by Amy Odell
Karl Lagerfeld is important to me because, as one of the fanciest people on the planet—who lives as though his life were one long black-and-white Fellini movie—he is an endless study in fascination and amusement. He has said he owns “hundreds” of iPods and has been thought to employ a “nanny” to upload music to them, would rather fax than use a cell phone, and wears kimonos during overseas flights. He is also obsessed with his cat Choupette, who eats fresh seafood off fine china and has been on the cover of German Vogue. He goes everywhere wearing a full three-piece suit with a tie, layered silver necklaces, and the occasional diamanté brooch. He is never without fingerless leather gloves and sunglasses, and keeps his powder-white hair in a low ponytail. His look is best summed up as a cross between the Founding Fathers and Michael Jackson.
No matter what he does, he’s heralded as a genius and promptly copied by nearly every other important designer. Karl’s runway shows have included purses fashioned from hula hoops, full-fur Chewbacca suits, and skirt suits with beaver tails. He has that rare ability to make rich people lust for seemingly terrible things, like clogs, fur boots, and basket-weave purses. This is a very hard thing to do, but also really important for a fashion designer because what’s amazeballs one decade is highly questionable the next (see: fringed vests for men, overalls with a strap down, brown carpets people had in their homes in the ’70s). If designers never convinced us to want the things we didn’t already have, we’d never shop. The next time you want something impractical you know you shouldn’t buy, like pilgrim shoes, you can probably trace the influence back to someone like Karl, Marc Jacobs, and—if what you’re eyeing are really tight pants and you are a man—Hedi Slimane.
Karl’s theatrical spirit makes him a natural for putting on fashion shows. (I have never been invited to one because I am not important enough to attend, being neither Posh Spice, a socialite with a Vogue column, an Olsen twin, nor J. Lo’s child.) For the purpose of dressing ladies in clothes and having them walk back and forth, he’s created a faux “airplane,” where the aisle served as the runway, a barn floored with hay and dirt, an iceberg imported from Northern Europe, and a carousel made from oversized Chanel purses. If Karl ever finds himself bankrupt and without a job in fashion, I’m quite convinced he could make a career out of creating amusement parks for older, rich ladies for whom the word summer is primarily a verb. He could charge $200 an hour, and one of the “rides” could involve sitting in the cabin of a private plane while flight attendants serve you low-cal fish mousse. Now, would spendy fifty-year-old broads be into that or what?
One of my other favorite fun facts about Karl: he published a diet book with the least useful recipes in history, such as fish soufflé, vegetables in aspic, and ham and raspberry mousse. Naturally, it worked fabulously for him and utterly failed for everyone else who would rather not eat than either try to prepare vegetable aspic or actually consume it.
I wrote the art gallery immediately to find out if this was really going to happen, Karl Lagerfeld strutting his fish-soufflé-eating self into this exhibition. I was assured that, yes, Karl was in fact supposed to appear in the flesh to fete an exhibition of photographs of Brad Kroenig he took for a book that consisted entirely of photographs of Brad Kroenig. The Amazon.com description of Metamorphoses of an American: A Cycle of Youth 2003–2008 reads:
In Metamorphoses of an American, Karl Lagerfeld documents the physical and emotional development of Brad Kroenig, the world’s most sought-after male model . . . Lagerfeld discovered Kroenig in 2003, making his first photographs of the young man in Biarritz; since then, he has diligently observed Kroenig through the photographic lens, month by month.
The weirdest part of this whole event was that Karl would spend five years photographing one male model in order to put his obsession on full display in an art gallery in, of all places, midtown. (There were likely also openings in other exotic cities like Venice and Seoul, but let’s just focus on New York City.) Being in midtown feels like being in a never-ending line at Starbucks. Isn’t that why publishing houses like Hearst maintain such glamorous in-office cafeterias? So that their beautiful employees don’t have to subject themselves to the distress of midtown for any extended length of time?
Of course, the problem with the opening being in midtown was that Karl Lagerfeld now had a really good excuse not to show up. But I had faith that it was my destiny to meet Fashion’s Santa in the flesh, and so to Karl I went.
I recruited two companions for Operation Stalk Karl Lagerfeld at Random Midtown Art Gallery: (1) My friend Chris, fashion enabler and endearingly speechless in the face of any meaningful celeb, most especially Madonna. Necessary for moral support in case I found myself speechless in Karl’s presence. And (2) NYmag.com’s videographer Jonah. Necessary to capture an interview for the website and the personal files I’d need if I ever felt like bragging about this occasion over the next several decades of my life.
We arrived that misty Friday night and rode the elevator up to the gallery, which had gray walls that were absolutely covered in photos of Brad Kroenig. There was Brad looking out a window, there was Brad looking at his sleeve, there was a collage of wallet-sized images of Brad’s face. We were all willfully trapped in a chamber of Bradness. Fortunately, they were serving free wine.
“What are you going to say to Karl?” Chris asked, eyes wide.
“Omigosh.” I was beginning to get tipsy and forget my plan, which amounted to engaging Karl in a brief but rousing discourse about sexism as it relates political candidates’ sartorial choices. All I could think of, though, was, “Do you only have acquired tastes, or do you like normal things, too?” and “Does Brad come with vocal cords? If so, does it matter?”
So, we waited. Chris and I decided Brad was attractive. Worthy of five years of documentation and an entire $80 art book attractive? Well, that at least gave us something to talk about. Seven o’clock turned to seven thirty, which turned to eight, which turned to . . . nine. Friends came, gave up on Karl, and left to go fist pump at nightclubs. One glass of wine turned to three. We forgot that it was weird that the face of one man surrounded us on all sides. I longed for the ordeal to end. Though I believed in Karl—have always believed in Karl—I started to wonder if he would materialize in this gray cell of his own imagination or if Brad would simply whisk him away to an Olsen twin’s house for a nice cold meal of aspic.
“He’s not coming,” Chris said.
“Don’t talk like that,” Jonah countered. “He’ll come. Keep the faith.” Even though Jonah was not of the world of fashion, he somehow understood a few basic rules: that Karl is God, God is worth waiting for, and that God arrives on God’s own schedule.
“Well if he doesn’t show up, we can’t feel too bad about getting stood up by Karl Lagerfeld,” I pointed out. Just think of the countless rock-hard abs that went unseen by Karl for the entire five years that he only had eyes for Brad’s. Besides, “It’s not like we found him on JDate.”
Just as I decided the invitation’s promise—Karl Lagerfeld will be present—was a lie and resigned myself to heading home drunk with no story to show for it, the elevator doors parted, and out strode the man, the myth, the Karl. You know how you feel when you’ve been at a concert forever, waiting for the artist to come on, and your feet hurt, and you’re blaming the person you paid too much to see and vowing to hate her forever, when all of a sudden the lights go down and smoke fills the stage, and suddenly Britney Spears or J. Lo emerges from an oversized floor tile, and everything is worth it? That’s pretty much exactly how Karl entered the room. Except his version of backup dancers are middle-aged men in suits.
This was our moment. The camera light turned on and we moved toward Karl. Because this was fate, Karl moved right toward us, like we were all Brad Kroenig.
“Karl!!! Karl. Karl, why Brad?” I shoved the mic in his face.
“I thought he had the ease with the camera very, very few people h
ave,” Karl said. He leaned in close when he talked to me. He smelled like soap. “I thought, he can transform himself.”
When interviewing God at a cocktail party, you have to remember that everyone around you is going to want a little piece of God. Whether it’s a selfie with God, an acknowledgment from God, or a photo of God—he’s going to be an in-demand member of the party. So, if you need a little piece of God—witty banter about an election, for instance—you’ll have to get the obligatory small talk out of the way quickly before God is understandably distracted by a man with abs that look like a freshly baked challah loaf.
“Do you prefer Barack or Hillary?”
Karl reminded me—and what would probably be our five viewers—that he’s foreign. “There’s nothing worse than strangers having an opinion of something that does not concern them,” he said.
“But what do you think of Hillary’s pantsuits,” I sputtered as he began to pull away. Was Brad tugging on his ponytail? Fuck off, Brad!
“Women in politics have a big problem,” he said. “If they are too chic they don’t look serious so it’s very, very difficult. I think her pants are poorly cut.”
And then he moved away to get his photo taken and gaze at the walls.
I remember feeling somewhat delirious after the interview. It was like seeing a really good concert from the front row where the artist leans over to high-five you. Also I wasn’t drunk or high and there was no crowd that caused exiting the venue to make you feel like swearing off concerts till the end of time.
• • •
If I could have such a positive experience with Karl, I could surely have one with Rachel a couple years later, when I had more experience and knew I could get through celebrity encounters without being weird. But I was afraid of what she’d think of me after so many years of blogging about her reality show, her QVC line, and her husband’s affinity for leather jewelry. For all I knew, she could have a voodoo doll that she stuck with an extra pin every time I wrote “Rachel’s husband, who wears more necklaces at once than I own.”
I arranged to meet Rachel at Saks, where she was doing a launch event for her clothing line. It was part party and part “Rachel tells people who spend a lot of money at Saks what to buy from her clothing line.” I was excited but extremely nervous that I’d be berated for being a snarky bitch.
When I arrived at Saks, I rode the escalators to the corner of a floor manned by a secretary at a dark wood desk. That’s how you know you’re in a really fancy store—they have secretaries at desks to keep the riffraff out of the secret “backstage” areas that regular people aren’t supposed to know exist. Going to a special area to interview a famous person like this is always a little nervous-making, because it heightens the differences between that person’s life and your own. But it’s also hardly unexpected. A famous stylist as recognizable as Zoe isn’t going to stand next to the sale rack to talk to me when she could be in a nice enclosed room with comfortable furniture and silver trays of tea sandwiches.
The secretary ushered me through a door. Behind that door was another desk manned by another secretary. That secretary had a woman wearing all black guide me through a maze of heavy doors and secret passageways lined with plush carpeting. Very often when you are going to meet a celebrity you will have to navigate the intestines of a very large building. They like to hide in rooms deep within these places that no one aside from other famous people ever knew existed. My gallery encounter with Karl was so unusual because he usually pulls this very trickery—once I tried to interview him at Macy’s and couldn’t because I was told I was “not on the list,” but in reality I had no idea if he was even physically there, since the only indication of his presence was a bunch of suits guarding a dark hallway.
Eventually my escort established me in a room with a lovely display of tiny sandwiches and refreshments. Those wildly popular ten-dollar bottles of green juice were chilling in a silver ice bucket. Because the new hotness at press junkets now is to treat overpriced green juice like fine champagne. To be fair, eight of them probably cost as much as a bottle of Dom. Everyone takes one, but no one drinks it because they like it—they just take it because they know it retails for ten dollars. It’s the Birkin bag of beverages.
Then I waited. Interviewing designers and celebrities always involves waiting because there are always eight million other people who want something from them and fame is a constant act of figuring out who deserves to be fit in and when. I probably fit in somewhere below “have assistant replace old socks” on these people’s to-do lists.
As I sat there with the ice bucket of overpriced juice waiting for Rachel, I thought about all the arguably negative things the Cut had posted about her. It all started with a freelancer reporting that Rachel missed Marc Jacobs’s show (because he had the gall to start on time instead of thirty minutes late like everyone else) and was upset by it. As one would be if they missed Marc Jacobs’s show for the reason that he started on time! Because this is a fact of every woman’s life: no one is on time. The blog post was even splashed on the screen in the middle of an episode of her Bravo reality show. Which shall stand forever in my mind as the closest I’ve ever been to appearing on Bravo. But as joyous as I was about the Cut’s airtime, it came at the cost of even more airtime of Rachel in her signature outfit—the white hotel bathrobe—looking quite upset over the whole thing. Did she still hate me? If she did, she might force me to explain why we published that she missed Marc Jacobs’s show and ask why I was so mean and don’t I know that she’s a real person just like everyone else? If she threw green juice on me, would it stain? I was about to find out.
Carrie came into the room before Rachel. She was tiny and stylish and perfectly lovely in person. But there was an edge to her voice that said she could turn off her niceness as soon as she wanted. Before Rachel Zoe came into the room, we exchanged polite conversation about how amazing she is. This is a ritual that seems to happen prior to interviewing nearly any major celeb. Maybe celebrities send their publicists in first to make sure the reporter will say she thinks the celebrity is the best thing that ever happened to the world. This must be the LA equivalent of a burning sage air cleanse.
Then Rachel breezed into the room, as if carried by the skirt of her long, flowing printed blue dress that was basically a daytime gown. Despite this being August, she wore the frock’s pussy bow knotted high around her neck and a glossy black leather jacket over a top. Not that she looked the least bit uncomfortable or out of place, especially next to her assistant, who was wearing a full black tuxedo pantsuit from the line and quite possibly might have had all the oil glands in her face removed. Rachel always wears what Rachel wants, not what’s practical. This is the beauty of being famous, and this is especially the beauty of working in fashion: no one expects the things you do, and certainly not the things you wear, to make sense. In fact, people prefer that you make very little sense. Hence, we have pop stars who wear ’80s workout leotards to go shopping in New York in December. Hence, we have Karl Lagerfeld making $2,400 purses out of hula hoops.
Rachel was lovely. Perfectly welcoming and didn’t say anything about how the Cut previously hurt her feelings. I definitely wouldn’t have taken as kindly to anyone who made me upset on Bravo.
“The line looks so expensive!” I told Rachel when we shook hands near the snacks that no one would eat. A rack of the clothes she created hung yonder from the festering food. These included: a camel cape, a coat with a faux fur hem so thick that it looked like it had a fur skirt sewn on, suiting with flared pants that skimmed the ground, ruffled dresses, sequined jackets, and fur vests.
“Would you like to sit down? Have a seat in my office,” she joked, plopping down on the couch. I obliged.
“So what made you want to do the line?” I asked.
“It was something that I have thought of a million times, but also the thing that I was petrified to do. I think being judged by my pee
rs is something that is very scary to me. I have sat with these buyers and fashion directors of these retail stores for many, many years. And the editor in chiefs and things—the thought of being judged by them is petrifying. Petrifying.”
I knew what she meant. People with outsize personas like Karl Lagerfeld are scary because you’ve no way of knowing whether what they’re really like matches public perception until you interact. And then there’s Fashion Week, which could be called “Judge Shit Week.” We judge the clothes on the runway; we judge the designers, like Rachel and Karl, who design them; we judge the models wearing them; we judge the clothes people in attendance are wearing; we judge where everyone’s sitting and what everyone is doing. And the most discomfiting part about all of it is that nothing anyone thinks is out in the open. With the exception of a few fashion critics, no one’s willing to come out and say what they say to their coworkers when they’re back at their offices or out of earshot. But you get alone with these people and you hear everything: which designer they think is terrible and should go out of business, which street-style star they think is a walking joke, which front-row celebrity they think is the most desperate, which editor they think is the most lame.
As someone who’s been on the inside of the business for two decades, Rachel knows this well. She also knows that hers is a business of image making where all that matters is the first impression. Fashion isn’t like pop songs that you have to hear several times before you fall in love with them. People fall in love with clothes or outright hate them immediately. Very few fashion designers get the chance to woo people over time—the ones who do manage to churn out hit after hit season after season until they train their audiences to embrace everything they do as genius. When you are just starting out and are a known reality TV star—in the snooty eyes of the fashion industry, the polyester of fame—you have to work even harder to get people to see your cred.