Coping in A Recession, A How-To Guide For The Rich

Although many fabulously well-to-do economists are claiming the recession is over, I've noticed many of my wealthy friends have fallen on hard times. Fortunes have been chopped in half: what was 6 billion dollars is now a mere 3 billion dollars. Many of my friends can only afford 5 yachts a year, rather then 10 or so. Dire straits indeed.

Yet, there is no need to worry- I have a solution. I was thinking of this as I was shooting Lara, Abby Lee, et al today, and I was thinking that this "blog" originally intended to be a guide to life. Then I thought: who do I care about the most? Who is most in need? Why, the rich of course. The wealthy. Those with a silver spoon in their mouth, born or purchased. Without the rich there'd be no poor- the poor would simply cease to exist. They would vanish in a "poof!" of air. There would be no middle class, either- because without the rich, the middle class would have no job (ie. serve the rich), and therefore they'd turn into the poor and then vanish in a "poof!" of air also. Without underling classes, there would be no rich, and therefore there'd be no humans at all. Without humans, animals would cease to exist also because their job, naturally, is to provide food and furs and such for humans. In essence: the universe would collapse.

Then I thought: how can I best the rich who are not as fortunate as I? Well, I thought about this for a while, and then I realized the best way would be to write a Guide To Doing Things For The Rich. We'll start with supermarket shopping. I personally went to a supermarket and discovered how they work, so you can be assured that this is all correct.

How To Shop At Supermarkets (For The Rich), by Karl Lagerfeld.

The first thing to remember about supermarkets is that they don't have a doorman. However, most of them do seem to have "auto-matic doors", which open when you step close to them. You can experiment with different techniques for doing this: the most common is simply to walk near the door, stop, wait for the doors to open and then walk through. It's also possible to hold your hands in front of the door, say "OPEN, PROLETARIAN DOOR!" and it will open. In fact, one can say as many things as one wants to say, and the doors will open. I think they're a wonderful invention.

Once you've accomplished Walking Through The Door, you can move onto the next step: moving through "The Gates". You'll discover once you pass through the door, there is another set of doors- generally metal barriers, although they're sometimes plastic. These are to stop thieves from getting away too quickly, I think. There is one set of "gates" for you to walk through, and another to walk out of. Once you've been to the supermarket a few times, you'll get the hang of it. (TIP: Don't wear couture to the supermarket, it could get damaged, and often won't fit through the "gates". I went to the supermarket with my friend Daphne Guinness the other day- she wore the Yohji Yamamoto "wedding dress" which requires several people to hold it up. It was a challenge getting it into the store, as you can imagine.)

You'll also notice that there are things which the supermarket staff will call "trollies". These are large metal baskets which I believe are for putting the goods which you obtain in "the store" (supermarket slang) in. Models also fit in there nicely, but it's generally accepted that you give the trolly back after using it. One works the trolly by pushing it from the front- you'll notice that there's a sort of bar with which one can do this. They're wonderful machines, and quite useful when one doesn't have a bevy of assistants to carry things.

The supermarket is divided into sections, similar to how a boutique is divided, except for "perfume", "clothes", "luggage" etc is replaced with more mundane titles like "vegetables and fruit", "meat", "beverages". Do not be fooled: they function more or less the same way, though there are no fitting rooms to try a carrot on, or see if a toothbrush fits. Normal people don't have these luxuries. You can make your selections by wheeling the trolly around the store and placing the selection in your trolly. Once you've finished that, there is one final step. This is the most important step.

This most important step is to maneuver your trolly into a narrow space know as a "counter", manned by a pimply youth. They will say "Hello, sir/madame". The normal response is "Greetings, Supermarket Worker". Then they will give you the price of all your purchases, and you will be expected to pay for them. One should never say "Darling, charge it to my account" because supermarkets do not do this. Instead, one should offer the money- normally in the form of "cash" or "card". Finally, the youth will say "have a nice day!" half heartedly, and you will be expected to say "thank you" in reply. This is the etiquette.

Once one has done that, one can unload one's purchases into the rolls, take the trolly back to where you obtained it, and drive away. Congratulations: you've completed a successful trip to the supermarket.

Any questions on this how-to, please send them to fakekarl@gmail.com. I am always there to help those in need that blow their noses on Hermès scarves.

Oh Gee

I was reading this morning's New York Times when I stumbled across an article about our favourite pint-sized blogging wonderkid, Scott Schuman. Young Schuman has a number of interesting things to say about the internet, the medium which has made him famous in some circles. “Now everyone feels the Internet is a free-for-all,” he said, while presumably munching on his bag of candy whilst taking a break from riding the Brand New Red Bike he received for Christmas. What Master Schuman doesn't understand is that the internet, well, is a free for all. I'm well over the age of youngsters such as him and even I understand that. Besides that- I find his lack of humor disturbing. The article refers to a site called the "Fake Sartorialist" which parodies the outfits- mostly old men- shown on young Scott's blog. He is upset with this, because his photos are high art and are not to be parodied, satirized, or anything like that. The internet is not a free for all! It is a venue for Scott Schuman to show his high art! And perhaps photos of his Brand New Bike. My butler told me that if you hurry, you can catch Scott and some of his pals playing basketball at the local court (beside Mrs. Brown's house). Afterwards they intend on watching Star Wars and talking about girls they have crushes on.

This was an involuntary facial reaction, it's not actually a smile as some of you may think.

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).

Interview

Whilst I've been elsewhere lately, I have done one interview over at Bonnie and Clyde. You can read it here.

We Will Return Shortly

D is for Dresses

The dress is like a woman's chambermaid- it is the closet confidante a woman can have, aside from herself. A dress knows all the secrets- you cannot hide anything from a dress; it sees all your flaws in technicolour. More importantly, it feels all your flaws. Yet a good dress does not reveal secrets. When selecting a dress, one should keep this in mind. How trustworthy is this dress? Of course, one cannot submit this dress to a lie-detector test- dresses cannot talk, they can only show. So I find in cases like these that it is best to hire an old fashioned private investigator to investigate the dress. You can do this by going to a private investigator's door, knocking on it and hiring him with cash handed in a manilla enevelope. In extreme cases, I'd suggest getting the police involved- but really, if you're getting the police involved the dress probably isn't very trustworth in the first place! The private eye will do some background work on the dress first- even an old Chanel dress may not be totally trustworthy, about one in a thousand tends to go rogue. Like the FBI or CIA or RIAA or something, no? Anyway- the background work, then if it passes that the P.I will start investigating the dress in person. He'll walk into the room, feel the dress, talk to the dress, feel it again- frankly, some of these private eyes are perverts. But they do their job, and it's absoultuly paramount that your dress is trustworthy.

I'm reminded of a case where a woman did not have her dress properly investigated before she went and purchased it. As you can imagine, the consequences were quite disastorous. She wore the dress to a rather "important" social function and her photo ended up in all the social pages the next day. Several magazines, I know, took pictures of her in the dress because it was so unflattering. This was before these internet memes- those internet-pictures that go around everywhere. People had to make their own memes, back then. So this stupid woman became a meme in the world of fashion- people would look at the picture of her in the dress, laugh, and take it as a warning. The woman in question- I won't name her, but you probably know her name; she's very well know. Well, that woman in question's social life was destoryed, and she now mopes about her house by herself.

A Dior dress is very untrustworthy. I don't think anyone should buy a dress made by a man with a finiticky moustache anyway. Dior dresses tend to tell the other dresses about their owner, so when the wearer of the dress is in a room with other people wearing other dresses, she looks very demode indeed. Be very wary of the couture. Whilst it may look like a lady, it does not behave like a lady!
Lanvin dresses are generally good. Alber, you know, the designer of Lanvin- he has a heart of gold. Real gold. Melting gold. Pure, melting gold. It must get very hot in there sometimes. They can be quite haughty, so treat them with respect.
I'm fond of Rodarte dresses. The Rodarte sisters are sweet, in the genuine way that one imagines Sylvia Plath to be when she wasn't being depressed. The dresses themselves are sweet. Sweet in an organic way- very natural.
I suppose I'd better include the Japanese in here. Dresses by Rei Kawakubo- Comme des Garcons, tend to be incredibly mysterious. Other dresses are a bit scared of them. It really depends if you intend on socializing at a party or not. I don't, so if I was a woman I'd wear Comme des Garcons all the time. I used to wear a lot of Yohji Yamamoto in the 90s- it scared away a lot of people. Alas, I cannot wear Yohji these days. It is not in "the now." Dresses by Yohji are wonderful- elegant, but spinsters or never married. Mostly the latter.