Overlooking this activity is a large portrait of Coco Chanel; and her eyes, like everyone else's in the room, seem to be watching her successor, Karl Lagerfeld, whose arrival in 1982 set in motion an endlessly inventive series of collections that have been both loved and hated - which is a measure of success in a world where boredom is a cardinal sin. For the fashion business is not simply about making clothes that women want to wear - though Lagerfeld is supremely good at that - but the creation of an emotional response. (As Coco Chanel remarked, "Adornment - what clothes are - is never anything except a reflection of the heart.")He must be El Diablo, or in the league with el diablo. He used to be fat, (not pleasingly plump like the Manolo) but fat, fat, fat. Now he's thin.
Lagerfeld seems also to understand - better, perhaps, than many of his competitors - that the passion for a piece of clothing is often fleeting, that fashion is about the desire of a moment, which will pass, of course, to be replaced by another, and another, in an endless cycle, in the turning of countless more afternoons.
So here he is, in the middle of this moment: quite possibly the most powerful fashion designer in the world, the reigning king (or Kaiser, as he is more often known), lord of all he surveys, as former rivals or later upstarts have melted away from the throne. If you want exact figures to prove this point, they're hard to come by (Chanel is a privately owned company, and famously secretive, though it has recently confirmed that sales in its fashion division were up 38 per cent in the first half of this year).
He has no talent, no talent! But he is famous, and runs the Chanel.
Karl Lagerfeld, he is the devil.
