Uncle Karl's wisdom

I've written before about my glee when Karl Largerfeld speaks.  The following extract lifted word for word from the Guardian is a string of pearls from Uncle Karl.  I just don't even know how to narrow it down to my favourite.  It's brilliant.

"Is this the finest fashion interview ever conducted?
As regular readers will know, Fashion Statement has an obsession with the wit and wisdom of Karl Lagerfeld. We love a gnomic tweet from the master of the profound non sequitur almost as much as we love a picture of him going dangerously radical in dark grey leather gloves. But this week we stumbled upon a true treat in Vice magazine - an epic 6,000-word interview with the man himself. And not just by any old hack. No, this meeting of minds took place between his Royal Karlness and Canadian writer, filmmaker, photographer and gay zombie porn director Bruce LaBruce.

The result is surely one of the finest pieces of incisive, probing journalism since Fearne Cotton grilled Peaches Geldof on ITV's seminal news show, Fearne and ...

FS is spoilt for choice when it comes to picking our favourite quotes, but here are our favourite ten things we learned from the interview:

1. Bruce LaBruce has redefined "anti-materialism"

What struck me most about Lagerfeld when I was doing my research was how closely aligned many of my beliefs were with his. Despite owning a private jet and multiple luxury homes, he is anti-materialistic and remains detached from his possessions, particularly as he has become more mature.

Just for the record, when FS wins the lottery, we are going to be totally anti-materialistic about our million-pound home.

2. Communism was all about transparent jumpers

Karl: 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?"

FS loves how the recent fall of the Berlin Wall is used as a self-evident explanation for poor fashion taste.

3. Karl is not pretentious

If I were pretentious I would say that I'm not an average person. But really, I know how that is ... I like to know everything; I like to be informed. I am not pretentious. I can speak several languages. I can read in every language.

See? Definitely not pretentious.

4. People dying of starvation is so boring

What does being politically correct mean to you?

It means people talking about charities. Do it, be charitable, but don't make a subject of conversation out of it because then you bore the world to death. It's very unpleasant. But I don't go out a lot so I'm not so exposed to people.

5. Therapists! On standby please!

Bruce: What were you like as a child?

Karl: I was very much like a grown-up. I have photos of me as a child wearing a tie, and it's the same as I am today. And of course I was very successful with pedophilia [sic]. I knew about it when I was ten.

Bruce: So you used it consciously?

Karl: Well, I wouldn't go that far. It was impossible to touch me. I would run away and I would tell my mother about people she knew, like the brother of one of my sister's husbands. Nothing happened, but my mother said, "You know, darling, it's your fault. You see how you behave."

For once, words fail us.

6. Karl doesn't vote. Democracy is doomed

Bruce: Politics is just so business-oriented.

Karl: I'm in fashion. Politics is not my job. I don't vote in France even though foreigners here can. I will never vote in my life.

Bruce: I'm the exact same way.

Karl: Good. I could vote for myself because I know everything about myself. And I can lie to everybody, but I cannot lie to myself.

Sorry, can we just go back to that lovely statement by Bruce LaBruce. "Politics is just so business-oriented"? God yes. All that tedious mucking around with taxes, balancing the books, making sure the economy doesn't collapse, etc. So unnecessary, no?

7. Escorts are for the rich, porn is for the poor

I personally only like high-class escorts. I don't like sleeping with people I really love. I don't want to sleep with them because sex cannot last, but affection can last forever. I think this is healthy. And for the way the rich live, this is possible. But the other world, I think they need porn.

8. Karl: eminent sociologist of our time

Bruce: I admire porn actors.

Karl: Me too, and prostitutes as well. There's a real art to it. Frustration is the mother of crime, and so there would be much more crime without prostitutes and without porn movies.

FS drifts off into mental reverie of Polly Toynbee interviewing Karl on same subject.

9. Karl is an idiot savant

Bruce: There's a boy who's 20 years old; you can see him on YouTube. He'd never seen Paris from the air before and they flew him over Paris in a helicopter. Then they took him to a studio and he drew the entire city. Building by building, street by street.

Karl: I can do that with the antique Greek world.

FS says: Really? The ENTIRE Greek world? PROVE IT, Karl.

10. Or maybe we could just drop the savant

Bruce: Did you study Latin at all?

Karl: When I was 10 or 12 years old I could speak Latin like I speak English. But I cannot speak Latin with French people. I don't understand the way they pronounce it. For me, they don't pronounce it right. But I love dead languages. Homer was one of the first books I read when I was starting to read. I think the Iliad is still one of the greatest books in the world

Homer was "one of the first books I read"? FS is ashamed, as we always thought that Homer was a person, not a book. Then again, we also though the Iliad was written in Greek, so what do we know?"