Karl Lagerfeld had a very particular drinking habit: he did not drink coffee or tea, and almost never drank water because it does not have taste, his favourite drink was as vulgar as that of a teenager living in Tokyo or Paris: Pepsi Diet Coke Max. But unlike the teenagers, he drank it in a crystal glass of Lalique, and his favourite glass model Langeais cost about 250 euros, which could buy more items Han 300 cans of Pepsi Max. And when the soda was not poured for him in Lalique, the can would be carried carefully by one of his assistants on a silver platter. Even the most elegant people could have some vulgar taste, but with some personal touch, it can be transformed into something much more elegant.
It is easy to say “I want to travel around the world”, particularly in our time when it has never been easier to travel from one place to another. But between two destinations, not everything is as amicable as traveling itself, the long waiting line, the bad traffic and loud noises, the omnipresent fluorescent lamps, but most annoying or even humiliating aspect of traveling, is the security control. It is necessary for everyone’s security including yours, but never pleasant. Most of people just accept it as part of traveling experience, but not Karl Lagerfeld. He had stopped flying commercial airlines for almost 20 years, so he would never need to take off his belt, his gloves or his sun glasses, which must have made him feel being nude in public.
In one of the interviews, Karl Lagerfeld confessed he had not talked to his family members, in particular his sisters for more than 40 years. « Ma famille, c’était mes parents. Mêmes mes sœurs, je ne les voyais jamais. Ce n’est pas que je ne les aimais pas, mais on ne se correspondait pas. » (my family, was my parents. Even my sisters, I never saw the,. It is not that I did not like them, but we do not correspond with each other.”) People may think it was cold of him, but for someone who was so sensitive about beauty, culture, art and quality of life, why did he want to communicate with someone who does not share his taste and interest just because they were of the same parents? Blood is not necessarily thicker than water. Well done, Mr. Lagerfeld! We can not choose our birth, or the family in which we were born, but we can choose how to relate to them. Or better yet, look for and build our own family, just like we do with love.
For more than one time, Karl Lagerfeld had played the ancient game of “I am as old as I tell you”, sometimes he was born in 1935, sometimes 1938, or neither. Coco Chanel had played the same game before him, and many more people before them. Time can change, but “vanity” will never get old. If the historians were annoyed because it hurt the integrity of their records, it is understandable, but other than them, nobody has the right to feel cheated, after all, his birth date, like his hair and his outfit, belongs only to him, and nobody else.
White shirt, black sunglasses, and fingerless gloves had been the symbolic outfit of Karl Lagerfeld for decades, they became part of him and his personality. Audrey Hepburn once said she felt protected in the clothes designed for her by Hubert de Givenchy, Karl Lagerfeld must have felt that way as well: from his dark sunglasses, he could see everything and everyone without being watched; with his starched high collar, he not only achieved a kind of baroque elegance and authority, but also made himself mysterious, inaccessible; and the countless leather fingerless gloves, while serving as the final touch of his unique outfit, also had the practical purpose of protecting his hands. Karl had stated that he had stopped using sunscreen for more than 40 years because he did not expose himself to sun at all, not even his hands. As a public figure who dedicated his life to beauty, he knew very well that he did not want to age under the public eyes.
 Karl Lagerfeld with Jacques de Bascher in 1970s For most of his adult life, Karl Lagerfeld lived in solitude. Even when he was with Jacques de Bascher, Karl lived separately. Th chosen solitude allowed him achieve something nobody in the fashion history had ever done before him: directing multiple couture houses both in France and Italy, created more than 10 collections every year for his most important patron Chanel alone, designed everything from haute couture to ready-to-wear to accessories to perfumes, designed, illustrated and published books, took photographers and direct shore movies.....and it allowed him to live just as he wanted: to sleep at least 9 hours a night, eat the food he wanted at exactly the same time he wanted, at home. When Thierry Demaizière, one of the directors of the 2008 documentary named the film: Un Roi Seul, Karl Lagerfeld did not like it, because he did not feel lonely. He had chosen to be “seul” (alone), but he did not feel “seul” (lonely).
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