A Very Pragmatic Emperor of Fashion....

"If things used to be better you might as well give up", Karl Lagerfeld said. It is perhaps a very Germanic way of putting it, and that amuses me. I love his matter of fact delivery. I also agree with  that statement.

I have an enormous respect for his prodigious talent. He is creative director of Chanel, Fendi, and Lagerfeld. He is an artist. He photographs all the campaigns for Fendi and Chanel. He designs all the runway shows, and or inspires the theme. He reads copiously, and is very cultured on many topics beyond the world of fashion. His look is now iconic, and that is good for the business of branding and establishing a place in history. The white hair in a pony tail, the dark glasses and the ubiquitous fan.

I was showing my students a documentary about him and what he said I found amusing and yet true. Fashion is many things to many people. It appears at times to be very superficial. It is by its nature transient. It is not art. But, how he defines it is also a philosophy of life. One which I understand because life itself is reflected in what we create.

This is not meant to be a critique of his work. I was wondering what to write about him. Fashion is about change. To be successful in it you must let go and move on, as he says. And, that job requirement merges with life. So, I decided to quote him below and let him speak for himself.

" Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair."

" I love change, am attached to nothing."

" I like today and perhaps a little future, the past is really something I'm not interested in. So, as far as I'm concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don't know. When I know, I don't care because I know how it was."

"Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes in time."

" What I hate most in life are people who are not really the peach of the day, but who want to be young and sexy. You can fool nobody. There is a moment when you have to accept that something else is young and fresher and hotter. Life is not a beauty contest."

On disrespecting Chanel? Karl said to my amusement," Respect is not creative... Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore... and then you get something out of her."

On Homosexuality?, " When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said ..and this is a hundred years ago in Germany and she was very open minded. " It's like hair color .It's nothing. Some people like blond and some have dark hair.It's not a subject". This was a very healthy attitude."

Karl Lagerfeld is an Emperor of an elite, status orientated world and having mastered it, this is what he said of it, " You are admired by people, then they forget you".

And for one surrounded by adoring fans he said, "Solitude is a victory."

His words struck me as true. Life is about change and letting go. This man has been given much that in our culture we admire. But, I love the frank honesty and the very down to earth way with which he speaks certain truths that we often disguise, because we cannot face them.

I have written much about change in other blogs. Fashion demands an acceptance of it, that is the nature of that beast. That is not superficial, since most people cannot let go, fear change and delude themselves that something is good, when it is dead. It sounds harsh to say, but life, like fashion, is not always fair. I also love his statement that people will forget you.We do so much to be accepted and often compromise who we really are in its pursuit. If after all the fame and glory this man has received he can see how hollow that pursuit is then there is an opportunity not to chase false Gods. Think about wearing labels, What do the say about us ?. What does it say about you?. Does it matter?. Do you like someone more because they can afford them?.

I admired him because he is the Emperor of labels, of creating status and in the middle of all the fame he seems to know this truth. It is nothing and it is obsolete. Hence, his victory is solitude. He embraces that he will be forgotten and that to me is real. A very stylish man.

Peace.