024# Black sunglasses

Oh, Karl

Karl Lagerfeld spoke to Bruce LaBruce in the latest issue of Vice magazine, and delivered some of his most epic quotes of the new decade. Without further ado:

On not removing his sunglasses for interviews:

They’re my burka ... I had an interview once with some German journalist — some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists — maybe a week after — and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, “It’s impolite; remove your glasses.” I said, “Do I ask you to remove your bra?”

And yet:

I have not one prejudice. I don’t judge things.

On childhood:

I was a beach boy in my youth.

And adoption:

If there were a child I wanted to adopt, I would try to find the family of the child and give them the money for an education in his life and his context.

On what political correctness means to him:

It means people talking about charities. Do it, be charitable, but don’t make a subject of conversation out of it because then you bore the world to death. It’s very unpleasant. But I don’t go out a lot so I’m not so exposed to people.

On homosexuality (though he is against gay marriage):

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.

On voting:

I’ve never voted in my life—for any kind of politics.

On sex:

I admire porn... And I personally only like high-class escorts. I don’t like sleeping with people I really love. I don’t want to sleep with them because sex cannot last, but affection can last forever. I think this is healthy. And for the way the rich live, this is possible. But the other world, I think they need porn. I also think it’s much more difficult to perform in porn than to fake some emotion on the face as an actor.

On fur:

That’s why I always say, when people talk about not using fur, “Are you rich enough to make an income for the people in the north who live from hunting? What do you want them to live off of when there’s nothing else to do?”

On communicating in modern times:

People I’m really friendly with have faxes. Anna Wintour has one. We speak via fax. And in Paris I send letters to people.

On exercise:

I worked out when I was very young and then one day I was bored to death by it. I did it before other people did it. I did it in the 60s and late 50s.

On his weight loss:

Well, there came this new line from Hedi Slimane at Dior, that you needed to be slim to wear. It said, “You want this? Go back to your bones.” And so I lost it all. I lost 88 pounds and never got them back.

R.
ox