Another day, another Karl Kontroversial Komment (we're considering trademarking that).
At a press conference in Japan on Friday, reports Women's Wear Daily, Karl Lagerfeld said of Newsweek:
"First of all, Tina Brown's magazine is not doing well at all." He added, "I'm sorry for Tina Brown, who was such a success at Vanity Fair, to go down with a shitty little paper like this. I'm sorry."
Like we said, Kontroversial Komment. Karl still seems to be smarting from Robin Givhan's profile of him back in January, which praised his talent yet billed him as "overrated." Critiquing the Chanel creative director for his lack of substantial design innovation, Givhan wrote:
"If a great designer is judged by a silhouette he has popularized, a sensibility he has nurtured, or an aesthetic that is unmistakably his own, then Lagerfeld has failed. [...] Lagerfeld has simply broadened a road built by Chanel herself."
Instead, she argued, the Kaiser has spent more time developing his persona as a celebrity and creating line after line of Karl-branded products.
Givhan was subsequently banished from the front row of Chanel's next show (although she didn't receive a dead fish at her hotel, as predicted). But it sounds like Lagerfeld is still mad enough to disparage not Givhan but Newsweek as a whole and editor Tina Brown in particular.
Of course Newsweek is less than pleased, telling Fashionista in a statement:
In the past year since Tina Brown took over as editor in chief of Newsweek, newsstand sales have increased 30% year on year, advertising pages have seen a 27% increase for the first quarter of 2012, we have over 2.2 million people engaged in our social media communities and perhaps the most telling indicator of the renewed vitality of Newsweek, subscription renewals, in a consistent state of decline since 2005, rose by 3% last year.
In other words, neither shitty nor small. But once Karl makes up his mind, we imagine, it's made up and that's that.
And that concludes today's edition of Karl's Kontroversial Komment, y'all. Until next time, check out a roundup of Karl's most shocking bon mots below.
