KARL LAGERFELD

VOGUE HOMMES You have a reputation for your caustic wit, and for your taste for revenge, which, they say, is the pleasure of the gods.

As time goes by, do you have a sense that you are mellowing?

I’m absolutely not mellowing at all, it’s just that there aren’t many people around I want to pull the rug out from under. I lack the opportunities, so I’m nice, despite myself.(A romantic revenge drama) is my favourite film and I love the legend of Kriemhild. Do you know the legend? Kriemhild was the wife of the popular Prince Siegfried and the sister of Gunther, king of the Burgundians. It all happened before the year 1000. The king was very jealous of Siegfried. One day, Siegfried took a bath in the blood of a dragon that he had slain. The blood of the dragon turned his skin into a kind of shell that no arrow could pierce. Unfortunately during his bath, a leaf fell from a tree and landed on Siegfried’s back, leaving a small area of his back vulnerable. Kriemhild made him a coat which she decorated with a small piece of embroidery at the very spot that was unprotected and ordered his valet to make sure that Siegfried should not be touched on that spot when out hunting. But the valet spilled the beans to the king, who, as Siegfried was drinking at a fountain, shot him with a fatal arrow. Kriemhild was devastated. Later, she married the king of Hungary, and twenty years later — an eternity at that time — she invited all her remaining family to a feast. At the end of the feast, she had all the doors of the castle locked and burned them all alive. That’s how to do it. I was a child when I read the story, and I saw myself in the character of Kriemhild. It’s never me who opens the hostilities, but afterwards, it’s such fun!