Remembering Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld

Why don’t people speak the truth about others when they die? It’s almost as if they are afraid that their spirits will come back to haunt them. Death seems to offer everyone a chance to receive their only standing ovation, a chance for their mistakes to be overlooked, to be loved and in some cases even made out to be a complete saint. I will never understand it.

Earlier last week when I heard of the death of Karl Lagerfeld, I was sure that this was the turn it was going to take. I was not wrong. It’s almost as if all the vile things he has said over the years were deleted by his death announcement. No one seems to remember that he said if he were  Russian, he’d be a lesbian because the men are so ugly; that he called the singer Adele “a little fat,” then later took credit for her weight loss; that he claimed Kim Kardashian’s life-threatening robbery was her fault; and called actress Meryl Streep cheap. People also seem to have forgotten the fact that he said it was shocking that it had taken “all these starlettes” 20 years to remember being assaulted or harassed, during the height of the #metoo movement. Somehow, people have managed to conveniently separate the man from the designer.