“Mi única ambición en la vida es usar jeans talle 28”

Esta nota del año 2006 realizada por Vanessa Grigoriadis para la NYMag, nos permite adentrarnos un poco más en el mundo del kaiser de la moda: Karl Lagerfeld.

Karl Lagerfeld en acción (Foto: Emanuele Scorcelletti)

Karl y su meta: “My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans”
Sobre el uso de pieles: “You eat meat and wear leather, so shut up,” “I have no time for zis foolishness.”
Sobre relacionarse con gente de su edad: “I get along with everyone except for men my age, who are bourgeois or retired or boring, and cannot follow the evolution of time and mood.”

Sobre la fama: “In the whole world, there is nowhere I can go”.“Everybody has a camera, and it is flash-flash-flash, and I am a puppet, a marionette, Mickey at Disneyland for children to play with. In Japan, they touch me. I have Japanese women pinch my ass, so now I must say, ‘You can have the photo, but please don’t touch me.’ You cannot pinch the ass of a man my age! And I cannot go out without something for my eyes, because someone might throw chemicals in my face, and I would be like my childhood French teacher whose wife burnt him with acid, Mr. Pommes-Frites, can you believe the name. I can cross the street nowhere in the world, I can never go into a shop. Oh, it’s horrible, horrible.” “In fact, I do like it. It’s very flattering, and very fun.”
Sobre Nueva York: “I like New York these days,” dice Karl. “At least the way I see it, it is perfect, though I am not down in the streets, so don’t ask me about that. I like how the people don’t call me by Monsieur here. It’s always just the first name—Karl!”
Sobre tatuajes y piercings: “Now, I have nothing against tattoo, as long as I don’t have to put it on my body. And her nose-pierce, well, we can move with a computer, though I don’t know if you have a cold if it is very pleasant. Some of them have pierces in the nipples also—and uh-oh—in other areas too!”, se ríe Karl. “That’s modern.”

Lagerfeld supervisa cada detalle previo al lanzamiento de las colecciones (Foto: Emanuele Scorcelletti)

Sobre Lady Di: “She was pretty and she was sweet, but she was stupid.”
Sobre la muerte de su compañero, Jacques de Bascher, y su consiguiente aumento de peso: “I started to lose interest in my appearance, because I knew what was going to happen. I lost interest in myself and trivial matters. I felt old-fashioned in my proper made-to-measure Italian clothes. I started to buy my clothes from Matsuda, Comme des Garçons, and Yohji Yamamoto. I went from small to medium, medium to large, then to extra-large.”
Sobre su obsesión con Hedi Slimane (ex diseñador de Dior Homme, y creador de la silueta Slim), que lo llevó a bajar más de 40 kilos: Stephen Gan presentó Slimane a Karl. Lagerfeld invitó a Gan a su estudio en Paris luciendo una corbata de Dior Homme. “The tie was unusually narrow for his width at the time,” dice Gan. “He said, ‘Look! I’m wearing your friend’s tie!’ ”. Seis meses después, Lagerfeld usaba las chaquetas de Dior Homme, y seis meses después los pantalones. De ahí que Lagerfeld dijera: “My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans.”

Sobre su trabajo en Chanel: En 1983 Lagerfeld fue contratado por Chanel para reinventar la marca, moribunda desde la muerte de Coco Chanel en 1971. “Respect is not creative,” le dijo Karl a Alain Wertheimer. “Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore—and then you get something out of her.”
Sobre la muerte: “I do not like funerals, and I do not want anyone to come to mine,” “Do what you want with the ashes. Send them down the garbage chute.”
Sobre los bomberos que tuvieron que retener a la gente ansiosa por ver a Lagerfeld en un cena en su honor: “Karl said the firemen were the best-dressed people from the whole evening!”, dijo Robert Burke.

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