Lagerfeld in ‘I love Skeletor’ shocker.
What is most shocking about Karl Lagerfeld recently adding his tuppence to the debate on size zero models, is not that he described haters of the skeletal look as ‘jealous’, ‘chip-eating mummies’ but that anyone would expect him to say anything else. Not least because he himself appears to be a fan of the Posh Spice school of eating-is for-quitters, having shrunk from the rotund physique of any regular fan-carrying man in his twilight years to the lollypop-headedness of a Mischa Barton pre-bloatedness/rehab so he could wear Hedi Slimane and ostensibly look like all the other little boys who wanted to be Pete Doherty 5 years ago.
What is also slightly bizarre is that Lagerfeld’s comments are off the back of German magazine Brigitte’s decision to feature real women not professional models in their pages, after complaining they were sick of photoshopping super-thin girls to make them look ‘healthy’. For starters Brigitte, may be a top seller in Germany but it is not Vogue. It is perhaps closer in style to Good Housekeeping. By this I’m not making a value judgement that one is better than the other, just that there is a difference, not just in content but more specifically in audience. For Brigitte to abandon super-thin models is a bit like preaching to the choir- they cater for a readership who want to bake thangs and make their clothes, not get Chanel’d up to the hilt (personally, I’ve got time for both these camps). Not only this but Brigitte were airbrushing the models between their pages because they needed to ‘fatten up’, who was hiring these models in the first place? The decision of integrity should’ve been made from the outset with the publication’s audience in mind not after the damage has been done. Fuelling the supposed collective desire for waif-like models by hiring them and then doctoring their image so they don’t offend your readership is in some ways more perverse and damaging than anything Lagerfeld has said.
So an established quasi-anorexic at the helm of the world largest fashion brand doesn’t want to see women with curves? Not surprising. Does his lack of love for women’s bodies flourish because he’s a gay man and doesn’t want to sleep with them? Maybe. But evidence would suggest he doesn’t want men’s bodies anything other than angular either. He is not to be applauded in love of bone above flesh, but neither are Brigitte for doing a u-turn on their skeletor cover-up mission too late in the day. I also can’t help feeling that a man who is as famous for his soundbites as he is for his day-job saw an opportunity to fuel his self characterization as the ultimate fashion cliche by letting rip with another banger. There is a fine line between a man who takes himself this seriously and a man who, perhaps, doesn’t.
