Why Karl’s Mother Preferred His Rival

Karl Lagerfeld´s  mother was not a woman to mince her words - and she had little interest in her son's work at Chanel.

"My mother used to say to me: 'You look like me, but not as good,'" he said. "She never saw a show of my work because, she said, 'I do not want to go see people my son works for.' And at the end of her life, when she was 70, she decided that she would not wear skirts any more. 'Long skirts make me old and the short skirts,' this was the Sixties, 'they're for the young girls.' So she couldn't care less about what I was making. She loved Sonia Rykiel."

Talking to Jessica Chastain at a fundraising event in New York, the Chanel designer also opened up on his views about red-carpet dressing ("A little too much sometimes - especially when you see all those mermaids and fishtail gowns going in to see movies about poor girls in Eastern Europe"), magazine retouching ("Everyone looks like they stepped out of a funeral parlour"), being lauded as the fashion equivalent of Oscar Wilde ("I hope I end up better"), as well as his childhood.

Karl Lagerfeld

"I hated when people came up to me and said 'How was school?' and things like that. I hated to be treated as a child," he recalled. "I thought it was the worst situation. I never spoke to people like that. I turned my back to them and never spoke to them again. I wanted to be grown-up."

He also relayed his first encounter with his beloved pampered pet, Choupette, who was originally loaned to him by model and friend Baptiste Giabiconi while he was on holiday. Lagerfeld promptly fell in love with the cat and refused to give her back.

"Baptiste got another one," said Lagerfeld. "But she is not as good as Choupette. It is always difficult to analyse influence, but perhaps she helped me become a nicer person - there's something very touching about her. And she is spoiled beyond."