics of our houses, we will kick you into the forest!", so they only have five slices of salami for breakfast, as opposed to 10, and so on. 

But they had a servant (all families in fairy tales have servants, who barely ever get acknowledged- let me tell you, fairy tales are essentially a slave trade. Who cleans the glass slippers? Not le Cinderella, anyway), who gave them extra slices of salami under their door. So the children got very fat and their Helmut Lang suits popped and Helmut Newton, when he saw them, put his fingers over his eyes and shuddered. So the parents said: "Look! You are too fat! You do not go with the Miles van der Rohe chair! You are bending it!"

"But Mama, Papa!" they said. "Are we not your children? Do you not love us like so?", to which the parents said:"No- we're afraid not. We had our art dealer do a valuation on you two, and well- I mean- you're just not that it anymore. And if you don't want Damien to put you in formaldehyde- well."

So the children were sent to the forest, where they ambled up the path like rocking eggs. Hansel said: "why don't we put some bread crumbs on the path to find our way back?", but they didn't have any bread crumbs- they only had pieces of formaldehyde Damien Hirst gave them, as in incentive to be placed in a giant tank titled "The Impossibility Of Living With Children In A World Of Magazine Architecture." So they scattered pieces of formaldehyde everywhere, which cute little Disney-esque creatures ate and subsequently died from. Oh ho ho, it is  hard to be Disney-esque in death, unless you are a Helpless Princess who Needs A Man To Save Her! And nobody wants to save the animals, except for the horrible PETA people- who frankly make my job easier. I considered making a coat out of the squirrels and birds, but I recalled my mother doing the same thing, one cold winter, and thought better of it.

Anyway- the children continued walking, until they got to a little cottage made out of candy. Inside, there was an old witch who wanted to eat them. "Come in, little children!" said the old witch. "You can eat some of my house!" But the children said: "Your house is terribly ugly! How can we eat ugliness?", and the witch said: "well, if you eat it, there will be no ugliness!" "however-" the children said, "we could be consuming ugliness, which could make us ugly in turn!", and the witch looked very troubled for a second.

"Look- I just want to eat you," she said. "I'll level with you. That's all I want to do- the candy is give or take. All I really want to do is put you in a cage and gobble you up. I will cook you in a fire first."

The children looked at each other, and said "no, thank you. We don't wish to participate in cannibalism" and the witch said "okay, fair enough. Like that song: you caaaan't always get what you waaaant", you know the one? The children knew the one.

"But sometimes you can get what you want", I said. "Sometimes you have to steal it. You could steal these children, but they are in front of me, and heard me- in any case, I suppose you've read my web-log, and know about the dangers of consuming people? Calories, my dear woman."

The old woman looked very indecisive, as did the children. Then they all turned into cats named Fluffy, and Herr Schrödinger came and took them back to his house. I ascended to the skies once more, with Mahler playing in the background.

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:

A children's story for the times.

There was once a silly but very powerful fashion editor who only wore Balmain and Margiela and other fashion brands that're not designed by Karl Lagerfeld (officially, anyway. Everybody knows that Margiela and such are simply the old designs of Karl Lagerfeld that he threw out). She was French, yet she did not own much Chanel. Sometimes, she would walk by one of the little French cafes and the ladies who weren't acquainted with methods of Not Eating, would laugh at this very silly fashion editor.

"How come you don't wear Chanel, Carine?", they taunted.
"We thought you were French! French Girls wear Chanel!"

And so on they went; but Carine thought she was better than these ladies who actually ate food anyway, because she edited a fashion magazine that was read only by the goths that exist in the sewers of France, and American fashionistas who assume that their French counterparts read it (whilst in actual fact, the French fashionistas were too busy blowing their noses on Hermès scarves. There was a cold going around France at this point, you see.)

Now one day Carine was walking along a Very Fashionable Street, where she noticed that the Balmain t-shirt she was going to buy had been marked down to Nine Hundred and Fifty Dollars from one thousand dollars.

"Oh my!" she exclaimed in French. There must be a depression! Fashion must be collapsing! It's the end of the world as we know it!

So she went to her little offices, and told her staff:
THERE IS A LE DEPRESSION! ALERT ALL THE PAPERS!

The staff and herself marched down the Very Fashionable Street and met up with a photographer who took pictures of people for "Street Style".
"I am not a street urchin!" shouted Carine. "If you are going to take a picture of me, you better call it something else!....Like "Non-Street Urchin Style", or "Scary Cat People Style," or something."
"Who said I was going to take a picture of you?
"Well, really now. I'm the editor of French Vogue."
"..."
"DOT DOT DOT?! Is that all you can say....to that?"
"...?"
"KARL! YOU'VE USED THE DRAMATIC DEVICE OF DOT DOT DOT (AN ALLUSION TO THE WORK OF FRENCH WRITER COLETTE) BEFORE IN YOUR BLOG, YOU LAZY BASTARD!"
"Fine then. Oh my! How I am amazed to find myself in the presence of such a force of fashion! What can I do for you, scary person?"
"Well, you know that the world is collapsing?"
"No!"
"It is! I saw a Balmain t-shirt for only $950 today!"
"They don't have dollars in France."
"Most of our readership isn't French so it doesn't matter."
"Are you alluding to French Vogue, or Karl Lagerfeld's Guide to Life?"
"We're breaking the fourth wall a lot today, aren't we Gustav?"
"My name is not Gustav."
"Next we'll be calling you Estrogen."
"Are you sure it was only $950?"
"Yes! It's a sure sign of the oncoming depression."
"This is simply shocking!"
"It's a scandal!"
"It's an outrage!"
"We must go and tell more people!"
"We must go and tell King Karl!"

They gathered up all of Paris (even the homeless), and went to knock on King Karl's door.
"Hello", said Karl.
"There's a depression! There's a depression!"
"Who said?"
"Carine".
"I could help with this, hmm?"
"What do we have to do?" shouted the crowd of several million stylish Parisians.
"Actually, you're all too demode. I know a fable like this is meant to have some sort of moral, but you all just bore me."

At this point the sky fell. The crowd, once silent, kept shouting about the depression. Karl sighed and went back into his closet.

Children's Time: Cinderella by Karl

There was once a very ugly girl who had two very chic stepsisters. The very ugly woman’s name was Cinderella, and well, the names of the chic stepsisters are not very important; they were just were beautiful and quite unlike anything from this world. If you ever needed them you could just say “hey doll”, and both of them would turn ‘round and stare not at you, but through you, because they were so very beautiful.
The ugly sister had once had a mother who gave her useless necessities like “food” and a “bed”.
But her mother died, because she was so very fat. And fat people cause global warming.

So her father remarried, and the woman he remarried to was some sort of power-player, the sort of woman you’d see on “Lipstick Jungle” only with more shoulder pads. Essentially, the new stepmother was very evil and therefore very fashion. For her lunch, she would eat and extinguish entire species. For her dinner, she would vomit the species up and video it and send the video to PETA. She was very fashion.

Anyway, the mother was very horrible to Cinderella, because she was so ugly; but she indulged the other two sisters that were from her previous marriage to a rich banker. Cinderella got very jealous of this, and one day she decided to become a hipster like the other ugly people become.

“I will become a hipster” she said to the imaginary camera in the barn where she had to live.

So the next day she went with her smelly male vintage-glasses wearing friend who couldn’t afford a shower ,to a place called American Apparel. At American Apparel there were many other smelly people just like Cinderella and her unnamed male friend, none of whom wore pants and all wore very thick glasses. And they sung this song in the style of the band “Kraftwerk".

“Just put some thick glasses on,
And lose those pants,
And be so ironic;
That you could be called bionic;
And move like a duck
And do the bird pose

Oooooh
Da da daaaaaa
Dada. Dada. Dada. Dada.
(catch the art movement reference?)
Dali. Dali. Dali. Dali
(had a big moustache)

Put your tights on,
Make your sweater bright;
Do a porno pose now,
It’s so ironic”

“I am glad to join your cult” said Cinderella.
“So are we!” said the hipsters.
“What?” said Cinderella
“It’s ironic!” said the hipsters.

Anyway, one day as Cinderella was practicing her porno poses at American Apparel, her friend Tony Hipster ™ came in, and said he was just on dru- on Facebook, and that there’s a ball on being hosted by Anna Wintour. Cinderella was very excited with this, as she thought she that this could be her step up, into the world of The Adults.

But later that night, when she told her stepsisters this; they were less than amused.
“You are too ugly to go to such a chic event!” said sister 1.
“You are sooo fat and demode” said sister 2.
“Just you wait! I’ll prove to you that I can be beautiful!” said Cinderella, and with a huff of her smelly hipster breath she was gone.
Poor little fat Cinderella was denied entry to the ball when she arrived there wearing only tights and a primary-coloured sweater! Was she ever to meet the prince she desired as per the normal story of Cinderella?
Unfortunately, yes.

Cinderella crawled into the back bathroom window, and found her prince sitting on his throne. The prince in question was Tom Ford; and because of this the bathroom was transformed into some sort of honeymoon suite with a revolving love-heart bed and a disco ball and 70’s music playing. Cinderella was situation on the middle of the bed, and Tom Ford walked into the room with trepidation and an open shirt.

“My my, what big glasses you have!” said Tom.
“All the better to see you with” said Cinderella in an incredibly creepy tone.
“My my, what smelly breath you have!”
“All the better to penetrate you with!” said Cinderella, meaning of course her breath penetrating Tom’s skin (which is moisturized with the milk of very thin models who’re given nothing but air to eat. Fight the 250 signs of aging: with Very Thin Models. Because it’s worth a lot).
“My my, what tight leggings you have!”
“All the better to HIPSTERIZE YOU WITH!!!” said Cinderella, who then inexplicably ran off leaving a shoe behind.

Tom picked up the shoe with tweezers and just at that moment, Karl’s daughter Jane came in.
“It’s a FLAT!” she screamed, horrified by the prospect of a shoe being anything but a heel.
“It’s from WALMART!” Tom screamed, horrified by the prospect of a shoe being from Walmart.
“It’s….it’s a BOY!” said the doctor, quite clearly confused.

So Cinderella never did marry Tom Ford, because she was very ugly. And ugly people are bad for the environment, don’t’cha’know!

Karl's Christmas Carols

Here's my first collection of Karl-edition Christmas carols. They are to replace normal Christmas carols. I must thank the lovely Jeunesse for the idea; so these are for you, Jeunesse.

O come all Ye Fashionable

O Come all Ye Fashionable
Bean Stalks and Coke Addicts
O come ye, O come ye to Lagerfeld-land
Come and behold him
Born the King of Fashion
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
Karl the King.

O strut, lines of models
Strut in chic formations
Strut all that see in Vogue, Karl's fashionable word,
Give to our Uncle, Collars in the heighest;
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
Karl the King.

All bow! Karl we greet thee,
Chic this happy morning,
O Karl! For evermore shall be King,
Word of fashion, now in flesh appearing,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
Karl the King.

We wish you a fattie Christmas
note: this song is especially for the fatties.

We wish you a fattie Christmas,
We wish you a fattie Christmas,
We wish you a fattie Christmas and a Walmart new year;
Bad tidings we bring, to you and your kin,
Bad tidings for Christmas and a Walmart new year

Oh, bring us our Chanel rifles,
Oh, bring us our Chanel rifles,
Oh bring us our Chanel rifles and we'll shoot demode ones right there

We won't go until you lose some,
We won't go until you lose some,
We won't go until you lose some, so lose some fat

We wish you a fattie Christmas,
We wish you a fattie Christmas,
We wish you a fattie Christmas and a Walmart new year

Chanel Night

Chanel night, Coco night,
All is quilt, all is white,
Round you are very thin people,
Make sure they don't snap now,
Stay awake because sleeping is demode,
Stay awake because sleeping is demode

Chanel night, Karl night!
Fashionistas do quake at the sight
Glories stream from afar
Of Karl putting on his fingerless gloves,
Karl, the saviour, is here
And Yves is kind of dead

Chanel night, quilted tights,
Son of fashion, chic's pure light
Radient beams from above thy holy glasses
With the dawn of a new collection
Karl, King, is very chic
Karl, King, wears le skinny jeans

Karl's Nursery Rhymes

Well, I thought it might be a good idea to write some Nursery Rhymes for you to read your children. Or if you don't have children, please go to the nearest park and shout them out at the top of your lungs. Perhaps have pamphlets (quilted, of course) of them to give out. Like a religious fanatic-- or PETA. Karl is a religion, after all! You could say something along the lines of: "DO YOU BELIEVE! DO YOU BEEEELIEVE IN THE POWER OF KARL?! DO YOU BELIEVE? DO YOU ACCEPT KARL AS YOUR SAVIOUR OF CHIC?"
And if they say "yes" you then say:
"TOO BAD! KARL REFUSES YOU! LOOK AT YOU! YOU'RE SO UGLY! EWWWW. REFUSAL IS THE ULTIMATE ELEGANCE, ANYWAY"

So, here we go:

This little fattie went to walmart.
This little fattie stayed at home.
This little fattie had potato chips,
This little fattie had none.
And this little fattie went "Snort! Snort! Snort!" all the way home.

Jack and Jill went on the pill to lose some weight for Summer
Jack fell down, and punched a photographer
And Jill came to pay the bail after
Out got Jack, and photoshoot did trot
Dressed in tights in a sort of caper
He went to bed and found a friend
who soon appeared in the tabloids later.

Twinkle Twinkle little star, how I wonder how chic you are?
Up above the world so high, like Yves Saint Laurent in the sky;
Twinkle Twinkle little star, how I wonder how chic you are?

Three hip assistants, three hip assistants;
See how they run, see how they run
Watch them run in their skinny jeans,
With wayfarers and ironic t-shirts to spare;
Did you ever see such thing in your life?
Three hip assistants

The Very Hungry Model: a Children's Story

Once upon a time there was a very thin model. Her name was Coco because all models are named that these days, because what actually happens is that people run out of names and then there’s no names to use so they just use Coco. And they drink Coco too, so they must be fat and wear polos because everybody knows that Coco contains calories (and Coco before bed is bad because how are you going to exercise it off, hmm? Unless you do..You Know What…but as this is a children’s book we shall not get into this. Ask Mummy about this when you are older).

Now. There was a model named Coco and she was very thin. She was so thin that all the designers wanted her for their shows, because she took up less fabric than normal people and therefore it was more economical to have her as a model. Of course, the other option was to have her buy the clothes she modelled herself; however this was not much of an option as then she’d be what we call a “consumer”, and not a model.

One day Coco was walking down the runway at Dries Van Noten bear’s show; where there was a girl-bear in the front row who was eating an APPLE. Coco felt an unfamiliar rumbling in her barely-there stomach, and made one giant jump for the apple; and tried to snatch it from the girl-bear’s hand.
“Mine!” said the girl-bear.
“No, mine!” said Coco, although she couldn’t possibly snatch it anyway because she was so very thin.
Coco’s stomach rumbled again.
“Awww…” said the girl-bear. I suppose you can have my apple…
Coco ate it and she then had a apple protruding out of her stomach, never mind all this business about the “digestive system”. She was still hungry.

The next day Coco ate two celery sticks, more than her usual one. She thought the apple would sustain her for a year or ten, but it had not. The apple was like crack for her, and it’s here was can learn about life: don’t feed the models (because food is like crack for them, haven’t you been told in school not to do drugs?).

The next day Coco ate 4 celery sticks and a piece of gum which her friend Geneva gallantly gave her.

The next day Coco sneaked into the bakery and bought ONE donut, as well as having EIGHT celery sticks and TWO pieces of gum.

The next day Coco bought TWO donuts from the bakery, ONE cream bun and 16 celery sticks and a whole PACKET of gum.

Karl-bear came to see her, and have her a copy of his book: “The Karl Lagerfeld Diet”. But the silly girl would not listen. She continued to nutrition herself, and keep herself healthy.

The next day Coco ate ONE roll of salami, ONE cake, FIVE donuts and 32 celery sticks and FIVE packets of gum. She was a very fat model. She weighed 60 Kilograms!

The next day Coco ate FIVE rolls of salami, TWO cakes; including a wedding cake, TEN donuts, 64 celery sticks and TEN packets of gum. That day she had a show, and she was so fat that she looked like a giant ball. And they had to roll her down the runway, and she crushed the audience and their Manalos.

She was a very very very very very fat model.

But then! She went into a rehab centre, which is basically a cocoon for famous people where The Karl Lagerfeld diet became her bible. And she emerged a beautiful butterfly-- I mean, model. And she was very thin again, and therefore fulfilled.