Karl Lagerfeld Explains Coco Chanel’s Two Biggest Mistakes

Karl Lagerfeld recently unveiled a new take on the classic quilted Chanel bag, with little enamel ladybugs crawling all over it. An odd choice in the age of bedbugs, or a genius take on making what's now (bugs) what will always be cool (quilted Chanel bags)? The Kaiser emphasized the importance of fashion designers not ignoring what's going on in the world at the moment at the International Herald Tribune's Luxury Heritage conference this week in explaining the two big mistakes Coco Chanel made toward the end of her career.

"The first was when she said 'Not one man I have spoken to likes a woman in miniskirts.' I think no one dared to tell this 86-year-old lady that miniskirts are great and really sexy," he says. "Number two was when she decided blue jeans were horrible. This was the fashion of the world at that partuclar [sic] moment — it was the Sixties. No one wanted to be told by an old lady that miniskirts and jeans weren't chic. The result was that she lost her power and in the end no one cared about what she did."

Karl showed both jeans and minis in his last Chanel show.

Karl's Coco Myth [British Vogue]