Maintenance Phase - Diet Book Deep Dive: The Karl Lagerfeld Diet

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Who’s that Bond villain stroking a cat and yelling at beloved public figures? It’s Karl Lagerfeld! This week, Mike and Aubrey go in on fashion’s favorite turbo troll and his fancy, joyless diet. This episode serves four.Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks!:The Karl Lagerfeld DietKaiser Karl: The Life of Karl LagerfeldKarl Lagerfeld: My childhood was very simpleA Look Back at Designer Karl Lagerfeld’s Iconic Fashion Career in PhotosSeven of Karl Lagerfeld's most iconic momentsKarl Lagerfeld Becomes a Video-Game CharacterKarl Lagerfeld's most controversial quotes on fat womenKarl Lagerfeld's most controversial quotesKarl Lagerfeld on Adele (archived)Karl Lagerfeld’s illustration of Adolf Hitler and Angela Merkel (archived)Paris is Losing it - The New York TimesHere's What Our Nutritionist Thinks of Karl Lagerfeld's DietKarl Lagerfeld: Adele 'fat' remarks taken out of contextKarl Lagerfeld Would Marry His Cat Choupette If It Were LegalSupport the show

What's this is this is the only knowledge I have welcome to maintenance phase the podcast where skinny jeans never died. Is that a thing? Because that's what he wears. It's good. It's good. It's good. That's my only fact. He calls them skinny suits, which is very funny.

I am like a hobs. I'm Aubrey Gordon. If you would like to support us on Patreon, you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase. Our current episode is an awards show for the best and mostly worst of wellness and weight loss in 2021. And if you want to buy t-shirts or mugs or tote bags or any of that kind of stuff, you can do that at T public and both of those things are linked for you in the show notes. And today we're talking about a french

weight, a french man, a Swiss man. Oh my god, we're gonna get into this. This is exactly what he wants you to think. Is he like Nutella, where everybody thinks it's from their country? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we're talking about Carl Lagerfeld and Carl Lagerfeld diet. Famous friend to fat people, Carl Lagerfeld. What do you know about Carl Lagerfeld?

I mostly know about him from you, every once in a while, ranting about him, like, he sucks. Yeah, he really does. I mean, he's a very famous fashion designer. He got, I'm out, that's it. He's a really famous fashion designer. He, I was gonna say he designed the costumes

for the fifth element, but that's Jean-Luc Picard or whatever the guy's name is. I'm not a fashion, I'm not a fashion guy. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fashion lady for the most part, but I will say Carl Lagerfeld worked for, he was the creative director of Chanel, he worked for Dior, and he very famously lost about 90 pounds, and then released a diet book under his name called the Carl Lagerfeld Diet.

Fashion people giving diet advice. Yeah, always. Yeah, it's a fraught area, I'll say that. So, shall we dive in? Dude, yeah, yes. Have you seen Carl Lagerfeld? That's the first thing we should talk about. Yes, he looks like David Lynch in my brain.

Sure. He's like a normy looking dude until you get his hair. And then his hair is like the shock of bright white poofed up Louis the 14th hairstyle. I don't think I've ever seen him before the weight loss. So all the images of him that I've seen are this thin, oh my God, okay, yeah, you just sent me an image. Holy shit.

So in this picture, he is wearing a crevatt. He's wearing a black suit, a white shirt. Yeah. Giant sunglasses. He is holding his cat. And he's wearing leather gloves. And I will say, so I'm down in Los Angeles with my family and my mom came in the other day and was like,

what are you working on? And I was like, I'm researching an episode on Karl Lagerfeld and she went, who, and I showed her a picture. And she went, he looks like a Bond villain. That's what I was gonna say, because he's in, he's in some sort of private jet situation. He's got a Venetian blind on an airplane window behind him.

Yes. He just looks like a very thin, wealthy socialite guy. And a super fucking gay. I mean, yes. Deeply gay. I was like, who's gonna mention it first? Me or Aubrey? Ha ha ha.

It's gonna be me. The most glaringly obvious thing about this photo is like, this is a blatantly gay man. It's fine, but that is, I think the human response to this photo. So gay, so gay. That's a very gay man, yeah. So in pulling together a bio of his,

it was difficult to do, not because there hasn't been a lot written about him, but because he was known to lie about a lot of things about his background. Also lying about random stuff in your life for no particular purpose, also very gay. My experience. Yeah, he would tell people that his mother was Elizabeth of Germany as if she was like a noble woman or aristocrat or royal or something. He was known to lie about his birth year.

He was known to lie about his nationality. I have had men on dates lie to me about their SAT scores and I'm like, you're 37. Who do you think you're impressive because I don't care. I'm just like, that's our culture, that's representation. So in reality, confirmed by like government records, he was born in Hamburg in September 1933. Okay. His father was named Otto.

He owned an evaporated milk business. His mother was not Elizabeth of Germany. She was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin. So she was of Germany, that part's true. She was of Germany, and her name was Elizabeth. I am Mike of Columbia City. That's exactly true. Yeah, I guess I'm Aubrey of Forest Grove.

That actually sounds royal, so lean into that. He had two sisters, and we have a little clip of him talking about his childhood. So we're gonna watch about a minute of this. Oh. Carl, can I take you back when you were growing up in a town very close to Denmark in Germany? And I just would like to ask you

a little bit about your childhood. A childhood was very simple. I only wanted one thing to get out of there and to be thrown up. I hated to be a child, that's why I could speak English, German and French when I was six. No, I had a nice childhood in a period when the world was not that way. Nothing I can say against. I'm not still recovering from an unhappy child or no, everything was perfect.

I never played with children. I only was sketching and reading. It was the only country I stayed quite isolated. No, I didn't even have anything to do with my sister and half sister. I always was isolated from the rest. I was on the best of terms with my father, and even better terms with my mother,

who thought it was perfect like this. As long as I was not creating trouble. It's kind of a rich text. Tell me. He's in a country house, so he's very wealthy growing up, but he's also very isolated, but it sounds like from his description that he's self-isolated, that he doesn't feel like he's a native of the place where he's growing up. He isn't on bad

terms with anybody, it's not an abusive childhood, it's simply one that he wants to escape. That is how I took this clip as well, and then I read his biography and I was like, nope. Incorrect. So he describes this as a quote unquote perfect childhood, right? What he does not mention is that he's born in fucking Germany in 1933. This is Nazi Germany when he's growing up. Yep. And then post-war destroyed Germany when he's a teenager. Uh-huh.

According to his biography, this is called Kaiser Karl. It was a good little read. He distanced himself from Germany and his German heritage starting in his teens. He would tell people that he was from an aristocratic Swedish family or people would guess that he was dutch and he would just like not object. when he was ordering German food in France, he lived in France for his whole adult life. He would order them using the French words for German foods. He was calling them freedom fries before we were calling them that. He also says in this that he's on good terms with his father and maybe even better terms with his mother. Every anecdote that I have found or read about his mom is a little bit funny, like 5 to 10% funny, and 90 to 95% devastatingly cruel. Uh, what are some of them? According to him, she never went to one of his shows, and when he asked her about it,

she said she just liked other designers better. Oh, fuck. In a book of his called The World According to Carl, he said that his mother said, quote, I'm going to have to take you to the upholsterer. Your nostrils are too big. They need curtains. Oh God. He also wrote in the Carl Lagerfeld diet or he said, she did go on a diet after my birth. From that moment on, I was always held responsible for her weight. She used to say jokingly that I had killed off her youth and beauty. Whoa.

Funny joke, mom. She also seems to be displaying the kind of acid wit that you've seen a lot of gay men, including Carl Lagerfeld. Yeah, this is the kind of frigid mother that people are told at this time when her fault and a gay kid. And in this case, for whatever role of the dice happened, it really matched. Yeah, you know? It really did. It turns out that pseudoscience is correct.

If your mom is me and you will be gay. Yeah. So in the 1950s, he moves to Paris. He's in his late teens and early 20s. He's in his late teens and early 20s. His father, bank rolls, his lodging, his clothing, he buys him a Mercedes, all kinds of stuff. And Karl Lagerfeld moves into the world of fashion alongside Yves Saint Laurent, who became a really close friend

and a sometimes sort of rival of his. Okay. In 1954, he won the International Woolmark Prize, which was very prestigious at that time in fashion. The judges were Balmain and Givashi. It's Prince Givenshi, but go ahead. Go ahead. It's time.

By the late 60s, he started working for Fendi and was hired on to modernize their fur line and extremely 60s statements. He worked at Fendi for the rest of his life. He was there until he died in a sort of part-time role. And in 1983, he added another job when he became the creative director of Chanel, where he stayed for 36 years. Wow. It was about 10 years after the death of Coco Chanel.

And people saw the brand as one that was sort of on its way out. And he took the brand in a new direction. He started doing ready-to-wear stuff from Chanel, which it had not done before, and really was credited with reviving the brand. It's like how Abercrombie and Fitch was some weird hunting brand. And then in the 90s, they were like, let's move over to gay bathing. And then it became a smash sensation.

You go. There is some writing about his design at this time, Vanessa Friedman with The New York Times, described it as, you know, they had all of these designers who were speaking exclusively with their own voice, right? And had very strong perspectives. And that the appeal of Carl Lagerfeld was that he could be this kind of chameleon. And he could go to different brands and go, okay, the key thing about this brand is this kind of look and I'm going to take it to the next level.

Oh, so he's like the JJ Abrams. They bring him on and he's able to speak through this existing property. All of his designs had a lens flare. Yes. Wait, can we look at some designs? I want to look at some designs. Do you want to? Yeah.

I didn't pull any designs. Let's, let's Google together. Sure. Oh my God, I found a stunning one. Send me the ones that are speaking to you. Here you go. I'm like quivering in anticipation. Here's, this is just a whole post that's like, here's his career in fashion. Okay. So the first one is a Chloe design that is, I'm very into it. Oh! You mean the one where the woman is in a business suit type of thing? Was that show in 1983? Yes it was! Wow, yeah!

Shoulder pass power blazer, short hair! It's a lady wearing a man's blazer and nothing under it essentially. With a pocket square. Oh yeah, a pocket square. Yeah. And then the next one is like pin stripes with a corset. Yeah. Yep.

Oh, it's a dog collar, but it's a dog collar with piano keys on it. And then do you see the next one down? The electric guitar dress? All right, swing in swinging to Miss Carl. Not for me. Oh, and there's like a little black dress with just waves of sequins on it. Little embellished.

Oh. And then, yeah. Okay, I'm into this. This is like some royalty shit. It's a white, bright like a wedding dress, but like a tight white dress. And then she has this, God, how would you even describe it, Aubrey? It's like a coral reef on her shoulders.

It is totally like a coral reef on her shoulders. That's exactly right. It's sort of this structured cape that kind of balloons out. And it has sort of a sweetheart neckline to it, which is also fascinating. Oh, yeah. It has a little widow's peak in the middle. Okay, then the next one down is like black leather,

and I think it's kind of boring. And then the next one is just like nipples poking out. Ha ha. Whoa. There you go. 1994 nips on the runway. Oh wow, okay. And then this, this is like some like Africa inspired,

like kind of cringed. Uh oh Carl. Appropriation stuff. Quote unquote tribal inspired. Yeah. Uh-oh Carl. Appropriation stuff. Quote unquote, tribal inspired. Like, Miggly African. Yeah. Yeah, and then we're back to sort of normal office wear. Scroll down to the bikini, the Chanel bikini.

Oh my fucking god. Okay, now we're back to the weird Dada shit. It's like tiny Yamacas. Yeah. So like little tiny half dollar size moons on a bikini over somebody's breasts. And then this lady, there's so many pelvic bones. I haven't seen those many pelvic bones in years. Another bridal dress.

I sort of see what you mean in that there isn't like a carolografe look. I don't know that there's an aesthetic that is running across all of these looks. Yeah, not when he's designing for other brands. He also launched his own brand. Ah, okay. But yeah, he's sort of a shapeshifter here, right? Yeah. He, in his fashion shows, he sort of courted controversy

throughout his career. So in the 60s, he made a big splash at one point by designing the shortest mini skirts that had hit the runway yes, which in the 60s was like a big go in concern, right? Yeah. In the early 90s, he used an Italian porn actor as a model for one of his shows. What's wrong with that?

Everyone. Ask Anna Winter, she walked out. What? So he had this incredible sort of storied career in fashion. He died a couple of years ago in February of 2019. He was 85 and he died of pancreatic cancer. Before we dig into sort of his public comments, I did wanna talk about his,

a couple of parts of his legacy. He has sort of a weird pop culture legacy. He voiced a character in Grand Theft Auto. Of all the three word phrases I didn't think I was going to have to answer that auto. What part of that sort of weird imprint that he has left on the world is his relationship with his cat in that first picture that I sent you, he's holding a cat.

His cat is named Shupet. He was completely and utterly devoted to this cat. Really? One year after getting her, he designed a whole collection around this sort of pale cornflower blue, which was the color of her eyes. Oh, okay. In 2013, he told CNN, quote,

there is no marriage yet for human beings and animals. I never thought that I would fall in love like this with a cat. Uh, slightly in artful wording, there's probably a better way to put that. Uh, no, because he then went on to say, yes, I would marry my cat if it were legal. So it's like, oh, so what you really mean is, and he's like, no, no, no, literally, I literally mean this. I am in romantic love with my cat. Who's the man? Let me clarify.

It is estimated that at the time of his death, he was worth between $270 million. I see one of those people that left all of his millions to his cat in his will. Oh, Michael, why would you spoil it this way? Dixie. Dixie. Hahaha. Huh? So, that's the rumor.

Oh, okay. She definitely like has her own bank account. That has been confirmed. There is a cat bank account. She has a pet agent. I'm uncomfortable with this. She has two assistants. She has a bodyguard and she has a personal chef.

Every rich person who leaves their money to their cat, the estate tax goes up by 5%. How's that? You guys as a group. You're losing your privileges. Yeah, this is the reverse of like, you can have a pet when you've proven you're responsible enough to take care of it.

Prove you're not making society worse. Sorry, guys. So that's Carl Lagerfeld's sort of life in very broad brush strokes, right? And his cat's life and even his cat or drugs. The thing that I would say, I know Carl Lagerfeld for best as someone who's not necessarily like a deep fashion person is as a public figure and he said not just controversial things, but like over the top racist things, deeply anti-fat things, astonishingly misogynist things. So we're gonna take a little tour. I'm going to send these quotes to you. I apologize in advance, but I think it will also be fun.

This guy sucks. I'm going to start us off a little easy. OK, level one problematic. Level one. Here you go. If I was a Russian woman, I'd be a lesbian. Russian men are really not very good looking. There are a few handsome ones like Naomi Campbell's boyfriend,

but there you see the most beautiful women and the most horrible men. Yeah, that's like a level one. It's bad. It's bad. It's mostly just like, why would you say that? Yeah, it's kind of like pointlessly mean. Here is another one for you. This is, I don't know, level two, level three. All right, now we've, we've bashed Russian men. What's the next group? We're gonna, we're gonna take down. Fat Homes, that's it. Oh my god. You've got fat mothers with their bags of chips

sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly. The world of beautiful clothing is about dreams and illusions. It's just again, though, pointlessly mean. Yep, that's right. He also said in that same interview, quote, no one wants to see curvy women.

I'll tell you who begs to differ. And that is pornography websites. Yeah, that's also just inaccurate, just empirically inaccurate. It's just not true. Yeah. And I mean, also I think like quite a bit of the stuff that Carl Lagerfeld did and said in the press

was just stating how things work in the fashion industry. Like he would talk about not wanting fat people to wear his clothes because nobody wants to look at them, but also none of the other couture houses were designing anything for plus size people. And I don't think any of them do now. Aside from occasional stunt casting and runway shows, he was just sort of saying it out loud.

And that was the part that people often responded to. So I have sort of a mixed reaction to all of this, right? He says these terrible things and he gets held accountable, but also a sort of unintended side effect of that is that he becomes sort of a scapegoat. And we sort of walk away with the impression that like other designers are somehow better because they're not saying it in the press. Right, because the other houses, if you ask them, why don't you have plus size people in your shows?

They would give you some euphemism bullshit. Our brand has a particular look, and our traditions go back a long way, and this is what we're called blah, blah, blah, blah. Takes a lot of effort to become size inclusive, we want to be sure that we're doing it right so we're not ever going to do it. Whereas if you're just like, yeah, I don't like looking at fat people because fat people suck. That's basically their belief.

They're just saying it in this completely different way or like making excuses. In addition to all of that, he in the press said that Adele was quote, a little too fat. Oh, fuck off. And then he apologized to her and said his remarks were taken out of context because he was really talking about Lana Del Rey, famously too fat. It's just a really immature way to be a public figure. Yeah.

And also, these kinds of quotes attract more journalists because they know they're going to get good quotes out of you and they know that they're going to get clicks on their stories and attention on their stories, because you're not saying something boring and anodyne. And it's a minimum of three stories, right? It's like you say something fucked up about a person or a community, that person or community responds, and then you respond to their response. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here are a bunch of those, a minimum. I'm just gonna do some quick hits

of like personal insults. Lighting round. Lightning round. He said Heidi Klum was quote, too heavy and has too big a bust to be a runway model. He said that Kate Middleton was a romantic beauty, but that he didn't like Pippa Middleton's face and she should quote,

only show her back. Oh my God. He said that Lady Die was quote, so pretty and so sweet, but she was stupid. Okay. And about seal, Heidi Holmes then partner. He said, quote, I am no dermatologist, but I would. Oh my god. Mine looks better than his. He is covered in craters. Why? This is like middle school stuff. It's nonsense.

He also picked a fight with Meryl Streep, which is maybe... Ha ha ha! I'm gonna go after Adele, Seal and Meryl Streep. Just throw in Beyoncé, it's bananas. So like, he told women's wear daily that he'd been working on an Oscar's dress for Meryl Streep,

but that one of her reps called him and said that he didn't need to anymore because they found someone who would pay her to wear the dress. Okay. So in Women's Wear Daily, he said, quote, a genius actress, but cheapness also, no? And he later said that he misunderstood and that wasn't true,

but that was like after the interview went out. Meryl Streep released a statement saying that he had quote unquote, defamed her and the designer that she chose. It's just Dick behavior. It's just Dick behavior. Total Dick behavior. We are now going to move into

extremely bananas racism. Okay, so now we're like problematicness level to this like USDA choice prime. Yep, problematicness. This is a photo shoot that he did with Claudia Schiffer in 2010. Oh, well, ooh, that's okay. Yellow face and black face.

Yeah, it's like, it's a black and white thing, sort of like passport photos. And it's different looks. So one, she's like a sort of office lady and one, she's Marie Antoinette. And then in one, she's like an Asian lady and then in the other one, she's like a black lady. And it's like the whole, she's an afro and like some black face on. It's not great.

That's pretty bad. In addition to that, he said this about Michelle Obama. Oh, I was just going to say, after he went after Adele and Merrill Street, it was like, who's next? Michelle Obama? What other than the loving public figure? I mean, here it is. I'm so sorry that I'm making you read this. God.

It says, My favorite line of Mrs. Obama is when a journalist asked her if she thought her skirts were not too tight and she answered, Why don't you like my big black ass? This is a line I admire. She got me with that. Is that that's not a real quote? Please read the next quote that I just sent you. Oh, okay. Christina Shake, director of communications for First Lady Michelle Obama, released a statement regarding Lagerfeld's comment saying Mrs. Obama never made that statement.

Correct! So he fabricated an event in which a black lady said, why don't you like my big black ass? Either this is something he invented whole cloth from a deeply racist brain, or it's an anecdote that somebody else told him and he believed it with a deeply racist brain. Also, Michelle Obama's skirts aren't too tight.

Like the whole premise of the story isn't making any sense. It's weird. She dressed beautifully, I think, but generally pretty conservatively as first ladies tend to do. Yeah. We are now moving in to the industrial strength clear the room shit. In 2017, he said a thing that is a little bit confusing, but definitely both deeply Islamophobic and deeply anti-Semitic. In France, he's talking about Angela Merkel, who he was not, not, not a fan of, mostly around her immigration policies, which he thought were too lax and too permissive. And that sort of Germany was like losing a sense of self-reformative.

This is a common argument amongst the far right in Germany, yes? Yes. She allowed in roughly one million Syrian refugees in a country of 80 million people. I'm so sorry for making you read this. Here we go. One cannot, even if they're decades between them, kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst you can bring millions of their worst enemies in the place.

I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said, the greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust, holy shit. Right. So he's saying that young Syrian was saying that the greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust. But also he's fucking saying this is something you see in a lot of reactionary rhetoric. They'll be like, oh, it's not me. It's Syrian refugees hate Jews. Syrian refugees hate gays. This is the Dave Chappelle trans people bullied my trans friend into dying by suicide.

Yeah. He's using a minority group to stigmatize another one. Yeah. So, after this talk show appearance where he says this, right, he also drew a political cartoon that was published in a magazine in Germany. It showed Hitler thanking Angela Merkel. Oh my god. While Merkel says, what have I done? That's not even a good joke.

That's not even a political cartoon. It is a magic trick rhetorically speaking to be like, what if people who support people of other races and efficiencies are the real Nazis? I don't about that. That's why everyone hates Hitler because he was nice to minorities. Okay, are you ready for more industrial strength?

Woo! So Carl Lagerfeld had some things to say about a model setting boundaries will start there. He says, I read somewhere that now you must ask a model if she's comfortable with posing. It's simply too much. From now on, as a designer, you can't do anything. If you don't want your pants pulled about, don't become a model. Join a nunnery. There's always a place for you in the event. Neat?

After he said that Rose McGowan called for a boycott of Chanel. Which I'm just like, sure, I will continue to boycott Chanel, I guess. Little social justice warrior here, Aubrey's never bought an article of clothing from Chanel. It's really interesting as I read these quotes and as I reread them after having read his biography, I was just thinking about how if you have a parent who is as intensely judgmental and rejecting as his mom was, I could see how you get to what are you complaining about?

I never complained. I had to deal with all this shit and I just figured it out. Right? Like that's like not an uncommon response. Yeah. I sort of came to think of him as a guy who never had a chance, but also never wanted a chance. This is also a challenge, I think, to social progress in some way, because there's always a population of people who lived during the time that you're trying to change. Yeah, think of something like spanking your kids. When you're saying, well, spanking your kids is bad, and people probably shouldn't do it anymore.

There's this massive population of tens of millions of people who are like, well, I got spanked. Yeah. Like, yes, that's what we were trying to change. Correct. That's the problem. Yes. So, Michael, I have a little tiny palette cleanser for you. Okay, thank God.

I have a fondness for sweatpants. Oh, yeah. I don't know how you feel about sweatpants. In him right now. Delightful. Well, you'll be glad to know what Carl Lagerfeld has to say about sweatpants. Oh, yeah. He says, sweatpants are a sign of defeat.

You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants. That's true. In my case, absolutely accurate. I take back everything I said about him previously. Anyway. So that's the public legacy of Carl Lagerfeld. I'm so sorry. It is deeply embarrassing that the fashion industry didn't drum this guy out years ago.

Right. It's always so weird to me when industries hold on to figures like this for so long as if they're so irreplaceable. Can you just get someone who doesn't really say anything publicly about Hitler, except he's bad? Yeah, I mean... Okay, are you ready to dig in to the Carl Lagerfeld diet? Book time, yes. First things first, I am going to pull up a picture of the cover.

Have you seen the cover of the Carl Lagerfeld diet? No. Here you go. Ooh, skinny jeans times, skinny jeans and boots. Boot cut jeans over the boots. Is that what boot cut means? There's supposed to go over your boots like that? Yeah.

They're like skinny jeans that end in bell bottoms. It looks insane. He has like galoshes on. It looks like they're spats. It looks like he's wearing denim spats. I am not into it. But also this is like, so this book was released in 2002 in Germany in 2005 in the US. So it's also like a different. It has a different time. Yeah. Wait, is he a short king? He is not. 5-11. I thought I thought he was one of my people, but also he's a huge racist misogynist.

So I don't know if you want to win in my team. So it says the car-logger-filled diet. Uh-huh. But then I guess the author, it says Dr. Jean-Claude Udrey. Yes. So a car-logger-filled didn't write it. He did not write it. But where did he design the diet?

He went to this doctor and he said he wanted to be, quote, unquote, a perfect clothes horse at 132 pounds and 511. Wow. That's thin. That is thin. So that is what we are seeing on this cover, presumably, is that weight, right? So he lost 92 pounds in about 13 months is his claim doing this diet. What he doesn't talk about very much publicly is that he started putting on weight when his partner died. Oh, his partner was named Jacques. He tested positive for HIV in 1984 and died in 1989. In his final days, by all accounts, he sort of self-isolated quite a bit and only allowed Carl to visit him.

And Carl had an extra bed or cot put in his hospital room so he could stay around the clock. So this is like, potentially to be linked, right? This like major traumatic event. It's also so frustrating to me that people can go through experiences like this and somehow not pick up empathy along the way. Yeah. If you've gained weight after a traumatic event,

you'd think, okay, zooming out, obviously this person's gonna have more empathy of like fat people. Yeah. No. It's so rough to read about it because you're like, boy, oh boy, my heart breaks. That's a horrible, horrible experience. And then, after that is when he started all of his media trolling shit. So I read the entirety of the carological

diet. And it was fun at times and mostly just an astonishing waste of my time. Did you, did you make any recipes? I made no recipes because I don't have rabbit to braise in my house. It is so fancy and so French and still so joyless. So the book itself is carological branded, but it's written by Jean-Claude Udrey. There are two different forwards, one written by each of them.

And they take totally different tax. Jean-Claude Udrey is all about the obesity epidemic and how a diet like this will help fight it and save society from what he sees as individual's bad choices. He talks about how like, fatness didn't used to be a problem in France, but now French women are eating like Americans, so they're getting fat like Americans. And he also sort of seems like he's going to be compassionate about it for a minute. Here's what he has to say about fat

people in that forward. I don't know. He says overweight people who are more and more numerous are paradoxically the unloved of our time. They are rejected, sometimes insulted, discriminated against, and they have more difficulty than others in finding work and their place in society. If they don't end up isolating themselves, they find themselves isolated by others. Wait bias, it's a problem. It's a problem, that's why you gotta get thin. Definitely don't make things better for fat people.

Just get yourself out of there. I love the thing where they just mention weight stigma in these books and then just do nothing with it. Yeah, that's right. Like, fat people are stigmatizing us anyway. Here's how not to be fat and why fat people suck. And how you're gonna die. Carl Lagerfeld's meanwhile is entirely about

vanity. Nice. And it is absolute fucking word salad. Oh, yeah. This is a longer quote that is a moment where I kind of appreciate him for being honest with readers about where he's coming from. It says, if you attach no importance to weight problems, if not being able to wear new, trendy, small-sized clothes does not cause you any regret, this book is not for you. Health reasons are an excellent motive for losing weight, and for some, they are truly vital. But, if you are lucky enough not to need to go on a diet for such reasons, there's nothing to stop you from pretending to others that health is indeed your motivation.

In order to avoid having to explain to them that health is indeed your motivation in order to avoid having to explain to them that your true, deeper motives have nothing to do with health. At least it's not disingenuous, right? I mean, actually, Aubrey, how do you feel about this? About people who do food restrictions, exercise, whatever, they're like, I want to have a six-pack. I'm just going to the next six months doing that. I mean, I feel like with all of this stuff, like people get to do whatever they want with their bodies

and if they want to pursue bodybuilding or weight loss or whatever, like go to town, I don't particularly mind, I do feel often like people are not in touch with their actual motivations for doing stuff like this, right? And people who go, I'm doing this for my health and I'll go, oh, is there like a particular health condition? Is there something, and they're like, no, I just need to like get healthy and I don't look healthy and I don't, and I'm like, I would honestly prefer in that case that they just go, look man,

I feel like I'm fatter than I want to be. I personally have a preference for that because then at least it's honest and I can meet them with my own honesty and say, that's fine, I don't really want to be. I personally have a preference for that because then at least it's honest and I can meet them with my own honesty and say, that's fine, I don't really want to hear about it. Is that okay? Right. We're all in the honesty together.

Versus if you say to someone who's sort of doing this amorphous, I want to lose weight, quote unquote for my health sort of broadly, right? If I then say, hey, I don't really want to talk to you about this, this person will often then have an outsized reaction of like, don't you care about my health? Don't you care that I'm doing something good for myself? The blowback is much greater, I find,

when folks are less honest and grounded about it with themselves. Well, there's also, I mean, one of the problems with the health disguise that a lot of this vanity stuff wears is that it then implies a universal rule that everybody has to be thin because thin is healthy. Yeah. Whereas you could defend the I wanna get a six pack thing

as well, yeah, you have a goal for yourself. It's the same way, like I wanna be able to run a 10K by the end of the year. I don't really care if anybody else runs a 10k. I'm doing this as a hobby. Yeah. Hopefully, maybe it's potentially not going to push them to, like, be shitty to other people who don't have the same goal. Yeah, but it also plays into the idea that this is, like, a public act of moral rightness. Right. And that is a social interaction that I have no desire to participate in. Yeah.

I have no desire to congratulate people on the accident and privilege of their hell. Right. I have no desire to participate in a conversation that devalues a body like mine and lifts up bodies that I have never had and that have always been lifted up. Yeah. That's the part that is hardest for me

is not what other people do with their bodies. It's how they want to engage me. There's also, I guess, the argument that focusing on your own vanity distracts you from who is creating the standards of vanity because another thing that he could do, I mean, if he's acknowledging the, I think reality that in the fashion industry,

he will lose standing as a fat person. One reaction to that is like, well, I should lose 90 pounds. Another reaction to that is like, well, the fashion industry should be more inclusive of people who aren't 90 pounds skinnier than me. And I, Carl Lagerfeld, have a fuck ton of power. Right.

What would it look like to try to create change? I was gonna say, he might have done that and we didn't see it, but then I was like, he definitely didn't fucking do that. He definitely didn't do that. He drew a Hitler cartoon. Because even with the thing of like, I'm trying to get a six pack by January 1st.

There is the question, you know, why does that open opportunities for me that I wouldn't have otherwise? Because that thin begs the question who doesn't have those opportunities. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I also think he leans really fucking hard into dieting is a process whereby you can make yourself who you really are.

Oh, don't, now he's ruining it. Here's a quote for you. Ugh, it is a lie to think that appearance does not matter in this day. It allows you to live in harmony with yourself. It is a lie to think that appearance does not matter in this day. It allows you to live in harmony with yourself. A diet does not need to be a philosophical explanation, nor all those excuses behind which people often feel the need to take refuge. A diet can help us discover or define our real personality.

We are what we used to be, not what we have become. It is often possible to go back with a new beginning, a different and encouraging one. This is fucking Mary Ann Williamson. This is refrigerator magnets. Just jumbled up, put on to the fridge. This is soup. I don't even know what he's talking about.

I don't totally understand, but I'm pretty sure I like fully deeply disagree. I don't think that diets help people discover their real personalities. For example, I just sent you the last couple of lines of that quote. It was three times as long. Oh my god. And 10 times is in coherent at the start. But that also indicates that he doesn't, he doesn't actually like know why he's doing this. He does say about the diet itself and about dieting. He says, quote, for me, a diet without complicated

instructions is not a diet. It has to be a sort of punishment, something that you have to do, even if you haven't imposed it on yourself. It just has to suck forever. It does. It does. And he says, in also in this forward, he says that he sort of expects to the way that he puts it is that he needs to, quote unquote, follow this diet for the rest of his life. I mean, again, it's honest. That seems to be the headline with this book. There are numerous studies that people that have taken off weight, significant amounts of weight, and kept it off.

And the main through line is ongoing restriction, never ending restriction, and a ton of exercise. Yep. Our two hours a day exercise like forever. Or in the case of like people who are on the biggest loser, four to six hours of exercise a day and you still regain weight. You just have to be hungry for the rest of your life. So should we talk about what the actual diet is? Oh yeah, give me recipes.

I want to make rabbit. It is called the Spoon Light Program. Okay. I want to make rabbit. It is called the Spoon Light Program. Okay. No joke, they don't even start discussing the diet itself until page 82. Nice. That's like us in this episode.

I approve. There is so much book before there is diet. The diet is basically just a very low fat, low calorie diet. There's no red meat, there's no alcohol. Carolografeld also says that it's helped him to stay on the diet by knowing that if he wants to eat something, he can just put it in his mouth and then spit it out. Isn't that like some anorexia shit? Isn't that like an eating disorder then?

A lot of what we're gonna talk about is not great. The diet has unlimited diet soda, which was good for carolografeld because he reportedly drank 10 diet coaks a day. Oh my God. But also he was sponsored by Diet Pepsi. Oh. There are as one reporter put it, quote, endless capsules.

You have to take a multivitamin, you have to take spirulina. What? You're supposed to take ginseng. You're also supposed to have multiple protein sachets each day. Would you like to know where you can get the protein packets and the supplements? Oh, God, is it like on the Champs-Oli's Day, like one, like one shop in Paris that sells these as a whole?

No, it's a French business called laboratoire sunrex. Okay. No, it's a French business called laboratory sunrex. Would you like to know who the chief medical advisor is for laboratory sunrex? Is it Jean-Claudeudrée? Yes, it is. So he's promoting his own products. The diet itself is also really fucking confusing,

if I'm honest. There are three different levels, but he doesn't really say, like who's supposed to do which levels? Okay. Level three, you can do for several months, he says. That's 1200 to 1600 calories a day. Level two, which is where Karl Lagerfeld

spent most of his time. You can do for several months with medical supervision. That one's a thousand to 1200 calories per day. Okay. And level one is eight to 900 calories per day. And he says you should only do that one for two to three weeks. I mean, you'll lose weight. You sure will. Can't stick to it very long. You'll be miserable and grumpy and you won't get any work done. He also says on this diet you are not supposed to get exercise. That's such a weird fashion industry thing too. Because you don't want to have muscles, you want to be just greedy and thin so close hang on you. You don't

want to be like buff. It's even better than that. There's a quote for you. Oh God. Okay. It says, it is unreasonable to ask someone on a diet to undergo any specific exercise for Gene. Firstly, because you have to really wear yourself out to burn calories. And secondly, because exercise runs the risk of making you hungry to sum up a little more walking and taking the stairs instead of the elevator won't do you any harm, but forcing yourself into action won't do you any good. Where physical activity is concerned,

there's only one rule, do what you feel like. That's what we say. I mean, I just love that he's like, no, no, you can't fucking exercise because when you exercise, I don't know if you know this, you get hungry. So, but then he also includes this whole list of things that burn calories.

He says you can burn 140 calories an hour by painting a room, 130 calories an hour by sewing, 280 calories an hour by playing the piano, and 160 calories an hour by shopping. Let me just, that's just walking. I don't know why shopping is any different than walking, but these all sound fake. It's totally fucking fake, but I love that he's like,

you know, hypothetically, if someone who did this diet, maybe someone who's on the cover of this book wanted to do a bunch of sewing and shopping, he could burn some calories to those things. This is how much Karl Lagerfeld's hobbies burn calories. or this book wanted to do a bunch of sewing and shopping. He could burn some calories to the most things. This is how much Karl Lagerfeld's hobbies burn calories. He talks about side effects, hunger and fatigue and constipation and all of this sort of stuff.

And he's like, but that'll all stop if you just follow the diet correctly. That's not true. Yeah, it's wrong. This is like the primary monometh of diets is that you'll reach some sort of plateau at which point this restriction gets easier, but the restriction gets harder. Your body fights back. Yes.

There's never a point at which on 900 calories, you're like, oh, I don't feel hungry anymore. It's like your fucking hair starts falling out in clumps. He also says that you might start feeling cold all the time and I'm like, yeah, I bet that's your money shutting down. You're near to death. Yes. And he says you might have some hair loss and you might lose your period, but those, both of those things are reversible. Don't worry about super sustainable. Once you become incapable of reproducing, then you'll be fine. Are you ready to hear about some recipes and meal plans? Oh yeah, give it to me. Okay. Me the days. Here's a recipe for salmon salad that is in the cookbook. You take a head of escarole, one small celery root, two tomatoes, two hard boiled eggs, eight ounces of smoked salmon, and a vinaigrette, and at the end of that recipe it says,

serves four. I was just, I was opening my mouth to be like, that's not the bad curl. I know, I was like, ooh, I'm in and then I was like, fucking, serves. Everyone gets two ounces of salmon. It's also the idea that I would invite people over to be like to experience this misery with me. Like I'm hungry and sad. Come join me. If you don't like this, I do have some protein sachets that might interest you.

I know. He has a confusing one and a half egg omelet. What? One of the recipes is four carrots, eight ounces of green beans, eight ounces of peas, two stalks of celery, salt and pepper, and unflaver gelatin, and of recipe. You're just suspending vegetables in jelly,

like alien resurrection. Sure, I think it's for the person who goes You know what this plate of vegetables looks good, but it doesn't have enough hooves in it You know I want this carrot suspended So those are most of the recipes. I mean again some of them are really lovely It's a lot of classic sort of French cooking but like Again, some of them are really lovely. It's a lot of classic sort of French cooking, but like stripped of a lot of joy and cream and butter

and all that kind of stuff. Like there's like a low fat French onion soup, which makes me sad. I mean, so many of these things are literally just like, how do I take the joy out of a normal recipe? The last sort of major chapter in the book is called Slim Attractive and Fit. And it's all about plastic surgery, skincare products,

and dietary supplements, all of which you can get from love or a to our sun rex. Of course. They talk a little bit about who the diet is for. Jean-Claudeoudre says it is for people with a BMI of over 25, so an overweight or obese BMI, quote unquote, right? If your BMI is under 25, he says like, sorry, you shouldn't do this diet, but you can have liposuction and I do happen to perform liposuction. So the whole thing is this dude marketing his clinic.

100%. This book is just like cash grab, after cash grab, after cash grab. Every recommendation for a supplement is like, you can get that at sunrecks.com. Unbelievable. It is fully like a 20 page product catalog at the end of the book.

That's disappointing. Sorry, that's the point in this episode when you get disappointed. Now I'm, now I'm livid. Everything else has been fine. I will say there has been press in the last few years as people have sort of dug this up. But at the time, there was a writer for the New York Times who decided to try the carologorfeld diet and wrote about it.

And then they died. It's a really good funny like straight up takedown. Okay. She talks about doing the diet and how the protein sachets have to be mixed with a blender. Oh. So she talks about taking a whole last fucking blender into the offices of the New York times. By day three on the diet, she starts describing parties as quote, By day three on the diet, she starts describing parties as quote, buzz b Berkeley scale fantasy sequences of denial. Yeah, because she can't have any snacks, because she's only doing 900 calories a day.

She can't eat shit. Yeah. She said that she did the diet for two weeks and lost five pounds. That's probably dangerous. Probably not great. Yeah. The way that she describes it, it's like a cartoon where someone watches a person turn into like a turkey leg

or like a cupcake or something. So as this diet book is sort of resurfaced, it's out of print now, it's hard to find. I paid an inordinate amount of money for the copy that I have, so don't do it. Really? Yeah, it was like do it. Really? Yeah, it was like 60 bucks.

No way! It's out of print and it is in demand. But you're losing five pounds every two weeks, sustainably, keep on it. Sorry. I'll just do this for ten more years, and then I'll be in my BMI for ten more weeks. Do you have a theory of what actually happened? Because I'm thinking that this doctor went to Carl Lagerfeld

and was like, I want to write a book promoting my product. Let me slap your name on it. That feels very possible. Carl Lagerfeld also talks in press and in the book about how a bunch of people think he just had weight loss surgery. Oh, okay, interesting. That to lose 90 pounds in 13 months is really significant.

Yeah. There's no real evidence either way. Yeah. This thing about like Dr. Ujra created this diet for carologgerfeld is like just patty false, right? Like that just seems like no way. I don't buy it. And also it seems like it's a text written by this random doctor, and Carl Lagerfeld wrote a totally incoherent forward. But it's not clear that Carl Lagerfeld had any other creative input into this book at all. Yeah, I think that's probably true. He wrote the forward, which is like four pages of just like gobbledygook nonsense.

It's only four pages long. It's so, the four pages might actually be generous. I think it's like three and a half. And he provides these little quotes that are like three sentences in each chapter, and they're highlighted in these little pull-out boxes. So you're like, oh, here's what Carl Lagerfeld has to say. And then it's fucking terrible nonsense, again.

And he might not even have written those for the foreword. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah. So there you have it. I will give the final word to a nutritionist with cooking light who wrote this about the Karl Lagerfeld Diet in 2019.

Bottom line, this is really just another quick fix diet plan that worked for a celebrity and is very likely to be hard to implement for the average person living an average life. Yeah, it's a tabloid. It's not a way to live. I actually think the whole thing is ghostwritten by Carlugherfield's cat. Thank you. you