He Said She Said: Karl Lagerfeld On Sex and Love

"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." - Karl Lagerfeld

HE SAID SHE SAID: THE CAT'S MEOW

 “I have often thought that in my next life, I would like to come back as Choupette, (Karla Lagerfeld’s) extremely beautiful and bourgeois cat, who has two maids, a chef, a personal hairdresser and many diamond necklaces.” - Anna Wintour

Spring 2013: My Sacred Cows

CHANEL
One of the few collections this season that probably deserves to be studied up close, and seen worn on a moving model because the bounce and energy isn't evident in the still images. This aristocratic collection by Karl Lagerfeld actually throws up a vast array of ideas and propositions for all hours of the day - something that can't be said for many of the collections. There were brisk day dresses, easy suits, cute knits, elegant tea dresses, regal cocktail numbers and dignified formal gowns.
The tweeds were truly standouts, and beautifully coloured.

You just need to look pass the hula hoop bag, the Elizabethan pearl studs, and those plastic sombreros (which  even I don't understand!).

Bottega Veneta

A lovely, reduced collection from Tomas Maier. The burnt palette of batik colours is sensual and sultry and coupled with the romantic styling, brings to mind a story set in the tropics in the 1940s. Although these dresses glanced back at the past, they don't look dusty or cliched, just rich and intelligent.Of course the workmanship and fabrics are special, but every look bears Mr Maier's imprint and that is a true auteur's work.

DRIES VAN NOTEN
Pure romance and so perfectly balanced: This is the textbook case for the combination of soft and hard, tailored with flou, masculine with feminine, rich and poor, western and eastern. And easy to wear too!

BURBERRY PRORSUM
Christopher Bailey is tirelessly genius and this collection is wonderfully accomplished as usual, and on top of that deliciously, energetically coloured and very shapely!

Comme des Garçons
Rei Kawakubo is a true original and this collection could be a comment on the no-meaning place that fashion is at now, just a jumble of everything thrown together. A very romantic vision and what would you rather wear?

LANVIN
In a season when all you year is YSL (or any one of the handful of names we must now refer to the label), Alber Elbaz put out the definitive modern YSL collection. This reminds me that I've always thought that he was the best man for YSL. Beautiful. 

Spring 2012 Couture: Valentino

Even though lots of people are reporting that this collection references Marie Antoinette's bucolic fantasy milkmaid frocks. I think it's fairly obvious that the starting point references that pseudo-French queen Jackie O. I mean Jackie Onassis, and not Jackie Kennedy, for the two are quite different in style. To be more specific, it references the Valentino dress that she wore to marry Aristotle Onassis in 1968. The flats are a clue, as are the sleeves and the short skirts. Having said that, Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri's (quite a mouthful huh?) collection is my favourite of the season. The lightness of touch in the lace, organza, and filigree, smocking, and embroidery that felt graceful, and modern.You only need to look at Chanel this season (it references the 1960s too, which is useful) to know what I mean. I usually fall down foaming at Aunty Karla's couture, but this collection feels rigid and heavy and quite, quite old.

Religion

Aunty Karla shot Carine Roitfeld (below) for the 60th Visionaire titled Religion. The guest editor is Riccardo Tisci, who commissioned all new works, except one Robert Mapplethorpe photograph that was unpublished previously. It's a 'collaboration' with Givaudan on a new scent called Religion. The limited edition will have only 3,000 numbered editions

Aunty Karla's Chocolate Fix

Dessert in bed, anybody?
As promotion for Karla’s new short films about Magnum Ice Cream, she is pictutred in a chocolate fantasy suite, complete with a candy bar headboard, dark chocolate armchair and cocoa dusted sculpture of his Beloved Baptiste Giabiconi. Isn't it all kinds of weird to make a chocolate replica of Beloved Baptiste (albeit one that got the eyes un-crossed)? Isn't it all kinds of creepy-crazy?
And Magnum paid for it!
“I like chocolate. I don’t eat it, but I like the smell of it. People can drink with their eyes; I can eat with my nose. I would love to have a perfume based on chocolate.” - Karl Lagerfeld

"I Don't Like Ze Hear"

Beloved Baptiste and Rachel Bilson in a Magnum ad by Karl Lagerfeld. BB actually screams "fockers fockers" in this ice cream ad?

3'20" CoCo Mademoiselle

A bit much?

Timesless Coco

Endless Love

He's pretending to read!Aunty Karla shows his endless love for Beloved Baptiste with a glut of shoots and projects with his muse this season. Truly devoted - do we hear wedding bells?

A Handsome French Woman

Karl Lagerfeld, who worked with Emmanuelle Alt as stylist on Chanel campaigns years ago, says he thinks Ms Alt's strong style could be a double-edged sword in her new role as editor of Vogue Paris: “Her style is her big shoulders, long legs, tight jeans, sleeves up to the elbow, one hip out. I personally like her. She’s a handsome French woman. She has a style, but is it enough to make a whole magazine? As editor in chief, she may blossom."

Worlds Apart

Gucci and Chanel Spring 2011 ads...

Karl for Volkswagen

And Beloved Baptiste tiptoes into the act! Really, he's almost dancing in on points! Hilarious.

He Said She Said: Aunty Karla

“At Chanel, people don’t know limits. That’s the secret of the success of Chanel.”

"I have no personal feeling about my work, you know. It’s a job I do, I try to do.I cannot get ecstatic over something I did."

"The minute it’s shown, it’s over. I’m happy people like it and I think it’s the biggest compliment you can have in fashion, but myself, I’m the poor boy who has to make the next one."

"I don’t make dresses for myself, so I need the inspiration of girls like Ines, like Stella, like Freja and I put a few boys. The Chanel jacket is like the jeans or the white shirt and the black jacket. It’s the base of people’s dressing. But you cannot make a show only with that. So the main Chanel has to follow fashion, but there has to be an element they can find back all the time, like the quilted bag."

Both Beloveds

Aunty Karl is so sweet, and not at all heartless, as has been rumoured: He included Beloved Brad (ex Beloved) in the Pirelli Calender, along with (reigning Beloved) Beloved Baptiste. They styling is fantastic - the accessories (BB's codpiece!!!) are so beautiful...

Pirelli Calender

Beloved Baptiste, the Cross Eyed One, as Apollo in the 2011 Pirelli Calender. Photographed by Aunty Karla... with ropes of Komodo dragon-type drool dripping down his bespoke cravat.

Beloved Baptiste's Debut Single Showtime

Just in time for Deepavali too.
Did you notice that his hair is becoming very much a statement tsunami? The iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa, an Edo era woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai, which has inspired many artists over the years, must have inspired Aunty Karla to create this Great Wave hairdo for Beloved Baptiste, the Cross-Eyed One!

Weekend Reading List

My friend HHH gave me a copy of Electric Youth, my first, somewhere between drinking a large carrot and orange juice in the basement of the Paragon, and drinking a large Mosburger iced tea in the basement of Takashimaya. In between we looked at Bally shoes and Zegna sunglasses, Lego bricks and wooden picture frames, a gold Cartier pendant in the shape of a screw ("It's a pendant for a top!" I said) and a Bulgari gold chain that's just the right length. It's my first Electric Youth, a large-format collectible, as it is one of 1,000 copies, and comes with a medium sized swim trunk in navy blue printed over with tiny silver stars. This latter I've stowed away in the drawer where I keep my briefs and shorts, still in its plastic bag. The magazine I cracked open that night and greedily skimmed through. This occasional, limited publication by American Apparel, part Tiger Beat, part Bel Ami, is an interesting concept on first encounter, but I quite quickly wearied of it, and before I turned the last page, was bored.Part of HHH's routine of an afternoon is a stroll through Kinokuniya , alighting with feathery quickness on this and that magazine, dipping into the fresh glossy pages, very much like those sparrows downstairs flitting and dipping and pecking on this and that all along the shop houses of Chander Road. This afternoon, after a protracted chat with a young lady at the magazines section, about essentially nothing really, he led us to the fashion books section, where we stood a long time looking at every page of the new Jurgen Teller book; I felt like a horse standing in its stable. This is where I bought David Downton's Masters of Fashion Illustration which is simply a must have, and Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld), which appears to be a transcript of a long conversation with Mademoiselle herself. It's fascinating of course, she does say so many eccentric things.MC gave me a book (we had dim sum at The Cathay overlooking Handy Road) because he said that the title reminded him of me - Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What can he mean? In it, he wrote: "Stay every bit as silly, unpredictable and wonderful as you've always been. Love, M".
Silly? Yes, undoubtedly. Unpredictable? Surely not. I'm one of the most predictable people ever.

Showtime

Beloved Baptiste now has an official website! http://www.baptiste-giabiconi.eu/