Sharp-tongued German designer Karl Lagerfeld thinks intellectuals have let sartorial standards slip and now dress like “slobs”, according to remarks published this week.

“I’m sorry, but I hate scruffy intellectuals,” the Chanel maestro, who gives his age as 72, told the Zeitmagazin weekly. “Before, intellectuals looked like they were something. Today they’re just slobs.” He singled out as a prime example compatriot Gunter Grass, 83, the Nobel prize-winning author of The Tin Drum, who generally appears in a well-worn jacket with an open-necked shirt or a woolly jumper, usually smoking a pipe.

“Gunter Grass should wear a collar and tie for once. He would come across as younger,” Mr Lagerfeld believes.