Lagerfeld will go on and on

You're having a fashion crisis. Who you gonna call? Well, Karl Lagerfeld would be a safe bet. The 76-year-old designer has swatted away persistent rumours that he is set to stand down from his position as the helm of Chanel, insisting, "The world can count on me for a long time."

"Retirement is not one of the topics with which I deal. Why should I?" he says. "I still have so many projects that I sometimes don't know where to begin. Chanel will still need some clothes when I'm 89."

Lagerfeld is a notorious workaholic. As well as designing for his own-name label and Chanel, he is the creative director of Fendi, an in-demand photographer and a celebrity in his own right.

His advancing age, however, means that many are considering the future of fashion without him. Lanvin's Alber Elbaz is the name most regularly in the frame when it comes to the top job at Chanel, although he is always quick to deny it's something that's in the pipeline.

Lagerfeld, who famously shed 42kg in order to fit into the slim silhouette championed by Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme, counters that he's fighting fit. His secret to maintaining a healthy diet? Step away from the jogging pants.

"Those things are dangerous because they have an elastic band," he told Freundin, a glossy based in his native Germany. "It stretches and then you don't know when you put on weight. I hate it when you let yourself go! I'm always looking the way you see me now."

Picture: Karl Lagerfeld, flanked by models at his spring/summer 2010 show for his own-name label in Paris in October.