Conspicuous Coffee Tables 4

Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld's coffee table is conspicuous by its absence. "The floor is my coffee table,' ' he explains, indicating his bookstrewn carpet. The Chanel couturier lives in the 1700s, an era when, he argues, society had no need for coffee tables: "They furnished rooms with conversation, not with pieces of furniture. I like the eighteenth-century concept that you could entertain people on a daybed with twelve to twenty armchairs around it. Only the most popular guest could lay down. ' '

Karl's Breton chateau and his various garconnieres (bachelor pads) are filled with antiques, except the one in Monte Carlo, which is crammed with a postmodern Memphis collection that no longer thrills him—"Things that are trendy like that. . .it becomes like wearing a dress that is out of fashion.'' He enjoys a special camaraderie with his eighteenth-century pieces: "They talk. That is the difference between great and average furniture— the expression, the atmosphere it projects, like a human presence, a kind of vibration from the artist who made it. It has that special touch of a lost hand. This exists also in dressmaking. It's something impossible to reproduce, like handwriting. ' '

Quality is Lagerfeld's signature. He started designing when his mother complained about his violin lessons. "She said, 'You are not gifted at all. I cannot take this kind of noise in the house. ' So I started sketching; it doesn't make any noise.'' Karl, too, relishes the luxury of quiescence, preferring country life to the social whirl of la vie parisienne: "The best thing is to spend an evening alone. To be lazy when I have things to do. Because then being lazy is something quite exciting. ' '

When he does entertain, Karl lets the guest of honor make the invitations—"In Paris, it's too dangerous. Nobody is speaking to anybody. You have to be careful." He adds philosophically: "Parisian doesn't mean anything anymore. Now it's just an idea. ' ' The same could be said of his coffee table, perched somewhere on that Platonic plateau.

Brooks Peters