The Couture Council Luncheon

'I feel a little bit guilty,' Karl Lagerfeld told the crowd assembled to honor him at a luncheon yesterday at Avery Fisher Hall. Here he was, smack in the middle of day two of fashion week, keeping some of the industry's central figures from the shows so they could watch him accept an award that, as he put it, 'I don't deserve.'

Lagerfeld's hosts, the Couture Council of the Museum at FIT, would beg to differ, of course, and the same goes for the flocks of lunching ladies who couldn't have been happier to get up close and personal with the Kaiser himself. Lady Amanda Harlech, who accompanied him there, had seen it all before: "He gets pushed and grabbed and pinched and kissed. That's the actual love that he inspires for being Karl, me included. Everybody wants a piece of Karl—he is the piece.'

That included a few types, like Olivier Zahm and Leigh Lezark, who wouldn't ordinarily make it uptown by lunchtime. 'I was doing wake-up calls this morning for some of the downtown people,' board member Michelle Harper confided, adding that Terence Koh hadn't heeded his. Still, Lagerfeld had plenty of friends (including Daphne Guinness and Elisa Sednaoui) there to help him raise a glass—and, perhaps more quietly, wish him a happy birthday. Lagerfeld may prefer not to make a big fuss about that particular achievement, but he's powerless to stop his pals from doing so. "Karl's celebrating constantly," Ruben Toledo pointed out. 'Knowing Karl is a celebration.'

—Darrell Hartman