London - Take a good, long look at the two pictures in this story. First, Karl Lagerfeld - dress designer, creative director of Chanel - the kind of crumpled, wizened and, frankly, faintly repulsive specimen you would not wish to bump into on a dark night.

Then Adele - a glowing, smiling, beautiful 23-year-old woman who oozes confidence, has the voice of an angel and sells records at a phenomenal rate: 23.5million copies of her first two albums have been bought worldwide.

So what do you suppose prompted a ravaged, 78-year-old, shrivelled old fella, once described as ‘the mincing pantomime dame of couture’ and, on another occasion, as ‘Karl, King Bitch of the catwalk’, to opine, apropos of nothing, that Adele is too fat?

It comes as particularly inept criticism from a man whose own appearance leaves so much to be desired. He might easily have just struggled through a tropical cyclone, given the state of his scrappy hairdo and the pretentious dark glasses.

But, of course, he has form. His contempt for the women for whom he designs was said to be apparent when he giggled at the hilarity of his own tacky joke in 2007, asking: ‘What does an old woman have between her breasts?’ Answer? ‘A navel.’

Nor is it the first time he’s slung around the word ‘fat’ as an insult. He complained bitterly when clothes chain H&M increased the sizes of his capsule collection for their High Street stores in 2004. British women, he said, were simply too fat to wear his clothes.

In 2009, when the size zero controversy over dangerously thin models began to rage and a number of leading designers banned from the catwalk the young women who’d developed the habit of starving themselves to show off ‘heroin chic’, Lagerfeld was noisily unrepentant.

He appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme and denounced the critics of skinny models as ‘fat, chip-eating mummies’.

There is an element of the reformed fattie in Lagerfeld’s vehemence. In 2009, he spent 18 months on a punishing diet, losing six stone and managing, at the end of the regime, to fit into the skinny suits he admires.

Forgive me, though, for thinking he made the classic crash dieter’s mistake - he may have regained a slim figure, but, boy, he sacrificed his face. And no one knows better than I do the risks involved in dramatic weight loss after a year on the rigid Dukan diet. No worries about my face, though, as I put all the weight back on.

No such danger for Adele. She’s not catwalk skinny nor, from everything she has said, does she appear to have any desire to be.

She’s clearly entirely comfortable in her own skin, loves her mother’s cooking, makes no pretence of trying to dress in anything that isn’t suitable for a big and beautiful young woman and, apart from her recent throat surgery, appears the picture of perfect health.

There’s no doubt that her popularity - after a short career that’s come about as a result of hard work as opposed to a reality TV show - is down to her great talent as a songwriter and a powerful voice that expresses heartbreak with every note.

But it’s also her personality that’s so appealing - and her size is part of what makes her who she is.

You can’t see Adele going home after a gig and picking her way through a salad and sipping a glass of sparkling water. You envisage her with something warm and filling, with a proper drink to wash it down.

And that’s what we love about her. She’s brilliant at what she does, but makes no concessions to the demands of celebrity culture.

She makes no attempt to talk posh, emphasises her best assets - her skin, hair and sense of humour - and has never been heard complaining about carbs. She is, in short, a bit like the rest of us: normal.

She’s a working-class lass from London, raised by a single mother she obviously adores. And she’s made a success of herself despite a difficult start. Her father, an alcoholic, left Adele and her mother when she was three. The pair then moved around several times, from North London to Brighton and back to London again, before Adele was accepted at the prestigious BRIT School in Croydon (as were other artists including Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Katie Melua), which allowed her to nurture her talent.

Her best-selling debut album, 19, followed two years later. Her second, 21, was released last year.

At a time when there’s a moral panic throughout the land when it comes to diet, Adele is a far better model to place in front of our children than anything Karl Lagerfeld is likely to send sashaying down the catwalk at this month’s British Fashion Week. She is not fat, just attractively well-built, and is in no way a poster girl for the anti-obesity brigade.

She doesn’t flaunt her sexuality in the rather distasteful way we witness all too frequently among young, female pop stars. Nor does she send out the dangerous message that size zero - the road to anorexia - is attainable or attractive.

There has long been a trend in the fashion industry for men who appear to be what’s known euphemistically as ‘confirmed bachelors’ to rise to the top in the rarefied world of haute couture.

In the 2007 Lagerfeld Confidential documentary, the Chanel designer addressed long-standing rumours and talked about his homosexuality and the moment he realised he was gay.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But there is a difficulty with the way gay men’s tastes dominate the high-end fashion world, and the images girls and women will, yet again, be encouraged to emulate as haute couture hits London.

Gay men tend to design clothes that look good on people with slim hips and flat chests, who would never need to ask: ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ Beautiful boys, in fact, and it’s a rare woman who can carry it off without starving herself half to death.

Lagerfeld’s comments have already created a backlash. One US blog is saying ‘If you love Adele, then boycott Chanel,’ which I’m sure would upset Coco - founder of the eponymous house.

She made an effort to design for women who wanted comfort as well as elegance, and introduced soft, sporty fabrics and made trousers acceptable.

So, to borrow the titles of two of Adele’s hit songs, I say this to Mr Lagerfeld: she is a Hometown Glory - and we won’t hear her called fat by Someone Like You.

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF KARL LAGERFELD

* I’M RATHER pro-prostitution. I admire people who do it. People need relief or they become murderers.

* VANITY is the healthiest thing in life.

* I HAVE no human feelings.

* I PERSONALLY only like high-class escorts. I don’t like sleeping with people I really love.

* HAVING adult children makes you look 100 years old.

* NOBODY wants to see a round woman.

* SOME people say to me you’re too skinny, but it’s never a skinny person who says that, only people who could lose a few pounds.

* IF YOU throw money out of the window, throw it with joy. Don’t say: ‘One shouldn’t do that.’ - Daily Mail