The Big Interview: Karl Lagerfeld

in the world of luxury goods both france and germany boast no figure that comes quite as close to a living national icon as carl lagerfeld he is best known as head designer and creative director for both the house of chanel and the italian fashion brand fendi and he enjoys great success with his own carl lagerfeld label born in hamburg he has been a fixture on the paris fashion scene for over 50 years if ever two nations had a private sector soft power asset at the center of the creative industries it's the man in the skinny denim frockish coat pulled back hair and sunglasses i met with mr lagerfeld in paris at his bookstore come atelier come photo studio to discuss everything from fine print politics and creative control in 89 90 i think we might have what might have met uh we were in a period of five or six sort of singular women um many fashion houses not attached to big corporates was there a different a different sense of of doing business a different sense of marketing uh then versus now or or do you think marketing is about i never use because i don't know what that means so good let's forget about it i don't have to do that like you yeah exactly you know i think about what i want to do when i think i found a good solution i don't discuss it with marketing people i do it because if not forget about it no it's it's another world you know in 25 years the world has changed unbelievable with stupid things like the the ipad and the and the iphone already that changed the world too and internet and all the all those things i mean the world is so different uh people connect in such a different way the business is also look amazon all those things didn't exist so you can not compare anymore for me it's like it happened 50 or 100 years ago it's interesting that you maybe refer to them in in a slightly dismissive way and in a way i applaud this as well you recently brought out a newspaper which was interesting to see a provocation uh just to say listen there are many ways to consume media there's many ways to advertise and promote or i love paper i love newspaper i think it was fun to do it was not done like this before you know i worked for one day with papers like metro but it was like mine for i did liberacion i did weld amazon i like that so why shouldn't i do not do it one day for myself does that maybe reflect also what your breakfast diet looks like are you a frankfurter algebraic uh yes you don't have the breakfast that comes out at lunchtime if you have the one for breakfast it's an old magazine all papers from the day before it's only a noon paper but it's a good thing because very often they have things the other don't have because they finish before midnight so i love daily papers i mean but some of them have problems because they are not well written i think the survival of daily paper depends a lot on the way people write there are not many greats what they used to call feathers plume and that makes it more banal because the language on on the digital and all this is another thing that is information but on a paper you want to sit down read and read something was pleasant to read not just flat information you can get that somewhere else they have to make a bigger effort it's interesting listening to the press barons they're always blaming it's digital's fault no it's their photo if they were geniuses with a new modern way to write like it used to happen in the past but that doesn't exist it's easily pretentious and it's not much better than the information on the digital i'm sorry so then i understand that there are problems it's very interesting to look at deedsite right now a newspaper which is actually growing uh everyone says the print is dead but also the level is better of course i mean the site i read i love that site the site magazine sometimes is a little too pretentious for me i prefer the magazine from the frankfurter once a month you know they did eight times a month in the first year not because of my cartoons my colleague culture now from next year they're doing so well they do every month what's in the dna do you think in in the german market that they've been able to sustain this i think it's also the fact that there are many different cities it's not only one big city and the rest is sleeping beauty i think there is something more complicated and more diversificated in germany than in other countries because it's polycentric yes power is not just sitting in berlin it's not just no no it's berlin what is your take on berlin but you know berlin could be great but for me berlin is like a human body with an arm and a leg missing what they did there the russians made it forever something what has not the soul berlin was famous for it's okay they want to be trendy they want to be so trendy that they look sometimes like a second great london that's not that easy for me i know so well the past of berlin and the spirit of ben and the whole thing that the berlin from today i don't know for me there is not enough left from what berlin was all about the spirit of balance there was a way you know there was a is too unknown this three you know somebody who was typical for that in a way was henry newton he had this kind of genius huh when you look at the state of where media is today digital media are you slightly saddened by the fact that there's almost this demystification i mean good brands i always think are quite mysterious but yet today everyone's talking every second about what they're doing you look you look at a major ceo he's telling you about who his next designer is uh how happy everyone is in the factory do you think that this somehow sort of diminishes the very industry that we're talking about information became so easy that we are over informed by things we are not supposed to know we are not that great to know but that is something what never existed before so it is too dangerous to say no it was better people it wasn't better it was just different it's up to us to adjust to our times the times are not supposed to adjust to our perhaps passive states so you have to be careful you like it or you don't like it the question is that's the way it is you can do nothing against it that's an evolution and this evolution cannot be stopped and will not be stopped tomorrow morning what if there's a certain boredom as well when you look at major fashion corporations when you think back to some of the great people that you worked with as partners before versus we're in this era of private equity so many companies are on the stock exchange now is there a similar rush today as there was when you put out a collection 30 years ago no you i don't even compare 30 years ago with now now it's all you know what globalization didn't existed 30 years ago now it's all on a global scale don't it has to be on the stock market it has to be you know people the companies i work for they have hundreds and hundreds of shops all over the world the whole thing so that was not like this before so you cannot criticize the world because you think it's better before and be part of that world what is all over the place for me it's okay i must be an opportunist i can still live in my private world but i'm not against the world of today because if you're against it you are like donkey shot i don't fight windmills and in this globalized world is a city like the one we're in paris is it is it important not just as a center for creativity but also as a center for making things even it depends on what kind of uh label you are working what chanel does they produce and trust this kind of thing in front they do it pretty well but uh for less expensive thing the the people ask for so much money that they would make things nobody would pay that much if they would be made here so you think provenance is still important when you're talking about a label like chanel made in france is is still key or made in italy yes made in italy they're pretty good and some of the things are mainly choose for chanel made in italy because in france there's nobody left for the shoes and today perfect labor is expensive beautiful craftsmanship like they can do here in terms of embroidery and things like that are expensive but not everybody can pay that so some people uh are happy to get something but some glitter on it made in india i hope not by children if you look at austria still a little bit of switzerland germany you still have this culture of the apprentice people do apprenticeships we've sort of lost this um you have to have a degree you have to go to university the idea of doing something with your hands is kind of gone but yeah you still get this practicant culture in in germany i mean being a carpenter if you do beautiful work there is something to be proud of it's like the the medieval corporations from six seven hundred years ago maybe there's something left in the mind of the people those things never have existed in more modern in recent countries like canada and america it never exists new york may be more exciting than paris but paris is a good platform for showing fashion do we see rise of somewhere else becoming more important in the world or not in the ten next years perhaps later i don't know i'm sure that china is ambitious to to become something like that japan has some fashion identity but the strongest part of the japanese fashion identity is shown in europe the the tokyo fashion week i don't know what's very strong or not strong there new york has an identity but it's not as established as paris london is known for creativity but not for business in italy i don't think it's that bad huh i mean i i look since fendi was bought by elvia mitch i mean they really do unbelievably well like uh i mean prada they do very well i mean mutual prada there are not 200 multiparters in the world you mentioned fendi you wear multiple hats working for multiple brands you speak to many companies they say the creative director the creative force behind a company needs to focus and yet you are able to send for your own collection a variety of other collections down the catwalk it's all very different of course it is i know i'm wondering how how does that look when you sit down to to sketch to collaborate with your colleagues on this that what is the vision and is it very sort of contained and is a discussion with mr arnold's team as to what you might have done for offending collection versus yeah what's going to then come down with the house say something horrible i don't discuss i do whatever that's horrible exactly i'm lucky that's a privilege what i want so i was never questioned and i don't make meetings there is no marketing meeting i i don't do those things you know my thing in life is the general opinion of a single person but before i open the mouse i vaguely think about what i want to do and apparently seeing the numbers my advice is not that bad most of them when they didn't listen to my advice uh especially in the past from long when they thought they knew better and things they all had trouble so i don't want to be pretentious but maybe i'm not that bad yet in a drive for bigger margins it is amazing how many designers do get pushed around now who have to have focus groups who have to listen to what wall street says etc poor boys or poor girls i mean it never happened to me and i hope it will never happen i was never had hunted because my head was never free i invented a kind of blueprint for the freelance job the way it is because you know i have no exclusivity with nobody not to challenge nobody no no no no but i'm honest enough not to do the same thing for somebody else because the label and the company is a company i have no ego problem chanel is chanel fendi is friendly lagerfeld is lagerfeld they are totally unrelated and if it wouldn't be like this it would be very dishonest it's a job because it's not me it's them do you think that's a bit of a an end of a line right now that you're in this position of supremacy mr lagerfeld that you'll be able to to do this but the next people who come along yeah i mean they're they have to answer to a board it's up to them to impose them i don't know i made never an effort to impose myself it happened like this i wasn't questioned i don't know why i think it's the top of luxury i would be bored to death and stop when i started chanel i made two ready to wear and two high fashion collection now i make eight and most of them were initiated by me the cruise was unimportant we made it a really important inventory now every two months because there are six collections with the pre-collection and the main collection there and they do the same kind of business there are every two months a collection that the shops the windows every everything can be changed and it's me who initiated this don't it's not even because a sense of business is because i thought it was just right for that brand buster are there certain places that inspire you where you see the next generation i don't know but my favorite collection last season was the one the young anderson it for followers i think he's great so there are new people and some of them are less pretentious than the generation before what i call the former young designers they should be nameless no no name because you know as well as i do so i don't have to give your name no one there is a young french boy called jacques i think he has something to no no i see a lot of people and simone rosha i think she's very gifted are we at a point right now where you've done all of the projects you've designed all the types of collections the yachts the cars built the houses that you've wanted to to build my only regret is that i didn't do the house with studio undo that that i really regret the rest i did what i wanted to do and even in a way more than i expected i could do but you know i'm never pleased with myself uh i always think i could do better i could make an effort i'm lazy i mean it's ridiculous i know but i has a healthy attitude and i don't think i should change my state of mind because when people start to think about their past their art and all that that's very dangerous i do a kind of applied ah don't be too potential and the good thing is that i get never like the old rolling stones and such any satisfaction of what i'm doing or always think it could improve i could do better and i could do more it's ridiculous but it's very healthy i think

Channel: Monocle Films

Views: 495,922

Keywords: Monocle, Karl Lagerfeld (Film Costumer Designer), Berlin, Media, Newspapers, Fashion, Tyler Brûlé

Id: wjVCBewCOgg

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 23 2015