Thankfully, Lagerfeld's great evil lies mostly dormant. (Image courtesy of Georges Biard.)

Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce conducts a lively interview with fashion star Karl Lagerfeld in the new issue of Vice. I don’t really care about Lagerfeld or fashion, but it’s a provocative and suitably ridiculous piece. The following are a few excerpts from the long Q&A.

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Bruce LaBruce: I hate it when photographers are like, “Can we have one with your glasses off?” Why? You can see me just fine.

Karl Lagerfeld: I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, “It’s impolite; remove your glasses.” I said, “Do I ask you to remove your bra?”

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Bruce LaBruce: And you have no problem with porn, either.

Karl Lagerfeld: No. I admire porn.

Bruce LaBruce: This is another thing that we have in common.

Karl Lagerfeld: I personally only like high-class escorts. I don’t like sleeping with people I really love. I don’t want to sleep with them because sex cannot last, but affection can last forever. I think this is healthy. And for the way the rich live, this is possible. But the other world, I think they need porn. I also think it’s much more difficult to perform in porn than to fake some emotion on the face as an actor.

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Bruce LaBruce: I think that you might have Asperger syndrome. Do you know what that is? It’s a kind of autism. It’s like an idiot savant.

Karl Lagerfeld: That’s exactly what I am. As a child I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to know everything—not that I like to talk about it. I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion, but I like to read very abstract constructions of the mind. It’s very strange.