Karl Lagerfeld Disses Newsweek, Tina Brown

In late January, Robin Givhan wrote a piece for Newsweek that asked if Karl Lagerfeld was spreading himself too thin with his many projects -- even going so far as to call the designer "overrated." While Givhan certainly paid Lagerfeld compliments in the piece, the article reportedly cost her a plum seat at the Chanel show, and the designer quipped that he'd never even heard of her.

Months later, it seems Lagerfeld still isn't over the jab, as WWD reports that he took a moment at recent press conference to take a stab at Newsweek itself, as well as the paper's editor-in-chief, Tina Brown:

"First of all, Tina Brown's magazine is not doing well at all," he said before ripping into the credibility of the story. "She is dying," he continued. "I'm sorry for Tina Brown, who was such a success at 'Vanity Fair,' to go down with a sh***y little paper like this. I'm sorry."

The exchange -- which all started with a rather thoughtful piece by Givhan -- has touched off a discussion within the fashion community about how much fashion editors and bloggers actually fear the designers they cover, often bending to pressure from design houses to keep coverage positive in exchange for acccess. In response to Lagerfeld's comments, Newsweek issued a statement of its own to Fashionista, which listed impressive lifts in newsstand sales ("30 percent year on year") and advertising pages ("27 percent increase for the first quarter of 2012") as a way to challenge the designer's allegation that the paper is "dying."

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