Fake Karl Lagerfeld Discusses His Haute Couture Collection

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Just after Karl Lagerfeld presented his masterfully cut, entirely black-and-white Spring 2009 Chanel Haute Couture collaboration with Japanese hairstylist/milliner Katsuya Kamo (whose light-as-a-meringue "white paper origami" hat motif delicately swathed the entire collection and extended throughout the intimate former rue Cambon bank venue), I sat down to discuss the show with "Fake Karl" of the hilarious cult read in fashion circles Karl Lagerfeld's Guide to Life. The site is a daily hit on the RSS-feeds of esteemed critics, distinguished designers and even a few Condé higher-ups.

What was your chief inspiration for the collection?
Paper! I love paper. It has zero calories. You can eat it, chew on it, drink it... and not get fat!

Who was charged with painstakingly garlanding the entire Pavillon Cambon-Capucines with white origami cut-out paper doilies and flowers?
We actually hired a trained squad of pristine white polar bears riding on very large pure-black horses, who were trained as ninjas in hell's kitchen in a celler kitted out as a ice-cold zoo; they used their very marvelous skills to garland the Pavillion, hmm?

The Chanel Haute Couture collection was nearly entirely black and white, with white playing the most striking and prominent role. Why the "lack of color"?
Color is for fat ladies who eat too much, hmm? I mean, we're in times where some people can only afford one or two butlers – couture needs to portray the times. I'm not rascist, you know. I believe in purple people just as the next purple person. Anyway, colour doesn't age as quickly. Not everybody can equip their dressing rooms with a new collection of couture every six months. Some can only afford it every year!

Many observers have compared the collection's cut-out kirgami motif to that featured in your most recent Fendi presentation. Would you mind possibly elaborating as to why they are mistaken?
Non, non, non. They're incredibly mistaken. This is why they're an "observer" and not a designer. Fendi was about the future; it was very Leonard Cohen in a batmobile, hmm? Chanel is very now. Always very now. It's like a photo – a snapshot of what's happening in the world. If people happen to be doing bunny ears in that snapshot, that's their problem.

With a new starting point – a self-described "paper dream" – and the recession in mind, what can we expect from the Chanel brand in the future?
Less bags; more clothes. Maybe bags that you can turn into clothes, no? Like if you go to a Chanel boutique and buy a nice dress, then you can cut out a dress from the bag... if you could only afford one dress.

Why the change of venue from the Grand Palais to a former bank?
Because banks are where this only-two-butlers crisis is happening, you know. Money's in the banks, or at least people think it is. Banks have big vaults anyway, and people like big vaults.

Opening with Freja, shooting her for the lookbook, casting her as the bride: how did you choose the stunning, tattooed Ms. Beha Erichsen to star? Speaking of which, why no Catherine McNeil in presentation?
Well, I was once talking to this man from Saudi Arabia who told me this ryhme, and as soon as I had heard the rhyme I started rapping with a rapper named Blind Wille McTell. So, I really wanted ol' Blind Willie as the bride, and Freja was the best they could come up with, as Blind Willie is currently dead.

You have been quick to harangue the casting of Shirley MacLaine as Coco Chanel: begging the question, did you actually tune into the, as you say, demodé Lifetime network?
I think anybody with the name Shirley should be not cast in anything, except maybe as a tea-and-biscuts lady. And no.

Hypothetically, who would you want to portray you on film?
My life is a film!

For more Fake Karl, go to http://fakekarl.blogspot.com/