Karl Lagerfeld has defended his comments about Adele's weight.

The Chanel creative director - who has claimed his remarks calling the singer "a little too fat" were taken out of context - insists that although Adele is a "beautiful girl," she needed to lose weight because she was "a little roundish."

"I never said that she was fat, I said that she was a little roundish. A little roundish is not fat. But for such a beautiful girl, after that she lost eight kilo [17.6 pounds], so I think the message was not that bad," he said, speaking on CNN's Fashion: Backstage Pass.

Following Karl's comments last year, Adele, 25, insisted she had never aspired to be stick-thin. "I'd lose weight if I was an actress and had to play a role where you're supposed to be 40 pounds lighter, but weight has nothing to do with my career. Even when I was signing [a contract], most of the industry knew if anyone ever dared say [lose weight] to me, they wouldn't be working with me," she said.