“I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‘It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.’ This was a very healthy attitude.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“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 with time.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Yes, some people say to me you’re too skinny, but never a skinny person says that to me, only people who could lose a few pounds say that.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never played with anything like toys.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Don’t dress to kill, dress to survive.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m a working-class person, working with class.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“No, I never thought I would like cats.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I always loved advertising. If I hadn’t been in fashion, I’d have been in advertising.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The first thing I do when I get up, I have breakfast.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t take showers at night, because I take a bath when I wake up. Then I go to bed on the most beautiful Egyptian-cotton antique sheets in the world.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“What I hate is nasty, ugly people.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“One day it will be over, and I don’t care.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I like the discipline of well-cut, impeccable clothes. I think it’s a very healthy discipline.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I can hardly eat meat because it has to look like something what it was not when it was alive.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Foreigners don’t want to invest any more in France – and this is not working.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The importance of logo into today’s fashion is un! be! Lievable!”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I can do whatever I want.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never go anywhere. I do sketches and make phone calls, and people visit. It’s more fun to come to Paris.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“People can drink with their eyes; I can eat with my nose.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I am not a second option person. It is that or nothing. If it is not the way I see it I prefer not to see it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t do meetings.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Nothing scares me more than people with some doll collection.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never smoked. I never drank and I never took drugs. The funny thing is, nothing is more boring, people like this. For me, it’s OK. But most of my friends, at least they smoke and drink.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Fortunately there is more wealth in the world than there was at the time of the global economic crisis of 1929 – Chinese, Indian, Arab and Russian.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Everyone wants to know and hopes I retire so they can get the jobs. But my contracts with Fendi and Chanel are lifelong.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Stupidly it should not be. It should be also nice. One must get along with that. Is however not necessary.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know. There’s no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I eat fish, three times a week meat, and if not yogurt, something like this and it rarely continues.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I have now exactly the same weight I had when I was 18, 20.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I like today and perhaps a little future still, but 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 knew how it was.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never – you know also one of the things that would save me for a man my age, it was not that easy to lose that much weight and fall down and look like something draped.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“If there’s something dangerous, sauces are dangerous for the body.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“No, and I never, ever eat in between the meals. I control it well enough and with no pills, and I sleep seven hours a night. I go to bed. I fall asleep, and I wake up seven hours later, and this is the most important.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“No. I mean those people really did something for designers I don’t think department stores can, could or should do still today. Today the world is different so you have to make it differently. There’s TV. There’s a lot of things.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Oh yes, I love to do shoes. I’m not a fetishist but I love to do shoes.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Some people would like me to be round again.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Music is part of the life of fashion, too.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I prefer to be in a video than to play with it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Personally, I don’t wear fur.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“What I love best in life is new starts.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m totally myself.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“People like me were supposed to be into exclusivity, unapproachable. That’s what I hate most. I think it’s very demode.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“T-shirts for ten dollars are even more fashion today than expensive fashion.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I think tattoos are horrible. It’s like living in a Pucci dress full-time.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Who buys French cars? Not me.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t speak Spanish, I speak a little of Italian but no Spanish.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“There are so many people in the world who cannot read English or French or whatever.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Black-and-white always looks modern, whatever that word means.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I sleep seven hours. If I go to bed at two, I wake up at nine. If I go to bed at midnight, I wake up at seven. I don’t wake up before – the house can fall apart, but I sleep for seven hours.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never drink anything hot; I don’t like hot drinks, very strange.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I love dogs, but dogs, you have to be in the country with dogs. I cannot walk a dog on the street.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My opinion can be completely different after a show.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I hate the past – especially my own past.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The brain is a muscle, and I’m a kind of body-builder.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I think for my bones and my size, I better stay with my 60 kilo.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Buy clothes the size you want to wear.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m not a fortune-teller.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It’s a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m an iPod person.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I like to do things quickly because I’m easily bored.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m like a rock singer with one-night stands on the road.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I love to watch times change!”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“There are less than 1 per cent of anorexic girls, but there more than 30 per cent of girls in France – I don’t know about England – that are much, much overweight. And it is much more dangerous and very bad for the health.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“No one wants to see curvy women.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m lucky to work in the most perfect of conditions.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Work is making a living out of being bored.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I do my job like I breathe.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I eat next to nothing.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I can no longer walk in the street. That’s over.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t want to be on the Internet.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t know what ‘normal’ means, anyway.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I never fall in love.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I have no human feelings.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I think it’s horrible that people have to be told. Don’t smoke! Everybody knows it’s bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I am like a TV antenna. I catch everything that is in the air, and then I do it my way.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Greece needs to work on a cleaner image. It’s a big problem, as they have this reputation of being so corrupt.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I have moved to a smaller house in Paris, and I don’t fancy having so much staff now.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I have more friends in New York than Paris.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Bling is over. Red carpet covered with rhinestones is out. I call it ‘the new modesty.’”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I make such big efforts to forget things and I can’t tell the story of my life because, thank God, I’m still living it.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I didn’t play with other children.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I hardly went to school.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“The way I talk is bizarre.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My mother did not like children.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“You cannot be creative with people around you.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“My hair is not really white; it’s kind of grayish, and I don’t like the color. So I make it totally white with Klorane dry shampoo. That is the best thing to do because my hair is always clean.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m always relaxed.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married – who divorce in three seconds – don’t want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t have any stress. I’m very lucky. I live a very healthy life.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t eat bubble gum, but I like the smell.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“There was a moment when designers draped in ermine would be reading Proust, or pretending to.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I like the language in Proust but not the context.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m not very gifted for hairdos. I don’t like gel and all those products.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I worked out a lot before I was 20. I was hard underneath. I had just a little padding. I was quilted. Always Chanel.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Start your diet during a period of optimism and happiness.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I’m a total puritan, but I found Jacques’ adventures amusing. We couldn’t be further apart. I am a Calvinist toward myself and totally indulgent toward others.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Is there a way to design a room in my house where I float around? I would quite enjoy that. It’s nuts.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Paris by night is a nightmare now. It is not a cliche anymore.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Everything has changed, and nothing has changed more than the world of fashion.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“If you’re in this business and you are scared, then you better do something else.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I was always told as a child by my mother that you always have to be impeccable, even when you go to bed.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“In my day, there were no vet video games.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“100 percent a huge fan of Beyonce. If I see her, I will faint. I’ve met her before. I just get really nervous and quiet – I just shut up and bow down.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“Mostly I stay at home from the morning until 5 P.M., and I only go out for fittings and shoots because I work at home. I like to be alone.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
“I admire people who destroy themselves.”
― Karl Lagerfeld
Leave a Reply