Karl Lagerfeld and Stella Tennant at Chanel’s Paris-Édimbourg 2012/13 show, held last month at Linlithgow Palace in Scotland. (Photo: Anne Combaz)

“It’s very important to [show Chanel collections] in a very special way, because today, everything is shown on the Internet and on television. When you have a show with only a girl coming out of the door, crossing a runway, it’s OK for fashion freaks but the public get bored very quickly. There has to be some magical surrounding. That’s why I went to Scotland to this castle where Mary Stuart was born, and it was quite a magical moment….Normally I try to find a vague connection. For Scotland, it was easy because her lover was hunting with her in Scotland and it’s is how she discovered tweeds, even if our tweeds have nothing to do with her tweeds of the past, but that’s not the subject. She went to Venice a lot, that’s why I did a show in Venice. She had a Russian lover, and loved Russian art, and so I did it in Russia. I try to find a connection, but the connection is often very vague.”

-Karl Lagerfeld, interviewed by Bridget Foley this week in New York at the WWD CEO Summit