>> Karl Lagerfeld makes his age hard to pin down, much less his personality.  Even his publicist will admit there are "many Karls" in a new Sunday Times profile: "Karl is like a chameleon. Always changing."  Whether what he says is believable or not, one thing is true: The man never ceases to be interesting. 

He'll make you wait three hours for an interview, but not because he's better than you.

“Karl is not a snob,” [his publicist] tells me, as we wait. “Karl has time for everyone, he is very generous, you will see.”

He is, however, better than smelly journalists.

“I have no problem with journalists – many are friends. Only if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday [after the Chanel couture show] I had a problem. I said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.’ ”

And he'll still make ridiculous requests — just because he can.

“They sent a private jet. I said, ‘It’s too small. I need a bigger plane.’ It’s fun, no?”

Maybe it's because his shoes are too tight?

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

He now devotes half his time to photography — because he's just that good.

"I don’t need meetings. I’m only interested in my own opinion anyway. If I have a project, like this,” he says, pointing to an advertising campaign he recently shot for Dom Pérignon, “you like, or you don’t like. There is no second opinion. If you’re not 100% sure about what I want to do, you ask someone else.”

Why wouldn't you hire him? He's better than other, much-lauded photographers anyway.

“I don’t always like Helmut Newton’s subjects, but I like his technique, his eye, his attitude, and as a person he was really fine.”

“. . . When Annie Leibovitz photographed me for Vanity Fair . . . I didn’t know her very well then, and she said, ‘I have to spend three days with you to see what’s behind.’ And I said, ‘Annie, you’re wasting your time. Look at what you see.’ ” He casts his hand theatrically over his face. “There is nothing else.”
*image: source