Kristen Stewart says late Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld wasn’t the “scary” person he appeared to be.
“It’s funny how he presents — so austere and so scary. He wasn’t though. He was incredibly inviting — insanely, shockingly unpretentious,” the actress said in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “He liked what he liked because he liked it.”
Stewart, 29, has long served as the face of Chanel perfumes, eyewear and more, and so she got very close to the controversial designer, who died last February at the age of 85 of pancreatic cancer.
“He was a fancy motherf—ker, but it was true to him,” she said. “It’s almost like he sensed he was intimidating, so he was like, ‘No. To have a creative heart is daunting, but let’s get it beating faster and harder.’”
Stewart also said Lagerfeld gave her “an encouraging attaboy thing” that “shapes you in really profound ways.” She also said the notoriously prickly and opinionated designer was more tender than one might assume.
“He was always touching you while speaking to you,” she said. “He never talked at you — if he was talking to you, he was usually holding your hand.”
Numerous A-listers have praised the legendary Lagerfeld since his death, including Pharrell, who worked with Lagerfeld on a capsule collection that was released posthumously, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista and Kim Kardashian.
When actress and body-positive activist Jameela Jamil publicly called him a “ruthless, fat-phobic misogynist” the day after he died, model Cara Delevingne quickly came to Lagerfeld’s defense on Twitter, saying: “No one is perfect but you clearly don’t know the man so please keep your opinions to yourself and stop bashing people for attention.”