Karl Lagerfeld doesn’t just have two personal maids tending to his Siamese cat, Choupette — he also requires a butler to follow him around at parties with a goblet of Pepsi Max on a silver tray.
At Lagerfeld and Chanel’s launch of his exhibition “The Little Black Jacket” at the Swiss Institute Wednesday, the ponytailed potentate was tailed by a staffer from catering company Olivier Cheng, whose sole task was holding a silver tray with one full glass of Pepsi Max in case The Kaiser found himself dehydrated.
The soda serf stood dutifully nearby a revolving ring of photographers and admirers around Lagerfeld, including Lily Collins, in case the design divo wanted a sip — but he never touched the stuff. (When Collins got her picture with the white-haired icon, she exclaimed to a pal, “Oh my God, I think I’m going to faint!”)
Lagerfeld apparently always has a Pepsi plebe by his side: Rapper Theophilus London, who appears in the exhibition, told us, “During the shoot [Karl] had a personal guy that holds his drink. He takes a sip, the guy walks away and comes back.”
Lagerfeld’s 9-month-old cat also made headlines this week when the designer revealed his fancy furball uses an iPad, eats at the dinner table with him and has two maids keeping a diary of the kitty’s activities when he’s not around.
“Every time we’re on jobs, he gets pictures from his maids that send him updates about his cat,” model Joan Smalls told us at the Chanel shindig. “He’s like a proud parent where he wants everybody to see every picture, and I think it’s so sweet and shows a sensitive side.”
Also at the SoHo exhibition were Anna Wintour, Linda Evangelista, Karolina Kurkova, Penn Badgley and Zoe Kravitz, and Carine Roitfeld, who had director Fabien Constant trailing her for a new “mini-documentary.”