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Karl Lagerfeld's Quotes

2012 - On the Middleton sisters:

"Kate Middleton has a nice silhouette. I like that kind of woman, I like romantic beauties. On the other hand, the sister struggles. I don't like the sister's face. She should only show her back."

2011 - On his famous diet:

"I made a diet and my doctor made money that way. We sold nearly a million copies. I never touch sugar, cheese, bread... It was a very good, healthy thing, the best move in my life, I think, but it's totally effortless. I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat."

2011 - On designers who complain:

"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."

2007 - On the world's oldest profession:

"I'm rather pro-prostitution," the designer said, in the documentary Lagerfeld Confidential. "I admire people who do it. It can't be much fun. Thank goodness for it. People need relief or they become murderers."

2009 - On his bedtime routine:

"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."

2006 - On staying healthy:

"Vanity is the healthiest thing in life"

1975 - On his working practices:

"I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people"

1973 - How he describes his boudoir:

“If you see it you will think about everything except sex, because it is the unsexiest room ever. I love unsexy bedrooms”

2007 - On his feelings prior to a fashion show:

"I have no human feelings"

1984 - On his feelings following a fashion show:

"I’m a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm"

2007 - On being labelled a squanderer:

"If you throw money out of the window throw it out with joy. Don’t say 'one shouldn’t do that' - that is bourgeois"

2007 - On furnishing a home:

"The most important piece in the house is the garbage can"

2008 - On the ongoing fur debate:

"The discussion of fur is childish"

2004 - On weightloss:

“I lost 200lb to wear suits by Hedi Slimane"

1997 - On living on his own:

"I live in a set, with the curtains of the stage closed with no audience - but who cares?"

2007 - On his inimitable image:

"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"

1989 - On Ines de la Fressange, his ex-muse:

"I wish her all the luck in the world, just so long as I don’t have to see her anymore or hear her spoken about"

1984 - His thoughts on Yves Saint Laurent:

"He is very middle-of-the-road French-very pied-noir, very provincial"

1978 - On his early start:

"When I was four I asked my mother for a valet for my birthday"

2006 - On music and technology:

"The iPod is genius. I have 300"

2007 - On being childless:

"They grow so fast, and having adult children makes you look 100 years old. I don’t want that"

2009 - His thoughts on the recession:

"Bling is over. Red carpetry covered with rhinestones is out. I call it the new modesty"

2009 - On Heidi Klum:

"I don't know Heidi Klum. She was never known in France. Claudia Schiffer also doesn't know who she is."

2003 - On unattractive and short people:

"Life is not a beauty contest, some [ugly people] are great. What I hate is nasty, ugly people... the worst is ugly, short men. Women can be short, but for men it is impossible. It is something that they will not forgive in life... they are mean and they want to kill you."

2004 - On his collaboration with H&M and relying less on cost and more on the individual's sense of style:

"Chic is a kind of mayonnaise, either it tastes, or it doesn't."

2010 - On sunglasses:

"They're my burka...I'm a little shortsighted, and people, when they're shortsighted, they remove their glasses and then they look like cute little dogs who want to be adopted."

2010 - On interview ettiquette:

"I had an interview once with some German journalist - some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists - maybe a week after - and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, 'It's impolite; remove your glasses.' I said, 'Do I ask you to remove your bra?'."

2010 - On fame:

"...you cannot fight against it. There's a price you have to pay for fame, and people who don't want to pay that price can get in trouble. I accepted the idea of celebrity because of a French expression: 'You cannot have the butter and the money for the butter'."

2010 - On political correctness:

"Be politically correct, but please don't bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that's the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation."

2010 - On wanting children:

"If I were interested in children, I would be a godfather."

2010 - On homosexuality:

"When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said - and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded - 'It's like hair colour. It's nothing. Some people are blonde and some people have dark hair. It's not a subject.' This was a very healthy attitude."

2010 - On his childhood:

"I was very much like a grown-up. I have photos of me as a child wearing a tie, and it's the same as I am today."

2010 - On photographing Carla Bruni in the nude:

"She was one of the ten supermodels... She has a great education and speaks many languages. She's perfect for the job of first lady. I even photographed her naked... but they were elegant and she had nothing against it. She couldn't care less. She's very cool like that. The photo is beautiful. I can show you the nude of her. I did it for Visionaire in 1998. Everybody knows how a man or a girl is built, and everybody goes to the beach. So where's the problem?"

2010 - On crime:

"Frustration is the mother of crime, and so there would be much more crime without prostitutes and without porn movies."

2010 - On fur and animal cruelty:

"It is farmers who are nice to the cows and the pigs and then kill them. It's even more hypocritical than hunters. At least the hunters don't flatter the animals....I don't like that people butcher animals, but I don't like them to butcher humans either, which is apparently very popular in the world."

2010 - On faxing Anna Wintour:

"People I'm really friendly with have faxes. Anna Wintour has one."

2010 - On phones:

"I send notes. I'm not a chambermaid whom you can ring at every moment. Today, you know, most people act like they work at a switchboard in a hotel."

2010 - On intellectual converstaion:

"That's exactly what I am. As a child I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to know everything - not that I like to talk about it. I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion."

2010 - On smoking:

"When I was 14 I wanted to smoke because my mother smoked like mad. I wanted to smoke to look grown-up. But my mother said, 'You shouldn't smoke. Your hands are not that beautiful and that shows when you smoke'."

2010 - On Andy Warhol:

"I shouldn't say this, but physically he was quite repulsive."

2010 - On losing weight:

"Well, there came this new line from Hedi Slimane at Dior that you needed to be slim to wear. It said, 'You want this? Go back to your bones.' And so I lost it all. I lost 88 pounds and never got them back."

2010 - On Wilhelm von Gloeden's photography:

"If you look at those photos they are not sexy. They have ugly teeth and I think they're dressed repulsively. It's the mood that may be interesting. People who were not groomed properly, who have big bellies and ugly teeth."

2011 - On Coco Chanel:

"What I do Coco would have hated. The label has an image and it's up to me to update it. I do what she never did. I had to find my mark. I had to go from what Chanel was to what it should be, could be, what it had been to something else."

2012 - In response to a Newsweek, report describing him as "overrated"(a publication edited by former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Tina Brown):

"First of all, Tina Brown’s magazine is not doing well at all. She is dying [professionally]. I’m sorry for Tina Brown, who was such a success at Vanity Fair, to go down with a shitty little paper like this. I’m sorry."