Karl Lagerfeld by Antonio Lopez , Saint Tropez 1970.

"I don't like to act because my life is a pantomime anyway."

- Karl Lagerfed

Masters and Slaves

Magister Dixit:

 "I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that. It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long" 

- Karl Lagerfeld

Magister Dixit:

"Please don't say I work hard. Nobody is forced to do this job and if they don't like it, they should do another one. If it's too much, do something else. But don't start doing it and then say, 'Aaaah, it's too much'. Because a lot of people depend on it. What we do at Chanel, thousands of people work on these things; these things are sold in hundreds and hundreds of shops all over the world. People like the big machine, and the money the big machine involves, but the effort... Then, suddenly, they become artists. They are too weak. Too fragile. Non. We have to be tough. We cannot talk about our suffering. People buy dresses to be happy, not to hear about somebody who suffered over a piece of taffeta. Me, I like to make an effort. I like nothing better than concrete reality. I'm a very down-to-earth person, but it is my job to make that earth more pleasant." 

- Karl Lagerfeld

Man at Work

Strike a Pose

"I'm very impeccable and clean before I go to bed. It's just like right before I'm going out. When I was a child, my mother always told me that you could wake up in the middle of the night and be deathly sick, so you always have to be impeccable. I laugh about it now, but I think everyone should go to bed like they have a date at the door." 

- Karl Lagerfeld

Real Love:

"Karl preferes Coca-Cola and chocolate cake to love. They 're his, they're there in the refrigerator and always accessible".

- Jacques de Bascher

Les Amoureux

Life Imitating Art

La Salle Ronde, Adolph von Menzel

"At the age of seven i had a total coup de foudre before a reproduction of a painting by Menzel representing Frederick the Great surrounded by friends, one of whom was Voltaire, and receiving them at Sans Souci. I immediately decided that this elegant and refined scene represented the life that was worth living, a sort of ideal that I have since endeavoured to achive."

- Karl Lagerfeld

Holy Trinity

Creating the Myth:

"Karl was engaged in the highly effective construction of an image. So that everything about him - his look, his world, his apartment, his background - was calculated to appear larger than life"

- Alicia Drake

Quo Vadis?

Conspiracy Theory

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Triumvirate