I know I won’t be the last to retort upon how cursory, shallow, pretentious and even desultory Kaiser Karl Lagerfeld is.  Upon reading his latest interview for Vice Magazine, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to expand upon some of the sentiments expressed there in the online thread.  While at first glance it may be hard not to get lost in the many pages of madness there.  Here’s why in that interview there lies something far more significant than even one of the greatest fashion icons alive today.

A week or two ago now, I ran across an interview conducted by Bruce LaBruce. He’s a controversial photographer/filmmaker and he conducted the below”in conversation” with Karl Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld is the director of The Fashion House Chanel as well as heads up Fendi.  He used to run with Andy Warhol and the gang from The Factory – though he claims to have never once experimented with drugs.  I don’t know designers but I know who Karl is. Because I don’t spent a whole lot of time looking at woman’s clothing; I’m not speaking from a connoisseur’s point of view.   The bulk of my experience in that department amounts to a handful of seasons of Project Runway. Today, I write as a member of the working class, the middle class.

The reason why I am regurgitating some of this interview, which is largely trash, is because I find it fascinating at how self-obsessed and lost these two appear to be.  Namely Lagerfeld, especially when he talks about not ever witnessing homophobia in his life. Not ever?

Like most who read this article, I was drawn to Karl Lagerfeld’s comments on gay marriage. He calls it bourgeois. He drops it like a bomb. Surely gay marriage is not merely the plight for mediocrity he thinks it is? Is it really necessary for me to point out just how capitalistic, commercial & industrial the fashion world is? It, too, falls on the bourgeois category.

The excerpt below is from page 2 onto page 3 of 7.

Being the sort of hard worker that you are is like being a monk.
But hard work is like being politically correct. 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.

What does being politically correct mean to you?
It means people talking about charities. Do it, be charitable, but don’t make a subject of conversation out of it because then you bore the world to death. It’s very unpleasant. But I don’t go out a lot so I’m not so exposed to people.

And being isolated is not a problem for you?
I have no problem. That’s the miracle of my life. There are no problems, only solutions—good ones or bad ones.

You are against the idea of gay marriage. I totally agree with you on that.
Yes, I’m against it for a very simple reason: In the 60s they all said we had the right to the difference. And now, suddenly, they want a bourgeois life.

It’s normalizing.
For me it’s difficult to imagine—one of the papas at work and the other at home with the baby. How would that be for the baby? I don’t know. I see more lesbians married with babies than I see boys married with babies. And I also believe more in the relationship between mother and child than in that between father and child.

I take it you don’t want children.
If I were interested in children, I would be a godfather—or a godmother. I don’t like the idea of taking people out of their lives and their contexts. If there were a child I wanted to adopt, I would try to find the family of the child and give them the money for an education in his life and his context.

What about famous gay artists like Francis Bacon or Wilhelm von Gloeden? They both had important relationships that were almost like marriages.
I knew Francis Bacon; he was the sweetest man in the world, like a Middle English lady with the finger up drinking tea in Monte Carlo. My best friend, who is dead now, was very friendly with Bacon. They gambled and drank together.

Did Bacon have his protégé with him, or was it his lover?
I think that he was dead already—the famous one was dead.

Ah, George Dyer.
I only saw Bacon with my friend, drinking and gambling heavily.

Your best friend is…
He’s dead, too.

What happened to him?
AIDS. That happened 20 years ago.

How did you cope with that whole period? I’m sure you knew so many great people who died of AIDS.
I don’t want to go back through that age. In those days it was a hopeless case.

It was a death sentence.
You may be a bit young to remember. It was horrible. Beyond horrible.

It decimated the fashion world.
It killed a whole generation of people.

You know, Fran Lebowitz said that AIDS killed all the cool people.
Yes, exactly.

Which I quite agree with, because it was usually the people who were living really hard and experimenting who got hit with it.
Perhaps things went too far then. But now they want to be too bourgeois.

Exactly. It’s swung back the other way. This bourgeois idea of gays wanting to take on a traditional family life—I just don’t understand it. It’s like the oppressed are becoming the oppressors.
In a way, yes. Exactly.

They want to be the type of people who have always despised them.
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 color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.” This was a very healthy attitude.

You were lucky in that regard.
Some people make drama out of it. I don’t even understand. It’s not a problem. It doesn’t exist. It’s not a subject. For me it never was.

What about your relationship to the whole political gay movement?
I have nothing to do with it. This is just a part of normal life. I mean, the 20 percent or so who are like this, made by God or by whoever, they are as they are supposed to be. So where’s the problem?

The argument would be that the more organized and political they are, the more they are able to fight against things like homophobic violence.
I never met anything like this in my life. I had an overprotected life. What can I fight about? I don’t know what to do. It never happened to me, and it never happened to people I know.

It’s like Marianne Faithfull says, “What are you fighting for? It’s not my reality.”
Exactly. And I’m mad for her. She’s great.

I’m wondering if gay political groups have tried to enlist you.
Yes, but I’ve never voted in my life—for any kind of politics.

Me neither.
I’m a stranger here; I’m a stranger in Germany. I’m just passing by.

I’m amazed at how disconnected an international man like Karl Lagerfeld is. I didn’t even know a man of his magnitude could be so distant and disconnected from the world. It’s clear he fails to understandthe importance of fitting in and how it plays a role in so many of our lives. It always has. The truth is, the more you differ from how the rest of society operates, the more you stick out. The more you stick out, the more you will be targeted.  This is what real people deal with day to day.  Clearly his concerns aren’t of the survival nature.  Must he disregard those who are? Being the same, or similar, for most people is the most effective survival tactic.

Now, I am not advocating that we all adhere ourselves to normalcy. Whatever that may be. Personally, there was a time in my life when I felt there was nothing worse in life than being ordinary. Even so – Karl Lagerfeld, we can’t all be fashion icons and clothing designers!  Those of us who aren’t (most of us that is) have to settle for a little mediocrity. A life partner who will love us unconditionally – a union and a marriage that provide us all the same recognition that everyone else has been afforded.

What Karl fails to understand about the movement for marriage equality is that it isn’t really about GETTING MARRIED for most of us. We just want the same rights as every one else. We’re a part of the modern world.  That means we deserve the right to file a joint tax return, to have our partner on our insurance plan, to make legal decisions that can’t be thrown out because we are viewed as roommates, to not be blocked from visiting a sick and/or dying partner in the hospital, to be able to make medical decisions about each other. Most importantly: it’s about not accepting less because we’re a minority! To oppose this for any reason is selfish and pretentious.  When someone of his magnitude opposes or fails to recognize the importance this holds for the people who work for him, look up to him and even buy his fashions; what message is he sending to us? That our values don’t matter because he doesn’t get them?

It’s a good thing Karl does mention he considers himself and his viewpoints over-privileged which is why he avoids politics, specifically gay issues.

Just because you can’t relate to the rest of the world doesn’t mean you’re excused from it.  Furthermore, I don’t understand what Lagerfeld means by, “be charitable but don’t talk about it.” Have a cause, contribute, but don’t make it a topic or a part of your life? This is why people get involved in the world beyond themselves! Because they are human and they want to be connected to others. They want to know they have done their part.  For many people, particularly people who live their lives in the public eye, talking about issues and making others aware is part of their very contribution to a cause greater than themselves.

I just can’t accept that a fashion designer and a photographer’s point of view and opinions are not meant to be taken seriously. These are two people on top of the world in their industries.  They are looked up to whether or not they are prepared to be role models.

The “In-Conversation” continues:

And you have no problem with porn, either.
No. I admire porn.

This is another thing that we have in common.
And I personally only like high-class escorts. I don’t like sleeping with people I really love. I don’t want to sleep with them because sex cannot last, but affection can last forever. I think this is healthy. And for the way the rich live, this is possible. But the other world, I think they need porn. I also think it’s much more difficult to perform in porn than to fake some emotion on the face as an actor.

Yes, there’s a quote from you about how giving a blowjob on film is more difficult than acting out grand emotions, which can be feigned. I totally agree. I think people don’t give porn actors credit. It’s not easy what they do.
I admire porn actors.

Me too, and prostitutes as well. There’s a real art to it.
Frustration is the mother of crime, and so there would be much more crime without prostitutes and without porn movies.

You got in trouble when you used a porn star in one of your shows in the early 90s.
But who cared?

Anna Wintour cared.
Yeah, but I’m still on the best terms with her.

There is so much hypocrisy against porn. So many people watch it and then look down their noses at people who are in it or who make it.
And those movie theaters don’t exist anymore, not like they did in the 70s.

There’s one left in Toronto, where I’m from.
I never went to one because I think it’s a quite sleazy situation.

It has its charm.
I’m not sure I want to be charmed.

Honestly, I don’t think Karl Lagerfeld knows anything about pornography at all.  And no, just because he claims to “admire” pornstars does not mean he’s redeemed himself.  The truth is, this entry isn’t really about Karl Lagerfeld or porn or fashion. Afterall, the man was quoted in The Times August 2008 saying this of himself:

“I want to know everything, but I’m not an intellectual, and I don’t like their company.

I’m the most superficial man on Earth.”

There’s nothing fresh about this new break, oh I know! Especially the Vice Magazine Article because it’s 2 weeks old and any online news break is already old 48 hours after posting.

Hopefully you, too, can see past this man and his haute lifestyle; his breathlessly grandiose and overblown place in the world.

This is what happens to old people who obsess, specialize, and isolate themselves from the world at large.  The truly scary part? It doesn’t just happen to old people, either.  In the midst of the digital age when everything is experienced in a movie theatre or on your computer screen, we too as the bourgeois middle class, are in danger of conducting our lives with such disregard as this Fashion Icon does. Don’t let it happen to you.

Get off Titter and leave the Facebook alone for a few hours. Get out into the world! Go on! It’s waiting for you!

Just in case you aren’t convinced, here’s one very dated monologue from Margaret Cho. She finds a less roundabout way of arriving at her point than I do