The_Notebook_11

Karl Lagerfeld

The power of capitalism, I thought. The 1st floor of Hyundai Department Store was buzzing with people, hair, makeup, shoes, jewelry, and perfumes. People brisk walked over the marble floor, arms full of shopping bags, eyes sweeping across the hundreds of products as they walked by.

I was what most people would describe as a vegetarian tree hugger. Living in metropolitan Korea meant constant exposure to humanity's consumption. One of my biggest regrets, of course, was the fashion industry. How it managed to spur multibillion pounds of garments each year just to let them “fall out of fashion” was a mystery to me. Sale promotions and fashion “seasons” unceasingly flashed by like a self-propagating carnival. My belief was that it was unlikely that our trifling need will outweigh the cost of producing a stripe of fabric or a plate of meat, not when we already had so much. Abstention would solve our problems, not “greener” additions.

Thinking this, I waited for my sister to finish her shopping. I had stopped propagating the message of pro-vegetarianism somewhere between the fiftieth and hundredth encounter of a pro-meat friend, but still failed to understand them. They were brilliant people, but how did they not see the simple truth of green living?

A large poster of an old man hanging in one of the stores caught my eye. The man’s black driving gloves, white pompadour, and sunglasses just barely belied his age. Who was this person, hanging where a young lean supermodel would normally be? A staff told me he was Karl Lagerfeld, a prominent designer.

The rest of my family were still not finished shopping, so I went up to the 8th floor. Sucking on my ice cream, I decided to look up on this Karl person.

Fortunately, there was a detailed editorial on Karl Lagerfeld posted recently. It turned out that Karl Lagerfeld was 80 years old and a madman, as he himself a put. To keep up with everchanging trend, he threw away design after design, kept lavish rows of wardrobes, and bought hundreds of magazines and newspapers a year just to breeze through the headlines. Even so, I was drawn to this exotic man and his work that inspired people in and out the fashion industry. Fashion was his world, path, and truth.

The truth. I remembered the inevitably cliché phrase, ‘there is no absolute truth’. Priorities and style differed, and I could not impose environmental concerns on others. That was my truth. Lagerfeld was a designer to his world view like I was to mine. We each own a boutique, regularly updated with books, people, and conversations, shaping the style of our collection and lens to process the world we share.

When I returned to the 1st floor at my sister’s call, she was tauntingly holding up her bag of purchases and smirking. I laughed. The department store was buzzing with people’s differences.