June 7, 2011 |
FROM THE VOLT (WINTER 2010)
Lady Amanda Harlech sat down with 10 at New York’s Mercer Hotel on a busy Saturday in September, during a brief pause in Karl Lagerfeld’s full frontal assault on Fashion Week. While Karl prepares his elite couture battalions and vast ready-to-wear armies for global fashion conquest, his first lieutenant performs her divinations, interprets the fault lines of the Zeitgeist for the mythical German genius.
WHAT DO YOU THINK MADAME CHANEL WOULD MAKE OF THE CURRENT STATE OF HER HOUSE?
She would probably be surprised at the massive level of production now. Karl really understands the huge commercial demand for Chanel product, and he has risen to that challenge. And the runway productions are increasingly spectacular, incorporating so much pop culture. Each show is an incredible installation, and when the curtains open and the light is shining on the first dress, it never fails to thrill me…
HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO SEE OR PREDICT SIX MONTHS AHEAD OF THE CURVE WHAT PEOPLE WILL WANT?
I think you’d have to ask Karl that. He’s doing six, eight collections a year. Fashion to me is comparable to different generations of people –the parents might be very devil may care and then their children are much more conservative. It is in constant flux, exuberant, diaphanous and ethereal one year, and cool, glacial monochrome the next.
DO YOU CHANNEL COCO, SEEK HER APPROVAL, GET PSYCHIC HINTS AND TIPS?
Well her presence is certainly felt. I don’t think she’d like me very much, to tell the truth, but she had a wicked mischievousness, and she was a genius, and it’s nice to have that vibration in the air. I walk through the same corridors, go to the same atelier where she worked.
HOW DO YOU MERGE THE TWO, ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE AND A SUITE AT THE RITZ? DO YOU HUNT RABBITS WITH WHIPPETS WHILE FIGURING OUT THE NEXT BIG HEMLINE MOVE?
I’m a Gemini, so I can switch quite easily. Whippets are useless for rabbiting, by the way. You need a Jack Russell on hand for the digging and dispatching. We just take long walks and they run like the wind. Very easy to housebreak them too…
AND THEN YOU COOK UP THE RABBIT ON THE AGA, ACCORDING TO AN ELIZABETH DAVID RECIPE?
What a clever boy!
THE DESCRIPTIONS OF YOUR MOTHER’S CLOTHES WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, AND OF THE THREADS BETWEEN THE MATERIAL AND THE IMMATERIAL WORLD EMBODIED IN AN OLD FORTUNY DRESS OF YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S, HAVE A KIND OF PROUSTIAN SENSUALITY, A REAL LITERARY SENSIBILITY. ARE YOU GOING TO SERIOUSLY ENGAGE WITH WRITING AT SOME POINT?
Well I have got one book finished, it’s three interlocking stories, and that is going forward to publication. I do want to continue writing, but I love what I’m doing with Karl too. When I started out working with John Galliano, what we did together was extraordinary, it was a rare and beautiful level of communication. One is fortunate to have that happen even once in a life. And I have been lucky enough to experience a similar connection with Karl. He has that Northern sensibility that I completely understand. That kind of instinctive empathy, where you can both look at an object and see the same thing. But it’s not just me. Karl is inspired by all kinds of things, art, books, men, a piece of furniture, a piece of music… And he’s like Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night, makes these elaborate, incredibly detailed sketches, and in the morning there they are. Faits accomplis. The muse has spoken.
BUT STILL, BOTH KARL AND JOHN GALLIANO WERE VERY LUCKY TO FIND SOMEONE LIKE YOU. I’M SURE YOU BRING A LOT OF STIMULATING IMAGES AND OBJECTS AND BOOKS AND FILMS AND OTHER THINGS OF BEAUTY TO KARL’S ATTENTION. A KIND OF ARIEL TO KARL’S PROSPERO.
Perhaps a sort of water dowser, or touchstone, a lightning rod. Of course you can get burned doing that…Karl also enjoys the Englishness I think, the irony, the stoicism.
INDEED. I’LL QUOTE THE KAISER, “BRITISH GIRLS LIKE AMANDA ARE FULL OF ECCENTRICITY AND IRREVERENCE AND INVENTION. THEY HAVE CLASS — PERHAPS FROM ANOTHER TIME — BUT THEY ARE NEVER ‘CLASSIC’. THEY HAVE A SPONTANEOUS, NATURAL ELEGANCE IN THE WAY THEY MOVE, THE WAY THEY DRESS AND THE WAY THEY TALK.” I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANS.
And there’s our sense of humor, sometimes absent in the French, and a lack of insecurity, that allows one to break the rules, to dress entirely for oneself rather than conform to what is dictated. The clothes produced by dictatorships are proof that system doesn’t work. Napoleon for example, with all those footwide epaulettes, those silly gold tassles…
THE SAME WITH RUSSIAN MILITARY UNIFORMS, OR ANY OF THOSE EASTERN EUROPEANS –ROMANIA COMES TO MIND, VERY GROUCHO MARX EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE PREACHING KARL. LET’S TALK ABOUT CLASS NOW. WHAT CLASS ARE YOU FROM?
I’m a weed. Middle class. The worst class really.
SORRY MILADY, BUT WE ARE NOT BUYING THAT TODAY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PERCEIVE YOU AS MIDDLE CLASS WHILE YOU RECLINE SO REGAL AND SLENDER ON DOWNY CUSHIONS IN A LUXURY HOTEL IN MANHATTAN, LOOKING LIKE YOU OWN THE PLACE.
[ignores compliment]. Actually I like to think I’m classless. I think the class system is about money now. Money is what gives people class these days, it’s irrelevant whether you were born in a ditch or a castle.
BUT YOU DON’T BELIEVE MERELY HAVING LOADS OF CASH IMPARTS CLASS, DO YOU?
No, I didn’t say money can give you class, but it certainly elevates you in this world.
SO THINGS HAVE GOT A BIT COMMON THEN. THE GENERAL LEVEL OF GREED TODAY SEEMS VERY UNHEALTHY. AND SO MANY PEOPLE WITH MONEY HAVE NO TASTE, WHICH IS WHY WE GET PLACES LIKE DUBAI. BUT ANYWAY, LET US ADDRESS YOUR INFERIORS, THE WORKING CLASS, OF WHICH I AM A CARD-CARRYING MEMBER. HOW WOULD YOU DRESS THEM, IF YOU COULD GET THEM OUT OF THEIR FLAMMABLE SHELL SUITS AND SMELLY TRAINERS?
Oh I wouldn’t dream of telling them what to wear! People should never be told what to wear. If they are happy in their Adidas, then so be it.
BUT SURELY THAT IS PART OF YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION, USING YOUR FINELY HONED JUDGEMENT TO ADVISE AND SUGGEST ITEMS OF CLOTHING WHOSE PARTICULAR CUT AND STYLE MIGHT MAKE THE WEARER LOOK FABULOUS? I MEAN ISN’T THAT PART OF FASHION’S AIM, GETTING PEOPLE INTO GEAR THEY WOULD OTHERWISE NEVER DREAM OF WEARING?
Not necessarily. Chavs have their own personal style, even if one happens not to particularly like it. The question you’ve got to ask is what do I feel like today?
THE CHAV WAKES UP AT NOON ON THE ESTATE AND SAYS, DO I FEEL LIKE SLASHING CAR TIRES TODAY? SHALL I WEAR FENDI FOR THAT, OR CHANEL?
I think the Fendi, something in leather.
WHAT MIGHT YOU HAVE DONE IF YOU HADN’T GONE INTO FASHION?
I would have stayed at Oxford, become a scholar, studied more, written more, perhaps on the lines of this splendid book I’m reading now, Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s novel about Oliver Cromwell. It transpires he wasn’t such a terrible fellow after all, despite that haircut.
ONE OF YOUR INTERROGATORS OBSERVED THAT PEOPLE WITH A GREAT INTEREST IN CLOTHES TEND TO HAVE NO INTEREST IN SEX.
That’s absolute rubbish! Maybe she meant the wrong clothes can be as fatal a choice as the wrong partner. Certainly most of the people I know who are interested in clothes are also interested in a bit of the other on a regular basis. Lynn Barber was quite peculiar with me in that one interview, which for some reason appears first in line in any internet search for my name…
YES, WHEN I GOOGLED YOU THAT PROFILE WAS NUMBER ONE. DESPITE THE HIGHLY AUDIBLE SUBTEXT OF PLAINTIVE GIRLY ENVY LEAKING OUT ONTO LYNN’S PAGES, SHE MANAGED TO WRITE A GOOD PROFILE OF YOU.
Perhaps she meant people who are unsuccessful with clothes are also unsuccessful with sex –you’ve got to love yourself after all. They choose the wrong outfit like they choose the wrong lover.
BEFORE YOU GO OFF TO SHROPSHIRE TO READ SHAKESPEARE, CAN WE HAVE A LAST WORD ON FASHION?
However shallow fashion may sometimes appear, after 25 years most people in this business have quite exquisitely tuned sensibilities, a very clear eye about what’s going on around them, and people outside fashion can sometimes be very mean and cruel, because they don’t see this. They don’t see how much really hard graft goes into getting an idea right. There are some really marvelous creative people at work here, and even though it often seems like open warfare between us, when we step out of the trenches, and gather in the no-mans land, we are all singing bawdy songs and drinking champagne together!
by Max Blagg
Photograph by Cedric Buchet – www.artpartner.com
