Manolo says, this news item surprises the Manolo not in the least.

Karl Lagerfeld was obviously joking when he told Hilary Alexander, “I don’t want an intellectual image, I’m a fashion person,” back in January. His latest project – and he is perhaps fashion’s greatest multi-tasker – is to publish the entire works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher.

Lagerfeld told WWD he would be publishing Nietzsche’s work, in 12 volumes, the way the German philosopher would have wanted it: typeset print alongside the original manuscripts complete with hand-written corrections. Only 3000 copies of “Nietzsche’s Nietzsche” will be printed, said Lagerfeld, showing off photocopies of original pages, apparently “dense blocks of small handwriting – some words underlined, others stricken and overwritten – on sheets of pale yellow paper.”
“It’s very easy to read if you understand this type of German,” he said. “I would love to publish it in English, but it would take five to seven years to translate it.”

It is not surprising because the Manolo has long thought of the Evil One as the supremely Nietzschean figure, working his Umwertung aller Werte on the unsuspecting world.

P.S. Thanks to the Manolo’s friend the Anne for alerting the Manolo to this.

Manolo says, chocolate has never looked so creepy.

At this point, the arrival of the SEAL Team 666 is the best we can hope for.

Sent back from the future to kill the woman who will give birth to the leader of the resistance.

The Manolo asks, somewhat hopefully, if you push the red button on the lapel, will it self-destruct?

P.S. Via the Celebitchy.

The torturing of the models with the agonizing shoes…

Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz recently explained that he had to scrap a lot of the heels in his spring 2011 show because “We did the rehearsal and all of a sudden I saw the girls couldn’t walk. I saw the agony in their faces. They were shaking; they looked like alcoholic girls.”

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The release of the frightening and nightmarishly surreal promotional video ..

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The normally adorable fashion director looking like Norman Bates’ chubby cousin.

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Dearest Alber, the Manolo must ask, is everything okay?

Wait the second, the Manolo seems to remember the picture from last year….

Noooooooooo!

This animadversion on the New York Magazine article about the Evil One, has proven to be one of the most popular posts the Manolo has ever written. It originally appeared on February 7th, 2006.

Manolo says, even from his sick bed, the Manolo he still feels impelled to rise to do battle with evil.

Look at this lengthy article in the New York Magazine, which the Manolo has annotated below for your edification. It is like the horrifying, surreal, opera buffo stage version of the Paradise Lost.

Act One, Scene One. The curtain it raises on the procession of the damned, who shuffle across the stage paying obsequious homage to the Lord of Flies.

First, the aged crones in thrall to evil..

What can one talk about while waiting for Lagerfeld? Lagerfeld, of course. “Karl has the energy of . . . what? Twenty-five thousand Turkish elephants!” says socialite Anne Slater, wearing her big blue glasses and grinning up a storm. “He’s magnetic and powerful. I think he’s absolutely, devastatingly attractive.”

Then, the young slatterns, proud of their debasement…

“Karl is a genius!” exclaims Lindsay Lohan

Next, the handmaidens of Asmodeus, eager to share their shame..

“Karl is the one person that makes me shy,” says throaty Bungalow 8 owner Amy Sacco.

Then, the greater demons, odious, cloven hooved beings who dwell in the lower rings of Hell…

Giorgio Armani, André Leon Talley, Anna Wintour with her pretty daughter, Bee. “A conversation with Karl is not a fashion conversation—it’s a conversation, a conversation that embraces the culture of life,” says Talley.

At last, the minor-key fanfare sounds the approach of Hell’s dark master. The lights dim. Low fog swirls onto the stage, and there! Suddenly! The Arch-Fiend himself!

But then there he is—Karl! His stiff silver tie glitters like a saber. His black leather gloves are good for murder. He poses for the cameras wearing a ghastly grimace, an entourage of twenty Frenchmen and foxes waiting behind.

Ayyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

The grotesque retinue orbits his dim majesty in the danse macabre…

Guests with fingers curled around champagne glasses jostle to catch a glimpse, not quite crying the way they did in Tokyo last year at the opening of the biggest Chanel store in the world, but certainly eager to be entertained. “I think his hair is powdered, like from the 1800s,” says one socialite. “In fact, it is from the 1800s,” titters her friend. Paparazzi are yelling “Karl!” and bystanders are yelling “Karl!” and PETA is yelling “Karl!” the loudest.

Hark! The lone voice in the urban desert, crying out righteousness!

A dreadlocked white guy with Rollerblades slung over his shoulder streaks down the sidewalk and snarls, “Blood for money, that’s what Karl Lagerfeld wants. Karl is greedy! Karl is evil! Karl is wicked! Karl is . . . the devil!”

The guises of Manolo are many!

But, quickly the prophetic cry of warning, it is forgotten…

Lagerfeld is too busy, too smart, and too old to be brought into any foolishness, at least not that which is not of his own making. At 67—or 72, if the 1933 birth date on a baptismal record unearthed by German tabloids is to be believed—he is one of the most professionally self-realized people alive, keeping busy with an incredible twelve or so collections each year, an extensive photography career, a Paris-based bookshop, personal museum-quality furniture collections, the management of six homes, and staying skinny.

67, or 72, or 666? What are the few numbers among the friends?

Lagerfeld lost 90 pounds four years ago on a low-calorie diet—his book on the subject was a best seller in Europe—and has put on ten or so since. The new, skinny Karl is an improved Karl. The creepy fat guy hiding behind a fan has been replaced by a boogying hipster who hangs out with Stephen Gan and Hedi Slimane. “My people are zee cool ones, the rockers,” says Lagerfeld. “I get along with everyone except for men my age, who are bourgeois or retired or boring, and cannot follow the evolution of time and mood.”

The creepy fat guy behind the fan, he has been replaced by the Arch Demon Moloch in tight pants!

His look is an extremely conscious metaphor for his philosophy of fashion and life: Here, watch as I bring together the old, in my tall eighteenth-century collar and bizarre powdered hair, with the new, as seen in my ponytail and $2,500 Agatha leather pants, “the most expensive leather pants in the world,” he declares, with a laugh exactly like Count Chocula’s in its length and ridiculousness.

Count Chocula! In today’s world it is so hard for evil to even be taken seriously.

“In the whole world, there is nowhere I can go,” says Lagerfeld, in a tone that should have him fluttering that old fan. “Everybody has a camera, and it is flash-flash-flash, and I am a puppet, a marionette, Mickey at Disneyland for children to play with. In Japan, they touch me. I have Japanese women pinch my ass, so now I must say, ‘You can have the photo, but please don’t touch me.’ You cannot pinch the ass of a man my age! And I cannot go out without something for my eyes, because someone might throw chemicals in my face,

or Holy Water

and I would be like my childhood French teacher whose wife burnt him with acid, Mr. Pommes-Frites, can you believe the name. I can cross the street nowhere in the world, I can never go into a shop. Oh, it’s horrible, horrible.”

And thus, the curtain for the first act it comes down on the Evil One lamenting his new life: floating on the firey lake that is the modern media celebrity.

P.S. “Demonic Biker Priest?”

Shoes are a key part of any outfit and if you love shoes and love fashion why not choose from a fantastic collection of Viva La Diva Designer Shoes, boots and handbags.

Manolo says, please, Manolo, do not be ridiculous. It is only the optical illusion.

There are no such things as the aliens who will suck you up into their spaceships with the tractor beams, where they will subject you to the intrusive probings with their grotesque and perverted appendages.

Surely there must be the more mundane explanation…perhaps at the Wikipedia…

Named for their alleged skin tone, “Greys” are most widely associated with the alien abduction phenomenon, wherein claimants allege that Greys are intelligent extraterrestrials who visit Earth and secretly perform medical experiments on humans they have temporarily kidnapped….A composite description derived from overlap in claims would have Greys as small bodied, sexless beings with smooth grey skin, enlarged head and large eyes.

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Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Manolo says, ayyyyyyyy! This photo will give the Manolo nightmares for months to come!!!

What? There are more photos? Does our suffering know no bounds?

And now, as the lesser devils Balam and Baleth look on, the Archdemon Asmodeus prepares to unhinge his jaw so as to consume his mesmerized victim whole.

Karl Lagerfeld, one of my biggest idols, arrived at a dinner for Ralph Lauren in Paris turned out in a dandy and dramatic look which I LOVE. The Chanel designer looks like the owner of a Parisian male escort service crossed with an Egyptian mummy. I can picture him going back to his tomb after the party, slipping into a fabulous duchess satin sleeping gown, and dealing with all the Pharaohs risen from the dead to beg him for a 30 percent discount at Chanel. Now remember these words from your fashion guru Cojo: There is Chanel and then everything else. To own a Chanel quilted bag is like having your cherry popped. I recommend turning tricks or stealing Sudafed and starting a meth lab so you can buy one.

It was, to say the least, the very trying time for the Manolo.

Manolo says, there are the all too frequent moments in fashion when the movie Zoolander seems like the documentary. Behold this scene recorded by Guy Trebay of the New York Times at the end of the Evil One’s most recent Chanel show (the theme of which was apparently, “Sexy Yetis Visit the Fortress of Solitude“).

But there was also a Woody Allen moment, and it occurred after the last of the models, clad in fake fur Wookie-wear, had sloshed through the puddles and offstage, and a small group of Mr. Lagerfeld’s industry friends tried to see and congratulate him.

For reasons that were not altogether clear but may have had something to do with pooled water and electrical cables lying about, the security guards formed a human wall blocking the Vogue editors Tonne Goodman and Grace Coddington; the Vanity Fair correspondent Ingrid Sischy; Lady Amanda Harlech; Babeth Djian, the editor of Numéro; and Jonathan Newhouse, the chairman of Condé Nast International, from going backstage.

BlackBerrys were fired up. Frantic calls were dialed. Well-shod hooves were stamped. Ms. Sischy upbraided the security force, assuring them that Mr. Lagerfeld would be both furious and “triste” if prevented from seeing his adoring fans. But the guards would not be budged. Passage backstage was impossible!

Then, in an abrupt reversal familiar to anyone who has ever encountered French bureaucracy, they changed their minds. The guards moved away, and the small crowd surged en masse to where Mr. Lagerfeld posed beside his ice sculpture surrounded on three sides by television crews. Still separated from her friend and idol, Ms. Sischy called out plaintively.

“Karl, Karl, Karl,” she trilled, and for a moment one was not in Paris at all but on a floe in the Arctic Ocean, on a fragment of ice snapped off the glacial shelf. “Karl, Karl,” Ms. Sischy called, her cry like that of a baby seal.

…ripe for the clubbing.