Entertainment | Celebrity

Lagerfeld backs gay marriage at Paris couture show

Two female models in long white gowns and trains sweepinto amphitheatre

AFP
Published: 09:47 January 23, 2013

Image Credit: AFP
Models present creations for Chanel with Hudson Kroenig, German designer Karl Lagerfeld's godson, during the Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2013 collection shows on January 22, 2013 at the Grand Palais in Paris. AFP PHOTO / LOIC VENANCE

German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld on Tuesday used the finale of his Chanel haute couture show in Paris to signal his support for gay marriage.

Closing his spring 2013 show, two female models in long white gowns and trains swept into an amphitheatre in Paris’s vast Grand Palais accompanied by Lagerfeld’s four-year-old godson Hudson Kroening.

Speaking backstage after the show, Lagerfeld confirmed that it was intended as a show of support for gay marriage, although he said that he was “less supportive” of what he called gay men “ordering babies”.

“I am not so crazy about that,” he told reporters, adding that he urged men to adopt instead.

“Two mothers seems to me to be better than two fathers. A child without a mother, that’s a bit sad,” he said.

And Lagerfeld said he had been “horribly shocked” by recent comments by Pierre Berge, former companion of the late Yves Saint Laurent, in which he said he did not see any difference between paying a woman for the use of her womb to bear a child and paying someone to use their arms to work in a factory.

Earlier, asked about news that disgraced British designer John Galliano had been thrown a lifeline by fellow designer Oscar de la Renta, Lagerfeld added that he hoped “something positive comes out of it for him”.

Considered a fashion genius, Galliano was sacked by Christian Dior and convicted last year in France of anti-Semitism after a video emerged of him hurling insults at people in a Paris bar.

“He made a mistake, but you cannot pay forever,” Lagerfeld said.

De la Renta has reportedly invited Galliano to work with him for three weeks in his New York studio “to give him the opportunity to reimmerse himself in the world of fashion and reacclimate in an environment where he has been so creative”.

Catering to no more than 200 of the world’s richest women, the label “haute couture” is protected in France, awarded on strict criteria such as the amount of work carried out by hand and in-house.

Four days of spring-summer 2013 haute couture shows are due to wrap up on Thursday.