 |
| Carine Roitfeld |
LAIRD BORRELLI-PERSSON
May 31, 2019
It makes total sense that the first product Carine Roitfeld is releasing under her own brand is scents. Fragrances can trigger submerged memories, stir up emotional responses, and rouse desire—which is exactly what characterizes this editor’s work. Roitfeld is this year’s recipient of the CFDA’s Founder’s Award, created in honor of Eleanor Lambert, who put American fashion on the map. Roitfeld, for her part, introduced a boldly sensual aesthetic that defined the 1990s and continues to be influential today. One imagines she would have been Helmut Newton’s dream. Certainly her talents have been highly valued by designers like Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld, and Riccardo Tisci.
With her high heels, trench coats, and kohl-smudged eyes, Roitfeld embodies the “French Girl” ideal—which she dismisses as being mostly irrelevant. Still, Roitfeld is a big believer in fiction: “My fantasy always appears in the pictures,” she’s said. Roitfeld’s narratives are often imbued with ’70s flair; they celebrate sexual liberation, and also difference. She was the first to put a transgender model on the cover of Vogue. “I’m always fearless regarding beauty,” Roitfeld told us. Continue reading for her thoughts on Mr. Ford, stilettos, and her inner punk.
Carine on Carine
[What] makes me different than everyone else is my way to be fearless in front of fashion, in my way to love fashion, and in a way, my personality. Fashion people [have a reputation for being] very snobby and not accessible, [but] when people meet me, they think I’m nice. And I’m very accessible, even [when] I’m wearing sunglasses a lot because I’m shy. People come to me very easily to take selfies all the time, which is quite nice—maybe not as much as Karl Lagerfeld, but he was a very accessible person, too. I’m quite humble, and I’m quite a hard worker and never stop, and I like big challenges, and maybe that makes me a bit different than other people in fashion.
I was born after the war, and it’s true we got another education: [We were taught to] never waste any food, any clothes; and I’m known for not changing, not wasting things; I’m saving. I got my [first] Chanel bag when I was 40. I’m someone who has a lot of respect for fashion, someone who didn’t get everything immediately. I made my own way to what I am today. To be a success with my kids and my granddaughter, and to be able to keep on pushing open doors, and now to work on my own brand. So it never stops.[One of my aims has been] to be first a good mother, and maybe this makes me more someone more [relatable] to a lot of women. Since I’m a grandma, I did a cosmetics campaign, and since I’m a grandma, I’ve never been on so many covers. I would like people to think of me as someone a bit different.
 |
Carine Roitfeld Photo of Bjorn Iooss |
On Building Her Own Brand
Vladimir told me that my name had become a brand. I didn’t realize this, maybe because I’m French and he was studying in America, so maybe he has another way of thinking. For me, I just was a good stylist, a good editor in chief helping a lot of designers [build] success—that was my job. I worked a lot with Karl Lagerfeld to make his campaigns, so I’m very good at that. [At Vogue], I never thought about business—I was just a very free spirit. I wanted to show new people, new faces, new clothes. I put clothes together very easy and instinctually.
Vladimir came up with this idea [of building a brand]. He said maybe it’s time to work for yourself, after all you have done, to have something for yourself and make your own brand that will stay as a legacy. We start with a perfume; it is to be the first one of a continuity of products. The next one will be related to the perfume—candles, of course candles, but not classic ones. And maybe some makeup and some fashion, because people associate me more with fashion than perfume, no?
I never thought I was going to work with my son; it came about organically, I would say. He said, “Maybe now, Mom, it’s time I join you and I help you structure your business.” He was supposed to keep on doing his art gallery, but finally he didn’t have enough time, so he stopped that for the moment and he’s now working with me and my team 100 percent of the time. He comes up with huge ideas, always, and I say, “Oh, my God, I’ll never stop working if you come with ideas this way!” We really make a great team.
On Amity
It’s a tough business, the fashion business, [but I believe] that you can be very faithful with your friends, you can be a good mother, you can be fearless in fashion. Friendships are important for me. People say, ”You cannot have any friends in fashion,” but that’s totally wrong. It’s been more than 25 years I’m working with my old friend Tom Pecheux, and now with Tom Ford it is 25 years we collaborate. Helmut Lang still sends me texts for my birthday, and a few weeks ago, I was invited for dinner with Martin Margiela. I know this is a big scoop, but it’s true. He invited me for dinner tête-à-tête in his home and he cooked for me. I hadn’t seen him for years. Nobody knows I worked with him; I made a show for him, and special fashion for him at Vogue. I have special relationships with a lot of photographers and a lot of models, too. When I find someone, I’m very faithful.
On Her Fragrances
You know I’m very faithful in perfume, too. I wore for 20 years the same perfume, my first creation, and I never wanted to change. It was Opium—because I love the name, of course, and I love Saint Laurent—mixed with orange blossom flower from Serge Lutens. I like the idea that people recognize me by my scent, in the elevator, in the office, to know I was there, and left.
My first challenge when I started to work on my perfume was to stop wearing [the one I had worn for 20 years]. So the first scent I decided to create with the nose was something that reminded me a bit of the one I was supposed to leave. It was a challenge, but we succeeded. It’s [inspired by] Paris, [and of the seven fragrances we created] it’s the one that is the most like what I was wearing before.
On Tom Ford
I love my Gucci years. I think between Tom and Mario [Testino], I was very lucky because everyone pushed the ideas of the other. We had so much fun; they were the best years possible. Tom has a big sense of humor, and it’s 25 years we’re working together. We support each other; he used my daughter as the first face for his own fragrance, and it’s very important for me that he likes the bottle that I did because I trust in his taste. He has great taste—we have a bit the same taste, I would say. We work very well together.
[At Gucci,] Tom came with this idea that for him women and men could be equally sexy. Before, women [were seen as] more sexy than men, but for him men could be as sexy as women; so in the campaigns men and women were at the same level—they were equals.
On Breaking Rules
I have a bourgeois education, and I always refuse and make fun [of the things I learned] from this bourgeois education. I hate all the supposedly “good” things. I would not say I’m rejecting what I learned, but I was taught a lot of things that I have come to think are not important. I want to open the gate; I don’t want people stuck with these old habits. Maybe I’m a punk, even if you don’t see it in [on the outside]. Inside myself, I’m a rebel; I don’t have a tattoo, I don’t have orange hair, but I like Vivienne Westwood, I like the Sex Pistols, and I love all this rebellion of young kids.
On Heels
I’m not small, but I’m not so tall, and I like to be the same height as the models and the same height as the photographers to be able to talk to them [looking] in the eyes. When you’re wearing high heels, it gives you a new way of sitting, of crossing your legs, or even of talking. Just the idea that you’re wearing high heels makes you feel like a different person. I have to wear lower heels because I broke my back, so unfortunately they’re just 9 [centimeters] now, not 11 or 12 like before.
On Working With Models
I’m very open-minded to different sorts of beauty. I think if you just stick to the codes, you don’t find the right people. [Working with a model is] like falling in love with someone—falling in love in a fantasy way, you know. When I met Lara Stone, she was not working anymore; she wanted to stop because no one booked her. When Riccardo Tisci introduced me to her, I said, “My God! She’s so beautiful. There is so much emotion in her face.” I just have to have like a love at first glance for a model. Lea T, for example, I think she is amazing [looking] and an amazing person. It’s not just the face; it’s what they have inside.
On Being a Fashion Mama
Because I’m a mom, I’m always thinking that the models could be my kids, so I’m very mama with all of them, and many models call me their fashion mom. I’m always asking: “Are you cold? Are you sure you want to be naked?” I’m very mama with the models, boys or girls. I’m happy that now everyone will have to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment