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How to be a fashion guru

By Stephen Holden
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Jan 18, 2008, Page 17

Lagerfeld is hardly intimate in this prolonged interview of a movie, but achieves his goal of being an apparition. PHOTO COURTESY OF SWALLOW WINGS

Those seeking career advice about how to become an emperor of fashion will find little if any useful information in Lagerfeld Confidential, an intimate portrait of the designer who has ruled the House of Chanel for more than two decades. At least Lagerfeld, an imperial figure if there ever was one, demonstrates how to act the part.

In every frame this designer, who is shown in his Paris studio and presiding at photo shoots (one with Nicole Kidman) and fashion shows, exudes a papal grandeur. Lagerfeld says he never formally studied fashion and has no patience for the craft of dressmaking. The movie offers no resume or analysis of his work. It is simply an extended interview, without talking-head commentary.

Lagerfeld claims to be "a complete improvisation."

"I don't want to be real in other people's minds," he declares. "I want to be an apparition."

Much of the film, written, directed and photographed by Rodolphe Marconi, might be described as a friendly sparring match between the filmmaker and his subject, with Marconi repeatedly pressuring Lagerfeld to open up about his private life. The tone of the questions implies that Marconi already knows the answers and wants Lagerfeld to spill the same beans on camera that he has off, but the designer continually eludes his interrogator.

Lagerfeld is hardly intimate in this prolonged interview of a movie, but achieves his goal of being an apparition. PHOTO COURTESY OF SWALLOW WINGS

To a point, Lagerfeld is candid about his homosexuality. He says he was aware of it by the age of 13, when he told his parents, for whom it was not a problem. When an older man and woman made passes at him, he recalls, his mother, instead of flying into a rage about child molestation, scolded her son and said such incidents wouldn't happen if he didn't behave so provocatively.

Film Notes LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL DIRECTED BY: Rodolphe Marconi STARRING: Nicole Kidman (herself), Karl Lagerfeld (himself), Princess Caroline of Monaco (herself) Language: French, with English and Mandarin subtitles Running time: 89 minutes Taiwan release: Today

Beyond declaring that he was sexually very active as a youth, however, Lagerfeld avoids mentioning the names of lovers or recalling major relationships. The most he will say is that there have been "a few tragedies I couldn't possibly talk about."

A cinematic scrapbook of photos reveals him to have been an exceptionally handsome young man, but the male companions pictured are unidentified.

His adoring mother seems to have been the major formative influence of his life. He grew up in northern Germany, near the Danish border, and moved to Paris as a teenager. As a child, he admits, he was "unbearable and spoiled" and compares himself to Shirley Temple. Even now, he cannot go to sleep without a pillow clutched to his stomach.

His mother, he says, was "the polar opposite of a typical German mother." She "exuded frivolity" and "made slaves of everyone." Lagerfeld displays a similar mixture of eccentricity and severity. With his white ponytail, high white collars, sunglasses, fingerless gloves (his hands are festooned with rings) and preference for black, he resembles a man of the cloth, "a defrocked one," he says matter-of-factly.

And like a priest, he is given to making lofty pronouncements with an aphoristic ring. If the documentary had a subtitle, it might be The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Lagerfeld. Or more accurately, The Wisdom and Obfuscation.

Here are some sample quotations: "The best things I've ever done have come from dreams"; "There is a German saying: 'You can't borrow on your past'"; "I love change; I'm attached to nothing"; "When I took on Chanel, it was a sleeping beauty - not even a beautiful one; she snored"; He sneers at "bourgeois marriages," is pro-prostitution and, as befits a man who aspires to be an apparition, virulently anti-psychoanalysis.

His most unsettling remarks concern friendship. Hanging over every close relationship, he asserts, is a Sword of Damocles. And he implies that many have been permanently exiled from his court. "Forgiveness isn't something I'm preoccupied with," he says. "Turning the other cheek is not my trip. The curtain falls: an iron curtain.
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