Karl Lagerfeld Quotes

What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.

Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.

The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.

We live in a dark and romantic and quite tragic world.

Dieting is the only game where you win when you lose!

Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.

A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul

One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.

Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.

I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.

Don't look to the approval of others for your mental stability

People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.

I love classic beauty. It’s an idea of beauty with no standard.

Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.

Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.

Music gives color to the air of the moment.

I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.

The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.

When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, 'It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old.' I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good.

The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.

Youthfulness is about how you live not when you were born.

We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.

Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.

I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes -- it's about all kinds of change

I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern.

Forgiveness is too easy. I can forget by indifference, but not forgive. I prefer revenge.

The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.

Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive

Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests

Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.

In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and even clothes, the discussion of fur is childish.

Buy what you don’t have yet, or what you really want, which can be mixed with what you already own. Buy only because something excites you, not just for the simple act of shopping.

Stuff your brain with knowledge.

For every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it.

The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman.

Guilty feelings about clothes are totally unnecessary. A lot of people earn their living by making clothes, so you should never feel bad.

You cannot fake chic but you can be chic and fake fur

When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop.

I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness.

Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.

Fashion and music are the same, because music express its period too.

Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English--but are great in remembering signs

Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.

I'm very down to Earth, I'm just not from this Earth.

I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.

The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine

Fashion is about going ahead, not about memory.

I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble.

Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.

I never touch sugar, cheese, bread... 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.

Fashion is about two things: the evolution and the opposite.

Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore – and then you get something out of her

Forgiveness isn’t something I’m preoccupied with — turning the other cheek isn’t my trip.

There will never be a chanel collection without black

I'm never content with what I do. I live in a sort of permanent dissatisfaction. I think that's the secret to doing things well.

Keep the best, forget the rest.

These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.

If you stick to something doggedly, you are off to a bad start.

I like today and perhaps a little future still, but the past is really something I'm not interested in. So, as far as I'm concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don't know. When I know, I don't care because I knew how it was.

Success nullifies. You then have to do it again, preferably differently

What is the worst is a fashion designer who talks all the time of his or her creativity, what they are, how they evolved. Just do it and shut up.

change is the healthiest way to survive

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?

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

Nothing makes you look older than attempting to look young. —Karl Lagerfeld

For me, Chanel is like music. There are certain notes and you have to make another tune with them

I buy my shoes a size too small. I like the way it feels.

Think pink but don't wear it

I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.

Personality begins where comparison ends.

Clamboring over building detritus was not the lifestyle Karl Lagerfeld had in mind for this sweet little powder-blue suit. As he oversaw the hand stitching in his atelier he had probably imagined the suit living a life of tea parties and lunches with the girls at the Ivy

Trendy is the last stage before tacky.

Mon plus grand luxe est de n'avoir à me justifier auprès de personne.

La mode n'est ni morale, ni amorale, mais elle est faite pour remonter le moral.

I'm very much down to earth - just not this earth.

Respect is not creative ... Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.

I'm very severe with myself and sometimes I miss French cheese, but in your world it's not exactly the same thing.

All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, "What can you write that hasn't been written already?" He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with right now is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't....seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin over-risen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, overfed, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L.?

Ma curiosité est insatiable, je vampirise l’air du temps.

Slang is the suitcase of the damned, my dear. CHECK IT.

Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose i'm the happy victim of books

When I was younger I wanted to be a caricaturist. In the end, I’ve become a caricature.

Τα βιβλία είναι ένα σκληρό ναρκωτικό χωρίς κίνδυνο υπερβολικής δόσης. Είμαι το ευτυχισμένο θύμα των βιβλίων

There is nothing worse than bringing up the 'good old days.' To me, that's the ultimate acknowledgment of failure.

«Никогда не говорите: «Я мог это сделать». Ведь вы этого не сделали»

One Is Never Over-Dressed OR Understand With A Little Black Dress" By Karl Lagerfeld

Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man. She smelled wonderful.

He sensed her aroma and greedily breathed in the fragrance. He must not let himself be duped. Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man.

«В настоящее время люди готовы облить грязью абсолютно все. Это привычка не из лучших. Конечно, каждый вправе иметь свое мнение, но, если верить прессе, 50% современых женщин – проститутки и 50% – серые мыши»

I am a living label. My name is Labelfeld not Lagerfeld.

Corey was hanging out down by the port one afternoon with Karl and Jacques when a bus-load of american tourists drove by, and in a moment of clarity Corey suddenly perceived Karl in the light of reality rather than through the kaleidoscope of fashion: the tourists were staring open-mouthed through the bus windows, ice creams held in mid-air, gawping at the apparition that was Karl. Jacques was driving the mobylette and Karl sat behind riding side-saddle dressed in hot pants, long strands of pearls and dark glasses; he was wielding a raw frankfurter straight from the packet in one hand and a bottle of coca-cola in the other. I remember thinking "I am with this total freak," says Corey.

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.

Their primary customers are upper-income women between thirty and fifty years sold. The average markup on a handbag is ten to twelve times production cost. Perfume has, for more than seventy years, served as an introduction to a luxury brand. The message was clear: buy our brand and you too, will live a luxury life. The contradiction between personal indulgence and conspicuous consumption is the crux of the luxury business today: the convergence of its history with its current reality. Today, luxury brand items are collected like baseball cards, displayed like artwork, brandished like iconography. The tycoons have shifted the focus from what the product is to what is represents. Perfume has a mystical, magical quality. It catches your attention, enchants you. It complements and enhances your personality. it stirs emotion, within you and others around you. Perfume was a link between gods and mortals. It was a way to contact the gods, Hermes's Jean-Claude Ellena told me. Now it is a profane link: it's between you and me. Contentment is natural wealth. Luxury is artificial poverty. Socrates More than anything else today, the handbag tells the story of a woman: her reality, her dreams. Oscar Wilde said elegance is power. If it would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury. Cicero People don't believe there is a difference between real and fake anymore. Bernard Arnault's marketing plan had worked: consumers don't buy luxury branded items for what they are, but for what they represent. Luxury is the ease of a T-shirt in a very expensive dress. If you don't have it, you are not a person used to luxury. You are just a rich person who can buy staff. Karl Lagerfeld Luxury is exclusivity, it is made for you and no one else has it. At a minimum, it must be impeccable. Maximum, unique. If you do luxury, Louboutin explained, you have to treat people in a human way and you have to be elegant. You can't ask poor people in bad conditions to make beautiful things.

And opposite Jacques sat Karl Lagerfeld, German ready-to-wear designer, lavish in wing collar and monocle, a fashion force in the making.

Once you get out of Copenhagen airport, you may think you have walked on to the set of a ninja movie. In Denmark, everyone wears black. You want to aim for a look that would be fitting for Karl Lagerfeld’s funeral: stylish but monochrome. In the summertime, you are allowed to go for a wider range of colours, even something crazily flamboyant like grey.

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.

Buy what you don’t have yet, or what you really want, which can be mixed with what you already own. Buy only because something excites you, not just for the simple act of shopping