Andre Leon Talley reveals Karl Lagerfeld’s abusive childhood in memoir

Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld was tied up at night as a child with leather straps by his mother to keep him from snacking, his former bestie André Leon Talley revealed in his upcoming memoir. In “The Chiffon Trenches,” (out in September), Talley tattles on the fashion icon, claiming the late Chanel creative director had a …

Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld was tied up at night as a child with leather straps by his mother to keep him from snacking, his former bestie André Leon Talley revealed in his upcoming memoir.

In “The Chiffon Trenches,” (out in September), Talley tattles on the fashion icon, claiming the late Chanel creative director had a troubled childhood and, according to The Daily Mail, which received an early copy of the book, “The designer admitted his mother took extreme measures to curb his diet and when he was eight years old his mother told him: ‘You look like an old dy–‘.”

“You look like me, but not as good,” Lagerfeld’s mother once told him, adding that she would strap him in bed with leather restraints to stop him from having nighttime snacks, Talley writes of King Karl’s abusive childhood.

The Vogue veteran also trashed his former boss Anna Wintour in snippets released earlier in the week from the memoir, claiming she is “not capable” of “human kindness” and that she dumped him for being “too old, too overweight, too uncool.”

And the portly poobah of patterns isn’t done dishing. Here are some other revelations in the book include:

• Always wary of his weight, Lagerfeld lost close to 100 pounds in 2001 with his “Spoonlight Program,” which involved low caloric dishes and Diet Coke.
• Talley first met Lagerfeld in 1975 when he interviewed the icon for Interview magazine, where “they bonded over 18th century French fashion,” according to the book.
• Lagerfeld would generously donate clothing to his friend saying: “Take this. It will look good on you,” Lagerfeld told him. “Take that. I am tired of these shirts! You should have them.”
• When Talley was working as an editor for Vogue in Paris, he and Lagerfeld got so close the designer revealed his traumatic childhood to Talley and trusted Talley’s taste so much that he took style recommendations about his collections from him.
• Talley writes he and Lagerfeld “both loved and lusted for luxury in all forms” and found inspiration in classic movies. Lagerfeld’s mother Elisabeth, who usually tormented him, actually indulged her son in this interest and “let him skip grade school and instructed their driver to take him to the theater where he would watch movies all day.”
• Lagerfeld spent much of his career “wolfing down cold frankfurter sausages at night straight out of the fridge.” When he did lose the weight, Lagerfeld said “he wanted to wear clothes designed by Hedi Slimane which were modeled by “very slim boys.”
• Talley fell out with Lagerfeld when he suggested the designer do a joint exhibition with photographer Deborah Turbeville — in front of a new group of friends Lagerfeld was hanging out with. Talley writes, “Lagerfeld’s “ego wouldn’t let him support another artist in the realm of photography… it was a “colossal blunder.” The two never spoke again and Lagerfeld took Talley off the guest list for Chanel shows, banishing him “like so many others had been from his orbit.”

Lagerfeld isn’t the only one Talley spills the tea on.

Regarding his old pal Andy Warhol, Talley writes Andy Warhol could be “naughty and vicious” to others, but never to him. “From time to time [Warhol] would put his pale white hands in my crotch, (always in public, never in private) and I would just swat him away, the way I did annoying flies in the summer on my front porch in the South,” Talley wrote.

Then there is famed shoe designer, Manolo Blahnik whom Talley befriended at a party on Fire Island where, according to the book, “somebody spiked the punch with something that made them laugh for 14 hours straight.” The two “took a long walk on the beach and found their way into the woods where they saw a group of men masturbating together wearing leather chaps and nothing else.”

Finally, Talley writes about his humiliation when he accidentally spilled a glass of red wine onto Princess Diana during a lunch for Kay Graham, the former publisher of The Washington Post. “The room gasped — she was wearing a lavender Versace suit — but she brushed it aside and said: ‘It’s nothing.’”

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