Book excerpt: Karl Lagerfeld’s legendary maxims in a fashionable gift format. Karl Lagerfeld was a modern master of couture. He was also legendarily outspoken—his wise and surprising statements popped up like offbeat news flashes. This compact collection of quotations pays homage to the renowned éminence grise of the fashion world. Lagerfeld’s pronouncements on fashion, women, art, politics, love, and life—high and low—are famously oracular, seized upon by fashionistas, acolytes, and sages around the world. Created with the full approval of the late designer, this cornucopia of Lagerfeld’s maxims is required reading for all of us as we negotiate the trickiest curves of modern life. Cultivated, unpredictable, provocative, and sometimes shocking, Lagerfeld’s bons mots are impossible to ignore.