Fashion Kaiser Karl should stay clear of the weighty issues

Oh, and the British Royal Family is “unnecessary” but “pleasant” and good for tourism.

The German-born multimillionaire, who is head designer and creative director of Chanel and also designs for his own label and for Italian fashion house Fendi, gave these insights in an interview with the European newspaper Metro (not the one we see all over public transport), which he was guest-editing.

Asked about the state of pop music, he said: “The thing at the moment is Adele. She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.”

He was slightly more complimentary about US singer Lana del Rey. His lofty opinion her was “...not bad at all... In her photos she is beautiful. Is she a construct, with all her implants?”

Ouch. Why do people at the top of the fashion tree sometimes feel they have to take this neanderthal approach to everything and everyone beyond their own perfumed garden?

Lagerfeld, who once said of Diana, Princess of Wales, “she was pretty and she was sweet, but she was stupid”, also aired his opinion on the Queen, who he described as “a more smiley version” of her grandmother... In terms of what she wears, she’s come into herself a little bit more – whatever that is.”

The designer’s own signature look is skinny black jeans and heeled boots, a high-collared white shirt, black jacket, silver chains, elaborate tie-pin, sun specs and frosty white hair powdered and pulled back in a ponytail. He seems to style himself as some sort of Sun King, sourly curling his lip at much of what he surveys, although stopping short of lopping off the heads of those who offend his aesthetic. Mind you, he is probably surrounded by sycophants who do nothing but doff their berets at the man many would call the greatest force in fashion today.

To those of us who live in the real world and are more likely to line our wardrobe with Marks & Spencer and Gap, his opinions are comical. Being laughed at was probably not the response KL had in mind, so let’s enjoy it.

Adele, who looks mighty fine at whatever size she is and entertains millions, may not fit into the exquisite threads made by Chanel (a couture evening gown might cost her £30,000 or a pair of leggings from the new “affordable” ready-to-wear line will set her back £245 – but they apparently look “a bit Top Shop” according to one pundit), yet the girl from London whose voice packs the soul of Aretha with the punch of Dusty, always looks fabulous.

Maybe Karl, 78, should just get out more. If he stopped moving exclusively in circles where the average size model is somewhere between 4 and 6 and may exist on half a dozen raisins and 40 cigarettes a day to stay that way, he might see that while some of us out here are not an ideal weight, we probably have a lot more fun than he appears to enjoy in a cloistered world where he says he lives “in a set with the curtain of the stage closed, with no audience”. How sad is that?

About a decade ago, the once rather larger and seemingly jollier Karl Lagerfeld lost 88lbs in order to fit into suits that were only made in what you might call “toy” sizes. I’ve rarely seen a photo of him smiling since, and he has increasingly frequently made daft observations about vanity being the healthiest thing in life, and referred to himself variously as a vampire (he does have the look), a creature with no human feeling and “a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm”.

It all goes to show that being utterly brilliant and being entertainingly bonkers do often exist side-by-side.