Suzy Menkes: Five Years in Vogue

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Happy Anniversary Suzy!

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Suzy Menkes

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FIVE YEARS IN VOGUE

Like a first love affair – although not necessarily as enjoyable – I remember my first encounter with Instagram, when my knowledge of the digital world was more ‘What’s that?’ than ‘WhatsApp’.

It was my first week at Condé Nast International as a roving editor and I was trying to absorb, after two decades in news print, how magazines functioned.

Little did I know, as I grasped, painfully, how to put a picture with a few words onto the screen of my phone, that the Instagram tool would take over people’s lives.

In my new role, I loved the change of pace – slow but beautiful magazines, with their exquisite, stroke-able pictures and intriguing texts. It was a big change from life in newspapers, where fast-and-furious postings were essential to the job.

How much the publishing and fashion industries have had to change in order to keep step with technology and social media is something that Alber Elbaz and I discussed at our recent meeting, when my team invited him to interview me for this book (page 102). He very generously provided the illustration for the cover, and shared our enthusiasm for creating something tactile.

Who could have thought, five years ago, that print would be obliged to speed up, offering on screen a moving and scenic view of the cover stories? And how could anyone have expected that, at the same time, digital connections across the world would inspire new print editions of Vogue?

From the Middle East to Greece to Hong Kong via Poland, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the number of editions has risen from 20 to 25. Five new Vogues in my first five years.

This growth underlines the international outlook and buoyant economies of the countries where the magazines emerge, and I have enjoyed visiting Brazil, India, Portugal and so many more of our magazine hubs, established or brand new.

Symbolically, I have also moved from an office in Mayfair, around the corner from London’s stately Vogue House, to a fascinating new digital-first world overlooking the River Thames. →

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↓Below ¬ Kanye West, Amber Rose and Suzy on the front row at Louis Vuitton, A/W 2010

I still have an office (now an exception in these open-plan days) with my collection of pictures on the wall, including an image of Yves Saint Laurent and a portrait of me by the late Karl Lagerfeld. But the main focus is the Vogue International Hub, which whirs words and pictures across the globe.

Since I have been a ‘Voguette’, that very word – suggesting a glamorous, blow-dried airhead – has gone out of fashion. We are all now citizens of the world with new arrivals as likely to be male as female. The ‘Voguys’ are changing too.

A fascination with the similarities and differences in fashion around the world inspired the idea of a rolling conference, moving each year to a different location, but always linking up with the bandwidth of Condé Nast.

I like to think that the choices can be prophetic. We ventured to Oman, a fascinating country, before Vogue Arabia had been conceived, let alone delivered.

And now the conference is in Africa, the vast continent with two hemispheres and 54 countries.

I was drawn to Africa by my love of nature and a feeling that fashion, a wasteful industry, must re-establish a pride in skills that are not only worth preserving, but are able to help the planet a little. I am passionate about the importance of objects made by human hands, and my trips to Africa include seeing how things are made and the jobs they can create.

I remember the exact moment when my mind clicked on Africa as a destination for the CNI Luxury conference.

It was two years ago at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, where I was enjoying a brief chance to see art beyond the skills of the couture ateliers.

There, in front of me, in that dramatic building by Frank Gehry, was an exhibition of contemporary art – ‘Collection: A Selection of African Artworks’. A small area was devoted to African hairstyles, the same magnificent and imaginative creations that I watched in wonder on a recent trip to Nigeria.

A few years ago there was no passionate discussion about bringing more models of colour on to the runway, nor on to the covers of Vogue. Now, Africa is everywhere – in the mind, in conversation, in choice of colours and ‘in fashion’ in every sense of those words. I wonder what creativity the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, might inspire?

I feel proud that my journey has led me to South Africa and the chance to share a discussion about ‘The Nature of Luxury’. Fashion is often a bellwether for changing times.

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Suzy Menkes Editor, Vogue International London, February 2019

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Contents

Suzy Menkes: Five Years in Vogue Creation

Where stories begin: Inside the ateliers, workshops and rehearsal studios

81

14 A Visit to Chanel’s Métiers d’Art 16 Christian Lacroix: “Fashion Was an Accident”

Celine

18 Dressing Madonna: Gucci’s Alessandro Michele

57 Okapi

Reveals (Almost) All

20 The Adara Foundation: A Lagos Project That Empowers Low-Income Women

22 LVMH: Putting Humanity into ‘Special Days’

26 Romeo Gigli’s Operatic Return 28 Gucci’s Secret Weapon: A School for Craft,

32

Technology and Passion Homo Faber: Craft and Humanity Define Luxury for the Future

Presentation

Sending creativity out into the world, defining the look of the age

40 Billion-Dollar Baby: Versace Takes Manhattan

42 Balmain Makes a Bold Move into High Fashion

44 Epic Nature from Alexander McQueen

84 Gucci

42 Balmain

89

Iris van Herpen

56

Van Cleef & Arpels

46 Duro Olowu: Pattern, Colour and Louche Elegance

47 Boss: Sleek Elegance

48 Valentino: Beyond Great Beauty, a Message of Inclusivity

52 Azzedine Alaïa: “My Roots are in Couture”

54 Dolce & Gabbana’s Ode to Palermo

56 Van Cleef & Arpels: Alhambra, The First Feminist Jewellery?

57 Luxury Out of Africa: Hanneli Rupert of Okapi

58 Obscure Objects of Desire: Vetements Haute Couture

61

62 Fendi: Karl’s Last Stand

64 Dries Van Noten: Melancholic Beauty

67 A Powerful Debut at Chloé

68 Maxhosa by Laduma: A Unique Expression of African Style

69 Marc Jacobs: Couture Power

73 Burberry: Streetsmart With a Dash of Heritage

74 Burberry: Riccardo Tisci’s Playful But Respectful Approach

77 It’s all Change for Spring/Summer 2019

78 Givenchy: Clare Waight Keller Unveils the

Jean Paul Gaultier: Smoking No Smoking

Spirit of Haute Couture

81

Celine: Ready, Hedi, Go!

83 The Beat of Africa Resounds From the Catwalk

84 Gucci: In the Line of Fire

89 Iris van Herpen Proves That Fashion is Now

90 Chris Moore: Backstage

93 Victoria Beckham: Ten Years in Fashion

94 Rebooting Chloé for the Woman of 2018

99 Alexandre Birman: A Bold Step Forward

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AFI congratulates Suzy Menkes for the years she has dedicated to the fashion industry, creating platforms for knowledge sharing and driving discussions on global fashion trends. Thank you for your candid insights, for making fashion and luxury inclusive, and for shining a spotlight on African style and perspectives.

GLOBAL LEADERS IN AFRICAN FASHION LUXURY & LIFESTYLE

W W W . A F R I C A N FA S H I O N I N T E R N AT I O N A L . C O M

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C ONTENTS

164

Maison Margiela Artisanal

Observation

News, views, interviews: Capturing the spirit of the times 102 Cover Story: Tea With Alber

111

Fighting the Bitch Brigade

112 Will the Real Karl Lagerfeld Please Stand Up?

178

118 Fendi Changes its Name – and its Attitude

121 Ingie Chalhoub: “Dream Big”

122 Ralph Lauren Celebrates 50 Years in Fashion 124 Toby Neilan: Planet Vogue

Manfred Thierry Mugler

130 Tiffany Amber Secures Her Place in Nigeria’s

Fashion Universe

132 Speaking my Language 137 Coty: From Storytelling to Story Living 140 Why Fashion is Crashing 143 Christopher Raeburn: A Creative Call to Arms 144 Apple’s Angela Ahrendts Re-Energises Retail 148 Bill Cunningham: History in his Lens 155 Answering the Succession Question 158 McQueen: Truths and Half-Truths 160 Dave Benett: Front Row 163 Iguatemi: Shopping for Green Growth in Brazil 164 Maison Margiela Artisanal: Those Poodles!

165 Woman to Woman Jewellery

102

168 Nick Knight: In the Studio 171 In Praise of the Tai Tai

Alber Elbaz

Curation

Conversations with the past as a wellspring for the future 174 Jil Sander: Fashion’s First Feminist 178 Manfred Thierry Mugler: Back in Fashion

148

Bill Cunningham

182 Remembering Hubert de Givenchy 186 Chinoiserie-on-Sea: Stephen Jones Hats

at the Royal Pavilion

188 School of Christian Dior 192 Glamour That Came in From the Cold 196 Martin Margiela: A Double Bill in Paris

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200 Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakesh: A Life in Colour 205 Armani’s Hollywood Army

Fendi Couture

208 Chris Moore: From Catwalk to Gallery 210 Couture Korea: From Far East to West Coast 214 Comme des Garçons: The Future of Silhouette

@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

218 Index

200

Yves Saint Laurent

Published in conjunction with the fifth Condé Nast International Luxury Conference – ‘The Nature of Luxury’ – hosted by Suzy Menkes in Cape Town, South Africa, 10–11 April 2019 Published by Condé Nast International, The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam St, London WC2N 6HT, UK (+44 [0] 20 7851 1800) www.condenastinternational.com; www.cniluxury.com © 2019 Condé Nast International Printed in Austria by Samson Druck

186 Stephen Jones

Cover illustration ‘The Mona Suzy’ by Alber Elbaz (January 2019) Creative Director Geraldine Lynch Editor Katia Hadidian Managing Editor Charlotte Bamsey Designers Ben Martin, Heather Thomas Editorial Co-ordinator Ellen Garlick Picture Research Dane Jackson-Brown

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A Visit to Chanel’s Métiers d’Art 0 9/ 1 2 / 2 0 1 4

In the orgy of opulence that was the Eighties, I remember so clearly my visit to the workshop of François Lesage. In the small, dark rooms, where buttons and threads filled jam jars on a worn wooden shelf, the world’s most famous embroiderer would pull open drawers, grab a square of cloth and announce triumphantly, “Schiaparelli!”

Then there was André Lemarié, who would treat the feathers in his warren of rooms not as if we were backstage at the Folies Bergère, but as if each plume were a priceless jewel.

What a difference Chanel makes! As I walked into the light and airy premises of the Métiers d’Art in the Pantin district of outer Paris, the light flooded in from wide windows on to the talented workers that Chanel has recruited to preserve this French field of excellence by buying up the treasured specialist companies.

Almost the first thing I noticed in this complex, opened in January 2013, were the chic Chanel storage boxes that had replaced Lesage’s slightly shabby ones. Then I was struck by the

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Feather swatches for Chanel; ‘Le Jardin d’Eden’ dress by Maison Lesage for Valentino Haute Couture S/S 2014; hat-making for Chanel

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Feather swatches by Maison Lemarié for Valentino Couture A/W 2014; Chanel’s couture trainers

age of the petites mains – so young! And the fact that there were a lot of men, not just women, taking up these ancient crafts.

Embroiderers My visit started with a look at the beautiful work from the past, from Elsa Schiaparelli to a Valentino are super-busy dress, rich with embroidered greenery, and from the completing spring and autumn couture. But I was impatient to Karl's loafers, see this ‘factory’ of human hands in motion. embroidered No one understands the art of needle and thread with white better than Hubert Barrère, Artistic Director of leather edelweiss, Maison Lesage. He is responsible for all the fashion white chenille world’s exceptional embroidery, carrying the torch yarns and small for François Lesage, who died in 2011. glitter balls Up close, it seems that these marvels of needlework can be applied to any fabric, from finest silk to thickest velvet, including those Chanel sneakers with their couture decoration. I spoke to Monsieur Barrère after the Chanel Salzburg show and he told me how much he and his team enjoyed the Métiers d’Art Chanel collection because there was “time to think”.

“This collection was a gift,” he said. “Karl just talked about Salzburg and then left us to do it. We researched Mozart, von Hofmannsthal, the music festival – even The Grand Budapest Hotel film. We studied Empress Sissi, her history, the Romy Schneider movie and all that was romantic and poetic, but also joyous. We did all those little embroidered flowers and butterflies; we wanted it to be imperial, but also bucolic, historic and very romantic.”

The work was dense, intense – but never vulgar or showy.

I could hardly believe that a chic bomber jacket worn casually by

a model, had required 330 hours of needlework in gold braid yarn at the collar, with golden waves of sequins at the hip and wrists.

No wonder Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Fashion at Chanel, told me in Salzburg that Métiers d’Art was close to couture.

Monsieur Barrère surprised me by saying he was a fan of simplicity. “People think that embroidery has to be very precious, but it can also be fresh and simple – and Karl is a fan of freshness,” the king of embroidery said, recalling the work his studio did for Chanel Métiers d’Art in Edinburgh in 2012. The 2013 Dallas show he called “classic Western”, while the 2011 Paris-Bombay show sought the delicate rather than the “land of the maharajas”.

I moved on to look at the Lemarié feathers – multiple plumes like a nest of birds of paradise, made into the same effects as I saw at the Chanel show in Salzburg. I asked Nadine Dufat, Managing Director of Lemarié and Lognon, how many people worked on the feathers, and was amazed when she answered, “Sixty people and up to 110 before the collections.” But she reminded me that this is also a house of flowers – meaning that extraordinary visual effects are created, as well as the plumes. Not to mention the production of 40,000 Chanel camellia flowers a year!

“It is a mixture of different savoirs-faire,” said Mme Dufat, using that French expression we might call in English a ‘skill set’.

She explained the featherwork that went into Karl Lagerfeld’s imaginative scenic view, where the paysage was created from the mix of colours and textures that I could imagine from seeing the box of feathers in front of me. These are the details of Chanel’s Métiers d’Art delicate ‘Mountain Landscape’ top and skirt: the pattern made from goose feathers, leather, woollen flowers, beads and crystal; on the sleeves, tie-dye sky-blue satin accordion pleats; star-shaped flowers and forget-me-knots in blue leather with a bead at centre. Total hours of handwork: 378.

Of course, the fashion point of these intricately worked designs is that they do not look heavy or weighed down by the decoration.

It is just absorbed into the overall design.

I liked the jaunty Tyrolean hats in Salzburg, with ostrich and chicken feathers set off by the Maison Michel black felt. But in my visit to Chanel’s Pantin workrooms, I realised that hats were not so easy to make, even if there seemed to be hundreds of them ready to go in typically Coco-pink checked tweed.

I watched milliner Shariff Hisaund making a Maison Michel felt hat, and he might have been a five-star chef, stretching the felt, dowsing it, stretching it again and popping it into a giant ‘oven’ to cook into shape.

When Karl presented his Paris-Edinburgh Métiers d’Art show in the ruins of a Scottish castle, I made a visit to Barrie Knitwear, home of cashmere, which has to be made in Scotland, not France, because of the natural features in the river Tweed (which is the basis of the iconic Chanel jacket).

But at Pantin, there were still more specialists. I am sure that embroiderers Montex, based in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, will be super-busy completing orders for Karl’s Salzburg loafers – embroidered with white leather edelweiss, white chenille yarns and small glitter balls. They could be as much of a hit as Chanel’s decorated haute couture sneakers.

Then there are the costume jewels from Maison Desrues, just outside Paris. The choker, inspired by Austrian embroidery, made from enamelled molten glass and velvet ribbon around a filigree metal heart, appeared in Salzburg with one of the most striking looks in the collection: lederhosen cut into saucy shorts worn with high hose and the edelweiss shoes.

I left Pantin with a feeling of elation that Chanel was not only keeping these Métiers d’Art alive, but they were in the hands of a new, young generation. Somewhere up there, François Lesage must be lifting his head from embroidering for the angels and rejoicing that Chanel has kept his skills alive.

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Christian Lacroix:

“fashion was an accident” As his designs for the ballet, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, receive triumphant applause, 30 years after founding his Paris couture house Lacroix admits that his heart always beat for costumes – not clothes 13/03/2017

TREES IN EERIE COLOURS, fairy tale flowers, and children outlined against the forest in a parade of prettiness…

Even before the first step was taken, this ballet of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was enchanting.

The applause turned into an ovation at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, but it was not only for the dancers, nor for this interpretation of George Balanchine’s production from 1962.

It was also for the costumes of Christian Lacroix, who, since his couture house went into administration in 2009, has concentrated on costume design on an international scale.

From two hundred dresses glowing in red or turquoise velvet, through intricate lace as delicate as a spider’s web, to one million Swarovski crystals twinkling in tulle or tiaras – this was an on-stage echo of the intensely decorative clothes that the designer once sent down the runways.

But Lacroix himself, known for couture work as light, pretty, sweetly coloured, and appetising as a plate of macaroons, is quick to correct the theory that he took to the theatre after his fashion business closed. His interest in costume started back in 1985 during his early role as designer at the house of Jean Patou.

“I didn’t think about fashion; I thought about theatre,” Lacroix told me. “Fashion was an accident.”

After two decades of his own brand, where the effervescent effects and exceptional handwork marked fashion history, does the designer, more than 30 years on, really believe that he was wedded to the wrong cause?

“I loved couture as much as theatre,” he explained. “I think I took the path I did because the Eighties and Nineties were so very theatrical and operatic that everyone played their part.But I never tried to create a fabric, a cut, or a new silhouette. I just wanted to create ambiences that were theatrical or cinematic, starting with intimate images, historicism, and folklore.”

The surprise of the ballet was that instead of the usual stage sets, Lacroix appeared to use the same brush strokes and textures as the backdrops for the costumes. So as tutus bounced to the rhythm of the dance, splashes of paint, the colour of bougainvillea, appeared on the underside of the tulle in graduated layers of colour – just as a similar shade could be found in the magic forest.

There, flat flowers appeared to zoom in and out, as if they were digital projections, while the rich colours were set off by the mud brown of Bottom’s donkey head.

Add the impression of fireflies twinkling in the tree canopy at the finale, and both set and costumes seemed like an artist’s canvas. Lacroix explained the painterly effects: “The colours are

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Christian Lacroix; Ann Ray

CREATION

dyed – like the rose-pink tulle under the tutus – occasionally repainted, often chosen from existing palettes, but the way the light is used gives them a feeling of being unreal and dream-like.”

The costumes had two major fashion supporters. First, sponsor Nadja Swarovski, who had worked with Lacroix on the ballet, La Source, at the Opéra Garnier in 2011, threw herself and her team of 70 into the task of “crystallising” 210 costumes and 90 headpieces, including crowns, tiaras, and diadems. That involved 10,000 hours of work, weaving crystals and pearls into tulle and organza, including whisper-delicate butterfly wings.

The other decorative-art collaboration was with Maud Lescroart, the Marketing Director of Sophie Hallette in Caudry, northern France, who supplied the dentelle lace-and-tulle weaving. She not only works with international fashion houses, but also teaches in London at Central Saint Martins and created the lace for Kate Middleton’s Alexander McQueen wedding dress.

“We worked for nearly three months on the ballet – with Chantilly lace, embroidered handwork and metallic gold,” the couture lacemaker explained.

The only thing constraining the orgy of gorgeousness for the ballet costumes was the New York-based George Balanchine Trust, which required all the costumes and sets to be approved before they could go on stage in Paris.

Xavier Ronze, Head of Couture at the Paris Opera Ballet, was in charge of ensuring that his team of 36 costumiers appreciated the importance of Christian’s vision for the success of the spectacle over the two months they worked on it. Every drawing, element of stage decoration, and outfit had to be approved and validated by the Balanchine Trust. “It’s entirely a Lacroix universe – his propositions, his colours, his ribbons – but we were always thinking of what M Balanchine would have wanted,” Ronze explained.

So what had inspired Lacroix to create this picture-postcard vision of William Shakespeare’s original 1595 play?

“For me, the ambience was in those old books you might find in the attic or at the flea market,” the designer revealed. “I was thinking about old illustrations, often the ones in English 19th-century children’s books. Like Alice, I wanted to go through the other side of the mirror. I adore old-fashioned pop-up books, too. Then there is the work of the British artist Richard Dadd in the Victoria and Albert Museum from the 1840s to 1880s. And there was an exhibition in the 1990s about paintings of fairies [at the Royal Academy in London, 1997, and the Frick in New York, 1999]. I based a whole couture collection on that theme.”

So when did that moment come when Lacroix switched his fascination with the performing arts – “music, decor, make-up, costumes, history” – towards fashion?

“When I was a child, I wanted to be a costumier. I didn’t think about fashion, but about the films of Fellini and Visconti,” he said.

“It’s not that I couldn’t find a job in the theatre, but that I was pushed towards fashion by friends already in the profession. But when I met with Karl Lagerfeld in 1978, he immediately saw the theatrical side of my portfolio and gave me contacts in that milieu.

“With hindsight, it was the fashion shows as spectacle that remain my happiest memories of couture,” Lacroix said. “But I have no regrets.”

¬ Lacroix’s designs required couture effects in crystal and lace in colours that reflected the stage set

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↑From left ¬ Gucci S/S 2016 ¬ Sketches for the dancers on Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ world tour ¬ Madonna and her ensemble in performance

Dressing Madonna:

Gucci’s Alessandro Michele Reveals (Almost) All 2 6 / 0 9/ 2 0 1 5

“It’s like you’re in a temple, going to meet the goddess, and then you discover that the goddess is a perfectionist and an incredible woman,” said Alessandro Michele, Creative Director of Gucci, about meeting Madonna.

“She is tiny and beautiful,” Alessandro continued. “The thing I really loved about her was her eyes – the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen; super green-blue eyes– I think she must have had the same eyes since she was six years old!”

The passionate designer, who has rocked Gucci with his magpie spirit, mixing inspirations from decades and centuries past, was spotted by über-stylist Arianne Phillips as new fashion blood for the Material Girl’s ‘Rebel Heart’ world tour. Full disclosure: I was the person who suggested to Arianne at Prada’s ‘Iconoclast’ exhibition in London in February that Alessandro could create a new romantic look for Madonna.

“Essentially, my job is to be an editor for Madonna,” Arianne said, whose list of designers to dress the tour includes Jeremy Scott at Moschino, Prada’s Miu Miu, Fausto Puglisi and Alexander Wang. But she was eager to include Gucci’s Alessandro.

“I became entranced by his return to craft, by the personal and feminine aspects that he has brought into his embellishment to the austere, slick Gucci,” Arianne said. “It was like a return to beauty and incredibly inspiring.”

Sitting with Alessandro in the Gucci showroom in Milan this week, surrounded by the Spring/Summer 2016 collection of

→Right ¬ Arianne Phillips, Madonna’s stylist, with Suzy in London, 2015

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intensely coloured and decorated outfits, wild with frescoes of flowers, he explained his thoughts about dressing Madonna.

“The idea was to mix Spanish and Latin attitude with chinoiserie, in the exact pink you can see in that skirt,” the designer said, pointing to a floral outfit on the rail. “I thought that if Madonna wore the chinoiserie – a skirt with a super-long fringe – it would be like the divas of the 1920s, when the exotic was mixing Japan and Spain together,” he said.

But these fantasies had to pass the eyes and experience of Arianne. She missed Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ tour’s first night in Montreal because she was in Los Angeles with Tom Ford, working on his new film, Nocturnal Animals, starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal. She also worked on Ford’s A Single Man. “It’s an interesting circle; Alessandro Michele first came to Gucci under Tom Ford, and played the soundtrack of A Single Man at his first Gucci show,” the award-winning costume designer said.

Back to Madonna. It was in awe and trepidation that Alessandro – who was promoted to Creative Director after years behind the scenes at Gucci – walked into the rehearsal studio on the outskirts of Manhattan at eleven at night to come face to face with his idol.

“They opened the door, and she was having dinner – grilled salmon – and she said, ‘Welcome to my restaurant – do you mind that I’m eating?’” Alessandro recalls. “Then she danced for an hour and a half or two. She was ready to work after midnight.”

“Madonna is really a performer - she doesn’t just want to look beautiful, she cares more about the performance”

I can imagine Alessandro sitting in the studio looking like a Romantic poet, with his beard, long hair, and his rings that he changes all the time, “because I have a huge box full of Georgian and Victorian jewellery”.

But as Arianne knew and Alessandro was about to find out on his midnight visit to Madonna, the art of performance clothes is different from fashion style.

“I wanted to give her something super-romantic with the idea of an exotic, dancing Frida Kahlo with ruffles, colour, and a different kind of aesthetic,” Alessandro said.

“I started with something super-huge, because I did not imagine she would actually want to dance with this dress.”

“And then she tried on the outfits, started to move to check that everything is good to dance in. She is really a performer – she doesn’t just want to look beautiful, she cares more about the performance. She is obsessive about how to communicate with her audience.”

He confesses that he was taken aback by her commitment. “I was completely shocked when I came to the rehearsals; it was in a place you would meet a real dancer, super rough, not a place for a diva, but a place for a real artist.”

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#SuzyLFWNG The Adara Foundation: A Lagos Project That Empowers Low-Income Women A new generation is learning – and saving – free-hand batik and the twisting, crunching, and stitching of tie and dye

“WE WANT PEOPLE TO BE touched

by the design,” says Yvonne Fasinro, referring to her project to empower low-income women through handwork at the Adara Foundation, which she founded. Her other day job is at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she is Managing Director and Head of Sub-Saharan Africa.

We are in a basic building in Yaba, a young working-class area of Lagos, where she shows me ‘resist-dyeing’ – a method that produces hand-crafted batik in all its rich patterns and colours – as well as dip-dye and tie-dye – related techniques that have a similar visual effect. The students work with traditional cottons, and then imported silk and chiffon – often their very first encounter with these delicate materials.

“We try to preserve the actual fabric-making and design, and then we encourage them to push boundaries – and themselves. It’s very inspiring,” Fasinro says.

From above:

Top, trainees at the Adara Foundation prepare indigo batik; Tiffany Amber S/S 2019

When we meet again the next day, she shows me elegant, airy dresses created from Adara’s hand-dye fabric for Tiffany Amber. Folake Folarin-Coker, the designer behind that brand, proves that this complex, traditional technique can be used for simple, modern styles.

I admire the fresh patterns on light materials in subtle colours that eager shoppers are busily buying. Yet I keep thinking back to the previous day at the Foundation, where the faces of the trainees expressed joy, excitement, and awe, as they worked together with tutors who taught them to transform cloth into artistic textiles.

Their lives are being changed through the opportunity to earn money – perhaps for the first time – and a sense of self-worth from their craft.

Frustrated that fabric makers from the Netherlands still export Dutch wax or ‘Ankara’ cloth to Africa, Fasinro insists that it is time for home-grown products to play a more prevalent role: “My passion is training women to give them a real skill and a means to make money out of that,” she says. “Another pillar is how to manage the money they make, and to help them through debilitating situations. Once a woman is brought down by her health, her community suffers.”

“Work is not just about beautiful fabric,” she says. “These women come here not knowing anything. We give them a work ethic. We teach them standards, teach them how to work with each other, and how to take a broad perspective.

Everywhere is peaceful and quiet. It’s a beautiful sound – orderly, in a way, and productive.”

One student on the ten-week course tells me of her wonder at learning to identify different colours and how best to use them. Her tutor, taking the eighth group of 26 people through the Adara Foundation system, says that the students teach him a great deal about inspiration and its effect on textiles.

Like so many ancient traditions of dress, the meaning behind the clothes and their patterns may be fading away compared to the messages the prints conveyed in the past. That knowledge

goes back five centuries to the art of dipping and twisting in a dye made from the indigo plant.

When Yvonne Fasinro first started to research the dip-and-dye work of Nigeria’s Abeokuta and Oshogbo regions, she reckoned that the ancient techniques had a lifespan of two generations, at best. No-one was trying to commercialise the work or make it more sustainable.

“We have soakaway pits for all the dyes so that they don’t disturb the environment. But they’re not like the ones in a village,” she says.

“We want to make a safe, properly controlled environment. Our work is about design, but it’s teaching women practicalities as well.”

The collaboration with Tiffany Amber is important for promoting the dyeing skills to the fashion world. But the importance of the prints I look at is in what lies beneath: the sessions on how to manage children without smacking them; the therapy that classes can give to a woman frozen into despair by her husband’s death.

“In Africa, our culture is quite community oriented and we support people,” Yvonne Fasinro says. “My focus is to empower women.

We want them to engage more in the economy.

Let’s create an industry of fabric design, let’s make beautiful clothes, and let the women themselves benefit from that.”

The Adara Faoundation; Lagos Fashion Week

01/11/2018

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6 March 2018 The colours of autumn at Chanel for A/W 2018! Karl turned the Grand Palais into woodland, right down to the crunchy leaves

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

“Lives are being changed through the opportunity to earn money – perhaps for the first time – and a sense of self-worth from their craft”

2 July 2018 Schiaparelli flamingos from Design Director Bertrand Guyon

4 March 2018 Valentino!

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suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

9 January 2018 I am in the new ‘Gucci Garden’ in Florence in the Palazzo della Mercanzia and everything is coming up FLORAL!

21 January 2019 Athletic accessories at Christian Dior Couture – Maria Grazia invited Mimbre, the all-women troupe of circus acrobats, to perform

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

24 April 2018 Mad for Liberty florals to play with – Richard Quinn’s graduate days at St Martins in 2016

19 March 2018 All the wonder, imagination and prowess of the late Zaha Hadid: The ‘Crista’ centrepiece to celebrate ten years of Atelier Swarovski

2 July 2018 Natalia Vodianova – football-crazy for her native Russia – in an Iris van Herpen dress

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Edwin Mahoney womenswear. This Central St Martins MA student won the LVMH Grand Prix Scholarship and Chloé Award 2017

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LVMH:

Putting Humanity Into ‘Special Days’ Antoine Arnault sees kind hearts and character at the heart of his family’s mighty luxury empire

From above:

Natalia Vodianova at the Berluti stand during ‘Les Journées Particulières LVMH’; Suzy with Antoine Arnault and Natalia Vodianova

The man in the leather apron was holding up a piece of wood carved roughly into the shape of a foot. Slowly and carefully he showed the ten-month progress from its soles to its uppers, and how they were finally joined together. Hooray for the work of human hands!

My visit to the handmakers at Berluti, in what is known as the ‘golden triangle’ – high-end Paris on the edges of the Champs-Élysées – was just one of many events offered by LVMH – the luxury goods company with tentacles stretching across the world.

I was lucky enough to jump the four-hourlong queue of people waiting to enter the house of Christian Dior. Up the stairs, where glamorous ball gowns with ballooning skirts were set out on mannequins, I followed the first visitor group into a room where little doll-figures wearing miniature versions of couture were displayed.

Other areas showed seamstresses at work or the variety of processes for watches or handbags.

Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH, raised his camera to snap decorative baby clothes and studied mad hats produced for Dior by milliner Stephen Jones.

With Antoine Arnault, the founder’s eldest son, who instigated ‘Les Journées Particulières LVMH’ – a three-day weekend of ‘open house’ events – the head of the luxury empire moved through different areas at Dior. One showed a line-up of toiles – the plain, white-cloth dresses that are the first stage of couture workmanship.

The same idea of development was open to the public at Givenchy: Up the grand staircase, past a picture of the founder and films of him with his muse Audrey Hepburn; and then a recreation of grand gowns that current Artistic Director Clare Waight Keller showed in haute couture after she had dressed Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s royal bride.

The next room had the ‘petites mains’ or hand-workers actually stitching the couture gowns.

At Givenchy, Sidney Toledano, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group and previously the long-term CEO at Dior, said, “A company like Givenchy must respects its roots – and the petites mains are the heart of the house.”

When I arrived at Asnières-sur-Seine – where the original Louis Vuitton built his trunk-making ateliers in 1859 and his son Georges built a house in 1892 – I asked Antoine Arnault what had compelled him to personalise LVMH, a company with a chilly, imperial feel and so many famous brands under its wings.

As I took in the homey atmosphere with Art Nouveau decorative windowpanes and photos of the founders framing the walls, Antoine explained the thought and effort he had put into this fourth edition of Les Journées Particulières.

Since his first tentative efforts seven years ago, the event has now grown into a worldwide enterprise, and this year, 56 of the LVMH Maisons in 14 countries were open to the public – some for the very first time.

“I wanted to make LVMH synonymous with everything I saw – the savoir-faire and the

@natasupernova; @SuzyMenkesVogue; Marguerite Bornhauser; Olivier Vigerie / Berluti

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Above and below:

preservation of heritage of these wonderful houses,” Antoine said. “At that time, the words around our group were more about profit, performance, and results – everything but what I saw in the ateliers, which was hundreds of people fascinated and full of passion for their work and craft.”

The result of this global initiative is spectacular, although Antoine joked about the three-day event, “If you are a bit adventurous you could actually start in New Zealand, fly to Australia, then China, Poland, all over Europe, the UK – where there are a couple of houses open – then fly across the Atlantic to North America, then Argentina, and finish on the West Coast of America. An LVMH world tour across five continents!”

The catalogue of brands is impressive – particularly in Europe – and includes, beyond the huddle of big names in Paris, tanneries near Lyon and Christian Dior Fragrance in the South of France. Italy includes Pucci in Florence and Bulgari and Fendi in Rome; Germany has Rimowa luggage; Spain is home to Loewe in

Madrid; and Switzerland to watch companies.

The list seems endless, even before looking beyond Europe to the rest of the world.

At the Vuitton viewing, Bernard Arnault praised his son’s initiative saying, “The number of people and the impact at Louis Vuitton is extraordinary – and the work really is by hand.”

But can such a huge company really be local as well as global? For the visitors – of whom 90 per cent were female on the days I visited – there is the fascination of seeing beautiful objects and understanding how they are made in their most rarefied versions. By contrast, a Louis Vuitton duty-free boutique at the airport is unlikely to offer a traditional LV patterned trunk, lined in scarlet, with all the accoutrements of a Chinese tea ceremony. And the intense embroidery – taking 650 hours of handwork, which Natalia Vodianova, Antoine’s partner, showed their son Maxim – will not be on offer in any Dior store, however swanky.

This ‘Lonely Planet’ tour of luxury hot spots is surely designed to create not just desire, but also to encourage customers, who are

At ‘Les Journées Particulières LVMH’ Givenchy patterncutters and a Berluti craftsman showcase the techniques of luxury production

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Fashion is so incredibly more than catwalks, images and magazines. It is, actually, about experiencing newness and touching hearts while changing the way people see and feel life. Suzy could, over the past five years, share her very best with the world through Vogue, allowing us this unique connection between fashion and passioned soul.

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Sébastien Gracco De Lay / Dior

“I wanted to make LVMH synonymous with What I saw – The savoirfaire and the preservation of heritage”

increasingly buying online, to re-embrace the idea of place; to rekindle the joy of shopping; and to offer miraculous human handcraft as an antidote to fast fashion.

There is also an element of celebrity watching, occasionally openly, with photos of the famous who are loyal to a brand. Other times the effect is subtle, as in Berluti lining up the moulds of a well-known client’s feet, even if, as in the case of Pierre Bergé, partner to Yves Saint Laurent, he had passed away.

The brand easiest to embrace was Sephora, which used its university in Neuilly, on the outskirts of Paris, to show how it encourages imaginative outsiders to join the empire. Among LVMH’s well-known beauty brands – from historic houses such as Guerlain to classics including Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, and Kenzo to celebrity brands such as Fenty Beauty By Rihanna – there were newbies.

I met Anju Rupal, who is part of Sephora’s ‘Accelerated Cohort’. Originally from India, she now works out of Switzerland and includes in her organic beauty-making the importance of planting trees and helping young Indian women go to school.

The Sephora Global CEO of the last seven years, Christopher de Lapuente, insisted that among the massive growth to 2,700 stores in 34 countries, he is encouraging innovation, originality and surprise.

“You really hope that when people come to Sephora they discover big brands and bestsellers, but also really cool niche brands co-created with founders,” the executive said.

“That is something that generates excitement.

It’s like a candy store of the beauty business.”

Sephora is also one of the rare LVMH affordable brands. Even an expensive fragrance costs less than a scarf at the couture houses and a fraction of the pieces at the jewellery brands.

Having involved 3,000 artisans and creatives and with more than 180,000 visitors, LVMH is calling this year’s Les Journées Particulières “unprecedented”.

For Givenchy’s seamstresses – some of whom have toiled in the shadows for 30 years – being brought into the spotlight seemed surprising, even bewildering. They worked in public as they do in their everyday jobs – mostly silent, eyes on the material they are shaping and stitching, answering questions politely, if asked.

Maybe the finest thing to come out of Les Journées Particulières is this appreciation of the craft makers. They have progressed from ‘little hands’ to heroes, fighting fast fashion and its sweatshop labourers by showing the nobility of their own work.

“I am not often proud,” Antoine Arnault told me, “but this time I am.”

From top:

A limited-edition Louis Vuitton trunk for a Far Eastern tea ceremony; a behind-the-scenes tour of the fabled Maison Christian Dior in Paris during ‘Les Journées Particulières LVMH’

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Romeo Gigli’s Operatic Return The designer’s poetic style takes centre stage in costumes for a new production of ‘Don Giovanni’ in Florence 12/01/2017

of the opera house, like a box of artistic crayons. The coalition of colours included terracotta, yellow, pink, mauve, green in all its leafy shades, and candy-floss pink worn with orange.

I was catapulted back to the era of Romeo Gigli, with his fantastic mixes of colours, or just a single juicy note when the fabric told the story and one shade stood out – like a sudden splash of royal blue in a suit or a green blouse on the stage.

Long since the designer disappeared from the Italian fashion scene and lost his name to his company’s owner, Gigli has come back in a collaboration with surrealist interior designer Barnaba Fornasetti, to give a magical aura to one of the world’s most famous operas – Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

“My dream is to be back,” said Gigli of losing his name and being able to work in Italian fashion only incognito. “Of course I am working because I have to support my family; I do different things, secret collections,” he explained. “Since 2003, when the company I was part of collapsed – they sold my name for €1,000!

– I have been trying to get it back.”

If Gigli was dispirited by the long battle, it did not show in the opera, which was presented with rambunctious energy in Alice in Wonderland style at the Teatro Della Toscana in Florence. The orchestra, playing period instruments under the hair-tossing enthusiasm of conductor Simone Toni, caught the spirit – even before the arrival of the colourful cast.

Between the rose-red draped dress of Raffaella Milanesi (Donna Anna), the lemon-yellow and floating petal effect of the gown worn by Lucía Martín-Cartón (Zerlina), and the purple dress, fluttering like feathers, worn by Emanuela Galli (Donna Elvira), the performance was vivid with colour and sexual energy.

As if the dashing wig and blue linen, body-hugging suit of Christian Senn as Don Giovanni were not enough, the singer also sported a codpiece, while Renato Dolcini as Leporello wore taut mauve trousers and a jacket with a lime-green pussybow.

The ever-changing set, designed by Barnaba Fornasetti, had everything from plates transported into faces through to golden

¬ Left, Romeo Gigli with ‘Donna Anna’ ¬ Sets by Barnaba Fornasetti

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty; Rex; Ariana Senesi; Ray Tarantino

The line-up on stage looked, from the red plush seats

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¬ Romeo Gigli at his A/W 2003 finale ¬ Right, S/S 1994 ¬ Below, S/S 2004

“I started thinking about the 17th century, and at the same time I was drawing and collecting the colours” sun rays; disproportionate bodypieces to Fornasetti’s famous playing cards and a line-up of knives and forks that the Commendatore broke through at the grand finale.

“It took me more than a year to do all the costumes,” Gigli said.

“But I have done other stage works, like The Magic Flute for John Eliot Gardiner in the Nineties, which did a tour of Europe and went to New York. Then the last time I made costumes was for Merce Cunningham.”

I was transported back by the Don Giovanni costumes to Romeo Gigli’s fashion heyday, when the designer brought an original spirit to a fashion world dominated by brash clothing and the Italian face-off between Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace; Tom Ford’s sexy Gucci and Miuccia Prada’s feminist streamlining.

Searching for Gigli’s unique vision, I remembered a style that was fresh, fairy-like, respectful to women and deliciously decorated.

I asked the designer where this particular vision of tender beauty had come from.

“It’s difficult to explain,” he said. “When I was a young kid, my family taught me to be a collector – they were antiquarian book collectors for generations. I was surrounded by antiques, but my parents died when I was 19 and after my family collapsed, I started to travel around the world. Because I lost my family, I started to collect art so that my mind became a huge melting pot of culture – antiques and contemporary. I remember that I started to collect colours, but at the same time I ‘contaminated’ all the colours of the fabrics with contemporary interferences.

“For the opera, I started thinking about the 17th century, but with so many references, and I was drawing and collecting the colours at the same time. In this way, I get inside the head of the opera. A little bit crazy, but every time I work, I start that way.”

I looked back at my reviews of Romeo Gigli. In March 1997 I wrote: “The joy of the show was in its opening coats and in fabrics that seemed to draw their rich colours and lattice or tapestry textures from the artistic soul of Italy.”

I hope for Gigli that his dream comes true: to recover his name.

He – and fashion – deserve his renaissance.

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↑Right and below ¬ The new Gucci ArtLab near Florence ¬ Suzy with Massimo Rigucci, CEO of ArtLab and Head of Production

Gucci’s Secret Weapon: A School for Craft, Technology and Passion An innovative ‘ArtLab’ introduced by Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s Creative Director, and Marco Bizzarri, its President and CEO, is designed to seed the famous brand with a young, dynamic attitude 13/11/2018

FLORENCE, ITALY, and my pristine white lab coat told the whole story as I joined the class of young workers cutting scarlet leather into hearts. Then I looked over my shoulder and saw the words Maison de l’Amour (‘House of Love’) printed on my back.

Welcome to Gucci! And to the brand’s new secret weapon – a private school opened in October at the company’s vast fashion ‘laboratory’ on the outskirts of Florence.

While the surrounding landscape consisted of white clouds racing over a blue sky above green hills, the fashion factory was far more colourful, with vivid frescoes on the front of the building and interiors filled with accessories in luminous shades. The maximalism of the brand by Creative Director Alessandro Michele has produced purses with wild patterns, shoes in plush velvet, bamboo bag handles shaped by flaming torches, and a rainbow coalition of coloured leather.

“I still have nostalgia for going out to see and learn more – I’m not able to go as often as I would like,” said Alessandro, who was plucked from the ‘factory floor’ to become the triumphant creative source of a re-energised Gucci.

“My schools were the factories. I learned so much in their modelling departments,” he continued. “They are incredible places, where people are in touch with each other, where the older generations teach the younger, and where you can see and experience unbelievable things.”

The idea of bringing fashion creation under one vast roof, rather than dotted across the landscape with smaller groups of workers, challenges the patriarchal fashion processes so indicative of the industry in Italy.

“We wanted to create a place where people love to work, with special values to spread happiness – diversity and inclusivity that reflect exactly what we stand for. I really believe that if you develop this kind of culture, people are happy and more productive,” Marco Bizzarri said.

For the apprentices clustered around a coffee bar, this did indeed look like fashion utopia – here a wall of bright patterns; there a picture produced by the artistic maestro as a ceramic tile.

Everywhere in the interconnected, transparent rooms there was a sense of vibrant, young energy, punctuated by old mastercraftsmen meticulously stretching leather for a shoe or shaping python skin for a handbag.

In contrast to that cosy, homespun feeling, innovative high-tech was there to empower and speed up the craft processes.

I watched shoes literally going through their paces as the longevity and suppleness of sneakers were tested by a digital machine.

There has been an explosion of accessories at Gucci since Alessandro Michele took over the brand, owned by the Parisbased Kering luxury group. Italian companies appear to be the best in Europe for turning art and craft into money, but such a

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Gucci

↑From far left ¬ Handmade Gucci shoes; charring the signature bamboo handles for Gucci bags; applying hand embroidery to accessories

success has reached a peak at Gucci – and Bizzarri places the company’s success on the shoulders of Alessandro.

“He was exactly the person that we wanted to have at Gucci,” the executive said. “He respects people, and a leader has got to be like this. He cannot be fake. People will discover that. Everyone looks to him as the person who will be carrying the aesthetic.”

Bizzarri spends time in Florence, including the Gucci Museum and restaurant in the heart of the Renaissance city. But with the Gucci headquarters in Milan and frequent foreign travel, the Florentine hub has its own management.

The local hero is Massimo Rigucci, CEO of ArtLab and the Head of Production for Bags and Shoes and Industrial Operations.

Over a cappuccino, he explained the hyper-modern idea of empowering craft through technology. The executive, 18 years at Gucci, comes from a family tradition of leather workers – his father and other relatives worked in the shoe trade.

“I was born in shoes – when I was a baby, I could screw in a heel,” he said. “But the change today is unbelievable, because Alessandro has altered the mentality and the process of the creativity – the whole methodology.”

This transition means that the Gucci designer has brought shoes and leather goods not just under one roof, but into a single mindset with the synergy fundamental to the change.

The new École de l’Amour – which has, for example, recruited a young man who used to work on fancy cakes in a bakery – has three different aspects: The Craftsmanship School (La Scuola dei Mestieri) offers a six-month training in the Gucci ArtLab as an overall experience to reach professional standards, with the next course starting in 2019.

The École follows the ‘Factory School’, which has been running for a year and is based on training ‘production operators’, which I understand to mean a more rigorous manufacturing education.

The third training course is the Technical Academy which, as its name suggests, has a focus on high-tech with the ability to make digital technology part of the creation process.

A cynic might say that this modern hub is a factory by any other name – and a long way from a small, family business passed from father to son. I don’t have the knowledge to judge whether Gucci’s training courses are unique. But it is certain that Italy’s textile, fashion, and accessory studios are rare in Europe for creating products that are otherwise mostly developed in the Far East or elsewhere. It is one of the jewels in the nation’s crown that it still

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has these skills. And jewellery is, incidentally, one of the products newly produced in this Gucci hub.

“I think ours is something unique, because I did not know that there are so many related activities,” Massimo said. “In Italy, they used to be in isolation, with shoes in totally different geographical areas – in Novara, Tuscany, Naples. And for leather goods, men’s and women’s shoes were usually separated in different areas.

When Alessandro wanted to make all the leather goods together it seemed crazy. But Marco said, ‘Yes, it’s crazy – but we can try!’”

Gucci's cascade of future plans includes bringing the same culture of openness and engagement to its huge clothes factory in Novara, in the northwest Italian area of Piedmont; and opening a giant tannery so that all leather is prepared in one place.

In one breath, Alessandro explained the Gucci philosophy: “Education, through the ArtLab, is fundamental in the mastering of craftsmanship, which is based on the handing down of know-how and is the only way to secure its future.”

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Where the ideas begin Suzy Menkes’ office at Condé Nast International in London

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Photography Geraldine Lynch Suzy Menkes-Five Years in Vogue_Creation.indb 41

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#SuzyVenice Craft and Humanity Define Luxury for the Future The exhibition, ‘Homo Faber’ brings together a monumental group of European artisans led by the enthusiasm of Johann Rupert – co-founder of the Michelangelo Foundation 1 8 / 0 9/ 2 0 1 8

↑Above ¬ A Chloé dress

by Natacha Ramsay-Levi, with a wicker wig by Angelo Seminara

A SOFT, SWAYING ENTRY via the lagoon, the domed silhouettes of Venice before me – and the first sign of my destination. A bold banner attached to ancient walls, read: ‘Homo Faber: Crafting a More Human Future’. With patronage from the European Parliament, the exhibition will have sequels every two years.

The calm of an ancient stone monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore held an impressive body of work – every single piece made by human hands, from a curvy glass vase set against a library of historic books to a leather-maker stitching an Hèrmes saddle.

Names – famous and anonymous – leapt out of a pan-European collection of handmade violins, finger-stitched fabrics, and moulded bowls. This was the art of artisans, whether I was looking at a display of modern clothes in an abandoned swimming pool, or climbing on to a Bottega Conticelli Vespa – that lasting symbol of a post-war Italy on the go.

This breathtaking body of work had been put together with the impetus of two men, Franco Cologni and Johann Rupert, who both founded the Swiss-based Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship.

They spoke passionately about their mission; a rallying cry for a “new Renaissance” from Cologni, coupled with Rupert’s determination to give the world more than his luxury empire at the Richemont conglomerate.

Johann Rupert’s philosophy? “In a world where machines are eliminating jobs every day

and artificial intelligence is in the process of transforming our lives, it is vital to recognise exceptional and uniquely human talent and its potential to provide balance and beauty.”

The speeches, given on a manicured lawn with topiary statues, were followed by a tour in which patient handwork was applied to every object in each room. Even something as small and humble as a wooden bookmark or a tiny pillbox was defined as ‘The Poetry of Wood’.

I found the same feeling of humility in everything from a woven fruit bowl to the intense couture embroideries of François Lesage, whose historic maison in Paris is now supported by Chanel’s Métiers d’Art programme.

“Homo Faber is supposed to be a proposal that a more human future can be crafted, so we acknowledge the value of the master craftsmen and consider them a comparative advantage,” said Alberto Cavalli, Executive Director of the Michelangelo Foundation.

“We propose the idea that we don’t have to apply a price tag to everything,” he said. “Prices hide a number of things because, really, the secret of wellbeing – which is something that all the artisans tell us – is ‘Fare bene per stare bene’, as we say in Italian. ‘To do well is to feel well.’ If you are happy with what you are doing, if you feel fulfilled by this work, you will be well. It is a revolutionary message for the young generation.”

Many of the artisans looked proud and even overwhelmed as they stood beside their work, from the shy creator from Finland who might

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Alessandra Chemollo, Tomas Bertelsen, Marco Kesseler / Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmaship

←This page ¬ Ensembles by John Galliano for Maison Margiela Artisanal, Dolce & Gabbana, and Jacquemus ¬ Fans

by Duvelleroy

have just one woven plate on display, to the Santoni family’s shoe business, founded in 1975, which Giuseppe Santoni inherited from his father and grew in size and stature while keeping a belief in handwork.

Johann Rupert’s enthusiasm started with his relationship to family businesses. “I would meet with artisans, because I always loved chatting to them, and then I would ask, Where is your son?

Your daughter? Aren’t they joining you?” Rupert said. “Some of them were too proud to admit that there was not enough work or incentive for their children to learn the skills. Or to train young artisans.”

The executive concluded that life and wealth had changed. “In the past you had patrons of artisans, people with culture and money, who

basically kept them alive,” Rupert said. “Now, money is made so quickly that people don’t have the time to acquire the culture en route. And I saw all of these crafts not being passed on.”

From this first thought, the head of the Richemont group, whose daughter Hanneli Rupert has built a handbag, accessories and clothing business from South Africa (see page 57), decided to imagine a luxury world of special objects. The Michelangelo Foundation gathered for ‘Homo Faber’ (‘Man the Maker’) an inspiring and highly sophisticated showcase that is far removed from the down-home look so often associated with handwork.

For example, the exhibition includes racing cars, a customised helicopter, and a personalised bicycle from British designer Caren Hartley that

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Tomas Bertelsen, Alessandra Chemollo, Robert Four / Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmaship

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gives a streak of modernity to what otherwise might have seemed familiar creative work.

Judith Clark, known as an exceptional fashion curator and architect, told me that at first she struggled with the long-abandoned swimming pool that she was allocated for her set, and wondered how to bring to life clothing and accessories as examples of craft.

Stephen Jones to the rescue! The imaginative milliner created transparent headpieces that are viewed in the empty pool as waves in motion.

Other displays in the drained area include a statement from Dolce & Gabbana – ‘Fatto a Mano’ (‘Made by Hand’) – in embroidery.

‘Fashion Inside Out’ is the buzzword description of the curator’s work, which has many original pieces, from the paper cut-out of a dress by Hussein Chalayan to Virgil Abloh’s canvas tote emblazoned with the word ‘Sculpture’ to suggest its connection to art.

“I wanted it to be anti-nostalgia, because I think with a show like this people might expect ball gowns and wedding dresses and I thought, ‘Not in a swimming pool!’” Clark said. She also wanted to shine the light of craft on accessories, such as wigs, that take as long as dresses to make.

And having chosen to lighten the scrubby pool with Venice’s favourite larch wood, she teamed that with a display of Chanel pieces that include wood as a material.

The relationship between high fashion and its makers has changed in this millennium. Once they were the ‘backroom boys’ and ‘petites mains’ (‘little hands’). Now the major brands like to emphasise the handwork, much as ‘Homo Faber’ does in the exhibition. Among many installations is the head of the Cartier jewellery studio, showing how he is passing his skills to a young female colleague, with the craftspeople surrounded by blocks of intensely coloured gemstones.

Many CEOs, not just from Richemont, came to the opening events, which included a dinner where lights in the shape of jellyfish gleamed over tables laden with fruit and flowers.

Opening in the middle of the

↑From top left ¬ European ceramics and glass ¬ Tapestry

by Robert Four ¬ Embroidery from Madeira ¬ Johann Rupert and Franco Cologni

Spring/Summer 2019 collections, few designers could make it to Venice, but Paul Smith, who always includes hand-drawing and handwork in his company, applauded the initiative.

I could write a book about those who have been involved in ‘Homo Faber’. Luckily, the exhibition guide has done it for me. But of all the words I read explaining and clarifying what was on display, the wisest came from Marcel Proust, who wrote: “The real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.”

Once they were the ‘backroom boys’, but the relationship between high fashion and its makers has changed

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ANNIVERSARY AT

VOGUE INTERNATIONAL.

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CREATION

@SUZYMENKESVOGUE INSTAGRAM EDIT

“The only designer in the Spring 2019 couture season who embraced absolutely that ‘the future is now’ was Iris van Herpen, yet she found inspiration in the past”

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

27 January 2019 Iris van Herpen – celestial whirls in close-up.

The cosmic effects look entirely modern in this collection named ‘Shift Souls’

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

11 February 2018 “I’ve got four kids – I need a bag like this!”

Victoria Beckham tells me

Darcel Disappoints

8 November 2018 In the wild at #parisphoto. ‘Trade Winds’ by Yojiro Imasaka from the Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York

Darcel Disappoints

12 April 2018 Johnny Coca of Mulberry is telling me about his vision as Creative Director, and the bag genius for Céline and Louis Vuitton now has a fresh British vibe

12 July 2018 Just to prove that I am Manolo’s greatest FAN #vogue30 @voguespain

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue

15 October 2018

With Natasha Cowan and Hilary Alexander, whose book, ‘Leopard: Fashion’s Most Powerful Print’ is published by Laurence King

suzymenkesvogue

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

6 July 2018 When two hats are better than one: Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda

3 March 2018 Yohji Yamamoto’s A/W 2018 collection paid homage to his late friend Azzedine Alaia

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

5 October 2018 Gerhard Richter, b.1932. From Galerie von Vertes, Zürich, at PAD in #london in Berkley Square

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Billion-Dollar Baby:

Versace Takes Manhattan

After selling the company to its American suitors, Donatella celebrates with a colourful and forceful Pre-Fall collection 03/12/2018

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Getty; Alessandro Lucioni / GoRunway

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THREE MONTHS AFTER THE ITALIAN Versace empire was bought by the Michael Kors company for $2.1 billion, Donatella gave the new owners a suitably stratospheric collection.

Around a massive centrepiece of a gilded hand holding up a flame – taken from the neoclassical Statue of Liberty – male and female models walked the cavernous interior of the former New York Stock Exchange.

The show was energetic, colourful and, as Donatella said, “empowering women”. There were references to the past, going right back to the Gianni years before he was murdered in 1997. Yet although the collection took a long look at the archives and touched on memories of Elizabeth Hurley in that neo-Punk dress held together with safety pins, the show looked snappy and modern.

Surprisingly, the big heat came not just from the line-up of celebrities in the audience, including Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Blake Lively, Bradley Cooper, Diane Kruger, Mary J Blige, and Lupita Nyong’o. It was rather from the joy and energy of the models, who joined the audience in an impromptu after-show party.

Soaking rain and lowering cloud may have obliterated the high-rise silhouettes of New York’s financial district, but the show itself was resolutely based on a Mediterranean climate – even though it opened with a shiny leather jacket over a draped satin skirt, visible flesh at the waistline, and a play on shine and sheen that conveyed the sexuality and body consciousness of brand Versace. Ditto for the men, whose flashes of bare chest were predictably sexy.

Behind the hot looks were Versace’s skills with print and pattern, especially those exploding with stars, and also references to ancient Greek and Roman symbols and the signature Medusa. Add swerves of black to the mix, and there were consistent reminders of the Italian brand’s unique DNA. Staying on as Versace’s Vice President and Creative Director as part of a new luxury fashion conglomerate called Capri Holdings, Donatella poured her heart into this show – literally, with sporty outfits (again, for both sexes) that lined up heart patterns in many colours.

This was the first time Versace has hosted a fashion show in New York and it was a major statement to present a Pre-Fall collection on the runway.

Speaking about the show, on the day that would have been Gianni’s 72nd birthday, his sister Donatella said, “I wanted to pay homage to this incredible city, bringing the sartorial heritage of Milan and fusing it with the energy of New York and its eclectic nature. This collection is the result.”

She was also underscoring the importance of the travelling promotional show in a week when Dior and Valentino have both shown mid-season collections in Tokyo; Chanel is presenting its Métiers d’Art collection in New York; and the debacle of Dolce & Gabbana’s cancelled show in China is still a topic of discussion.

The truth about these events is that they must be relevant to the place in which they are presented, rather than as aspects of a repetitive travelling circus.

Without any crass reference to the Stars and Stripes or American idols, Donatella Versace succeeded in producing a collection that was true to its Italian origins but also internationally appealing.

¬ Donatella Versace updated classic Versace tropes with upbeat New York energy for Pre-Fall 2018

“I wanted to bring the sartorial heritage of Milan and fuse it with the energy of New York and its eclectic nature”

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#SuzyCouture Balmain:

A BOLD Move into high fashion

Designer Olivier Rousteing discusses his haute couture debut 24/01/2019

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Luc Braquet

“The look that

I feel really emotional about is the first dress, because it’s totally white, it’s totally pure,” Olivier Rousteing said about the opening of his first haute couture show for Balmain.

“Sometimes I feel misunderstood because people just see the bling of me, but with couture I can show my craftsmanship,” he said. “I know that sometimes people think I’m tacky or cheesy – they should see beyond that.”

The signature pieces in this show came at the start: plain, pure and slender in white, with a flat sweep of a hat.

Then the ending, when puffed-up tulle in apple-green or lilac appeared in dresses for a 21st-century ball, for which gowns were shown throughout the Paris couture season.

But the designer, only 33 and Balmain’s Creative Director for nearly eight years, cramped his powerful style by showing in the house’s upcoming flagship store on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. In absolute contrast to his usual ultra-modern, energetic fashion ‘army’ marching through an airy space – shown in Balmain menswear less than a week ago – the designs felt constrained. In spite of bulbous decoration, angular geometrics and fan pleats, these shining, sparkling clothes seemed to be looking back to the future, more like a mirror of the Space Age created by André Courrèges sixty years ago.

But if there were shadows from the past, Rousteing meant it to be that way.

“It makes complete sense to me to finally arrive at this point because couture is the essence of the brand,” he explained. “It is an homage to Monsieur Balmain, who built the house, and to Oscar de la Renta, who helped the house have elegance. So for me, now, it’s interesting to see what it could be in 2019, when couture is made by someone who is in his thirties.”

Olivier has had lightning success by threading fashion into the digital world far earlier than in other, mightier Paris fashion houses. His Instagram following is legendary and his own persona has become part of the story. But rather than hitching on to the fashion craze for street culture, he has turned in the other direction.

Maybe that is why the runway show seemed such a tortuous work in progress.

“Everybody is going for street runway and sportswear, and in my opinion, we went too far,” the designer said.

“We need to bring back the knowledge of couture.

Fashion is about inspiration as well.

“I understand everyone is obsessed about what is real, what people wear in the street, and this is important to me,” he continued, “but couture is aspirational. It’s time for people to dream again. I am part of the generation of Instagramming, digital and being fast, but being young doesn’t mean that you don’t care about quality.”

The fundamental reason why I feel the show did not work, in spite of its pretty meld of pinks and blues and some intriguing workmanship, is that Rousteing needs time to refine his vision of haute couture. I remember the strength, but stiffness, of his early shows and asked how he envisaged his development in the next few years.

“I think it will be about challenging myself with my tailoring,” the designer replied. “I want to make Balmain even bigger, more international. I fought so much for so

many things in my youth, like the fact that when I started with my digital, I got a lot of criticism for being too cheap.

Today it’s most natural, what I felt five years ago. So I’m not fighting. Now I feel more free, at peace with myself.”

I wondered if Olivier saw Instagram as an essential opportunity or simply a pragmatic way to advertise without a big budget?

“It was important for me to communicate directly with the young generation,” he replied, “because when I was a young kid I felt I did not belong to the fashion world – there was a feeling that it was elitist. With the digital world we think, ‘Let’s break boundaries, be more inclusive with fashion.’”

¬ Backstage with Olivier Rousteing and his Balmain Haute Couture debut collection

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“Metamorphosis – the magical transformation of femininity, extreme nature with the delicate, emergent beauty of butterflies and moths”

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#SuzyPFW

Epic Nature From

Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton is inspired by Brazil’s “big plants, big bugs and birds of paradise”

@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

06/03/2018

A glitter gulch of tiny bugs formed the back of a dress – minuscule creatures in a rainbow of colours, taken from a swarm of raw nature as inspiration for the Alexander McQueen show.

“Metamorphosis – the magical transformation of femininity, extreme nature with the delicate, emergent beauty of butterflies and moths,” the designer said to describe the source of her collection that, by its end, had moved from smart tailoring and pretty patterns to something much wilder. Without a smart, curvy blazer or a tailored coat to keep things under control, luscious patterns and bold curves introduced another world.

Sarah described the moment, during the shoot for an advertising campaign in Brazil, when she had been overcome by “empowered, very heightened nature”.

“It was inspiring to think how to make her (the model) feel strong and feminine – not pagan and earthy. We had to give her power not to lose her femininity. I think that is what I wanted to do, so that she could retain both.”

It was difficult not to view this collection sexually, as a sort of Georgia O’Keeffe landscape in a steamier, wilder country. Sarah described her experience of Brazil as an explosion of “epic nature” with its “big plants, big bags and birds of paradise”.

What was astounding about the collection was how in control Sarah was of this ode to raw nature – something that fascinated McQueen himself, but mostly its dark side. There were none of his dead birds, rather birds of paradise and, in an exceptional piece of couture-style craftsmanship, those tiny bugs, each colourful creature swarming over the back of a dress cinched in by a corset belt, as though the designer was determined to keep control.

There seemed to be many hidden stories in this fecund display. Were these women – in the early looks so controlled, shaped to a sharp waistline – being given the opportunity to cover their bosoms not with leather armoury but something much rounder and softer?

Or perhaps the later looks were to prove that women could appear just as strong and powerful in looser clothes, especially when those outfits were black with blood-red silk running towards the hem. Here the clothes were not dependent on a waistline: A woman could even be a butterfly, although this pale pink gathering of wings on each shoulder looked more warrior than pretty little thing.

This tour de force from Sarah was both beautifully articulated and food for thought. It offered a new kind of femininity that was powered by strength.

↑Clockwise from top A chiffon sheath appliquéd with sequin bugs ¬ A butterfly-wing print on distressed fabric ¬ Insect wing effects on sleeves Opposite A floating butterfly silhouette in silk

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Right: Duro Olowu

at his S/S 2016 presentation; pieces from the collection

#SuzyLFW Duro Olowu:

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A MISCHIEVOUS MIX of prints, an intriguing

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Luis Monteiro, courtesy of Duro Olowu; Daniel Oberrauch / GoRunway

rear view, an effortless elegance… The shows that linger in the mind are often unexpected.

Duro Olowu presented his collection in an elegant private home – the antithesis of the Soho car park that was this season’s location for London Fashion Week.

His inspiration was Amrita Sher-Gil, a significant Hungarian/Indian woman painter of the 1930s known as ‘India’s Frida Kahlo’. To Duro, her sense of colour and artistic empathy with her subjects were compelling. He translated her spirit by creating what he described as “a feminine silhouette with that louche elegance that’s always intriguing to me”.

This London-based designer with a multi-cultural sensibility showed me his Spring/Summer 2016 collection, with its apparently effortless mixes of colour and pattern, often with a surprising exit line. This meant that a dress in a geometric pattern of moss green turned to show the same design in black and white at the back; or a tumble of patterns, from fat pink roses to tiny black-and-white polka dots to a bouquet of florals, all melded into a single summer dress.

We see so much pattern on the current fashion catwalks, but it is rare to see print perfectly aligned with the design of the clothes. Duro favoured a long, lean body with hemline elongated to over the knee – the better to show low, pointed-toe shoes with a glazed surface, designed in collaboration with Paul Andrew.

I was not convinced by a kaftan with colour and pattern rippling like waves. But the Duro Olowu message was elegant for evening, with a softly tiered dress printed with peonies and a waft of green feathers as a cover-up.

That was one of the most appealing dresses I saw for the next season.

For the designer himself, it all starts with the fabrics, mostly his own developments. They are usually striking, without shouting above the voice of the client. As a one-man band – a designer who interacts with his customers – he understands their needs and desires.

Mixes of colour in the same pattern is one of his strengths. Duro works in contrasts the way that another designer might blend shades and patterns together.

The clothes are not quirky; rather elegant and measured. And it is a rare pleasure to find a thoughtful designer who brings individuality to his eager followers.

Includes extracts from ‘Duro Olowu – Opposites Attract’ (20/02/2017)

Boss: Sleek Elegance 14/02/2019

‘BOSS CURATED’ was the name given to the sharply tailored, but soft, coats for both sexes and other highly elevated city wear that formed part of this collection.

It was as though Boss designer Ingo Wilts had decided to make a statement about purity, stripping the clothes to the minimum and presenting them on a hard silver runway in a giant shed by the waterside.

The urge for stylish simplicity has been growing since the Celine brand was abandoned by designer Phoebe Philo. But Boss has always taken this clean-cut line, softened by the quality of fabrics and by some

quirky and artistic visions. For example, the three-tone trousers in shades of beige, worn with a thick coat that also had pale, painterly horizontal lines.

The problem with offering this elaborated simplicity is that it really needs to be appreciated close-up.

But the graphic lines worked well as a theme – for both sexes. When colour appeared, it showed up first in the men’s clothes, which were suddenly dashed with shocking pink.

The women’s line followed suit.

But the most impressive dresses for women were in white satin, pouring gently over the body.

Definitively the curator’s choice.

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#SuzyCouture Valentino:

Beyond Great Beauty, A Message Of Inclusivity Designer Pierpaolo Piccioli presents a game-changing fashion experience 24/01/2019

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Filipo Fior / GoRunway

A

swish of taffeta on a long dress, a shiver of movement in the branches of spring flowers – and the audience rose to its feet. Céline Dion wiped away her tears and Valentino himself hugged Pierpaolo Piccioli, a 21st-century designer of dreams.

Is there any greater wonder than an haute couture show in the heart of Paris, in a grand and gilded mansion, where – at last – the overwhelming majority of the models were black?

As they walked with dignity and grace through the interlocking rooms, the audience was awed by the colours: bright coral with a cluster of satin roses surrounding the face; a mustard-yellow coat over grass-green trousers; or a mauve throw over orange, shaded with silken string. The combinations were artistic and exceptional.

Then there was the unprecedented lightness of gowns which, back in history, would have draped heavily and puddled across the floor. In their handcraft, the Valentino workers seemed to have exceeded their own stratospheric standards.

“I love couture for what it is – a dream, a fantasy. I don’t really believe in modernism in couture. It has to be craftsmanship, construction and lightness,” said Pierpaolo, who had reimagined the iconic Cecil Beaton photograph of a group of elegant women in evening gowns, and transferred it to elegant women of colour.

Pierpalo said he had traced early images of African beauty in art from the Renaissance to the 19th century, “when these people were always put on the side”, through to Ebony, the first 20thcentury magazine to reach out to black people. He also referred to the moment in 2008 when the late Franca Sozzani produced an all-black issue of Italian Vogue, which sold out in a single day.

Yet the show did not seem in any way like a lesson – more a flutter of prettiness, from shapely short dresses to longer gowns, printed or patterned with flowers.

Every one of the 65 Valentino outfits was named after flowers, from roses – look number one – to orchids, rhododendrons, tulips, violets and so many more. The blooms had each been chosen by the seamstresses themselves.

A fairy-like quality was enhanced by the models’ eyes, where feathers embellished the lashes.

The attention to detail, right down to flora-painted stockings, was to be expected from Valentino, but the way that Pierpaolo created beauty out of a contentious subject was unique.

“This is not a political message,” the designer insisted. “It’s very aesthetic, which may be more deep and more subtle, but definitely stronger for me. Every day, all of us talk about diversity, but we always talk about being free to wear something. Talking

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A symphony of colour

The Valentino Spring/ Summer 2019 Haute Couture collection featured a truly international cast of models, radiant colour combinations and dramatic silhouettes

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about diversity and beauty in haute couture is something different.” He elaborated, “I have been thinking about colours in a different way because you can invent new colours or reimagine combinations. Colour is a reflection of life, so when you see colour on different skins, of course, it looks different, like working on something you already know. Let’s say the collection is a very classic couture collection and there are floral prints but nothing ethnic at all… nothing to do specifically with black culture.”

The front-row audience, aside from Pierpaolo’s wife and two daughters, included film maker Sofia Coppola, movie star Kristin Scott Thomas, and designers Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy, Raf Simons, shoe supremo Christian Louboutin and Giambattista Valli, who was at fashion school in Rome with Pierpaolo.

Valentino himself said that the show made him feel proud and joyous. “Just the colours in chiffon, more than the embroideries, moved me,” the founding designer said. “Everything was so exceptional. Pierpaolo is so intelligent. He must love me because he has worked with me for more than 30 years and sometimes I saw things that I thought were in my memory.”

Attention to detail

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Filippo Fior / GoRunway

From top, intricate floral appliqué; feathered eyelashes; lace stockings worn with clear sandals to accent colour blocking

In their handcraft, the Valentino workers seemed to have exceeded their own stratospheric standards

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#SuzyCouture Azzedine Alaïa:

"My Roots are in Couture" The designer once dubbed ‘The King of Cling’ showed the variety and sensitivity of his work in every single piece of this unprecedented couture show 1 3 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 7

↑This page ¬ Linda Evangelista being fitted by Alaia in his studio, 1990

Andrea & Valentina / Design Museum; Getty; InDigital.TV; Sante D’Orazio

“I

t is not the first time that I have done haute couture, but it is to my own rhythm,” said Azzedine Alaïa after showing his first high fashion collection for six years.

“I’ve been doing couture since the start of my career,” he explained. “While I enjoyed – and still enjoy – ready-to-wear, my roots are in couture.

All my clothes are made first by myself, all patterns are traced by me, and then developed by my couture ateliers, where 30 people work every day only on couture pieces.

“Shows are not important to me,” the designer continued. “But it is one way of expressing my work.”

With these rare words, Alaïa’s passionate vision and intensely personal way of working made a clear statement in the confusion that is today’s haute couture. In all the chaos, he stands alone as keeper of the flame for design caressed by human hands.

Alaïa is nothing if not passionate. He showed it in the intense decoration of the clothes that opened the collection: the three-dimensional textures; the torrid red colour; Naomi Campbell offering not just a memory of her supermodel past but also proving how chic and wearable the new Autumn/Winter 2017 looks are.

At a time when everything in designer fashion seems to be questioned – with ready-to-wear creatives infiltrating the haute couture season and the see-now-buy-now philosophy as the antithesis of hands-on high fashion – Alaïa chose to make a statement.

The reclusive designer did that both with his intricately-made clothes and with his words.

“I don’t see the difference between couture and ready-to-wear,” he said. “Everyone should do what feels good to express creativity.”

At the heart of the show was a sense that the designer’s perky dresses, which had once been short and sweet, had now become elongated in line. The above-the-knee coats with the fluffy surface and three-dimensional patterns of roses at times linked up with the same pattern on

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up-to-the-knee boots. Or boots and hose just rose upwards to offer not a peek of bare flesh.

The thigh-high leopard print boots had a story to prove that Alaïa always takes the long view. The ‘Indiana’ boot was created by Salvatore Ferragamo in 1925 when this ‘shoemaker to the stars’ was working in California, but it could not have looked more relevant to today.

The same cover-up – modern elegance rather than anything prissy – applied to the clothes, which included a maxi-length python coat and textured dresses that stopped at the same point.

Evening dresses were slightly longer, some falling straight, but with inserts of metallic lines to give the effect of glittering pleats.

“It is mostly fabrics with specially created leathers and embroidery and some knitwear, of course, because it is such a tool for creativity,” Alaïa explained. “But wool here is treated as a fabric. It is knitted by the metre. And all patterns and shapes were made by me and in my ateliers.”

This, of course, is the essence of the Azzedine Alaïa creations. Each one is invented and worked on by the designer himself, as I can testify. I have watched him at work over the years and have learned to appreciate the intensity of his vision and the concentration that is required to turn a concept into clothing.

The pieces that surprised me most in this new collection were the patterned, fluffy coats, as if begging to be stroked. But it was the continuity of the show that was exceptional, in its roll-out of modern looks from start to finish and in the sense that the designer had not changed his vision in all the years I had known him, from a small studio in the rue de Bellechasse on the Left Bank of Paris to his position today with the Richemont company financing a shop on London’s Bond Street.

But however wide Alaïa’s reach, we can be sure that his heart will be in his studio with hands and eyes on every single piece.

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↑Clockwise from top right ¬ Alaïa with model and muse Farida Khelfa, circa 1990 ¬ Alaïa with Grace Jones modelling S/S 1986 ¬ Two looks from A/W 2017 ¬ An exhibit from ‘Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier’ at the Design Museum, London, 2018

“all my clothes are made first by myself, all patterns are traced by me and then developed by my couture ateliers”

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#SuzyCouture: Dolce & Gabbana:

Ode to Palermo The Italian duo cleared the square in Domenico’s home town for a show that translated history for a private international audience 0 8 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 7

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty

AS DOMENICO DOLCE skirted the

gilded angel atop the Baroque crown and applied the finishing touches to the models’ lips, he spilled out all his emotions about showing Alta Moda in his home town.

“Palermo! For me, it is my life, my memories – my family, my grandmother, my school, my father, my mother,” the designer said.

The line-up of colourful clothes – some cute and sporty, others intricate or noble – led to a finale of dresses sweeping across the pathway.

They were topped by feather headdresses swaying in the evening breeze.

By the time Stefano Gabbana had hugged the mayor of the southern Italian city, and the models in all their peacock colours had lined up among the marble statues in the Piazza Pretoria, private clients were waving their champagne flutes and leaping to register a purchase.

That evening, sitting at tables in the gardens of a former Benedictine monastery by the ocean, gazing at tables laden with toy characters carved in sugar, there was no doubt that the show was a palpable hit. For in a discrete side room, clients who had registered their choices by WhatsApp were ordering outfits, fighting as politely as possible to be the one and only owner.

There is a backstory to the design duo’s couture collections for women, men, women’s jewellery and, this season, the advent of Alta Gioielleria – men’s high jewellery – that went from eagle-shaped brooches to intricate decorative cigarette lighters. They were shown in a private palazzo with Damien Hirst butterflies on the walls and a view from the balcony over the jumbled stone buildings.

When Stefano and Domenico decided to close their D&G fashion line in 2011 and invest in high fashion, it touched a nerve in society.

A global class was growing, with big money, but one that was not defined or even recognised by society in general.

For some clients, the bi-annual event, which is grandiose without being stiff, has become a fixture on their social calendar. I recognise the same people – from Tokyo, Hawaii, Macau, Saint Petersburg – all sharing the experience. And judging by the crowded audience, the numbers are growing. For Autumn/Winter 2017 there was a wide variety of styles for any time of the year, in keeping with their globe-hopping.

The designers were not sitting on their laurels and trotting out the familiar, which was the feeling at last season’s Milan show. Rather, there were more daytime clothes: slim, sporty trousers with decorative tops; blouses with ballooning

↑From opposite page ¬ The 126 Alta Moda looks included billowing ballgowns encrusted with jewels and references to ‘Il Gattopardo’ ¬ Alta Gioielleria (High Jewellery) for men ¬ The runway in the piazza

sleeves. Pretty, but not fussy. Yet the essence of the work is hand decoration, dense or delicate, which turns each outfit into a treasure.

By the end of the show, the grand gowns were on more familiar territory – skirts ballooning over the runway were brushed with whimsical paintings. The headpieces made of plumes of multi-coloured feathers made a powerful finale.

What this Alta Moda show achieved was to create a cultural fashion universe. Domenico and Stefano used fragments of Palermo’s history – Arab to African, Spanish to Middle Eastern – and its deep Catholic heritage.

Not least was the reference to Il Gattopardo, or The Leopard, the book that defined Palermo’s history and whose film version by Luchino Visconti in 1963 brought it to the wider world.

For the high jewellery collection, Domenico and Stefano chose the very location from the film, the Palazzo Gangi Valguarnera, in which Italian actress Claudia Cardinale danced in the ballroom as a symbol of sensuality and societal change. That idea of bringing a fresh spirit to the historic was mirrored in the show.

For some clients, the bi-annual event has become a fixture on their social calendar

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Alhambra:

The First Feminist Jewellery?

The creations of Van Cleef & Arpels, from an era of revolt and counter-culture fifty years ago, are still relevant to independent women today PARIS, 1968: students building barricades; a giant youthquake

exploding across the city; young women in jeans and mini-skirts marching fast-forward; a whimsical hippie trail to exotic spots; and the invention of Alhambra – the first feminist jewellery.

What? Surely the creation of a four-leaf clover shape in a chain of stones by Parisian jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels, half a century ago when these riots took place, had little to do with free love, women’s liberation, or the deep societal changes of that era?

But after watching the tiny trefoils being cut by hand from semi-precious stones and seeing the garden of the French consulate in Marrakesh host a dressing-up tent containing an archive of the era’s hippie de luxe clothes, from Paco Rabanne’s metallic weaves to Yves Saint Laurent’s desert fatigues, I am convinced that jewellery, like fashion, tells a story of its time.

“It’s not necessarily about celebrating an anniversary, but it’s still symbolic: 50 years of a collection’s continuous existence,” said Nicolas Bos, the CEO and Design Director of Van Cleef & Arpels. He added to the glitter of the stones being shaped by company’s jewellers by holding a dinner party with thousands of twinkling candles in the El Badi Palace.

“I wanted to take you back to the archives, the history and also the research; how and when the Alhambra motif was created, its influence, and how the jewellery has remained relevant throughout 50 years of change – social, and in style and design,” Bos said. “And to review for us, for our clients and the industry, what is the meaning of this daywear jewellery.”

The true meaning is that in 1968 Van Cleef invented something relevant to its time, and to today: Jewels that are bought by

women, as much as for women. Bos would not reveal the ratio of men to women among his customers, I would be willing to bet that one of the most affordable styles – the yellow-gold Byzantine Alhambra with trefoils but no stone – is often bought by a woman for herself, choosing between the varied Alhambra collections, which make up roughly half of Van Cleef’s total jewellery offering.

Bos references the birth of the Alhambra – although no-one knows why the name of the Spanish citadel was chosen by Van Cleef. He explains that the company’s concept of daytime, ‘woman friendly’ jewellery can be traced back to the 1950s, when Princess Grace of Monaco wore whimsical pieces from its range of golden cats or elephants alongside her formal tiaras and sumptuous jewels. Those smaller ‘daytime’ pieces were found in the new Van Cleef boutique, which at that time offered a revolutionary attitude to buying fine jewels. The kind of jewellery that Alhambra defined from its inception could be seen as decoration for the light of day. Unlike high jewellery, it was not connected in the mind with grand and formal evening events.

“You can feel that beside the barricades, in 1968 there was more than just something in the air, it was a way to express something – and that is what connects fine jewellery to real life,” Bos says.

“High jewellery is something I love – we will always remember something exceptional and out of this world. But those magical pieces are beyond expensive and nothing to do with everyday life.

The Alhambra, to me, connects fine jewellery with women becoming more independent. At the same time, they are still appreciating an element of refinement and long-lasting value – and an element of transgression.”

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Hanneli Rupert; Laduma Ngxokolo; Van Cleef & Arpels

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“It expresses continuity and legacy instead of this idea that we have to burn everything to be reborn”

From left:

A necklace from the Alhambra collection; Suzy cuts a trefoil

The concept of change through continuity and legacy, rather than coming from behind the barricades, is a neat one. Put more simply, ‘luxury’– even in the context of jewellery – can have a relatively low starting point. And that might be a lure to those millennials, born with the Internet, who may not be big on the concepts of heritage and history.

I watched the hand-workers cut with absolute precision the outline in stones that can be as varied as black onyx to milky mother-of-pearl or translucent rock crystal. The shape can be traced to the quatrefoil architectural silhouettes across Arabia and including the decoration of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. And, of course, to the lucky four-leaf clover.

Does this really have a deep resonance with historical events in France so many years ago?

“In France, we love revolutions and strikes,” Bos replied.

“There is always this idea that for something to be born, the past has to die. It is very different in the UK and many countries, like Japan, and in Asia. From that period of 1968, Alhambra is an expression of change coming from Paris workshops, which had nothing to do with the barricades. It expresses continuity and legacy instead of the idea that we have to burn everything to be reborn. It may seem presumptuous, but that’s what we feel about what we do. I believe that there is still relevance in luxury today.”

Luxury Out of Africa: Hanneli Rupert of Okapi 13/06/2014

THE MYTHICAL ‘African unicorn’, more

commonly known as the okapi, has an air of magic about it. So it was not so surprising to see that designer Hanneli Rupert had waved her wand over an art gallery in London to turn it into a pop-up shop to display her handbags: Totes in the African continent’s blesbok leather (a type of antelope) or ostrich, each with the brand’s signature hardware – Springbok horns dangling from a gold-plated chain.

“It’s about exotic skins – but keeping them sustainable,” said Hanneli, who explained that every element of an Okapi bag is traceable, sustainable and ethically sourced.

The designer’s passion for her native South Africa led her to open a Cape Town boutique called Merchants on Long. But her plan is to expand internationally, and introduce African style to the world through signature rich colours, from bark brown through burning-sun yellow to Limpopo-River green for sturdy bags and sleek wallets. Those who missed the pop-up can see the collection at okapi.com.

From top: Laduma Ngxokolo

wears an Okapi x Capsule ‘Yemaja’, 2019; Hanneli Rupert

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Obscure Objects of Desire: Vetements Haute Couture The ‘anti-fashion’ fashion brand is invited to present a collection at the Haute Couture shows 20/05/2016

“FASHION NEWS SHOCK!” was my

↓Clockwise from below ¬ Demna Gvasalia backstage at Vetements A/W 2016 ¬ A/W 2016 ¬ Vetements muse Lotta Volkova, A/W 2016 ¬ Vetements S/S 2016 ¬ The cult DHL T-shirt from S/S 2016 ¬ A/W 2016

@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

reaction when I heard that Vetements has been selected by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, French fashion’s ruling body, to show a collection at the official opening of the Spring/ Summer 2017 Haute Couture season.

Demna and Guram Gvasalia, the brothers who founded Vetements, will show readyto-wear with ‘interpretations of haute couture’.

“We are guest members of the Couture; changing the whole season’s structure,” says Guram, who plays business yin to Demna’s creative yang.

A design collective, Vetements’ seemingly simple, over-sized sporty clothes, floral dresses, and famous ‘hoodie’ so beloved of Kanye West that it is a universal object of desire, fly off the racks. (Guram tells me that Net-a-Porter has an 83 per cent sell-through of the current range.)

Then there are the cult yellow and red ‘DHL’ T-shirts. “The CEO of DHL wears the T-shirt!

He takes selfies with it! It’s actually a special fabric, and a limited production of 250 pieces,” Guram says. “People complain about the price (some $330) but if you do 250 pieces and not one million T-shirts, this is what the price is.”

Now that Demna is Creative Director of Balenciaga, there is a second stream of cult clothing. “The idea is to reach your equilibrium,” Guram says. “If at the end of the season there is merchandise on sale, it means that it was over-produced. If you sell one piece less than the market desires, then it is sold out. If you make one piece extra, then it goes on sale and damages perception of the brand. It’s not just about supply and demand, but delivery. We deliver on time, there is no reproduction, no restock.”

“We had this hoodie with a metallic print that all the celebrities wore,” he continues, “and it reached this ridiculous stage when I had 7,000

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emails requesting it. It’s now on eBay for €3,500!

If we reproduced it, we could retire. But we don’t, out of respect for the people who bought it. Now people are afraid that they won’t be able to get the pieces. So when the new collection hits the market, the longing is a psychological thing.”

“It’s like Apple and the way they market their products; the interiors of their stores look like a church and for a new store they have music and thousands of people gathering,” he explains.

I remember that the Vetements Autumn/Winter 2016 collection was held in a church. Curiously, afterwards Demna and Guram learned from Pamela Golbin, Chief Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, that Cristóbal Balenciaga’s home backed on to the very same church their show was held in, and that he prayed there every day.

As I sit, mesmerised, by Guram at Sotheby’s café in London, I recall a recent meeting in Paris with Demna. What is the real story of these two brothers who came from nowhere to up-end fashion design and marketing?

They come from Georgia, or more precisely Abkhazia, which suffered a civil war following the break-up of the Soviet Union. When Demna was 12 the family fled their home, taking only their photo albums. They lived in Ukraine for two years and the brothers spent the rest of their teens in various locations in the former USSR. In 1993, Demna saw his first ever Vogue, which inspired him to study fashion in Antwerp at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he was taught

by Linda Loppa. Meanwhile, Guram went to business school in Germany, “wearing Ralph Lauren and being happy with my life”. He has

“People complain about the price, but the point is if you do 250 pieces and not one million T-shirts this is what the price is”

four degrees: “One in law, two in business, and a Masters from the London College of Fashion”.

Both brothers speak six languages: Russian, English, Georgian, French, Italian, and German, plus Demna has a “bit of Flemish”.

Like many Jewish people, buffeted by wars, they told me that they do not really “belong anywhere”, and Guram speaks every day to his French Jewish grandmother who follows his endless worldwide travels.

Guram has followed a different path from his older brother: “We grew up together, but are on very different roads in life.” Guram is a business wizard, filling my head with his analysis of fashion in the online age, the celebrity circus, and managing expectations. In 2012 he wrote a book, Size Zero, “a guide to spiritual management and how to find yourself ”. “I like the idea of playing with the supply and demand curve,” he says, about taking complete control of global distribution to 200 stores. His summer will be spent touring North America, “going to every major city where we have partners to understand if it is the right place to be”. At the same time, he is surveying a successful conquest of South Korea, where K-Pop stars such as G-Dragon have put Vetements on the hip Asian fashion map.

I think of Martin Margiela, where the Gvasalia brothers both worked, though not when Martin was a lone voice quietening the raucous tone of Eighties fashion. I also wonder why Balenciaga, recognised by his peers as “the master of us all”, was not Demna’s choice for a couture show.

What will Vetements’ couture look like?

Guram tells me the story of Vetements’ recycled jeans, and why they are worth their more-than €1,000 price for the complex treatment of denim, de-bacterialised and reconstructed from a patchwork of castaway trousers to make the old new again. Handwork for each piece? Six hours. Haute jeans by Vetements. That has a certain ring to it.

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#SuzyCouture: Jean Paul Gaultier: Smoking, No Smoking Jean Paul refreshes the Fez and reminds us he was gender-friendly thirty years ago

InDigital.TV; Ben Toms / Luncheon Magaine

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MILLINER STEPHEN JONES gasped as male models, dressed with a tailored but witty elegance, walked the Jean Paul Gaultier runway wearing variations on the Fez, that North African headdress that is so often seen as exotic in period films about the Orient.

Sitting front row, near Naomi Campbell, Farida Khelfa and the French contenders to the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, Madame Monsieur, Stephen told me the story of how, as an unknown young designer in Paris back in 1984, the already-famous Gaultier asked him to make hats. He called this first Eighties Fez in velvet, with face mask attached, ‘Mystère’.

There was not much mystery to this current Gaultier show, though. It was based on sharp and often extremely inventive tailoring, although, as ever, the designer would conceal his brilliance with tricks and turns.

It seems ironic that while the ‘fashion shock’ of the moment is streetwear elevated to high fashion, Gaultier continues to break only the codes he knows. Hence a set devoted to the ‘Smoking, No Smoking’ tropes from thirty years ago, with giant posters on the walls and curtains painted with fumes of smoke.

What cannot be denied is that since the start of his career, Gaultier was in the vanguard, even the team leader, of fashion’s gender-blending.

Concepts that both sexes accept so casually today were once something quite shocking.

Let’s hope that the fun and games along the gender-neutral path that Gaultier started to walk in the Eighties will appear in ‘Fashion Freak Show’, his theatrical fashion-revue hybrid, at the Folies Bergère in September.

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Jean Paul Gaultier’s riff on the genderneutral smoking suit for his haute couture, 2018; ‘Mystère’ by Stephen Jones

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#SuzyMFW Fendi: Karl’s Last Stand After Lagerfeld’s more than half-century at the helm, his final Fendi show still had fresh elements 21/02/2019

with a curvy jacket, a stiff bow at the neckline, and thigh-high shorts on the model who swanned down the runway. Nor did it when Fendi had a chic exit line of a bold ribbon and a big bow bouncing at the back.

How could Karl Lagerfeld be dead? He popped up on film at the show’s end, displaying his dexterity as he drew yet another new design.

He told me recently that Fendi had amassed 50,000 drawings during the 54 years that he had been Artistic Director, the longest tenure of any designer at a single fashion house.

Alessandro Lucioni / GoRunway

IT DID NOT FEEL like a funeral, not

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←From opposite page ¬ Silvia Venturini Fendi at the A/W 2019 show, beneath a message from Lagerfeld ¬ An Italian palette of colours after a procession of beige ¬ Loosely draped and neat bows softened the silhouette

It was only when we moved backstage, with David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ on the soundtrack and everyone in the Fendi team weeping, that it seemed possible that this colossus of a designer had left us. He died on 19 February after completing shows for Chanel and Fendi.

“I never wanted this moment to happen,” said Silvia Venturini Fendi, the remaining symbol of the furrier family that started the brand back in 1925 and who had been Karl’s partner in brand-building for at least 20 years.

Now that Fendi is owned by LVMH, it was the youngest of the Arnault family, Alexandre, 27, who remembered somberly his year working at Fendi in 2016. “I wanted to be here to show respect and to remember that year,” he said.

The rest of the Fendi friends, supporters and craftspeople were too overwhelmed to speak as they grasped each other, sobbing.

What had Karl brought to Fendi? Continuity, of course, the most important service to a house that bears another’s name – and perhaps the least appreciated. His grasp of Italy, with its mix of noble sculpture and baroque decoration,

made Fendi into a Janus, with three parts elegance to one part froufrou.

That had meant, in the past, flowers and furbelows, most especially for the Fendi bags and their bread-shaped, bestselling ‘baguette’.

That reappeared this season, transformed into an embossed pillow with a utility strap.

This Autumn/Winter 2019 collection had more than a breath of northern wind, from its sharp Pagoda-shaped shoulders to the nip in the waist, while pleated trousers were placed firmly to the masculine side. “The sartorial – that was quite new,” said Silvia of the firm tailoring.

What blew in from Italy were the colours – green, orange and sunshine yellow, compared to earlier offerings of beige.

Perhaps, too, the seductive side was drawn in the semi-transparent skirts revealing legs; or a sportier version in netted see-through.

The surprise element was what Silvia Fendi described as ‘the romantic trace of a silk foulard’, meaning the satin bows, made from silk scarves, that gave a lush elegance to the back of otherwise sober outfits. Karl, who was never known as a

romantic, had been showing his softer side recently at Fendi with flowers.

The bows served the same purpose: Protestant cutting versus Catholic decoration.

The show included a scattering of furs, the roots of Fendi, and the subject of angry howls and chants in an anti-fur demonstration outside the company building.

Where Karl intended to take Fendi – a separation from fur or a focus on sportswear – we shall now never know. His presence had seemed eternal.

As Silvia herself put it: “The bond between Karl Lagerfeld and Fendi is fashion’s longest love story. He will touch our lives for years to come.

I am profoundly saddened by his passing and deeply touched by his constant care and perseverance until the very end.

“When we called just a few days before the show, his only thoughts were on the richness and beauty of the collection,” Silvia continued.

“He will be so missed.”

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#SuzyPFW: Dries Van Noten:

Melancholic Beauty The Belgian designer made imperfect flowers and their subtle colours symbolic of current times 28/02/2019

Andrea Adriani, Alessandro Lucioni / GoRunway

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“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” said Dries Van Noten backstage, rolling his Rs to give a hard edge to the soft flowers rambling over his Autumn/Winter 2019 collection.

“I didn’t want sweet, sweet flowers,” he continued. “It really had to be the flower in our garden in October – roses with an edge, when you see a disease on the roses; the black spots.”

Women in black – seven of them with padded puffer cover-ups – started the Dries show. But even before that, there was a sense of sadness in the low-ceilinged, underground bunker with heavy atonal music filling the air.

Nature won out in the end, as autumnal roses made a shadowy appearance on a lilac top; or pink blooms shone through a shimmering transparent coat, as if caught in a rain shower.

“The roses were literally from the garden.

We made a small video to look at, but it was really the idea of having the right feeling of strangeness,” the designer explained. “Flowers can be sweet and romantic, but it had to be a vision of roses from now, not from the past.”

That gentle poignancy explained why he opened the show with grey pinstripe suits and ended on a single tailored outfit at the end.

“For me, you have the masculine side and the extremely feminine side with the roses. The grey outfits were the balance between men and

women,” he said. As Gertrude Stein’s reference to a rose in her 1913 poem, ‘Sacred Emily’, suggests absolute beauty, I was interested by the ‘imperfect’ Dries angle. He seemed to have a consciously Belgian, almost Calvinistic, approach to flowers, compared to luxurious blooms from Europe’s sunny south.

Poetry and passion are familiar to the Dries ethic, but this show was played out in a deliberately minor key. Dries described the greys of the tailoring as “graphite, slate, charcoal” and the pastels as “powdery mauve, duck-egg blue, eau de nil”, although those gentle shades were illuminated by “imperial yellow”.

The result was a subtle, restrained beauty, the colours mixed as if in a fading autumnal flowerbed, with mauve and turquoise often as base colours, but with flourishes of vivid rose pink at the top of a shirt or golden leaves cascading over a muted-mauve dress.

Sometimes a rose would protrude from a shoulder as a purple coat gently slipped off.

Every single garment – from a plain sweater touched with colour to wild patterning in different shades – had a melancholy beauty that reflected so perfectly the angst and foreboding of current times.

It made for a fine and thought-provoking collection from the sensitive Dries Van Noten.

“The result was a subtle, restrained beauty, the colours mixed as if in a fading autumnal flowerbed”

Clockwise from top:

For Dries Van Noten A/W 2019, the designer chose a sombre palette offset by the colours of an autumnal flowerbed

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#SuzyPFW: A Powerful Debut at Chloé Using skills honed in previous roles, Natacha Ramsay-Levi has a bright new beginning at the French fashion house 2 8 / 0 9/ 2 0 1 7

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty; InDigital.TV

A HARD-WORKING, long-serving star is born. Cheers rang

out at Chloé for new designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi, whose modern – and very French – take on the whimsical, Flower Child generation was cheered to the echo.

The loudest clapping came from designer Nicolas Ghesquière on the front row, who described the emotional moment of seeing his right-hand woman at Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton step out on her own after 16 years. But there was pride, too, that his protégée could have achieved such a flawless start to her new career.

The most important and powerful quality of the pretty mid-calf dresses, decorative tops, and elaborate sweaters with hug-me-tight jeans was that it was all ineffably and deliciously French – the world of exquisite macaroons and discreet sexual allure. In a fashion industry that prides itself on its global reach, the designer achieved that most difficult of styles: local and global. It came in the free-flowing hair and subtle make-up, but also in the attitude.

“For me it’s very French and that means very cinematographic – like it’s worn by a lot of actresses in French movies,” Natacha said. “That’s the first thing.”

“I also think that Chloé has to be easy to understand. It’s important that it works with the personality of the woman; not just to draw a character, but to give a woman the possibility to express her own personality. It’s the mix and match between these two.”

So what was the designer’s star quality? Probably her sophisticated use of decoration, which often had references to Chloé’s history, but used differently in the 21st century.

Ever since the late 1990s, the house of Chloé has hired British designers – from Stella McCartney through Phoebe Philo to outgoing Chloé designer Clare Waight Keller – who brought an easy attitude but seldom captured the insouciant, youthful elegance of the new arrival.

Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, the company CEO, should be congratulated for nurturing the previous stars, but especially for choosing the new designer for a brand shaped from 1966 and through the 1970s by rising star Karl Lagerfeld. The executive had a word to say about the new focus on a more Gallic attitude.

“The French woman has the world ‘à pied’ – at her feet,” de La Bourdonnaye said, explaining the reason why so many Asian women, for example, have warmed to the brand.

So what was so great about the show? Primarily it was the ease with which Natacha melded decoration with modern cutting.

Then there was a blending of hard and soft in a bodice peppered with rivets yet with soft flaring sleeves. A sporty ease bonding with prettiness worked well.

Most striking of all, the designer said all this in just 21 looks – a mere bagatelle by the standards of current shows.

Were there traces of her previous fashion life? Probably, in the square shoulders, mannish trousers and maybe in the imaginative bags. But this was a Chloé moment. And the best of fashion debuts.

Clockwise from top left:

Natacha Ramsay Levi’s debut collection for Chloé S/S 2018; her fomer boss, Nicolas Ghesquière, cheers her on; Natacha with Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye

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#SuzyLFWNG Maxhosa By Laduma: A Unique Expression of African Style The South African brand creates colourful knit sportswear with a fresh, modern twist 06/11/2018

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Andile Buka; Alessandro Lucioni / GoRunway; Laduma Ngxokolo; Lagos Fashion Week

IN JOHANNESBURG, the leaves are not

falling – even if the rain might be. Nor is this the end of a long-drawn out, sun-soaked autumn, as seen in Europe this year. Rather, this is the burgeoning bloom of a South African summer.

But whatever the season, rain or shine, Maxhosa By Laduma is designed for customers who like modern knitwear. Laduma Ngxokolo, the South African textile designer behind the brand, took his talent from South Africa to London’s Central Saint Martins and back again, thrilling his many collectors with knits inspired by traditional Xhosa beadwork.

A star of Lagos Fashion Week 2018 – and the only designer I saw focusing on knitwear – he explained the geometric patterns and unexpected colours of his stylish sportswear.

“I’d say my wish is to produce an evolution of African culture in fashion,” said the designer, whose fashion collection soundtrack was by African hip-hop artist Manu WorldStar.

“Over the last couple of years, I have tried to create a utopian type of luxury brand that has an element of African Futurism,” Laduma said.

“I started the brand in 2010, while I was doing my BA at Nelson Mandela University. Then I travelled out of my home city for the first time and came to London. So that was my first-hand experience of what was happening in the world.”

“I looked around and I couldn’t find any case studies of African luxury brands – that’s why I started to fill that gap,” Laduma said.

“Ultimately, what I want to show is that Africa is capable of producing luxury goods that sit next to other international luxury goods.”

The first time I saw Laduma’s striking work was in 2012 in Cape Town at Hanneli Rupert’s concept store, Merchants on Long. Back then, there were stylish made-in-Africa handbags and a small variety of local fashion designers, among which Maxhosa By Laduma stood out for its colour, clean lines, and dynamism. Now, there is a Hanneli-Laduma collaboration with the Okapi accessories range, which sent cross-body bags, pouches and belts down the Lagos Fashion Week runway in Nigeria.

This year has been crucial to the growth of Maxhosa By Laduma, because the designer has bought one of his supplier’s factories, enabling him to develop his interest in fashion textiles in a broader way.

“The African textile industry has deteriorated – 90 per cent of clothing is made in China and there are very limited outlets. Although a lot of us aspire to be in that space, we have a limited infrastructure to manufacture our products,” Laduma explained. “We have the commodities – mohair wool, and various other opulent fibres – but we export most of them. People are surprised when I talk about job creation – the factory that I bought was going to close down, but I recovered about 80 jobs.”

Laduma’s work in wool – perhaps a mannish coat knitted in squares, at an angle; or tribal

geometric patterns for women’s ponchos and trousers – express the knitting craftsmanship that he was taught by his late mother when he was 16. But, significantly, the patterns are modernist and angular, not the complex sequences of South African traditional dress, which can look tribal and exclusive.

“The story that I want to share is that culture is very important, and in the modern world it is disappearing,” he said. “I wasn’t born in a poor area, I was born and raised in the city, so I didn’t know much about my culture until I researched it. Africa was the centre of slavery, which in some part has diminished a lot of people’s dignity and selfconfidence. As a brand, I want to reclaim the dignity and confidence of black culture.”

Laduma’s skill is to strike a balance between ethnic and elegant, ancient and modern.

“Some of our clients from the African diaspora get emotionally connected to what we do because it celebrates black history,” he says. “That is why I play with a lot of references. I learn about the negativity, and find new ways of making culture contemporary.”

↑Opposite page and above ¬ Laduma Ngxokolo ¬ Maxhosa by Laduma, Lagos Fashion Week 2018

Marc Jacobs: Couture Power 14/02/2019 The exquisite drama of pitch dark, illuminated briefly by twin spotlights from above: That was the spirit of the Marc Jacobs show that closed New York this season.

The clothes were equally dramatic; roomy coats in lush fabrics, or shorter with A-line silhouettes. For a few seconds in the spotlight came a puffed evening gown and a small hat with a feathery decoration.

A tailored coat, sliced off at the knee, and a bright yellow evening gown were both equally dramatic, reflected in the mirrored floor. Yet there was a sense of intimacy, even with relatively few onlookers in the gigantic space.

Two seasons ago, Marc Jacobs first showed his fascination with haute couture, in that case a reinterpretation of Yves Saint Laurent in haute mode – big hats and all.

For Autumn/Winter 2019, the spirit was closer to Valentino, with graceful clothes and gentle tailoring; respectful to women, but with giant gestures. They included coats shaped as if by a compass, circling the body; capes with animalskin prints, and the same puffed-up shape for a dress with pink flowers smothering the surface.

The featherwork alone created an airy glamour that seemed nearer to Paris

than Manhattan. So did the chic hats by Stephen Jones.

Yet the celebrity line-up suggested that Jacobs now has an American following.

This peaceful elevation of fashion from a designer once on the wild side was a beautiful ending to New York Fashion Week.

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Photography Geraldine Lynch

A carnival of creativity Vogue interprets the trends that become the culture.

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Christopher Bailey’s final collection for Burberry A/W 2018 was an ode to the Eighties

#SuzyLFW Burberry: Street Smart With a Dash of Heritage Christopher Bailey bows out with a fun look back to his teenage years in the Eighties 18/02/2018

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IN A VAST, EMPTY bus depot in West London, to the sound of Eighties pop star Jimmy Somerville (not quite drowned out by anti-fur protestors), Burberry said farewell to Christopher Bailey after 17 years.

Creative Director since 2004, and CEO for the last five years, the designer from Yorkshire in northern England, re-scaled for the 21st century a company that originally made clothes for the British military – hence the trench coat that was having yet another turn with its signature check pattern.

The show was not so much a tear-jerking event, but rather one filled with love and laughter and a mighty pile-up of celebrities.

The group of famous faces was haloed by Chelsea Clinton, with Paris Jackson (daughter of superstar Michael), Keira Knightley, director Steve McQueen with daughter Alex, Sienna Miller, Naomi Watts and so many more you could not spot because the cavernous area was so dimly lit by an art installation. It consisted of old school lamps swinging around, while the only other light illuminated the collection.

By the end of the show, the multi-coloured sportswear with a vivid scarlet, yellow, green and orange palette beamed out to compete with a richly embroidered coat or a shirt so loud in its mix of Burberry plaid with Versace-esque gilding that it looked like a crazy knock-off from a market stall. Yet many of these gaudy shout-outs were actually reviving the Eighties

creations under license from the company’s years in the wilderness.

“Joy and reminiscence,” said Christopher Bailey, as I fought past Naomi Campbell to ask him how he felt about the show. It was certainly joyful, with so many crazy plays on colour – from the scribbled pattern on a blush-pink hooded sweatshirt, worn with rainbow sparkles on a white shirt; through multicoloured ceramic flowers on a mesh dress; and, finally, for a dramatic ending, model Cara Delevingne in a rainbow coalition of colours on a velvet cloak, where the traditional beige Burberry checks peaked out from inside.

It was all a mad mix, heavy on cool guys loping down the runway wearing outfits with patterns of kids’ boardgames and riffs on Burberry’s leaping horse. It was all good fun and a hyper-modern, streetwise mix. But something was missing. Surely the fun and the cool should have been anchored by what Burberry has stood for since its beginning – its connection with the armed forces? Beige gabardine raincoats may be less fun than a bold jacket in scarlet, orange, yellow, grass green, bright blue and purple – but they hold the weight of heritage.

I looked online to see what was on the capsule see-now, buy-now Burberry collection at FarFetch.com, and there was a vintage check wrap coat at £1,990 with an offer of matching sneakers and cap. I guess heritage is still a Burberry bestseller.

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#SuzyLFW Burberry:

Riccardo Tisci’s Playful But Respectful Approach The new designer in the British house pushed forward the classics plus witty elements for women and men 1 8 / 9/ 2 0 1 8

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fter the last elegant, beige trench coat had left the Burberry stage – along with a newly designed logo on shirts; women in slithering black dresses; and men in suits or funky sportswear – Riccardo Tisci, Burberry’s new Chief Creative Officer, described his vision.

The intensely Italian designer, who was recently Creative Director at Givenchy in Paris, offered his thoughts after a well-received, low-key but massive display of clothes – without his usual front row of celebrity friends such as Beyoncé or Kanye West. Nor were there the expected iconoclastic interventions from an official collaboration with the forever Punk, Vivienne Westwood.

There were a few jazzy elements, especially for men, but references to Bambi were outdone by prints of Shakespearean

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characters, presented as if the Old Bard’s theatre programmes had been laundered on to the fabric.

Tisci, reminiscing about his student years at London’s Central Saint Martins, to which he won a scholarship in the Nineties, was reverential about ‘Great Britain’ – known more tersely in current usage as the ‘UK’. But he knew that. He named the entire show ‘Kingdom’.

“It’s new Burberry, but keeping the heritage.

I wanted a mix of things, like an essence, or like petrol,” the designer said backstage in the vast mail sorting office in Vauxhall, converted into a show space. His smooth working relationship with CEO Marco Gobbetti made the event seem streamlined and efficient.

“I have tried to build a wardrobe for mother and daughter and father and son. I want to show everything under the umbrella of Burberry,” Tisci said, although instead of typically British rain, the show started with the roof opening dramatically to let in a flood of autumn sunlight.

Disney played a small role in the collection, with Bambi references appearing as clever tilts at the more stolid tailoring that opened the show. A classic British passport dangled from a chain as a sneaky reference to Brexit.

But Tisci’s view of England was seen through rose-coloured spectacles of the past. He seemed wedded to the late Eighties and the Margaret Thatcher era, when women still followed Queen Elizabeth II’s style, with smart tailoring in town and Burberry raincoats. The beige jackets and slim skirts, and especially Thatcher’s pussy bows, will now be seen in the international world of working women. There were enough jacket-and-skirt outfits in that section of the 134 Burberry looks to fill any sophisticated closet.

But the designer’s real fetish is Punk, which a young Tisci experienced on his first visit to England at age 17 and once again at St Martin’s.

“I love music, I love rave, I love to follow DJs, but coming back this year I saw that this new generation of English boys and girls are different.

They don’t like rock anymore, more things like rap, which is not British, but at the same time in the blood is the fact they are Punks,” Tisci said. “The way they approach fashion is very interesting, like using the clothes of their parents or mixing oversize with vintage, like they used to for Punk in the moment of revolution.”

In his 13 years at Givenchy, Tisci’s style hovered between haute couture and rap, and he has shown similar skills at Burberry. After a rather dull but utterly wearable display of men in suits (with a few tricks like a truncated waistcoat across the chest), the menswear broke out into something far more daring and cool than ‘smart casual’. Baggy shirts with Bambi motifs, a trench patterned with graffiti and all sorts of story-

Riccardo Tisci’s first collection for Burberry featured imaginative detailing and literary references to reflect his outlook on ‘Britishness’

“It’s new Burberry, but keeping the heritage.

I wanted a mix of things, like an essence, or like petrol” telling objects plonked on the chest made that section a Wow! of millennial looks.

The women’s collection of clothes for hip kids was also well thought out, with a focus on skinny stretch leg warmers and mini skirts.

Only a concluding line-up of slim black dresses, elegant and modern, seemed an afterthought.

My memories of Riccardo Tisci go back a long way, to his very first presentation in Milan, when I found backstage a nervous young man lighting votive candles to pray for a successful show.

I have since followed every single one of his collections and admired the see-saw of designs from this good Catholic and family man, whose mother has been to so many shows (including the new Burberry), and who also has a wilder rock’n’roll side that has underlined so much of his work and made it vibrant and contemporary.

Perhaps because I am British, and living through the turmoil of Brexit and the despair of so many young people struggling to pay for university or to find a job, I found something missing from this celebration of ‘Britishness’.

I was also there in the Eighties to see the flip side of Thatcher’s world, when fights with the trade unions turned off the country’s electricity and a frustrated young generation spent hours creating aggressive hair-dos and torn clothes that became romanticised as ‘Punk’.

I also know that fading pictures of men in Burberry raincoats and army caps still sit on pianos and above fireplaces across the UK to remember those who died for their country.

Perhaps Tisci, after a year or so at Burberry, will take off those rose-tinted spectacles and develop this British-rooted brand on more 21st-century lines.

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CONGRATULATIONS SUZY ON YOUR 5TH ANNIVERSARY AT VOGUE INTERNATIONAL.

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It’s All Change For Spring / Summer 2019 The winds of fashion are blowing in new directions to reflect the times we’re in VO G U E JA PA N P R I N T E D I T I O N , DECEMBER 2018

First published as ‘Stripping Down the Spring/Summer 2019 Season’ for Vogue Japan, 12/2018. Images: InDigital.TV

SINCE WHEN HAS A NEW WARDROBE for the

Spring/Summer season meant focussing on just two vital pieces?

For the top half of the body there is the bold, broad-shouldered jacket as seen in its most dramatic form at Balenciaga. For legs, it’s Chop! Chop! cycling shorts, clinging to the thighs and breaking off above the knee. When this leggy look appears at Prada (mixed with decorative knee-high socks) you know it will be a winner.

Wear with a bold blazer, and that is the look of the season. It appeared at Chanel’s beach parade, with barefoot models striding in the sand alongside lapping water.

The fashion story is all in the mix – of attitude, fabrics and gender. On one side there is calm, as seen in the shades of beige from Riccardo Tisci for his first collection at Burberry. Simplicity applies also to the ‘boilersuit’ – an all-in-one garment seen on sporty figures at Off-White or Stella McCartney.

That utility element threads through the collections, from the wetsuits of LVMH-winner Marine Serre to the ever-graceful Hermès, which sent out a one-piece garment in a show held at the famous French racetrack, the Hippodrome de Longchamp.

On the other side, fashion has an opposite focus: glitter, fringing and feathers. But that too is tied together with sportswear, as in Balmain’s very different plays on sparkle and denim.

Added to all this are relatively simple clothes with treatments that recall the Seventies and Eighties. Etro, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, has added surfer accessories to colourful clothes; while Proenza Schouler harks back to hippie years, with tie-anddye patterns that are also found at Prada.

Utility definitely scores higher than decorative clothes this season. The Givenchy models walked at high speed down a flat runway, clutching iPads and accessories that looked like they were designed for a working woman. And even Giambattista Valli has introduced streamlined tuxedos.

By contrast, Simone Rocha plays with ruffles and Erdem has a giant bow in flowing fabric from the neck all the way down the spine.

So is fashion in 2019 all about contrasts? Designers are keeping things simple, but adding a touch of excitement, as in the leopard prints that appeared in disparate shows from Tom Ford to up-and-coming Richard Quinn.

Decoding fashion is challenging in the current era of feminism and gender equality. Maybe it is the moment to stick to sporty simplicity. Surfing, cycling and skating seem the way to go.

Just in case that seems a little too simple, there is one unmissable element: sunshine shades. From burnished golden colours through yellow and orange down to an earthy terracotta, fashion for 2019 looks like a celebration of summer.

Yet there is one sign of change: the decline of sports shoes.

Really? When every other designer seems to show sneakers? But not Hedi Slimane in his first collection for Celine. His entire Spring/Sumer 2019 collection for men and women does not have a single sneaker in sight.

Clockwise from top:

Looks for S/S 2019 from Chanel; Etro; Simone Rocha; Riccardo Tisci’s first collection for Burberry; and Olivier Rousteing (centre) at Balmain

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Givenchy: Clare Waight Keller Unveils the Spirit of Haute Couture After creating the royal wedding dress for Meghan Markle, the British designer pays homage to the maison’s high-fashion founder 18/06/2018

WITH ‘MOON RIVER’ dipping and diving on the soundtrack, the first Givenchy-minded haute couture show since the death of its founder was both grand and gracious. Yet this was not just a tribute to ‘Le Grand Hubert’, as he was affectionately known, it was also to the glory that designer Clare Waight Keller has earned for the house with Meghan Markle’s wedding dress.

Clare is only just starting to appreciate her achievement. “It’s funny,” she said. “It takes a while until you understand the impact you have had. When you are in it, the whole thing just feels like you are working, doing your bit.”

“It’s an amazing part of history, so I am super proud,” the designer continued, as she relived that magical moment when the secret she had kept even from her husband and children was beamed across the world at the royal wedding.

But today, all eyes were on the formal gardens of the Archives Nationales, its paths inset with mirrors, as photographers jostled to see what Meghan might wear next. The answer was more of the same, as Clare used the sweep of a compass or angular shapes to create an interplay between masculine and feminine.

On a day when France paid reverence at the Panthéon to Simone Veil, the French political activist, intellectual, and fierce champion of women’s rights, the noble Givenchy collection seemed apt – if a little formal. While other couture houses might be looking to street style for relevance, it would be a very grand personality, male or female, who would choose to step out in silver or scarlet with fluffy textures that contrasted with the flat metallic materials.

Even the many black outfits were showpieces.

“For me, it is always about the difference between masculine and feminine, and I think it was for Hubert as well. When I dig deep in the archives, he had a real masculine sense through the shoulders, and that is part of the language that I am developing,” the designer said, bringing out her white-coated hand-workers to take a bow before the audience, seated on the lawn.

Backstage inside the grandiose building, mood boards included Aubrey Hepburn in her various pencil-thin poses and images of metallic jewellery. “I was searching a lot through the Sixties and Seventies, and that feeling of cleanness and sharpness felt very modern. And the futuristic moment felt right to tap into now.”

Making haute couture relevant in an era of urban trends is not easy. Many of the Givenchy outfits – a dress mingling glitter-golden pleats and pure white, or one of those Meghan bateau necklines – made quite a statement. Such gowns, often with covered-up areas or swooping lines, would make a new look for the red carpet.

But the day clothes, unlike Waight Keller’s own white top and slim black leather skirt, seemed preternaturally bold. That is not meant as a criticism, rather more of a question mark about exactly who would make dressing-up such a strong statement. For example, the metallic collars and silvered headpieces were all fit, perhaps, for a queen.

The real difficulty for successors to Hubert de Givenchy is that he never had a powerful personal vision; rather, a desire to make his clients feel good, which is not such a modest endeavour. The original designer had followed two great mentors, first Balenciaga and then Yves Saint Laurent. In this couture show, the noble grandeur in liquid fabrics made a statement – one that apparently came directly from Givenchy himself, who met Clare before he died in March this year, age 91.

Unlike Givenchy’s previous Creative Directors, including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, and Riccardo Tisci, Clare has made a conscious effort to follow in the founder’s footsteps and embrace the codes of the house.

“Monsieur Givenchy said that I should be ‘really strong and have something that felt very pure’,” the current couturier revealed. “He believed in elegance and chic, and I wanted to do something that was respectful to him.”

But who is today’s couture customer? Royalty from the 21st-century makes a good starting point. And maybe this Givenchy designer can link her vision more firmly to modernity. But, again, perhaps this is a moment when change is less meaningful in couture than it is in fast-paced ready-to-wear.

I have known Clare’s work for over a decade, from her time as Artistic Director of knitwear brand Pringle of Scotland (2005-2011), to Chloé (2011-2017), the French brand of cool, quirky

“I searched through the Sixties and Seventies, and that cleanness and sharpness, that futuristic moment, felt right to tap into now”

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style. She had cut her fashion teeth as a stylist for Calvin Klein, followed by Ralph Lauren Purple Label and then Gucci with Tom Ford, before joining Pringle as a designer in her own right. But when she took on her role at Givenchy in 2017, her casual, ‘Chloé girl’ aesthetic was given a grander dimension.

“It was an extraordinary experience to have the most amazing laboratory of techniques at my hands, mixing incredibly big volumes of dresses, and then narrow columns, while working on texture,” she said, as she was congratulated backstage by LVMH supremo Sidney Toledano.

I recently asked the Chairman and CEO how and where this resurgence of high fashion began.

“It was Clare herself who wanted to restart haute couture,” Toledano replied. “She has given a good energy to couture, taking up the heritage of Monsieur Givenchy.”

About the royal wedding, Toledano was jubilant. “It was such a surprise. She didn’t tell anyone,” he said. “For me it was a moment of ‘grande honneur’. But the key was that she had developed a relationship with the Duchess.”

Has the concept of woman-to-woman been the essence of Clare’s work from the outset? In her Pringle years, art played an important role, alongside her relationship with Tilda Swinton.

The actress was a fiery mascot, but Clare was smart enough to embrace the work of Scottish artists as inspiration without overdoing it.

I have kept the letter that she sent me in March 2011, when she resigned from Pringle to join Chloé, where she took over from acclaimed designers including British stars Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo.

On reading the news, I asked when we could meet in Paris. Clare revealed the strength that has enabled her to balance motherhood and fashion at the highest level, emailing back, “I would have been so delighted to meet, but unfortunately everything seems to be happening this week and I’m actually going into hospital tomorrow to have my baby boy!”

Harrison is now six, and with her 15-year-old twin daughters, Charlotte and Amelia, and her American architect husband, Philip Keller, Clare is a fine example of a modern working mother.

Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, the CEO of Chloé, is as generous to Clare now as he was when she worked for him. “I think she’s a very talented, creative person,” he told me. “She has a very strong balance between the imperative of creation and the imperative of rationality.

She’s always very open to dialogue, is an amazing creative, and is very balanced in her life as well, with three wonderful children. She has a very even keel and a personality that allows people to feel comfortable around her, which is why she is very strong on collaborations.”

He was as surprised as everyone else to see Clare at the wedding on television, crouching behind Meghan to straighten out her train. “I was totally surprised, but happily surprised,” he said.

“It felt very moving and very emotional.”

Two weeks ago, at the award ceremony for the 2018 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, Louis Vuitton’s Director and Vice President, Delphine Arnault, expressed her combined emotions of joy and sadness about the royal wedding dress. “It was a big surprise, magnificent!” Delphine said. “But I thought of Hubert de Givenchy and I am sad he didn’t see it. He would have been so pleased and proud to see Meghan looking so beautiful in Givenchy.”

Includes extracts from ‘After the Royal Wedding Dress, it’s Back to the Future’, 2 July 2018

Clockwise from opposite page:

All ensembles, Givenchy Haute Couture A/W 2018; inspiration from the founder’s archive of dramatic looks; Clare Waight Keller, current Creative Director of Givenchy

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@SuzyMenkesVogue Ready, Hedi, Go! For his debut at Celine, Hedi Slimane’s show was both a shock and a display of strength, even erasing the acute accent from the logo 2 9/ 0 9/ 2 0 1 8

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Clockwise from left:

The S/S 2019 collection was titled ‘Paris La Nuit’ and showed that Celine was clearly casting off the decade-long Phoebe Philo era, so that women could “wear Celine after 5pm” as LVMH CEO Sidney Toledano put it. Slimane made a clear decision to carry on where he had left off at Saint Laurent, with slender and sharp silhouettes; Karl Lagerfeld and Lady Gaga at Celine S/S 2019

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¬ Summer 2014 looks from Stella Jean (left and right); and Duaba Serwa by Nelly Aboagye & Mina Evans-Anfom (centre)

The Beat of Africa Resounds From the Catwalk 1 6 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 4

Luca Sorrentino, Courtesy of AltaRoma

JUBILANT PRINTS on controlled

silhouettes, joyous embellishment to sporty shapes – the Beat of Africa resounded from the catwalk at this week’s Alta Roma event.

Ever since half-Italian, half-Haitian designer Stella Jean won the Who Is On Next award in 2011 – and was subsequently chosen by Giorgio Armani to show in his Milan premises – she has become a torch-bearer for Africa in fashion.

Her Stella Jean collection was a model of exuberance and restraint. My heart lifted on seeing her vivid patterns and graphic checks, controlled by slimline outfits – for both sexes.

A pair of slender trousers, the waist rising high, would be teamed with a light coat – perhaps with a pattern of green leaves exploding at the back.

It is to Stella Jean’s credit that she has taken her line forward in modern Italian style, while using the fabrics of Burkina Faso and exploring the visual heritage of Kenya, Maili and Haiti.

“Diversity is richness,” said Jean, expressing her excitement in introducing African prints and embellishment to Asia.

The Beat of Africa fashion show is brought to the catwalk by the International Trade Centre’s Ethical Fashion Initiative in collaboration with Alta Roma. (The International Trade Centre is a joint agency of the United Nations and the

World Trade Organisation.) Nigerian designer Lisa Folawiyo was this year’s special guest, and she opened the show with a powerful mix of pattern, colour and texture: a grass-green foliage-patterned blouse, morphing into a turquoise and pink pinafore and pink plaid skirt.

(Add a colourful clutch bag to this sophisticated fashion recipe.) I felt that these were clothes out of Africa – but for the world to wear.

Omoyemi Akerele, the managerial and creative force behind Lagos Fashion and Design Week, underscored the importance of having a platform in Rome for African designers.

Duaba Serwa by Nelly Aboagye and Mina Evans-Anfom also showed fine collections with a smart mix of exuberant colours and prints and restrained shapes.

Simone Cipriani, the master force behind the Beat of Africa project, received wild applause – but chose to concentrate on the future. He talked about having set up a manufacturing plant in Ghana, dedicated to designers’ work, and the importance of finding both patrons and platforms for African talent.

“And now we have to take on the issue of the Internet,” Cipriani said. “Today we have a lot of bricks-and-mortar partners. But now we have to sell online.”

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In the Line of Fire Alessandro Michele turns fashion alchemist to meld history with a powerful present 31/05/2018

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Getty; InDigital.TV

¬ The Gucci Cruise 2019 show at the ancient Roman necropolis in Arles

CANDLES FLICKERING beside ancient stone tombs, a line of fire running down the dusty pathway and a church silhouetted against the dying light – that was the atmospheric Gucci Cruise 2019 show, held in the southern French city of Arles.

It was an evening of magic and wonder, as figures walked the Alyscamps – an ancient Roman necropolis – wearing the crucifix as an essential memento mori, the feather as another symbol, and a dancing devil motif taken from Hollywood’s Château Marmont – all part of the tangle of historic references from Creative Director Alessandro Michele.

By the time the designer was sitting in jeans among the audience, swaying his long hair to the rhythm of Elton John’s live performance, there was a sense of wide-eyed wonder. Gucci had

pulled off the most dramatic show, completing the trilogy of Cruise collections following Dior in Paris, Louis Vuitton in Cannes, and now the Italian designer’s walk on the wild side.

The fact that it had been raining buckets all day in Arles, and then the heavens closed just for the length of the show, made it an extraordinary feat on every level. And that’s not to mention the 114 outfits, including historic capes, schoolgirl jackets, a bodice made out of bones, wisps of feathers, bouquets of dying flowers, and a sense that mourning regalia had switched from traditional black to pink – as well as the realisation that menswear is in a new, fiery, gender-neutral world.

Michele was quick to point out that the Alyscamps in this ancient area was not quite the noble historic burial ground it seemed – and that

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The 114 outfits included historic capes, a bodice made of bones, wisps of feathers, and bouquets of dying flowers

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↑Clockwise from above ¬ Gucci Cruise 2019 hinted at gothic novels and elements of mourning, but in a riot of colour

a mash-up of history is just how he likes it: “Alyscamps has a rock’n’roll soul, it has a gothic look, and in the 1700s this place was fashionable to visit,” he explained. The tumble of show notes insisted that, “Alyscamps is a Roman cemetery, but it’s not a cemetery; it was a promenade, then it became a walk in 1700. It is a hybrid place that has several significances.”

But Michele – who also touched on the macabre in his Autumn/Winter 2018 show, which had models walk out holding replicas of their own heads – admitted that he sees “death as fascination”.

How does all this ghoulish stuff, some suggesting a crazy Halloween night, fit with a luxury brand? Perfectly! Breaking apart the cornucopia of clothes and accessories, here was a cloak, there a sports shoe. Funky accessories melded with fabulous florals. Patterns ranged from sweet 18th-century meadow flowers to 1970s Pop-Art patterns. Priestly cloaks swished by while other pieces for both sexes were body conscious and brief.

From this abundance comes the glory of Gucci. It makes a massive fashion statement and sells a mass of goods for its parent company, Kering, whose sales are zooming upwards with dizzying speed.

François-Henri Pinault, Kering’s Chairman and CEO, said that one important aspect of the inter-season shows is that the company invites clients, making sense of the concept of a stand-alone spectacle, rather than a show crammed amongst others. “Without the constraint of other shows, it can be more of an event,” Pinault said.

Although Michele’s essence is in the spirit of Rome, ancient or modern, Marco Bizzarri, Gucci’s President and CEO, confirmed that the next Gucci show will take place during the Paris Ready-to-Wear season.

In the intricacy of detail that cannot be seen on stage, Michele has embroidered the words of Dante’s Divine Comedy as decoration on the clothes. And there is certainly a divine fashion comedy in Michele’s mix of rappers and priests; of Billy Idol and Elton John, whom Gucci will dress for his three-year farewell tour.

Michele brought together each diverse reference with brilliant alchemy.

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The only designer in the Spring/ Summer 2019 couture season who embraced absolutely that ‘the future is now’ was Iris van Herpen. Yet she found inspiration in the distant past – specifically in the Harmonia Macrocosmica of 1660 by the cartographer Andreas Cellarius, who created a preliminary map of the heavens.

But van Herpen’s translation of cosmic effects on dresses looked entirely modern in this collection, named ‘Shift Souls’.

“I looked at the evolution of the human shape, its idealisation through time, and the hybridisation of female forms within mythology,” the designer explained. “The imagination and fluidity in Japanese mythology inspired me to explore the deeper meaning of identity and how immaterial and mutable it can become.”

The other transformation was in her use of colour. The depth of brown lightening to orange and honey, the deep celestial blue and the olive-green, made an imaginative canvas of just 18 outfits. The fabric was brought closer to the female form, outlining the body shape or sitting in puffy clouds on the skin. That made her collection far more ‘body friendly’ than previous seasons, when models might be tortured with shards of glass or other unwearable creations.

But this was not a collection to suggest that the designer had fallen to earth, leaving behind her celestial fashion cosmos. In imagination and execution, Van Herpen is still way up there.

↑Above and inset ¬ A 17th-century star atlas inspired Iris van Herpen’s S/S 2019 Haute Couture collection

#SuzyCouture Iris van Herpen Proves

That the future is now The Dutch designer wants her powerful, but wearable, collection to ‘Shift Souls’

GoRunway

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PRESENTATION

@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

↑ From above ¬ Suzy selects a photo from a contact sheet to illustrate her print story, 1980s ¬ Backstage at Christian Lacroix, early 1990s (Andrew Thomas for Chris Moore)

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Backstage, by Chris Moore:

@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

“Suzy’s different from a lot of journalists because she’s very particular about choosing her photos. She always used to tell me, ‘You can say no!’

But I said yes. She opened every door for me when we worked together, and our pages were as much about my pictures as her observations.”

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@SUZYMENKESVOGUE INSTAGRAM EDIT

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

6 March 2018 How beetle becomes cloth at McQueen by Sarah Burton for Autumn 2018

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

1 February 2018 The dress code at Wendy Yu’s party is “Black tie with a touch of red – and of the Orient”, but I couldn’t resist my Dries chinoiserie coat

Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue

21 September 2018 Anna, Miuccia and Stefano Tonchi at the Prada Foundation, waiting for Spike Lee

2 May 2017 Donatella goes for GOLD (even for her HAIR).

The real Rei? Read ‘Abstract Anger’, my story about the Met Ball and Comme designer

9 July 2018 So this is what I learned about crinolines at the Dolce & Gabbana extravaganza. You need TWO pairs of helping hands!

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

15 September 2018 The Kate Moss signature! At the book launch for “Kate by Mario Sorrenti”, just published

by Phaidon

3 July 2018 I’m in competition at Giambattista Valli with those fluffy shoes. Who won? I think my gilded palm trees looked pretty FUN

“I love independent girls and strong characters – girls that are not so fashion gifted – and I love customers who are not afraid of couture,” Giambattista told me

23 January 2019 Long leg, short skirt at Valentino Haute Couture for the Spring/Summer season

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

28 May 2018 Amazing Grace! A design for Louis Vuitton with Grace Coddington’s love of cats. But Artistic Director Nicolas Ghesquière says he loves dogs like she loves cats!

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PRESENTATION

#SuzyLFW: Victoria Beckham: Ten Years in Fashion The designer brings her show home from New York to London

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Art may not have been in Victoria Beckham’s heart at the start of her career, but it is now

“I’M STILL ENTHUSIASTIC, I’m still excited and I’m still passionate. And I’m very driven; I love what I do ,” Victoria Beckham said after the waves of clapping for her tenth anniversary show had subsided.

“Each season is a challenge in different ways,” she continued. “Building a business is huge, so I’m learning a lot. Yet I still wake up every day and love what I do. It’s about making women feel great and celebrating them. When I looked back over the last ten years and I looked at all the collections again, I was really emotional.”

Victoria celebrated her decade in fashion by both bringing her show back from New York to her native London – and absolutely laying to rest her early career as a Spice Girl.

For this landmark show, the designer introduced confident new ideas about fabrics and cut. Intriguing colours included a ginger jacket with a red striped top and a purple and green chiffon skirt with a tweedy floral jacket.

These shades were inspired by the paintings of American-based British artist, Nicola Tyson.

Another example of a fresh confidence was in the use of lace, giving subtle glimpses of skin.

The result was more elegant than cheeky, and womanly without a hint of vulgarity.

All this proved how far ‘VB’, as her team knows her, has come since she introduced her first design efforts in a tiny gallery in Midtown Manhattan, presenting each look with her own commentary on the technique and fabric.

Now her collection was live-streamed on the giant advertising screens at Piccadilly Circus, amongst a mash-up of her career highlights.

“When I saw the films from the first presentation to last season, I was so emotional,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’m proud; I’m proud of me, I’m proud of my team.’ We’ve come a long way.”

Since I was there at the very beginning, I feel that I witnessed the growth. It was, of course, about growing up and – dare we say it – approaching middle age with energy and style.

Not for nothing was the Spring/Summer 2019 show kicked off by Stella Tenant, a model of classic and eternal beauty at age 47.

Art may not have been in Victoria Beckham’s heart at the start of her career, but it is now.

Holding the show in the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac positioned opposite her own store on London’s Dover Street, was a statement.

Then there is the art of holding together a family. David Beckham loyally led in their four children, while the eldest, Brooklyn, snapped photographs, in keeping with his career ambition.

What were the key visuals in the collection?

First, there was a gentle treatment on traditionally mannish clothes, such as a top with soft trousers; or a streamlined striped dress for summer in the city. Those dresses, the skirts angular and cut on the bias, were the base of a wardrobe that anyone could do business with.

But softening the looks with peeps of lace at the neckline or silken underwear teamed with heavier dresses or trousers was also on the Beckham agenda.

“It really is about celebrating all women – not just the Victoria Beckham woman,” said Victoria.

“But that’s who my customer wants to see.”

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“I love Chloé,” announced Natacha Ramsay-Levi at our third meeting, as she did when we were chatting in Paris earlier this year about her work at Balenciaga and her four-year-old son; and then again in February when there was a Chloé party in New York with 130 young, lively, and interesting women from the worlds of art and music.

We spoke again in London’s Selfridges store, where she and the company CEO, Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, were having a meet-and-greet for Chloé clients.

And, of course, Ramsay-Levi, 38, is the mirror image of the kind of clothes she sends down the runway – the look of a woman who walks fast forward, which is fitting in the current fashion climate. “For my first show I wanted it to be a mosaic of what I believe is really relevant for Chloé and what I like to work on – little chapters, two or three looks – a lot of layers, and a lot of different things,” she said. “But I really wanted this second show to be my point of view. It’s much more focussed.”

The Autumn/Winter 2018 show opened with a dress in a mix of chestnut and burnt orange – 1970s colours – seductive in the deep ‘V’ front and with tinges of North Africa in the chunky jewellery. Later, the Maghreb feel became stronger, and throughout there were round, metallic heels and bags with straps and rivets.

“There is every femininity with a bit of Arabic and a bit of bourgeois – I think it is a good mix,” Natacha said, as her son cheered her on.

How does she feel about being in the limelight – at last – after working with Nicolas Ghesquière (who was once again on the front row), first for the transformation of Balenciaga and then as the creative go-between at Louis Vuitton? Is there a sense of freedom?

“I love Chloé, which is important,” she says.

“It’s always been on my radar and I think it’s very

interesting to have a frame. I am such a ‘fashion kid’; there is nothing that I don’t like. I have learned, growing older, not to say, ‘No! Never!’

You can always change your mind and I like the fact that it is an ongoing conversation – a bit like taking the past to make it into something that is relevant to the future. I am not using the past as a ghost, but the way sci-fi uses it; taking the past to make the future.”

Her first Chloé show in September 2017 had a statement in the show notes that claimed: “Chloé girls have a suave mix of sophistication and humility – they are timeless but never conventional.” It sounded rather like herself, and I gave her full marks for a modern and very French take on the whimsical ‘flower child’.

“I wanted to focus on silk skirt dresses,” the designer said, having clearly delved into Chloé’s history, including the influence of French films.

But the strength of the show was in its sense of movement, as skirts flared outwards and even the trousers were either nonchalantly soft and loose, or cut like jodhpurs. This new season also suggests a stronger, less ‘girly’ woman for today.

The Western horsey feel of the appliqués on silk shirts and dresses may have come through from Ramsay-Levi’s love of cinema, which she explained, “has a very strong connection with Chloé through Stéphane Audran, a French film actress from the 1970s”.

“The first show was very broad and about a multiplicity of women, but now it is more psychological – about getting into a play of selves,” she said. “And for me, the Chloé girl is very French but for a lot of people she is very English – because all the designers were.”

Ramsay-Levi was referring to the string of British designer names at Chloé including Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo (who left Chloé in 2006 before joining Céline, which she left this year), and Clare Waight Keller, who has now

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#SuzyPFW:

rebooting ChloĂŠ for the Woman of 2018 Natacha Ramsay-Levi on her creative vision, stepping into the limelight, the legacy of Lagerfeld and being the first French female designer at the house since its founder 01/03/2018

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Alessandro Garofalo; Getty; InDigital.TV; Alastair Nicol

joined Givenchy. And what about Karl Lagerfeld, who, at the time, was the hardly-known designer who put Chloé on the map, back in the 1970s?

“My first idea about Karl is the way he is totally connected to French cinema,” RamsayLevi explained. “It was a very 1970s house, very bourgeois and perfect in a way, but with Karl, it became a bit scandalous with the things he was playing with. And he was there for 15 years!

“Really, when I started my research for Chloé, the Karl Lagerfeld years blew me away. They were incredible, because they could be for a woman of today.”

As someone who remembers the Karl show for Chloé Autumn/Winter 1983 when he had torrents of water from a ‘shower’ worked in embroidery on the back of a slim evening dress, I hope to see some of these ideas remade.

Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye, who has arranged exhibitions of Chloé photographed in its early years by Guy Bourdin, has tried throughout his tenure to keep the spirit of the brand’s original founder, the late Gaby Aghion, who had Egyptian origins. But like any other fashion company founded in history, there has to be a constant refreshing.

So who is the Chloé woman in 2018? “I think it is not just one woman, but women,” RamsayLevi says. “The principle of Chloé is to be a brand that comes into your life in an organic, natural way. There really is a sense of appropriation – and that is very important. In the advertising campaign, for example, we worked on different personalities. We had five different ones.”

I ask Ramsay-Levi if she thinks that there is one boyish Chloé woman, and another ultra-feminine one, and she reveals her secret weapon in her search for the Chloé girl.

“There is still a divide between mannish and feminine, I definitely see it,” she says. “I would say that my stepdaughter is on the boyish side.

She is 13, she is feminine and doesn’t want to look like a boy. She is gorgeous and sometimes puts lipstick on, but she wants to be comfortable and likes the idea of being dressed the same way as her boyfriend. There are girls who have already stated equality by the way they dress.”

And her own life? How does she feel about being a working mother to her young son?

“Being a mother is at the centre of it,” she says, “but also to accomplish what I want. I have been raised with the idea that you also work.”

“There is Every femininity, with a bit of Arabic and a bit of bourgeois – I think it is a good mix”

Clockwise from top left:

Natacha Ramsay-Levi at her debut collection for Chloé, S/S 2018; an ensemble from the Chloé S/S 2018 collection; Karl Lagerfeld and Pat Cleveland at Chloé in the 1970s. Previous page: Chloé, A/W 2018

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#SuzyBrazil Alexandre Birman:

A Bold step Forward

← Left and below Alexandre Birman laser-cut suede gladiator boots; Suzy with Alexandre Birman

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@SuzyMenkesVogue

COLOURFUL, FURRY pompoms on

nude sandals; shiny silver brogues; cork pumps; olé olé high-heels embroidered with flowers...

By the time I had finished my tour of his three different shoe boutiques, I thought that owner Alexandre Birman must have a split personality.

But as soon as we sat down to talk over tea at the Iguatemi mall in São Paulo, I realised that he is walking in one direction: fast forward.

The son of Anderson Birman, who founded the Arezzo shoe brand with brother Jefferson in the Seventies, Alexandre is following in the family’s footsteps. Today he is head of five different brands: Arezzo, which emerged from the family garage in 1972; Schutz (founded by Alexandre in 1995; Alexandre Birman (founded in 2009); and the diffusion lines Anacapri and Fiever, all produced in the current streamlined factories. The five brands are different in price and style, and are starting the long walk from Brazil to the rest of the world.

I was eager to hear about how the high-end Alexandre Birman brand had landed on the feet of stars such as Kate Hudson and Katy Perry, but he wanted to tell me the entire backstory, from the moment his father founded the company at age 18 and transformed it over 20 years into a manufacturing hub with more than 2,000 employees. That was in Belo Horizonte, near Brazil’s border with Argentina, which Italians had colonised in the 19th century, bringing with them the art of shoemaking. Hence ‘Arezzo’, named after the Tuscan town.

When the company expanded rapidly in the Nineties, Arezzo was the family’s first store in São Paulo, in 1991. Twenty-five years later, I found Alexander Birman’s own name at

Iguatemi, where stiletto heels on a pair of boots in laser-cut leather and decorated with crystals compete with evening shoes in exotic skins.

There were even flat sandals made striking by the use of turquoise snake. It was that glamorous look, selling at around $590, that aroused the interest of Bergdorf Goodman’s Fashion Director, Linda Fargo. Meanwhile, more accessible brands have been progressing since the company went public. I could see that Schutz, a youthful and cool brand, was dear to Alexandre’s heart when he showed me a classic navy loafer with a naval-stripe wedge heel and then a pair of cork slip-ons with silvered toes.

Researching Arezzo & Co’s company profile, I discovered that it now creates 11,500 models every year. Alexandre was open about strategy, especially the hiring of an art director to help upgrade the Arezzo brand.

His own journey was evident from his early teens, when he worked beside his father, learning everything “from leather classification to cutting to stitching”. “After that I went to the United States when I was 15, living in a boarding school,” he said. “Then I went to Italy to learn Italian and I speak Italian as fluently as I speak English today. Then my father hired a family business consultant to assess me, and his conclusion was that we should not work together but I should have my own path.”

The result of such individuality was that he told his father that he wanted to launch his own brand with an “outdoor atmosphere” – comfortable shoes offering “peace of mind”. Although this was a period of upheaval, with father and son deciding to sell 25 per cent of the company to investors to help with growth, it was the start of a turnaround: While he and

his father had spent 80 per cent of their time as “product people”, Alexandre could now turn to brand building, with a two-year programme at Harvard to hone his business skills.

“We have been able to gain a good market share and to develop a company that is based on people, and the mindset is to create the right product, at the right time, for the right price,” he said. “All the marketing and branding is very important, but if the product doesn’t work, you can invest whatever you want and you will not make a successful brand. There are a lot of great shoes in the world, but few fit well. As well as looking feminine, they have to be comfortable.”

Since he met his wife Johanna, whom he spotted trying on boots in his store, shoes have played a leading role in every aspect of his life.

But how far has Arezzo ventured outside Brazil?

“It’s 90 per cent in Brazil and 10 per cent outside,” Alexandre said, citing Schutz’s success in America because of its price: under $200 for a full leather sole, lining and uppers. “Customers who buy Jimmy Choos for $500-$600 buy Schutz, thinking it’s a bargain,” he said, citing Miami and New York as fertile sales grounds.

In Europe, the situation is reversed. The big push is with the Alexandre Birman brand.

I had one last question for Alexandre, who was wearing Gucci loafers with deliberately bashed-up backs. Why had he chosen them?

“My friends joke that my baby stroller was a shoe box, and that’s kind of true. I love the projects of my favourite brands and all my trainers and sneakers. But today I felt like wearing a loafer to meet you. I hope that I made the right choice?”

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OBSERVATION

Cover Story: Tea With Alber To explore what happens when interviewers are interviewed, Condé Nast International invited Alber Elbaz to turn reporter for the day and quiz Suzy over tea and macaroons in Paris 18/01/2019

Suzy Menkes: I’m very, very nervous.

Alber Elbaz: You are?

SM: Yes. I’m rarely interviewed because I always turn everybody down. Please don’t ask me what was the worst show I’ve ever seen, because there’ve been so many we’ll be here until dawn.

AE: I have so much make-up on, I feel like Kim Kardashian!

SM: Well, I’ve tried to look better than usual just for you, Alber.

AE: Thank you, Suzy. I have to say, it’s really hard to prepare an interview; I’d rather be interviewed.

Anytime you want to switch chairs, I’m ready!

When your office invited me to do this, I thought, “What will be my first question?” because in a fashion show, the first dress you send out is always the most important.

I decided that I won’t do a Wikipedia interview: It won’t be about Cambridge or being the first female editor of the university paper; or your 25 years at the ‘International Herald Tribune’ as the Supreme Court Judge, like the

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Illustrations Alber Elbaz

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OBSERVATION

“As a fashion editor, you should look at a collection again in the context of other designers so you don’t just focus on what one person did in 15 minutes on a runway” Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Fashion. It won’t be about ‘The New York Times’ or the international Vogues, or the Légion d’honneur and OBE. What I discovered was that you actually went to the École supérieure des arts et techniques de la mode (ESMOD) and studied to be a dressmaker. So actually, you’re a dressmaker.

SM: Well I don’t think I’ve ever made a dress except for myself.

AE: Was it a horrible dress or an amazing dress?

SM: There were horrible moments in it.

Everything had to be done with tiny, precise measurements, and of course they spoke to you in French and were very, very serious.

I made a dress with pleats and got one of the folds a quarter of a millimetre out, but I wasn’t told this. So I walked up to the instructor very proudly with my pleated skirt, thinking, “I’m really making it here,” and she took one look at it, held it in her hands, and tore it to shreds.

The worst thing was that we had to pay for our own fabrics. My mother had sent me the money when we didn’t have so much, and I did not dare ask for more. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. So after I finished crying in the loo, I went back to the dragon lady and said, “I’d like to know what I did wrong.” She said, “You must understand that everything in fashion must be exact. Suppose you did all the pleats wrong – it wouldn’t fit anywhere.” That’s when I realised it would be much easier to be a fashion journalist than a fashion maker.

AE: So that was the reason you said, “It’s not for me, let’s go to Cambridge.” The other thing that I found interesting is your birthday, the 24th of December. You were born one day before Jesus!

SM: No one’s put it to me like that before!

AE: I have something to confess. When I was doing the shows, the one person we always had to make sure was there, was you. I wore these headphones backstage and would ask the ushers, “Did Suzy arrive?” They’d say, “Not yet, but we are in contact,” and then I’d hear, “Suzy’s in a taxi; Suzy just got out of a taxi; Suzy is smiling.”

I was like, “Oh my God, smiling!” Then I’d hear, “Suzy is sitting; Suzy is seated.” And then I would send out a spy and tell them, “Check her hair – check how high the antenna is,” because the higher it was, I knew the review would be horrible.

They would come back and say, “It’s not that high today.” I’d say, “Okay, let’s start the show!”

So I’m going to ask a question that everybody in the fashion industry wants to know: How did this coiffure happen? What really happened at the salon? Was it an accident?

SM: In those days it was all very different. We worked on typewriters, which aren’t a light little thing that you carry in your hand, like your phone. My hair would flop in my face and drive me mad, but if I pushed it back over my ears, I looked terrible. So I asked the hairdresser what to do, and she said, “You should put a comb in your hair.” So she did it, and still does it today.

AE: I have something to show you.

SM: Is it something to do with my hair? Oh dear.

AE: I made an artwork of you and I asked John Nollet to do the hair. Ta-da!

SM: Oooh! Her hair is fabulous!

AE: Enjoy her! There’s more: When your office asked me to draw the cover and take part in this book, I thought, “Why me? Can I do it?” And then I immediately thought of my mother, who would

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“Yves Saint Laurent was so stressed, he was almost yellow. He told me, ‘It’s not really about a show, it’s about lasting so long.

That’s stressful”

always tell me that her wish was for me to be big and small. I would ask her, “What do you mean?

Like fat and skinny?” She said, “No, no. Be big in your work, but simple, humble and small in your private life.” I think there is no one better to fit that description of being big and small, in a good way, than you. So I’ve drawn you as a Mona Lisa.

SM: Suzy as Mona Lisa, I can’t believe it.

AE: There is only one Mona, and only one Suzy – the Mona Suzy! Mona looks everywhere and sees it all. Everything you have is in the drawing: Your necklace; Apple watch; engagement ring; and laptop. And this is your Légion d’honneur, which is also a compass, because you’re always the one to show us the way.

SM: I love it. I love the whole thing. It’s amazing.

AE: I know you love prints, and you love purple and pink. And all the little selfies are the Working Suzies taking photos of Big Suzy. And like Leonardo da Vinci, who always hid all this information in the back of his paintings, behind you is a map of the world for all your conferences.

SM: Of all the things I’ve been called over the years, Leonardo Da Vinci was not one of them until today. She’s wonderful and I think you’re wonderful. Thank you. I love all the details. It’s fun but it’s also serious, which is very nice.

AE: I remember when I had to give a speech for you in Hong Kong, I didn’t know how to begin. It was so stressful. Then, the night before, I was having dumplings and asked for red spicy sauce.

I was told, “We only have ketchup.” So that was the start of my speech. To keep tradition and not erase yesterday for a new tomorrow.

SM: Ketchup is not my colour.

AE: Actually, the first drawing was all red and I changed it to pink.

SM: She’s gorgeous – almost as gorgeous as me. Alber, I can’t thank you enough. It’s such a lovely gesture.

AE: I’m happy you like it. And I think John Nollet and I didn’t miss with the hair?

SM: It’s a bit shorter than mine, but otherwise it’s totally perfect.

AE: Suzy, you were actually the first person to conceive and initiate the luxury fashion conference; the first person from the industry to turn three days into a family, fashion trend.

You were also the first person who took selfies backstage before Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. I remember your disposable camera!

And you were the first person to embrace technology when you brought your laptop to a fashion show to start reviewing live. What’s next?

SM: What’s fascinating is how much technology has grown. When Instagram started, I realised right away that it would be interesting, but I thought it was just about posting a few little pictures. How it’s developed has been absolutely fascinating and that’s the thing with fashion: You never know which way it’s going to go.

The speed doesn’t surprise me so much because when I worked for the International Herald Tribune I had to report very fast. But now, everything is reported before it’s even happened.

AE: Do you have to write some of your reviews in the car between shows? And does that give you enough time to think and to digest, to come back to it, or is it all about speed, speed, speed; make it bigger, make it smaller, make it sharper, make it faster? Because this is what we feel, as designers. Do editors on the other side of the runway have the same feeling?

SM: I definitely feel that there should be two

speeds, so you have an instant judgement or reportage on what you’ve just seen, but also that as a fashion editor you should come back and look at it again, in the context of other designers, so that you’re not just focusing on one person and what they did in 15 minutes on the runway, but look at the larger picture.

AE: I remember when I was at Saint Laurent, I saw him and his dog one night before his show.

The dog was barking and I was a bit scared. But Saint Laurent was so stressed, he was almost yellow. I asked him, “Why are you so stressed, Monsieur Saint Laurent, after all these years?”

And he told me, and I remember it to this day, “Because of all these years.” He told me, “It’s not really about a show, it’s about lasting for so long.

That’s what stresses me.”

Do you ever feel, Suzy, that you’ve been working for so many years, and are on top of the world, and are so relevant, and are adored by the industry, that it’s difficult to maintain? Does it stress you that tomorrow is a different day?

SM: I don’t feel stressed myself – AE: Because you stress everybody else?

SM: Well, there’s always the usual stress of things breaking down in the digital world. A long time ago, in the days when journalists had to dictate their copy straight down the telephone to the newspaper, at least we knew we had someone there to help. Now, if something breaks down, there’s a panic. But more than that, I feel concerned about giving such quick reviews of people who I know have such a deep knowledge of fashion and have produced such wonderful collections. Now they’re being asked to produce six or eight a year; it’s soon going to be ten a year. It’s not fair on them and I feel that

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Geraldine Lynch, Getty

it’s not fair to judge this one collection, because whatever we say about it, in six weeks there will be another. “Next!” I find that a bit disturbing.

AE: Remember when I was invited to the Met Gala in 2007 for the Poiret show and I was meant to come with a seven-foot-tall model, and I didn’t feel comfortable and wanted to go with someone I could eat and chat with instead? So I asked you to be my date, and I picked you up from your hotel in a beautiful car. I remember I was so proud that you were my date, but five minutes later you disappeared. I was like, “Suzy? Suzy?”

And while everybody was in their long gowns, having champagne, you were running around with your camera, with your notebook, writing, running, working the room. And I thought, while everybody is enjoying life, there you are. So maybe this is your source of joy – your work.

Your work is your life; your work is your happy moment. In fashion, there are many workaholics.

Are you a workaholic?

SM: I don’t think I’m a workaholic because I have my family, whom I love very much, and I always know that they’re there for me. About that Met Gala, I now feel terrible that you thought I’d run away from you. But we were given all these instructions that the photographers didn’t want to see Suzy, they wanted to see Alber.

AE: I’m so unphotogenic; they’d better have you!

SM: Well, they wanted to have you. And that’s what we were told: Keep away and let the famous people be photographed. So that’s the story behind that. I’m not a workaholic; I do work very hard, but I enjoy my work. And there’s another side to my work that people don’t see.

AE: You spoke about the rapidity of the industry and that it’s no longer like Fashion Week, but

more like Fashion Year. It’s endless. And I know that, like so many other fashion industry people, you run from one Fashion Week to another; from New York to London to Milan to Paris. I see on your Instagram how you have shows all day long, and then late, late dinners where there are so many flowers but not enough food! And then I know that when it’s over and everybody’s collapsing and going into detox, you’re already on your way to Cape Town or to another place to work on your next project. Then I see – boom!

– you are already somewhere else in Africa supporting a new designer. And I think, surely now you’re going to sleep for a little, but no, here you are in Brighton doing a review of Stephen Jones and I see your post and think, okay, Suzy’s going to sleep, but at 6am you’re in Florence doing an interview with the CEO of Gucci.

I’m not asking if you sleep, because I know you don’t, but where does this energy come from?

What is it? Is it about career? Is it about the fear of missing something that’s happening? Because you have a reputation for going to every show and not only the big houses; you go to small designers too. You help them to grow, which is amazing. But where does this energy come from?

Is there a secret? Do you put something in your coffee in the morning for breakfast that you want to share with us?

SM: I don’t even have coffee in the morning – I have tea.

AE: What do you put in the tea?

SM: You know, I think I’m more wily – a special English word, meaning not exactly smart, but quite clever – in the way I present things because although I might look as though I’m a magic person who can be in two places at once, or even

Above:

Alber Elbaz with Suzy at the Met Gala in 2007 to launch the ‘Poiret: King of Fashion’ exhibition

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“How can we bring stories back?

I’m not saying we have to delete the images, but we want to hear opinion, read a point of view”

three, the reality is that when it comes to Instagram or big stories, it might have taken quite a long time for me to digest it and publish it. For a story about somebody who is making wonderful sweaters in Cape Town, say, I might have interviewed them six weeks before.

And of course I don’t just do Instagram. For Vogue, I have a chance to write long articles.

And that’s one thing that I wish I could impress on people – that fun though it is to see Suzy running around doing this and that, I also want people to look at something more deeply.

I wrote an article once about the British Royal Family and how they were getting interested in fashion, and maybe not everyone wants to read it, but it’s important that it’s there and that there’s something more to read than just a quick post about what a celebrity was wearing. So I think I am quite an energetic person, but I don’t set out to prove that. I just like my job.

AE: Designers feel the same way from the other side of the runway about the changing world and changing speed. What you’re saying about the world being image-driven, that it’s all about Instagram and having to look good in photos – and God forbid if you don’t look skinny in the photo – in that world of visuals, how important are the words? How important are stories? For my part, images can easily be deleted but stories stay. How do you feel about it? Do you think that people are still interested in reading words?

SM: This is such a good question.

AE: It’s difficult to ask the woman who’s like the Queen of Words. But I’m inspired by words, that’s why I’m asking.

SM: I think all journalists are finding this now – that it’s difficult to say “I’m a writer” when all that some people want to read is three lines underneath a picture. I believe in words, and when it comes to an interview, it’s so important to find the words that tell you something about the person. You take all the little pieces and make a wonderful stew out of it. Writers certainly can’t just fill our pages, or our screen, with things that we’ve seen, because everybody now sees everything. Not so very long ago, people used to wait to hear what was going on.

Of course, I’m interested in the architecture of words and the use of words. That’s one thing that you’ll see on my Instagram page. There

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aren’t too many hashtags and things like that, because even if I only write three lines, I want people to read them.

AE: As a designer, I always look for inspiration, which is a very selfish kind of life because we go to a museum and think, “What can I take from this?” But I think that my source of inspiration is actually words. That’s why I asked this tough question of you, the writer. How can we bring stories back? I’m not saying that we have to delete the images, but we want to hear opinion; we want to read a point of view. And that’s what stories are all about.

SM: I think one of the luckiest things that happened to me is that I was trained in the old school, and we had to write to a length. When a newspaper only has a certain amount of space, you have to compress everything you want to say into fewer words. Even today, sometimes I despise myself when I see how much I’ve written when it could have been condensed. I’m a great believer in making the most of the words, but not thinking that more words is necessarily better. It’s wise words, few words, the right words that matter.

AE: It used to be that designers were called couturiers. And then we became designers and then we turned into creative directors, and now we are image makers and also influencers.

Do you think that it’s more difficult today for a young designer to start out in the job of designing? And, since there are so many influencers that design, do you think that today fame is more important than talent?

Above and left:

As well as drawing our cover, Alber Elbaz created an artwork for Suzy with Jean Nollet

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SM: I wish I had been the person who invented this word ‘influencers’, as then I would know what it means. Because I don’t know. I think it’s so extraordinary that we’ve got all these people running around and the only influence they seem to have is on themselves. They dress the part; they look fabulous; they take endless pictures of themselves; but in the end it’s all hot air.

What is behind it? This isn’t entirely fair, because sometimes – and particularly off the Internet in general – there are wonderful people who have become great artists and critics, but they are one amongst thousands. So I think it is very difficult now to take things seriously.

Everything’s about appearances, everything’s about speed, everything is about showing off, to be honest. And I wish it weren’t so. Particularly with writing, I wish more people would just write quietly and get on with it.

AE: Do you think it’s easier for young designers to start but more difficult for them to last? Or that it’s easier to last because of all this social media and influencing? As designers, we like it but we don’t like it, and as a designer that looks to the future, I really question myself about it all.

Is it more important to look good or to be good? Is it more important to be famous – to be a dancer or an actor before and then become

a designer? Is the path a little bit easier if you come from YouTube?

SM: I think that there are many people now who have been famous and made into designers, although they don’t design the clothes themselves. It’s all part of an alliance and it’s not just about fashion, it’s about the music business.

Talk to anyone in the music business, and they say exactly the same thing.

It’s very difficult now, but I believe, as has always happened, things will slow down. People will not remember in forty years’ time somebody who was briefly in the centre of the fashion world for doing I don’t know what. Eventually, I’m sure the ones who really know what they’re doing, the ones who make clothes – people like you, Alber, who make clothes for women – will be remembered. What is so important is that you were the first person to actually look at women and say, “This is not a show about one thing.” You were showing different characteristics of clothes for different kinds of women. People were doing that twenty or thirty years before, but you were the first person – and the great person – from your generation doing that. That’s what we want to see from you, Alber. Women love you.

AE: And I love them! The funny thing is that our

shows were always so late and I knew that everybody always arrived hungry, so the first thing I did was to serve food so everybody was relaxed. I had a kind of fear, a phobia, about fashion editors. So instead of doing shows for editors, I did shows for women. And when the editors came to see me after the show, they would talk about it not as a critique, but as women.

And I love women.

To finish, let’s play a game. Fashion people don’t usually like to play sports. When I played tennis, I always asked the instructor to throw all the balls at me so I didn’t have to run and burn calories. Suzy, we’re going to play fashion tennis. I’ll say a word and you tell me whatever comes to mind. Ready?

AE: Sexy!

SM: Alber.

AE: Oooh, I love that. Fame!

SM: Anna.

AE: Haute Couture.

SM: Yves Saint Laurent.

AE: Style.

SM: Not fashion.

AE: Artificial intelligence.

SM: Too many computers.

AE: Perfect, that’s it. Love you, Suzy!

The CNI Luxury Conference team would like to thank Hélène Ferchaud and the staff of the Shangri-La Hotel, Paris, for their kind assistance in hosting this interview (shangri-la.com).

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Fighting the Bitch Brigade 03/06/2014 In her very first column for Vogue, Suzy Menkes challenged “the ugly face of fashion criticism” Whether it is the Kim and Kanye baby/wedding or the appearance of Kate (Moss/Middleton), Twitter’s stream of catty comments never ends.

One Kate is accused of looking like a Virgin Atlantic air hostess when she arrives in New Zealand on the Royal Tour; the other Kate, seductive at 41, supposedly shows every wrinkle from her partying days.

On the red carpet at Cannes, Nicole Kidman is sneered at for looking like ‘Princess Grace of Botox’. And Kim, in her Versailles outfit before her wedding, is deemed all cleavage, no class.

The Internet shows the ugly face of fashion criticism. If there is something mean to be said in 140 characters, there is always someone ready to dish the dirt about the ill-fitting haute frock or the wobbly super-high heels.

A nice comment about how pretty a star looks is as rare as a high-carat diamond. (And even that was dismissed as vulgar when George Clooney finally found his soulmate.)

I have a very different view of being a fashion critic. And in my new position as International Editor at Vogue, here is my mantra: No bitching.

I am happy to see a great collection and give credit where it is due. And if the show is a flop? I try to offer constructive, not hateful, comments.

It is about being thoughtful, not mean; offering analysis rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

Maybe there always was a hint, especially from outside the business, that the fashion world is Bitch Central. There are all those stories from back in the Thirties of Coco Chanel, in her mannish modernity, caustic about the dizzy wit of Elsa Schiaparelli, dismissing her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes”.

Karl Lagerfeld once shocked France by calling Yves Saint Laurent a ‘pied noir’ (‘black foot’), referring to the couturier’s childhood in North Africa. And there was a long froideur between Giorgio Armani, maestro of minimalism, and Gianni Versace, with his exuberant sexiness.

I first realised that the popular perception of the fashion world was one of glossy nastiness back in the Nineties, when I was asked to play a bit part in Absolutely Fabulous, the sitcom about two middle-aged fashion colleagues desperately trying to stay cool.

I arrived at the studio to find Joanna Lumley playing her character, Patsy Stone, in super-

us

4:24 PM

“ If there is something mean to be said in 140 characters, there is always someone ready to dish the dirt” bitch mode, screaming at the studio hairdresser.

Patsy was boiling with rage as he struggled to recreate my quiff – the so-called ‘pompadour’ – on her. She was even more furious when her hairstyle fell apart in the front row, whereas mine survived the filming.

Yet in the real world, people rarely play nasty.

There is a genuine sense of a fashion family – either the actual family or one that has evolved.

The Missonis are the archetype. I saw the cousinhood line-up in San Francisco in May 2014, as Angela and her daughter Margherita received honorary doctorates at the Academy of Art University, with matriarch Rosita as team leader.

Even if not part of a biological family, as in the Fendi, Ferragamo or Ralph Lauren clans, there are teams so loyal that if the designer jumps ship – as when Nicolas Ghesquière moved to Louis Vuitton – the ‘family’ goes, too.

But this is the world of fashion’s real players, where there is physical connection between creatives and critics – even if it is only at the twice-a-year shows and related social events.

The Internet has been described as the great democratiser, where crowd-sourcing and online connections have shifted the face of power. But

participating via a keyboard, webcam or Twitter feed is a one-way conversation. And being snarky, controversial and just plain nasty is about the only way for a laptop or smartphone commentator to get noticed.

One look at celebrity news website TMZ and the responses to its ‘So we gotta ask’ questions in its ‘Stars and Scars – You Be The Judge’ section and you realise that bitchiness is a sugar rush for readers. And all those increasingly torrid comments are in phase with the opportunities that digital and social media have created.

What’s to be done, as the race to the bottom careers downwards at breakneck speed? I find dispiriting not the harping criticism itself, but the concept that no one can dare to be different, if he/she wants to avoid the e-worst-dressed list.

I am all for fashion diversity, not dictatorship; for rejoicing not carping.

The bitches have the advantage of speed – an un-thought-out response that may go viral and flag up a new blog to click on. But the instant reaction to Lindsay Lohan’s bikinirevealed bruises, Natalia Vodianova’s elastic post-baby stomach and every designer’s latest resort wear is not worth the rush to judgement.

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#SuzyCouture Will The Real Karl Lagerfeld Please Stand Up? 25/05/2018

KARL LAGERFELD’S new beard gives him the look of a professor – a very well-dressed one – as he sits in the Chanel studio the day after his latest haute couture show.

My eyes go straight to his necktie, pinned with a clip from Suzanne Belperron, the 20th-century jewellery designer. He makes me look more closely at the sparkle and I see the tiny face and sapphire-blue eyes of Choupette, his beloved Birman. →

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

In what would be his last in-depth interview with Suzy, the late fashion powerhouse shared his thoughts on his six decades at the top

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

¬ “Karl loved this picture I took on a disposable camera at the Hedi Slimane Dior Homme show in Paris very early in the new millennium. Karl asked for a copy and propped it up by the window in his studio. It curled up and turned yellow – but maybe it’s still there as a reminder of how Karl viewed himself: Enigmatic to the end.” @SuzyMenkesVogue

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“I love to be an outsider. I’m part of nothing, no milieu. I am totally free in that sense of the word”

Getty

That cat! I had seen Lagerfeld a few weeks earlier, caressing the fluffy creature that travels with him, on his return to his native Hamburg for the Chanel Métiers d’Art show – an annual travelling showcase of the maison’s craftsmanship. Now the mighty designer is telling me that his various homes have been redesigned to accommodate his 100,000 books – and Choupette.

“In my bedroom in Paris I pulled down every wall so there are no doors, but a huge studio where I sketch and read and where Choupette lives. I must say, I’m pretty happy there. Everything is impeccable and one of Choupette’s two maids takes care of her the minute I leave, because she doesn’t like to be alone.”

As Karl involuntarily strokes his desk with a gloved hand, he says, “I never thought that I would fall in love with a little cat like this. But I think it is very funny and cannot imagine another life, because I don’t want it. I’m envious of nothing.”

Lagerfeld’s book, Choupette: The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat, captures the essence of his wit and knowledge of art and literature, as I have witnessed in his homes from the books piled on tables and spilling over on to chairs. I am entranced by his suggestion that her life resembles ‘Las Meninas’, the Velázquez painting of the Infanta Margarita Teresa surrounded by servants.

During the four decades I have attended his shows, enjoyed his exceptional cultural reach and his edgy – even wicked – wit, I have never known Lagerfeld to be at his desk in the morning. This must be his culture time, sitting at home reading, impeccably dressed in the latest Dior Homme suit. He remained faithful to the style, even after his favoured designer Hedi Slimane left the brand. Now Hedi has been chosen as the new Artistic Director of Céline, and Karl is literally licking his lips about his return. “Hedi is a professional killer,” he says with relish. Hedi has been one of the most widely mentioned names in the endless gossip about Karl’s departure.

“Don’t mention the succession; don’t talk about retirement,” I say to myself as I walk to the Chanel entrance on rue Cambon in Paris and take the small elevator to the fourth floor. In the studio, the designer pours us each a glass of golden Château d’Yquem, while we reminisce about going to the famous Bordeaux vineyards for the 2005 wedding of Delphine, the daughter of LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, when Karl was “fashionably late”, interrupting the service by clumping down the aisle in his boots. “But the crowds were cheering,” he says, with a wry twist of his soft lips.

Now I hear some hot news: Lagerfeld will make two more collections for Chanel, privately owned by the Wertheimer brothers. The house is launching Coco Snow and Coco Beach, that, with Fendi and his own Karl Lagerfeld brand, will bring his workload up to eight collections a year at Chanel, five at Fendi, and two at his own brand. And those 15 shows do not include his photography and books, published by

his friend and colleague Gerhard Steidl. Impressive for someone half his age, let alone 84, as his peers claim.

“The youth obsession is a kind of racism,” he says. “Do you know how long my contract is? Until 2045.” For real? That is more than 25 years from now, making him at least 105 before he can lay down his pencil. He speaks cheerfully about his work: “I have a lifelong contract and I am enchanted,” he says of his roles at Chanel and at Fendi (now part of Arnault’s LVMH empire).

“My work conditions are fabulous and don’t exist anywhere else.”

The following day he will fly to Rome (“For Fendi, of course; I’m not a tourist”) on a private plane, as he no longer travels any other way, especially since the selfie generation appeared. “I’m commercial, but not for commercial flights,” he says. “I hate all that ‘arms up’ at the airport. I don’t want to be touched. I can hardly support it with my hairdresser.”

Fendi has been Karl’s first fashion family since he revitalised the Roman fur house in 1965. Fifty-three years! Even when I sat in front of the Trevi Fountain for the Fendi Roma Haute Couture 2016 show, I could hardly believe the longevity of the partnership.

Silvia Venturini Fendi, the remaining family member in the company and Lagerfeld’s creative companion, recounted her childhood memories of those days. “I remember big parcels of sketches, books and swatches coming and going from Paris to Rome,” Silvia says, explaining that today the drawings are just the same – precise, detailed, definite – but now arrive digitally, with no chance of rescuing rejected drawings that, to this day, Karl will scrunch up and throw away while he goes on to the next thing.

“My Aunt Carla, who was always a good archivist, used to grab sketches from the dustbin. She would iron them and file them in the archives. But if you talk to him about the archive he becomes mad because he doesn’t want to talk about the past.”

I remember the detailed drawings I saw in their hundreds at the exhibition, ‘Karl Lagerfeld: Modemethode’ in Bonn at the Bundeskunsthalle in 2015. True to form, he never saw the work curated by his muse and cultural partner, Amanda Harlech, who had the agonising hope, right to the end, that he might visit.

I ask him if he still feels emotionally attached to Fendi, now → that Carla, the family matriarch who died in 2017, and the

¬ Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel Haute Couture, A/W 2014

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OBSERVATION

sisters have faded away with the arrival of LVMH. He dismisses my question. “Emotional is difficult to say – I don’t overact with emotions,” he says. For Lagerfeld, the end of a collection is the seedbed for the next, and Silvia Fendi tells me about their ritual at the end of each show, “when we go backstage and give each other big hugs and say, ‘Okay, let’s do the next one.’”

“Fashion is about change, and I like change,” Karl says, as if it is a well-worn mantra. As to work, “I do it like I breathe. I wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea. I put it on a card next to my bed and I make the sketches in the morning before I forget it.”

Where exactly does his own Karl Lagerfeld line fit into his work and life? I remember him telling me that it was his “German side”.

How did he reinvigorate Chanel so perfectly and reinvent fur at Fendi, yet has never developed his own label to the same degree?

I ask him how he feels about his own brand. “It’s a very strange thing – it’s me and it’s not me. It’s me from outside myself,” he says, looking almost guilty. He tells me later, “I turned myself into a cartoon” referring to the images that decorate stores.

Will the real Karl Lagerfeld please stand up? It has been the big question since I joined the International Herald Tribune in 1988 and wrote an article suggesting that Karl played Salieri to Yves Saint Laurent’s Mozart, seeing in the two musicians the hard worker and the genius. Karl dismissed the piece at the time, saying that “Salieri had a better life” – a smart response when Saint Laurent was the tortured artist and Karl was having fun around town, much stouter then, hiding his face and making witty remarks from under an enormous selection of elegant fans. In the 1970s, when I was at The Times, I would see him as the designer who brought a fresh, light-hearted vision to Chloé, one collection with a crystal embroidery of a shower running down the back.

Lagerfeld was born in Germany in the mid-1930s, the beginning of a brutal era from which he says he was totally detached, protected by living on his father’s country estate. I met his mother briefly in Paris in the 1970s, when Karl was at Chloé. He now tells me that after his father died she wanted to leave Germany, and her move to Paris was essential. He mentions briefly, in passing, his sister in America, and her daughter, a promising opera singer.

Karl has built his own family, and the human equivalent of cat love appeared two days earlier, when I was in the Chanel studio and his godson, the nine-year-old Hudson Kroenig (the model Brad Kroenig’s son), came in with his latest shopping bag. The confident, perky little boy appears in the Chanel shows. Karl calls him “darling” and is amused by his sophisticated knowledge of cool shops and hot celebrities. “He is the kind of grandson I would like to have – he’s witty, he’s beyond, and I think that’s very funny,” Karl says. “I certainly didn’t want to have children myself, because it’s too much responsibility. I hate responsibility – that’s why I don’t want to own my business.”

His own childhood was something to finish as soon as possible, he says, describing his “charming, devilish mother” and her sharp tongue, which she would whip out when he tried to talk to her: “Make an effort, I’m not six – you are.” He remembers to this day how she threw his diary away because “there is no reason for people to know that you are that stupid”.

“I hated being a child; I wanted to be a grownup,” Karl says. “I never played with children, I never had toys – only paper, colours and books.

Apparently I was unbearable to strangers because I was so obsessed with the idea of being grown up that I missed my own childhood.” ¬ Suzy and Karl in Paris, backstage at Chanel A/W 2018

I had tried to talk about these early years when we were in Hamburg for the Chanel show, but he was not forthcoming about his hometown, explaining that he left long ago, in his late teens, when he came to Paris and won the Woolmark Prize, along with Yves Saint Laurent, in 1954. But now he opens up a little more, expressing regret that he had not felt close to his elderly father.

“My father was a very nice person, very sweet, but not as fun as my mother; not very witty, but warm and lovely,” he says. “He was born in 1880 – from another planet, no? Sometimes I nearly feel guilty that I was not nice to him, as I was a slave to my mother.”

One period that Karl is reluctant to discuss is his relationship with Jacques de Bascher, which lasted for nearly two decades, until AIDS swept through the 1980s, destroying a generation and taking away so many in the fashion world, including his partner.

Of that dark and tragic period, Karl says briskly, “I’m with Madonna, who says, ‘I don’t remember the 1980s because I wasn’t born.’ It’s still a nightmare I prefer to forget.”

I never felt that personal turmoil in his collections at the time, as Lagerfeld moved Chanel forward, reinvigorating the Coco years and focusing on the codes, from pearls to tweeds, that had faded away in the last years of Gabrielle Chanel herself.

Whenever I shut my eyes to recall his early shows for Chanel, I see a vision of Inès de la Fressange, with her aristocratic cheekbones and toothy smile. I asked her recently about those Chanel revival years and she waxed lyrical. “I have thousands of memories. With Karl we invented something that was a bit more than a mannequin – a ‘brand ambassador’. But this new métier was spontaneous each day. In contrast to the mannequins who came to try on their outfits two hours before the show, I was in the studio from the first choice of fabrics and the first drawings,” she says. “I could give my opinion or choose the clothes that I would wear. And travelling with Karl was such fun! We played a lot of games. We spent our time at the café in the rue Cambon and went out in the deep of the night to buy records on the Champs-Elysées.”

In conversation, Lagerfeld switches from French to English and occasionally German, so I ask him which country feels like home. The answer is sharp and impassioned. “No! No! I am a citizen of Europe. I’m not French and I never intend to become French, because I like to be a stranger,” he says. “I’m a stranger in Germany and a stranger here. I never wanted to be part of something I could not get away from. I love to be an outsider.

I’m part of nothing, no milieu. I am totally free in that sense.”

I consider asking Karl why he feels this disconnection, but before I speak he says, “I want to have a superficial image, I don’t want to look serious. You can be serious, but you mustn’t show it.”

I think of the many couture clients that Karl must have dressed at Chanel for more than three decades, and look forward to some juicy stories. But he appears utterly uninterested in the famous, except for his friend Princess Caroline of Hanover and her family.

“I never go into the salon – never!” he proclaims. “I never go to the shops to take selfies with clients. The only thing you can do is stay home. Go from door to door.”

I realise we’ve been talking for two hours. “Only bad journalists talk that long,” I say. He replies: “I’ve known you long enough that I don’t consider you a journalist – I don’t have to see you in such a limited frame.” But after all these years of seeing him at work, at home; publicly and privately, I still don’t know which of his different personas is the real Karl.

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#SuzyCouture Fendi Changes Its Name and Its Attitude The brand drops ‘Fur’ from its name for the Paris Haute Couture season 0 4 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 8

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The Fendi Haute Couture A/W 2018 collection featured ingenious fur and fabric treatments in which chiffon, sequins and organza mimicked the effect of fur, and vice versa

of guessing game for the audience. Was that coat woven in fur or wool? Surely that dress must be animal skin? But actually it’s a shredded knit.

If you want to ask, “What’s in a name?”, Fendi has now changed its spots. The show that has been labelled ‘Fendi Fur’ for the past two years on the Paris calendar is now called ‘Fendi Couture’.

Karl Lagerfeld stood backstage explaining his own feelings about fur after more than 50 years working with the Fendi family.

“My favourite furs were once sable and ermine, but now you cannot even touch them,” he said, as he and Silvia Fendi showed me up-close the ingenious clothes they had created.

The duo’s elegant and streamlined pieces were a sophisticated puzzle. Was a shimmering coat put together with sequins, or by working with ultra-light Mongolian lamb? Shearling interspersed with organza and feathers is not technically fur. But wispy, floaty organza was actually edged with fox.

Backstage, surrounded by the Arnault family and executives of LVMH, which owns the Roman Fendi brand, Karl and Silvia pointed to a mood board for the show, revealing a mash-up of elegant outfits and furry (or maybe not) patches.

It seems like a genius idea to remove Fendi’s name from absolute commitment to fur to the more hazy title of ‘Couture’ – although even that name is also under discussion.

“We changed the name from Fendi Fur because not all customers – and there a lot of them – are looking for fur. We sell so many other things,” said Serge Brunschwig, Fendi’s Chairman and CEO. “Also, Karl wanted to play and mix things.”

The show opened with a coat in such a vivid yellow, blue, and olive that the colours seemed more important than the material, which was described as “ruffled chiffon”. Then came a slender, plain beige coat, most certainly of lush Astrakhan. Except it turned out to be sequins. The elegance of the dresses made a fine and crafty collection in which texture and technique were major assets, whether or not the clothes were furry or friendly.

If this had been a mediocre collection, the Fendi show might have appeared like a fur company with tails between its legs. But the ultra-sophisticated designs, with their real modern elegance, made the best of both sides of Fendi – its fur and its fashion.

InDigital.TV

IMAGINE A FASHION SHOW as a kind

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The elegance of the clothes made a fine and crafty collection in which texture and technique were major assets

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OBSERVATION Ingie Chalhoub: “Dream Big” The creative force behind Ingie Paris on the power of perseverance

CNI LUXURY CONFERENCE, OMAN 05/04/2017

¬ Ingie Paris, S/S 2019 by retailer-turneddesigner, Ingie Chalhoub

Getty

Suzy: Tell us about this incredible journey you’ve made to become a leading player in the Middle East luxury market.

Ingie: It is important to have a vision and a dream, and I started dreaming as a child, when Barbies were my celebrities and I dressed them!

My father was a very conservative person and made me study business, so later on, partnering in business with my mother was very important because she saw my creative talents.

I had a lot of setbacks in my early days, struggling with the invasion of Kuwait. I had a business there with my mother and husband that had all the luxury labels, including Chanel, which we brought to Kuwait for the very first time. Then our country was invaded, and losing the business was very hard. My husband would tell me, “You still have to go to the shows, you have to attend, you have to show them that you are there so they don’t forget about you.”

During the war I would sit there, watching the shows, acting like everything was okay, but of course it was very difficult to lose everything all of a sudden and have to move. My husband

had a vision about Dubai, but it did not come easy. I had to convince Madame Montenay, who was the President of Chanel, to come to Dubai, which at the time was very small. But she believed in me and my vision of its potential.

SM: So you had to persuade this extremely important French woman at Chanel that they should sell in Dubai, which nobody had ever heard of? Anybody in the audience who is a retailer knows this deserves a round of applause, because what you’ve been doing is really a wonderful achievement.

I would also like to know a bit more about the Ingie Paris line. It may have seemed a long journey to you, but it’s sort of miraculous.

IC: To be part of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture is very important to me. A year ago I was having lunch with Ralph Toledano and he said, “Why don’t you present a fashion line?”

So I launched at Bonne Marché with a pop-up, but we all have a creative mind that needs to be fed, and I needed something more; to take a chance and go for it. I then had my Paris Fashion Week debut at the Autumn/Winter 2016 shows.

To me, the most important thing is to feel close to the customer. As a customer myself, as a woman designing for women, I know I like to feel the fit of the clothes. My mother was my mentor and always used to tell me, “Don’t look at the collection on a model – try it on yourself.”

Then, my biggest challenge is to show that Parisian chic can be combined with Arab culture and the traditional, conservative way. Ingie Paris is a mix of both these cultures.

SM: I went to the fashion school in Muscat to teach the students and encourage them about fashion. What would be your advice to them?

IC: The new generation has much more power than we did at the beginning. We needed to have CapEx – really big financial support – for our first stores and to do a lot of marketing.

Today you can go global without CapEx; you go global by Instagram! They need to know there will always be setbacks and difficulties, but you have to work hard – and from the heart. When you believe in something, you have to dream big and not give up on those dreams.

SM: That’s a beautiful way to finish. Thank you!

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#SuzyNYFW Ralph Lauren Celebrates 50 Years in Fashion The inventor of preppy and Polo turns his eye on the diverse America of today 0 8 / 0 9/ 2 0 1 8

HOLDING HANDS with a small child whose eyes were

Above:

Ralph Lauren S/S 2019; Ralph takes a bow after his 50th anniversary S/S 2019 show, held in the Arcade under Bethesda Terrace in Central Park

filled with wonder, Ralph Lauren walked down the steps of Bethesda Terrace in New York’s Central Park. In the Arcade below, transformed by Persian rugs, the designer greeted his wife Ricky and three children, shed a twinkling tear with Oprah Winfrey, and continued his walk of honour to mark his 50 years in fashion.

Except this was not a preppy parade of the designer’s favourite things – what he had described to me that afternoon as “jeans and a fresh, white button-down shirt”. Instead, it was an open door on a diverse world: Women in the lush elegance of hippie deluxe; long-haired men wearing plaid coats and leather trousers.

After the parade of strokable, tailored clothes, some seeming archival, others current, came diversity at its sweetest. ‘Families’ in Polo sportswear lined up like a fashion army on the steep stairs.

“When I was 24 I started selling ties I’d made – from a drawer,” Ralph told me earlier in a heartfelt interview. Having followed his career for over three decades, I am still fascinated by the story of the little boy from the Bronx who achieved the American dream.

“It was not a room or a closet, it was a drawer!” he explained. “I called the company Polo because it was aristocratic in some way.”

Given his majestic position in New York’s fashion firmament, the designer who could shut down Central Park for a Spring/ Summer 2019 show might equally have brought in horses for a polo game or to thunder through the trees, carrying models in the Big Country prairie look that was part of his oeuvre in the Eighties.

But Ralph Lauren showed humility in a speech with Oprah Winfrey at dinner (including steak from his Colorado ranch).

Of her early days, the media icon said, “My idea of celebrating success wasn’t to get a fancy car or jewellery. It was Ralph Lauren towels that represented comfort, luxury and admiration.” She reminded the audience that the designer had another first: He was a lifestyle innovator. He replied to her humbly by saying that in his own home the towels are worn and few, but loved.

America loves Ralph because he created an augmented reality – a more beautiful and desirable vision of city and country clothing, with his sharp tailoring melding with Native American prints and rustic knits. But could a designer do the same today for a fragmented country? Could there be a distinctive modern look as American as apple pie?

“The world is very small now,” Ralph said. “I don’t know what you would call ‘an American look’ for new designers. Today there is an international sensibility. I did what I did because it was what I wanted to wear myself. Then, when I had children, I made clothes for them and my wife. This show is all about individuality and taste, not what the trend is. It doesn’t look like it’s American, English or French. It looks cool and doesn’t have an age.”

On the runway, the collection looked different; more eclectic, with whimsical jewellery that might have been found on global travels, and slightly

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Sonny Vandevelde / InDigital.TV

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offbeat masculine tailoring as an alternative to the more familiar, sporty, casualwear. The more than 100 looks in the collection were streamlined but rich in soft leather and sumptuous velvets; an off-key elegance of striking colours and fabric. But the designer, subtly but firmly, has put a lock on the preppy style that was once his signature, and left WASP America far behind. What made my eyes prick and had many in the audience wiping away tears was the parade of diversity from Polo that will live long in my memory.

The celebrity guests reflected that, and included Iman, Robert De Niro, Kanye West, Hillary Clinton, Blake Lively – chic in a curvy tuxedo, Jessica Chastain in buttercup yellow, and Priyanka Chopra in a glittering dress. How to find front row seats for them all? Then there were the applauding fashion designers; legends such as Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and Tommy Hilfiger; and Thom Browne, Michael Kors and Alexander Wang. Who from the world of fame and fashion was not there?

I have spoken to Ralph Lauren before about his tough start in life, with immigrant parents who could not jump-start his career or buy him things. So I asked him now, 50 years on, what he would say to teenagers about building a life – and maybe a business.

After a long pause, he replied, “I would say, believe in yourself.

Believe in who you are. You feel emotions, you feel things. If you have a sense of design and that’s what you want to do, stay with it.

If you don’t expand in one year, you won’t last long. Pay attention to your talent and believe in yourself. If I had believed in what everyone else said, I wouldn’t have got anywhere.”

I asked Ralph, who once told me how his mother “Believe in yourself. Believe in would come to the school playground with a cup of who you are. If you have a sense warm milk for him, whether his parents encouraged of design and that’s what you his early choice of making neckties. “I don’t think want to do, stay with it” they were very impressed. Like a lot of parents that came from Europe, they wanted security for me, a job like a teacher, doctor or lawyer,” Ralph said. “My father was an artist, he did murals for churches and synagogues.

I didn’t have his talent, but I got something that came out in colour. I didn’t go to fashion school; I had a free-form sensibility.”

His brother Jerry has been part of the company for over thirty years, what about his own children? His eldest son Andrew is a film producer; David, as Executive Vice President at Ralph Lauren, heads marketing and advertising. His daughter Dylan has opened a chain of candy stores. “If she had asked my advice, I would have said, ‘What are you doing? You went to college and you’re a smart girl. Candy?’ But she has the drive,” he said. “I believe in young people. They should be encouraged to do something they love.”

After dinner, David Lauren did a round of the tables, famous names on each one. “It’s all about love,’ he said. “I talked to my dad this morning, and that’s what I said to him. It’s love. He loves his work and he loves his family. That is the basis of it all.”

Corny – but surely true.

From top: The

Ralph Lauren S/S 2019 show focussed on family and diversity; Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain; Edward Enninful, Iman and Tyson Beckford

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Planet Vogue “When I joined Condé Nast in June 2014 as Editor, Vogue International, there were 20 international editions of Vogue. In the past five years, we have been delighted to welcome five more.” Suzy Menkes → Illustration Toby Neilan

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A C R E AT I V E A N D E V E N T P R O D U C T I O N C O M PA N Y P R O U D PA R T N E R S O F T H E C O N D É N A S T I N T E R N AT I O N A L L U X U R Y C O N F E R E N C E

imgfocus.com | @imgfocus

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Vogue Poland [2018,Warsaw ] Editor-in-Chief: Filip Niedenthal

Vogue Czech Republic & Slovakia

[2018,Prague ] Editor-in-Chief: Andrea Behounková

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→

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Lina ballerina clip White gold and diamonds.

Haute Joaillerie, place VendĂ´me since 1906

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Vogue Arabia [2017,Dubai ] Editor-in-Chief: Manuel Arnaut

Vogue Greece [2019,Athens ] Editor-in-Chief: Thaleia Karafyllidou

Vogue Hong Kong [2019] Editorial Director: Peter Wong

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#SuzyLFWNG Tiffany Amber Secures Her Place in Nigeria’s Fashion Universe Folake Folarin-Coker, the designer behind the Tiffany Amber brand, has ignited interest in African style 25/10/2018

“TIFFANY AMBER” is just shy of 20 years old, but she holds a chic, unique position in the fashion industry. The name was dreamed up by Creative Director Folake Folarin-Coker, who is something of a star in Lagos, Nigeria.

Born in Nigeria’s most dynamic city, and educated in Switzerland, England, and Scotland, Folake graduated with a Masters in Petroleum Law. But the incipient designer decided to found a sophisticated clothing business, in 1998. Now, having won international acclaim, Folake reveals how she made Tiffany Amber grow.

Suzy Menkes: How do you divide your time between creativity and management?

Folake Folarin-Coker: I brought in a partner

↑From left ¬ Tiffany Amber S/S 2019 at Lagos Fashion Week ¬ A silk batik ‘lappa’ ¬ Suzy snaps a tie-dye ensemble ¬ Folake Folarin-Coker with Naomi Campbell at Arise Fashion Week, 2018

three years ago to handle the business side, because for 17 years I did it all on my own, working up to 19 hours a day. Now I work 60-40, fashion-management. I still have a lot of say in running the business because there isn’t an industry here; there’s no structure. But we are trying to put the structure in place.

If I’m not involved in production, it just doesn’t happen, but I don’t want to produce outside Nigeria. At the moment we have a workshop of 50 tailors, but we are building our own factory to accommodate 250 tailors because we have just launched a diffusion line.

SM: A lot of people in Nigeria think there are more important things than fashion, but you’ve kept your company going, which is very impressive.

FFC: It’s changing slowly. A lot of banks are taking interest in the fashion industry now, but they are asking for an arm and a leg to finance it! There are also lots of people who prefer the fame over the business, so they bring in collections every season and don’t mind selling only three or four pieces.

They are wrecking the industry, as far as I am concerned.

If we didn’t want to grow, we would be comfortable where we are. But we want to be all over the continent. Nigeria doesn’t have a marketing or

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Simon Deiner / SDR Photo; Kunle Ogunfuyi; Tiffany Amber

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magazine industry. Instagram has been a blessing and a curse. So many people post stories that are not true, which affects others that do have a proper business.

The message I’d like to send out is that, as much as African designers say we don’t need anything, we really do! We need to teach designers how to be designers. Fashion schools don’t really exist here, and I think the global fashion industry needs to work more with the African fashion industry, to help it grow.

SM: If an investor approached you, what do you feel would make a big change?

FFC: We are selling equity in the business right now. Our ‘growth machinery’ is a diffusion line.

For the first three years we are only selling 30 per cent, to raise capital to fund everything.

Ideally, someone would say, “I want to invest some capital into your business and I’m going to bring foreign expertise to train your people.”

SM: What would that expertise be? Financial, management, or helping you find design staff?

FFC: The biggest problem now is that financial people don’t understand the fashion industry.

In Nigeria, people like to see an immediate return on their investment. It’s easier to invest in an oil company that’s about to fail than in a fashion brand that’s about to blow up all over the world. In this profession, a lot of money is thrown out the window. But if it lands in the right place, it walks right back through the door.

Tiffany Amber was the first ready-to-wear brand in Nigeria. We were the first of the so-called rock-star fashion designers. Before us, if you came from a particular background, it was taboo to enter the fashion industry.

SM: You are very highly educated yourself; you aren’t someone who has just come out of college having learned how to cut a dress.

FFC: I qualified as a lawyer. I come from a big family – nine girls and two boys – and I’ve always been fascinated by fashion. But I did not dare tell my parents that I wanted to be a designer! So, secretly, I launched Tiffany Amber.

I told the press, “Never say Folake Folarin-Coker, always say Tiffany Amber.” The name made people think it was a foreign brand, so they bought into it. Five years later I told my parents, “You know what? Tiffany Amber is me.”

For ten years, I had no competition. Then parents started allowing their kids to do it, and now there’s a designer in almost every family!

SM: So are there fashion schools in Nigeria?

FFC: They are not anywhere near sophisticated enough. A Nigerian fashion school graduate

doesn’t have the same knowledge as a first-year student in a British or American fashion school.

Even in South Africa, something is missing.

SM: What message would you like to share?

FFC: What this continent has to offer in terms of fabrication, weaves, or even concepts, has been seen on all the major runways. When I saw the Valentino Spring/Summer 2016 collection, inspired by Africa, I thought, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ They took the best of the continent and made it so sophisticated and globally appealing.

I don’t think the fashion industry is focussed enough to make it stand strong in Africa. Zara is all over the world, but why are there only one or two Zara boutiques on the entire African continent? It’s an untapped market. The average African woman is well travelled. In terms of the

fabric we wear, the style, the jewellery, we’ve come up with a new style that can only be described as an attitude.

At Tiffany Amber, we probably have the largest clientele of African first ladies. I honestly believe that nobody can dress an African better than another African. I want the world to know that we are capable of becoming an African heritage brand. In Africa, there is no brand that transcends the whole continent. Every country has its star. I would invest in the most bankable brand on the continent.

SM: And that’s you?

FFC: Yes! SM: That’s good, speak up for yourself!

FFC: Let the world see that once one brand is successful, it opens a huge market for everyone.

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Speaking My Language Re-thinking the meaning of luxury fashion is a trend we can all follow 0 9/ 1 0 / 2 0 1 8

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV

↑From left page ¬ The orbs for Vivienne Westwood’s Ethical Fashion Initiative collection are forged in Kenya by Steven Adawo Kine ¬ A Masai workshop produces beading for Westwood pieces ¬ A Vivienne Westwood rucksack for A/W 2018

I was recently interviewed by the sustainability and communications consultancy, Eco-Age, whose Creative Director is Livia Firth, about my work in the fashion industry and my observations of its environmental and social impact. The interview was timely, as I had just been honoured with the Visionary Award at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards 2018 in Milan.

The awards are part of Italy’s unprecedented effort to make its powerful clothing industry a model of good practice. Carlo Capasa, President of Italy’s Camera Nazionale della Moda (the official chamber of fashion), told me how it sets guidelines for manufacturers on the percentage of allowable chemicals and other crucial rules.

“We are working to make sustainability something you can measure, not something esoteric where no-one understands the truth,” he told me, explaining how Italy, the greatest European hub for creating clothing, has not just a duty but a desire to make fashion as beautiful in its production as its glamorous appearance.

The award is particularly poignant for me as I have been concerned with green issues throughout my career, and once wrote an article on what were then the new fashion-industry buzzwords, ‘sustainability’ and ‘responsibility’ (‘Sustainability is Back in Fashion’, The New York Times 29 March 2009). A decade later, has anything changed? The alarming news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that, quite literally, the heat is on.

The subject of a more responsible luxury industry has been a principal focus of the annual Condé Nast International Luxury Conferences since they began in 2015. I discussed my commitment to the subject in an interview with the team from Eco-Age, transcribed below: “We need to encourage people’s interest in the provenance of the clothes they are buying.

That’s what worries me most, because it really comes down to customers understanding that

buying things just because they are cheap can be counterproductive. But it can feel like a radical change to demand of anyone, and even one that feels unnatural if they don’t have much money.

“The truth is, if you really love clothes, you hate the idea that they are produced by people who are being treated like slaves – or using methods that have catastrophic environmental consequences. We can’t expect people to be suddenly enlightened and transform themselves into leading what we might now call an ‘Eco-Age life’, but changing attitudes is another matter.

“We need to bang harder on the drum and get everybody talking about it. That’s why I love what Livia Firth is doing with the Green Carpet Fashion Awards. It’s not just a fancy night out; it’s really a wonderful way to encourage deep thought about the impact fashion has.

“Sustainability was not the particular focus of the Spring/Summer 2019 collections that I just saw. It’s difficult for big fashion houses, which have so many different global customers, and for designers, who are under multifaceted pressure.

To their credit, big luxury groups like LVMH and Kering have appointed sustainability experts to encourage customer awareness, but it’s difficult to rein in and push sales at the same time. Ideally the big houses would acknowledge the work of

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↑From top ¬ Finalists of the CNMI Green Carpet Fashion Awards. First-prize winner Gilberto Calzolari (centre) won for a dress made of Brazilian coffee sacks ¬ Marine Serre, S/S 2019 ¬ Suzy at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards with Livia Firth

Includes extracts from ‘#SuzyMFW: Milan’s Red-Hot Story is Green’, 30/09/2017. @SuzyMenkesVogue; François Durand; Marine Serre

Eco-Age and what being ‘green’ means in reality – and somehow ensure that their most influential young customers question how and where their clothes are produced.

“One highlight of the season was 26-year-old Marine Serre, the winner of 2017’s LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. Her attitude is absolute – she does nothing without thinking about its provenance and its impact. Yet it’s also a deeply joyous, interesting and fresh take on fashion. We need people like her as role models.

“What also inspired me hugely was ‘Homo Faber’ in Venice, produced by Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert’s Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship.

(See page 32.) It was a fascinating exhibition of the effect of human hands in the creation of luxury goods, and such an engaging story. And while it’s hard to imagine fashion slowing down enough for everyone to focus on its real-life impact, it takes real thinkers to drive change, and people with money to drive the ideas into reality.

“In terms of sustainability in my own life, I’m probably the last person working in fashion who was a baby in the war years, so I grew up with a very clear understanding that we had to take care of our belongings and make them last. My mother would save every coil of string that came on parcels in the post because we didn’t know when we’d next be able to get hold of a ball of string. But I never wanted a plethora of clothes;

my ambition was to have enough money to have beautiful things, and that attitude has prevailed throughout my life. I don’t buy diamonds, either for myself or anyone else, but if I wanted to I would look very keenly on how and where they were sourced. But generally I don’t have an acquisitive nature. I like to think about how I can change what I wear by how I wear it. In fact, I’m probably the worst advert for the fashion industry since I’m not always rushing off to buy something new. I’ve always wanted to love my clothes and wear them until they drop.

“One challenge is that it’s difficult to know how truthful people are about their attitude to sustainability. I don’t want to imply that they deliberately don’t tell the truth, but sometimes people prefer not to admit that they bought something cheaply at Topshop because it looks like a luxury brand, and we can’t always expect them to. We can’t blame fashion magazines for that, however. Their message hasn’t ever been about encouraging people to buy cheap clothes, but of course they certainly haven’t been about encouraging people to wear things until they wear out, either. I was lucky to be alive in the fantastic Sixties and Seventies, when separates were all the rage. Before that, it was all top-to-toe looks. That break-up of the traditional female

wardrobe was very important and gave us an opportunity to style our clothes in a variety of ways and style more life out of them.

“I was honoured to receive the Green Carpet Fashion Visionary Award, but I also felt ashamed that I don’t do more. With all of our busy jobs, it’s challenging to do all the things we want. As I thought about it, I had a flashback to a trip to Kenya in 2012 to research the creator of the metal embellishments on Vivienne Westwood’s bags. We had to walk through slums that you just can’t imagine. Put it this way, you had to throw away your shoes afterwards. We eventually found the craftsman and he was so joyous and proud of his work, and about the fact that it was his route out of the slums. That was my turning point: I became determined to think about the human beings involved in making the things we buy. We can’t all go to Bangladesh and tell people off for inhumane working conditions, but we can encourage people to care about the beauty of something created by human hands, and to love it and pass it on to their children.

“That’s what I want to encourage designers to do: To tell the world about the exceptional people and skills involved in making their collections. It’s not the language of fashion yet, but it’s certainly my language.”

I like to think about how I can change what I wear by how I wear it. I always want to love my clothes and wear them until they drop

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Talent is everywhere.

Opportunity is not.

The African Fashion Fund (AFF) works to propel African designers into the global fashion industry by helping them with resources, grants, mentorships and more.

For all enquiries to the program please contact: info@africanfashionfund.org or visit our website www.africanfashionfund.org

SUKEINA by OMAR SALAM

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Courtesy of Coty; Krista Lindahl, Colossal Media; Heather Shuker

“CUSTOMER WISDOM, the social network revolution,

From Story Telling to Story Living Simona Cattaneo, Chief Marketing Officer of Coty Luxury fragrances, shares her insights on launching iconic products CNI LUXURY CONFERENCE, L I S B O N , 1 9/ 0 4 / 2 0 1 8

Clockwise from top: Subverting the traditional billboard by mixing street art with advertising, and painting an artwork by Ines Morreale’s on city walls for the Gucci Bloom campaign; Simona Cattaneo at the CNI Luxury Conference in Lisbon, 2018

and the ‘Uberisation’ of our culture have led to new behaviours that challenge luxury conventions,” Coty’s Simona Cattaneo told the audience at the CNI Luxury Conference in Lisbon. She shared her experience of attracting this increasingly informed and expert luxury customer by changing strategy, moving from “storytelling to story living” with the customer as a “brand co-creator”.

Suzy Menkes: At our conference in Oman in 2017, beauty blogger

Huda Kattan, was a speaker. She had 18 million Instagram followers then, and now she has 25 million! Some customers may feel that she has more credibility than big beauty houses. How do companies like Coty manage the power of social media?

Simona Cattaneo: Coty partners with some of the most elite global brands with a very strong heritage, such as Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Burberry, Tiffany & Co, Alexander McQueen, and Chloé. We have established a pyramid, with a big vision at the top and a network of influencers right down to a local level of customer who shares their impressions of fragrance, when to use it or why. We co-create the organic content of the brand, which is a little more difficult for luxury brands because we need to control the image, but we control it in a curated way.

Individualisation is also important. For fragrance and beauty it’s a little challenging, although for fashion it’s nothing new. A good example is Burberry fashion; it offers bespoke for some iconic products, like the trench. You can customise the length, the buttons, add your initials. Today we offer the same thing with our bespoke fragrance collection: The customer can monogram the flacon and become a brand co-creator,

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“Inclusion means celebrating and liberating the diversity of beauty”

Coty; DP Media

From top: Defining

and setting the spirit of the times, Coty campaigns for ‘Gucci Bloom’; Burberry’s ‘Her’; Chloé’s ‘Nomade’; and Calvin Klein’s ‘Women’

choosing such details as the colour of the ribbon, and even the concentration of the fragrance. Also, thanks to new technologies we can establish one-to-one conversation with the customer through live chatbots. For me, this is about “story living”, moving a transactional relationship to a more emotional one.

SM: How do you translate the essence of a house or brand into a fragrance?

SC: In ancient Egypt, perfume was diffused in temples to honour the gods, but it became associated with seduction when Cleopatra used it to entice Mark Antony, scenting the sails of her ships to create an aura of sensuality around her. This is why perfumeurs speak of ‘sillage’ (‘wake’ or ‘trail’ in French).

Today, it is vital to have consistency between the fashion side and the beauty side, and to work very closely with the fashion house, whether the founding designer or a design team is there. The first thing we do is study the story of the brand – the values, the collections, the advertising, the archives – to get to its essence. Then, the challenge is to balance the luxury DNA of the brand heritage with staying culturally relevant. This is true for all luxury brands, but it is even more salient for beauty. Because of our lower price we are often the entry point into luxury brands and we engage with a much wider, differentiated target.

Our priorities are always flawless quality, brand reinvention and innovation.

Gucci is a good example of this. From Alessandro Michele’s very first show, it was obvious that a complete brand reinvention was taking place before our very eyes. No marketing person in the world knows what is better for the brand than he does, and it’s little wonder that ‘Gucci’ has become an adjective!

We are witnessing a movement from tradition to positive transgression. To transgress means to break the code, which generates surprise and also desire.

For the launch of Gucci Bloom, we broke all the traditional fragrance codes, from the flacon to the talent to the advertising to the communication model.

“The idea of blooming is to become something different,” Alessandro says, and one of the most disruptive ways Gucci Bloom came to life was with its artwork, created with Spanish artist Ines Morreale. The traditional advertising billboard blended with the modern medium of street art. Installed in global cities like New York, London, Paris and Milan, it reinvented fragrance advertising. It was an artistic interpretation of the urban garden, and put the customer at the heart of the happening, allowing them to share it broadly.

SM: Is there a worldwide language of beauty or is each global market different?

SC: When our phone can translate anything into any language, and we all use the same emojis, then we are moving towards a universal language. But, you need to know the needs of the local customer perfectly. For example, fragrance and make-up played an important role in the history of China until the Cultural Revolution, when Mao banned them for being bourgeois symbols of gender oppression. But in 2018 the rate of growth in China is 37 per cent – we have not seen this since Gabrielle Chanel invented Chanel No5! The Middle East is also interesting, because more than 80 per cent of the population uses fragrance.

Because of their history their olfactory tastes are spicy, woody, Silk Road scents.

They also have a very free relationship with fragrance; there is no gender in its use, and they practically invented the layering that is trendy today.

SM: Tell me about Coty’s approach to beauty, fragrance and wider social issues.

SC: Luxury is a world of exclusivity, and as a beauty company and as a leader, Coty has a responsibility to be inclusive, support freedom and respect, and fight prejudice. Inclusion means celebrating and liberating the diversity of beauty; respecting the singularity and authenticity of each individual. This is one reason why we moved towards genderless campaigns. The Gucci Guilty campaign transforms the traditional narrative about fragrance into a celebration of different kinds of contemporary love. Another form of inclusion is to be more trans-generational, celebrating the beauty of all ages. So we have Susan Sarandon celebrating the latest fragrance for Jil Sander.

Authenticity also brings credibility. In a recent Calvin Klein campaign, Raf Simons presented the young generation in a very relaxed, casual way, as if to say, “Luxury is now cool, it is effortless, it is universal,” and the visuals referenced Pop Art. For our recent CK One campaign, where the product itself is a pop icon, we used the codes of the same tribe to engage millennials. CK One is now 30 years old, but because at the time of its launch it was very disruptive, it is still contemporary and the only successful, global, genderless fragrance today.

Coty can change things. We can fight discrimination and the dictatorship of beauty stereotypes, and we can speak loud with all these beautiful brands.

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Why Fashion is Crashing Suzy’s call for slow fashion becomes her most widely shared and popular online story THE ANNOUNCEMENT that Raf Simons is resigning from his position as Creative Director of Christian Dior might seem like a sequel to Dior and I. That film showed the Belgian designer’s arrival at the historic Parisian house, his struggle, his tears, his million flowers decorating the walls of the Autumn/ Winter 2012 Haute Couture show – and his ultimate triumph.

But as with any designer for a luxury house, one successful show is never enough. That film has to be played over and over, again and again and again. January is Haute Couture; March is Ready-to-Wear; May is Cruise; July Couture again; September Ready-to-Wear again; November is Resort – or is it Cruise again?

Add to this the advertising campaigns, personal appearances, store openings, global visits, trunk shows, museum exhibitions, interviews, Instagram – and it’s a wonder that any designer is prepared – or able – to keep up the pace.

The statement that Dior sent out this week was amicable but definite. After three and a half years at the helm, Raf Simons would not renew his contract with Christian Dior “for personal reasons”.

And the show earlier this month – a well-received fusion of Victorian underwear and modernist clothing – would be his last.

“It is a decision based entirely and equally on my desire,” said Raf, while thanking Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH, and Sidney Toledano, Dior’s Chief Executive, who returned the compliment.

I have no information on this separation, but I remembered one incident: At last year’s Frieze art fair I sent a text to Raf, whom I have known since his first edgy, schoolboy looks in menswear 20 years ago. I asked him which tent he was in and where we could meet. The answer, still on my phone, was this: “I really miss it, but the schedules are so tight now with another show in December.

Just a terrible agenda.”

No time to take one day to go from Paris to London, for inspiration, or for the contemporary art in which Raf is so interested and knowledgable? Has being a fashion designer really come to this?

It has indeed. Like that bird in a gilded cage, creative people at the major fashion houses have everything: A circle of assistants, drivers, first-class travel, access to elegant homes, and celebrity clients. Everything, but time.

All of us in the industry know of people who are living on the edge, using substances to get through the days that roll inexorably into nights. We all think of Lee McQueen and his tragic ending. Of

Marc Jacobs lurching though his punishing schedule until he finally gave up Louis Vuitton for his own label. With Dior again in the news, the fashion world gulps and thinks of John Galliano, his drunken anti-semitic raving and the shocking end to that chapter of a brilliant career.

We watch designers adopting protection mechanisms, like Phoebe Philo of Céline refusing to move from her native England to Paris; or Hedi Slimane fleeing Paris after his Saint Laurent shows to his home and studio in faraway Los Angeles.

Designers – by their nature sensitive, emotional and artistic people – are being asked to take on so much. Too much.

The situation is not so easy for buyers and editors either, also trying to keep up with a punishing schedule. The pressure on retailing, aggravated by online sales and the speed of the digital world, has exacerbated the situation. People talk of ‘fast fashion’ as though it only applies to H&M or Uniqlo. In fact it is equally present in high-end stores from New York’s Bergdorf Goodman to Paris’ Bon Marché. New lines are put up constantly, while the rest is marked down.

Then there is social media, as the voracious demands of Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and Facebook eat into time and designers fight for attention and links to celebrities.

The people who suffer most from high-speed fashion are undoubtedly the creatives, who are the heart and soul of our industry. Without them, there is no fashion – just an echo chamber of ideas; nothing truly new, just repetition dressed up as invention.

Ultimately, the fashion world may come to thank Raf Simons for his brave stand. For walking away from Dior with his head held high. For getting his life back.

But someone has to fill his shoes, to take over the reins at Dior.

Balenciaga has only just filled its vacancy for a new Creative Director with Demna Gvasalia of Vetements, after Alexander Wang moved on. And if LVMH moves Riccardo Tisci to Dior, as has been suggested, his place will then be empty at Givenchy.

We used to call this game of vacant thrones ‘fashion’s merrygo-round’. But now the vision is much darker. Who is next to be thrown into the lion’s den?

From August 2016 to December 2018 Raf Simons was Chief Creative Officer at Calvin Klein; Maria Grazia Chiuri was appointed Creative Director at Dior in July 2016; and Riccardo Tisci left Givenchy to become Chief Creative Officer of Burberry in March 2018 (see p 74)

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty; Jack Pierson

23/10/2015

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↑From left ¬ Raf Simons in 2017 ¬ Nicolas Ghesquière, Suzy, and Raf Simons ¬ Detail from the Dior Couture A/W 2012 ‘million flowers’ set

Like that bird in a gilded cage, creative people at major fashion houses have everything... but time

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“If we design things in a really good way, then it solves part of the problem”

Edited extract from ‘The Nature of Man: Technology and Technique’. Photographs: Raeburn

Christopher Raeburn: A Creative Call to Arms 16/06/2018 I stopped reporting from the international menswear shows after 20 years because the sheer number of womenswear collections became overwhelming. But I like to dip into men’s fashion, especially now, when the meld of the technical and the streetwise has such urgent, mixed-gender appeal.

After a trip to Pitti Uomo in Florence, I realised that new attitudes and demands are sweeping away the neat tailored clothes and colourful mix-and-match neckties that once formed the foundation of a man’s wardrobe.

From the 1,240 brands taking part, today Pitti reflects the new generation’s searching for meaning in what they wear and how it is

made. The result is what can best be described as fashion’s climate change.

At Pitti’s ‘I Go Out’, an area at the Fortezza da Basso dedicated to the great outdoors, 20-plus designers focused on nature – including its salvation – and none more so than Christopher Raeburn, the British designer who is dedicated to recycling and to creating a balance between man and environment.

“It’s a creative call to arms,” the designer said, displaying patterns developed from NASA images of our planet, taken over a 30-year period. “I think we’re in a really interesting moment, where we are all part of the problem and we know it,” Christopher continued. “Lots

of people say to me, ‘Oh, I don’t really know what I can do to help.’ But the good thing is that we are all part of the solution.

“It’s a design-led solution, because if we design things in a really good way, then it already solves a bit of the problem. So, unsurprisingly, everything you see here is one of the ‘Three Rs’ – it’s either remade, recycled, or reduced.

What that really means is that ’remade’ is all made in our own studio (from deconstructed and surplus clothing); ‘reduced’ and organic cotton; and ‘recycled’ is made from recycled PVC and polyster. We just try to keep things simple.”

Bravo Christopher!

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Apple’s Angela Ahrendts Re-Energises Retail A rare interview with the acclaimed visionary of 21st-century commerce V O G U E B U S I N E S S . C O M 2 9/ 0 1 / 2 0 1 9

Angela Ahrendts

stands on the snowy steps of the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC. This noble building, opened in 1903 and once filled with books, is having an Apple makeover. But that does not mean it will be a tech hub, dedicated to all things digital. Its conversion into a place of learning and entertainment – with creative workshops, sketching tours of the neighbourhood, and author readings live-streamed to its stores around the world – is proof that while the tech giant makes its big money up in the ether, it is also transforming retail.

Ahrendts, 58, first became famous during her tenure as CEO of Burberry in the UK from 2006–2014, when she proved that a bricks-and-mortar store could be re-thought to appeal to the millennial generation. Cue music, ‘smart mirrors’ and shopping as entertainment. She then left London for Silicon Valley, and ever since has been directing her energy and enthusiasm towards creating a new ambience to bring vibrant life back in-store.

“These are big gestures, because Apple could invest anywhere, but we needed a beautiful flagship here,” she explains, as we pick our way through concrete and rubble to where the hard-hat brigade are inserting sensors in the walls, to link up with Apple stores across the world. “A few years ago I sent a photo to Tim (CEO Tim Cook, her boss), saying there’s this library that Apple could turn into a community space,“ she says. “Carnegie envisioned it years ago when he had the reading room. For Apple, we’ll have field trips with busloads of kids; or they can come in to learn to code every morning. It’s a different type of investment, and you can’t do it in every city.”

The growth of on-the-ground Apple stores offers food for thought. In 506 Apple outlets in 21 countries (Thailand being the most recent) Ahrendts has pursued the concept of stores as centres of knowledge and discovery. The ‘Today at Apple’ series of in-store experiences (classes, talks, concerts and workshops) is designed to reach out to the half-billion global customers who visit them. Such is its success, even more events worldwide are planned. Apple has brought its high-flying digital empire down to earth with such ‘info-tainment’ (what Federico Marchetti, CEO of the Yoox Net-A-Porter group, calls being an ‘enter-tailer).

“As humans we still need gathering places,” Ahrendts says. “I’ve always maintained that this is the role of Apple retail, because we already have more people coming to us than anyone else, typically in a mall or big urban markets. But why shouldn’t Apple make big spaces where people want to learn? We always say that’s our job.”

Ahrendts references the original vision of Apple’s founder, the late Steve Jobs, to explain her thinking. “Steve told the teams when he opened retail 18 years ago, ‘Your job is not to sell, your job is to enrich lives and always through the lens of education.’”

No focus on selling? Really? With department stores quivering and closing around the globe – especially in the United States,

where almost 10,000 stores have shuttered their business since 2017 – the exceptional Apple buildings are a bold statement of the company’s success.

Another store in the spirit of ancient-made-modern is in Los Angeles, where the landmark Howard Theatre will be a West Coast version of the Carnegie site. Then there is the other ‘Ahrendts baby’ – the Norman Foster-designed Apple store that opened in November on the Champs Élysées in Paris, with its floor-to-ceiling glass, trees planted in the courtyard and vertical plantings in the sales area. The traditional carved wooden staircase has been preserved, but the rooms are hyper-modern, filed with educational entertainment.

Why are the physical stores so important to Apple that Ahrendts searches the Genius Bar for feedback and when a customer buys something they receive a survey asking, “How did we do?” Angela replies, “In this data-driven world we need to define what ‘enriching lives’ means, and then we need to measure that. Did we inspire you to learn something new? Did we help to unlock your creativity or creative thinking?”

This might sound whimsical, but the reality is not. In revenue terms, retail is a small part of Apple’s business, but it is the company’s largest division by staff numbers: 70,000 of its 132,000 employees worldwide work in retail, and when they join, the majority stay. Ahrendts hopes to improve the experience and consistency of the stores by launching two company apps: ‘Hello’, which briefs employees at every Apple store on the ‘need to knows’ of the day; and ‘Loop’, an internal social network where employees can share learning and ideas. “It’s a huge unlock, just getting all the stores to talk to one another,” Ahrendts says.

This passion for retail started way back when the executive worked with Donna Karan. Here she met British designer Christopher Bailey in the creative team. Together they would take control of Burberry in London, making a company rooted in army raincoats into a hip brand for the new millennium.

“I think it was just Christopher’s age and the team’s age,” Ahrendts recalls. “It really wasn’t rocket science – we had targeted the millennial customer and we knew the best way to talk to them.“ The executive believes that the current predicament of 21st-century retail is global. “The tragedy of retail is that it has become about numbers,” Ahrendts continues. “It’s about cost-cutting the way to prosperity instead of investing in your people, and in that environment, big isn’t always good. Some companies get more removed as they get bigger.”

Apple is renowned as the ultimate influencer: a company that has changed the face of retail by shifting from a single channel (stores) to multiple channels (bricks-and-mortar, e-commerce, mobile and social media). In contrast, traffic to shopping malls

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ÂŹ Angela Ahrendts at the Carnegie Library in Washington DC, which Apple is transforming into a flagship store

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@SUZYMENKESVOGUE INSTAGRAM EDIT

and department stores, hit by on-line buying, has fallen by some 25 per cent in the last seven years.

In spite of all the admiration heaped on Apple, it is not immune to the winds of change. After a stellar progress in 2018, Tim Cook sent out a profit warning in January 2019 referring to an unexpected downturn in China. In the unlikely event that the Far East fall is precipitous or long lasting, retail activities may stall.

Ahrendts says that she is not privy to discussions about future sales trends. She simply defines Apple as a phone company that makes 62 per cent of its $266 billion in annual revenue through iPhone sales, and says that retail is a modest portion of its business. The programming of the ‘Today at Apple’ stores, which will be increased by 50 new sessions this year, is designed to engage customers in “skills, walks and labs”. But the sheer scale of operations across the world makes offering so many subjects exceptional – even extraordinary.

Before asking Ahrendts to outline Apple’s next move, I admire her tailored Ralph Lauren outfit (she sits on the company’s board) and high-heeled boots (for a building site) and ask if she misses fashion.

After a pause, she replies: “You know, I loved fashion for 40 years and there are things about the industry that I miss. This job is less the people part; more the design of stores. I came to Apple because I felt it was a calling to one of the greatest companies on the planet. I felt we could even do a little of what we did at Burberry: unite people to do incredible things.“ So what advice would Ahrendts give to bricks-and-mortar retailers in our digital world?

“They have to stop looking at everything on a linear basis,” she says. “You can’t just look at the store, the profitability of your app, or your dot-com business – you have to put it all together. It’s one customer, one brand – and they are going to come in and out of those touch points. I’m going to use the world ‘omni-channel’. It’s not a consumer-friendly word to me. But in your own brand you’re going to have a multitude of ways into your company and no matter how that customer comes in and buys, you have to look at it as P&L. That is the issue. They try to make these stores on a four-wall, stand-alone basis, but with buy online, pick-up in-store, you are recognising the revenue online and not in-store.”

“From a financial perspective, look differently at the markets,” she recommends. “My big flagship may not take as much money as my store over in Century City in Los Angeles, but I’m studying LA and its customers.”

While spreading the joy of Apple across the world, Ahrendts keeps up with her three children, two of whom stayed in London while the third is in LA. The executive says that she raised the family as the kind of tech-savvy ‘global citizens’ who also travel to countries such as Ethiopia to “help turtles and build water wells”.

Everything I learned about Apple makes it seem more like a religion or calling than retail, as we have previously understood it. Behind the massive sales, online or in-store, is the original vision of Steve Jobs – that Apple’s higher purpose is to enrich lives through education. And even without the company wardrobe that once symbolised her career, Angela Ahrendts has followed the founder’s intentions to “unlock creativity, inspire learning, and create human connections”.

Adapted from a longer story for the launch of VogueBusiness.com.

On 5 February 2019, Apple announced that Angela Ahrendts would leave the company in April.

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Amy Harrity

“Retailers have to stop looking at everything on a linear basis.

It’s not just the store, the app, or the dot-com business. It’s one customer, one brand”

suzymenkesvogue 29 January 2019 Darcel Disappoints

I’m stepping inside the bricks-and-mortar Carnegie Library in Washington DC, about to be reimagined by Apple’s Angela Ahrendts

suzymenkesvogue 29 January 2019 Darcel Disappoints

Inside the work-in-progress Carnegie Library, I’m about to learn what Angela has achieved in the five years since she left Burberry

suzymenkesvogue 29 January 2019 Darcel Disappoints

With Angela Ahrendts in Washington DC at the Carnegie Library. “When you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for is human connection – eye contact,” she says

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Bill Cunningham: History in His Lens A tribute to the master of photographic fashion reportage, who documented the spirit of the times with his eye for style V O G U E I N T E R N AT I O N A L P R I N T E D I T I O N S , J A N U A R Y- M A R C H 2 0 1 9

Clockwise from top:

Portrait of Bill Cunningham by Jean-Luc Huré; ‘Girl with a cigarette’ – New York street style, 1980s; Diane von Furstenberg at the Met Gala, 1974; Calvin Klein and Iman at the Met Gala, 1981

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Clockwise from top left:

Debbie Harry (centre) at the ‘Interview’ party at Studio 54 with Lorna Luft (left) and Paloma Picasso (behind her) in 1979; Josephine Baker and Marisa Berenson at ‘The Battle of Versailles’, 1973; Liza Minnelli with the American delegation of models at ‘The Battle of Versailles’; Diana Vreeland and Oscar de la Renta at the Met Gala, 1980s; New York street style near the Rockefeller Plaza, 1970s; Bethan Hardison’s ground-breaking swagger (left) at ‘The Battle of Versailles’

Courtesy of ‘The Times of Bill Cunningham’

“THANK YOU, CHILD,” Bill Cunningham would say, as

he politely refused my offer to share a taxi back from the New York shows. Instead, he set off on his bicycle, rain, shine or drizzling snow, wearing his signature blue worker’s jacket and cap.

The man with a camera who captured history in his lens always called me ‘child’, even though I had known him half his 60 years as a photographer. On his wonky bike, he would snap society mavens, quirky Downtown characters and, best of all, sniff out fashion trends on his favourite corner of 57th and Fifth Avenue.

“I’ve never been a paparazzi,” Cunningham always said. Yet he managed to capture not only the famous – such as a younger, thicker Karl Lagerfeld with Italian fashion legend Anna Piaggi – but also to stitch together the ever-changing patchwork of society, catching a private glimpse of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis or →

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Clockwise from left:

New York street style, Gay Pride, 1970s; Patrick Demarchelier, 1970s; Sonny and Cher, 1970s

the old guard of upper-class America. So who was this slight man with a perpetual smile and ever-present camera?

Cunningham, whose father worked for the US Post Office and whose first step in fashion was as a milliner, remained humble. His studio in New York’s Carnegie Hall had a simple, single bed among racks of photographs. No television. A communal bathroom. Yet his work transcended fashion. The path he followed, or created, produced a lifetime body of work that marks history.

Mark Bozek’s The Times of Bill Cunningham was selected for the 2018 New York Film Festival. The movie-maker had exceptional insight into the photographer’s character after sitting down with him for a brief recording back in 1994.

“We were supposed to be there for ten minutes, and threeand-a-half hours later we ran out of tape,” Bozek recalls. “When I pulled it from my basement the day he died in 2016, I hadn’t watched it for 25 years. But I decided it was going to be just him and me. He told his own story so passionately.”

That was a reference to Cunningham’s move from sunshine to shadow as he spoke openly about the scourge of AIDS. But Cunningham’s life was focused entirely on photography and on recording fashion and the swathe of people it involved.

I cannot think of a time when his free spirit was not following fashion and making a reportage for the The New York Times. No show was too small, nor too grand, for his attention. He was aroused by the unexpected: the return of men’s sartorial splendour; tailoring worn in vivid colours by millennials; everchanging street-style from baggy rocker outfits to streamlined sportswear. I remember him talking with glee about New →

Clockwise from above:

Grace Jones and friends at Studio 54, 1970s; Anna Piaggi and Karl Lagerfeld in Paris, 1980s; Gianni Versace and Donatella Versace at the Met Gala, 1980

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Clockwise from left: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a frequent Cunningham subject, in New York, 1980s; Gloria Vanderbilt at home in New

York around the time she launched one of the first lines of slim-fit designer jeans, 1976; Boy George in New York, 1980s; Marc Jacobs with Christy Turlington (left) and a friend wearing his signature daisy prints after his runway show, New York, 1980s

Above and below:

Courtesy of ‘The Times of Bill Cunningham’

New York street style – mourners at the Andy Warhol memorial service, 1987; First Lady Nancy Reagan and Diana Vreeland at the Met, 1980s

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Clockwise from left: Willi Smith with his American Fashion Critic’s Coty Award for Women’s

Courtesy of ‘The Times of Bill Cunningham’

Fashion, 1986; Cindy Crawford, Richard Avedon and Verushka party in New York, 1990s; Terry Doktor (a frequent Cunningham subject with his wife Louise), Pierre Francillon and Andre Walker, New York, 1980s; Diane von Furstenberg with her son Alexandre, 1974

York designers’ relaxed, modern clothes that trumped the haute couture grandeur of Paris at the ‘Battle of Versailles’ fashion event in 1973, which American fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert had devised to raise money for the restoration of the crumbling palace.

He called it “the most exciting show I have ever seen”, recalling the contrast between French maestros – Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent – pitted against the understated, casual, streamlined clothes sent out by America’s Bill Blass, Halston and Oscar de la Renta. The finale had Liza Minnelli blaring out ‘Bonjour Paris’, while African-American designer Stephen Burrows stunned the formal French audience. It was the first, but by no means the last, time that Cunningham showed his open mind to class and colour.

Cunningham was 87 when he died, having received the French Légion d’Honneur in 2008 and, in the same period, becoming an official staff member of The New York Times after a truck crashed into his bike. Before that move, so late in his career, he was stubbornly independent, using his visual notebook to mark the changes from the wild energy of Studio 54 in the 1970s and then introducing the concept of Uptown and Downtown dressing.

Today, Cunningham’s exceptional photographs are supposedly worth more than a million dollars. But he would not have been impressed by the numbers. “Money is the cheapest thing,” he said.

“Liberty and freedom are the most expensive”.

All images by Bill Cunningham, courtesy of Mark Bozek’s ‘The Times of Bill Cunningham’, in cinemas and on iTunes Movies in Spring 2019

From left:

Thierry Mugler in New York, 1980s; Barbra Streisand in New York, early 1980s

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@SUZYMENKESVOGUE INSTAGRAM EDIT

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18 March 2018 SUZY FOCUS: Karl Lagerfeld plays guardian angel to Marine Serre at this year’s judging of the LVMH Award, won by Marine in 2017

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8 May 2018 Close to heaven! Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Donatella, Amal in Richard (“The Queen came to my show!”) Quinn and Anna in Chanel

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21 February 2019 My sneak snap of Karl and Choupette, when I visited his studio in Paris in 2018

Darcel Disappoints

6 September 2018 LeSportSac is so BIG and I am so tiny. (Well, I’m not going to complain to Alber that I look so trim!)

5 December 2018 Scarab jewels! A close-up on the Chanel Métiers d’Art jewellery, from Egypt to Manhattan at the Met’s Temple of Dendur

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29 September 2018

What is Miss V whispering in my ear at the Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Spring/Summer 2019 show?

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8 November 2018 Shall I tell you what made Sarah Burton laugh so much? No, I think I will keep the secret...

“From the first moment of the Valentino show, sending out colours from sky blue to bordeaux, you knew that it could only end in tears – tears of joy at the mad, poetic dream of couture”

5 December 2018 Pharrell back in his own rapper clothing as he leaves the Chanel after-party on the Rumsey Playfield in New York #centralpark

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4 March 2018 Pierpaolo of Valentino with his family after the Spring/Summer 2018 show

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#SuzyMFW Answering The Succession Question Ferragamo, Cavalli and Marni are negotiating a bumpy ride 23/02/2019

CONSIDERING THAT THE ROOTS of the current

big names of Milan fashion were planted – or already flowering – 30 years ago, it is not surprising that the ongoing story is about the future. I feel that the succession question is short of answers for several reasons: The desire to keep things in the family and the problem of finding fresh designers with a global attitude but who also understand the Italian soul. Or indeed its sole – since so many fashion houses are built on leather goods and expanded from that into clothing.

The problem is so acute – and so profound – that even Pucci, a world-famous historic brand owned by LVMH, is still unable to find an appropriate designer after two years.

How are the brands in search of a reboot doing? Are they flourishing, floating or failing?

Salvatore Ferragamo: Feet First

↑From top ¬ Salvatore Ferragamo A/W 2019 ¬ Roberto Cavalli A/W 2019 womenswear and menswear

There is something smart about pushing to the fore Paul Andrew, already a noted shoe designer before he joined Ferragamo.

Although he shared a bow with his clothing-design partner Guillaume Meilland, Andrew’s words explained how the origins of the show defined the collection.

“It began with an archival wedge from Salvatore – everything I do with Ferragamo starts with the shoe and this patchwork rainbow inspired the colour palette,” the designer said, referring to the wedge shoe made by the resourceful Salvatore when normal materials were unavailable during the war. “You see a whole series of patchwork garments also,” Andrew continued. “So that shoe sure inspired a lot. And then the idea that it was such an individual standout shoe, if you think that it was designed in 1942. Now, I have tried to combine technology and craftsmanship in the collection and think what Salvatore would be doing today.”

The colours were certainly striking – such as the light shade of arsenic green for a soft sweater with a fringed skirt wrapped like a blanket. There were more intense shades of purple and poppy red for men, including a lilac sweater and wine velvet trousers alongside a small red pouch. On the women’s side, there was a mix of a pink wool coat over an orange leather top and trousers.

How were the shoes? Boots patterned with ostrich competed with flat shoes with the suede cut away like sandals, while a shoe with an upended triangular heel looked back to the 1940s.

With new CEO Micaela le Divelec Lemmi, it looks like Ferragamo is managing and imagining its future. But there is no question of forgetting the past. The Mayor of Florence announced during Pitti Uomo in January that a square in the city’s historic centre will be named for Salvatore Ferragamo and his wife Wanda, who ran the company after his death in 1960 and remained a strong head of the family until she passed away in 2018.

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Roberto Cavalli: Trying For a Good Fit The difference between northern and southern Europe is far stronger than many people understand. British Creative Director Paul Surridge took over at Roberto Cavalli with a clear vision – sportswear elements for both sexes.

What seems to elude him is any real understanding of the hot-blooded look that the original Cavalli founded.

However, the designer made an unexpected leap from those spare, sporty looks he had previously shown on the runway to something colourfully patterned and sexually inviting – that is, if you think that a short skater skirt revealing flesh above thigh-high stiletto-heeled boots is a step forward for a modern woman.

It seems churlish to criticise Surridge for doing what looked like he had been ordered or encouraged to do: Send out bright colours like the mustard-gold that is so fashionable for Autumn/ Winter 2019, or patterns that became waves of colour with graphic movement. For those who don’t want mini skirts, there were draped dresses, pleated to sway over the knees, while male models looked more at ease wearing colourful tailored suits.

The real problem at Cavalli is not whether Surridge is suited to the job, but rather that the essence of the founder, Roberto Cavalli, whose fine artistic skills were laced with a sexualising approach to women, simply isn’t in fashion today.

If Cavalli the brand wants to continue to be a worldwide offering, there has to be some hard thinking about women in 2020 and beyond – and how they should be represented beside the male wardrobe.

↑From top ¬ Roberto Cavalli A/W 2019 ¬ Marni A/W 2019 ¬ Roberto Cavalli A/W 2019

Marni: A New Broom

GoRunway

The legacy of Marni is the quirky, original look of clothes in offbeat colours and textural fabrics, as shown for two decades by Consuelo Castiglioni. But when new owners bought control of the family company, Consuelo was out.

The new broom concept is a normal reaction to a takeover, and the question is how successfully the brand is now being steered towards a younger, more modern woman with a different outlook.

The collection sent out by Francesco Risso was dramatic to a fault, with blood orange as the main colour. Then there were satin dresses overlaid with metal chains, and panels linked with silvered rings and studs. The result seemed much closer to Alexander McQueen than to the previous Marni look, which was dedicated to nature with a spirit of bird song and the opposite of this tough, urban sophistication.

This may be the right moment to change course at Marni.

But what about those customers passionate for the work of the previous designer? What is the strategy behind a destructive movement. Is it to get attention? To open a new chapter?

Presumably, making more money is one of the goals.

The Marni show was not bad. Just very different. Ultimately what is needed when designers take over an established brand is a mix of fresh thought – but presented with respect.

As they say, ‘Rome was not built in a day’ and brands trying to reassess their situation need both intelligent direction and time.

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McQueen:

Truths and Half-Truths A sensitive new film about the perturbed life of the late designer tells his sad story all over again 25/04/2018

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Dave Bennett; Getty; InDigital.TV; Ann Ray; Rex; Gary Wallis / Misfits Entertainment

The painful story of Alexander McQueen – his fashion

triumph and inner turmoil – has yet another airing. After ‘Savage Beauty’, the record-breaking 2011 exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of the British designer’s life and art, now comes a movie.

Produced by Ian Bonhôte and co-directed by Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, McQueen premiered in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is the most sensitive vision I have seen about a creative who never lost his rough edges, and who put his life – the bloody history of distant warriors in Scotland and childhood abuse within his family – on stage.

Episodes of McQueen’s life, before his suicide in February 2010, both exhibit and explain his development as a young and bolshie creator who, in his days as an apprentice on Savile Row, stitched a vulgar motif, supposedly a penis, hidden on the inside of a suit destined for Prince Charles, and who seemed to move with lightning speed from British bad boy to Creative Director of Givenchy in Paris.

There are various examples of the designer’s wild side, including collecting dead birds and offering tortuous blocks of footwear in his final and supremely beautiful collection, titled ‘Plato’s Atlantis’. And the film, through interviews with the designer’s family, offers an insider vision – or at least their various points of view.

The “star” is Sebastian Pons, a Majorcan member of team McQueen, who gives energetic and honest descriptions of what it was like to be on fashion’s floor.

The movie is inevitably low-key about McQueen’s drug use, but high on the anguish of those who worked alongside him and watched the downward spiral.

The late Isabella Blow, the designer’s mentor and chief support – until she was pushed aside – has a major role. But watching that relationship on screen, I started to feel the discomfort of having lived in parallel to the times. When Detmar Blow, Issie’s husband, talks about his wife’s relationship with McQueen, I can think only of her anguished emails to me in the last few weeks before her suicide, and the betrayal she felt by the designer she had nurtured.

But the real elephant in the room is John Galliano. The film lacks context on what was happening in fashion in the 1990s, when the old guard of Parisian couture houses started employing the daring Young Turks from London’s Saint Martins School of Art and Design. Galliano was the chosen designer at Givenchy in 1995.

Only when he shifted to Christian Dior was McQueen put in place.

There is a harrowing scene in the film when a desolate McQueen realises that his neo-classical mythology did not gel with Parisian haute couture. He also felt slighted by the relatively low budget he had been given to stage Givenchy shows compared to Galliano’s extravaganzas at Dior.

Missing too are the YBAs – the Young British Artists – appearing as a group in the 1990s, with Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst as leaders of the art world. Jake and Dinos Chapman were friends with McQueen, and it is impossible to see the designer’s work – such as robotic arms showering paint on model Shalom Harlow in his Spring/Summer 1999 show (his thirteenth, and titled ‘No 13’) – without its context in ‘Cool Britannia’.

A brief and passing glimpse of Sarah Burton, who has taken over brand McQueen, also underscores a missing link in the film. As a young assistant, she joined the company straight out of college in 1997, and her absence on screen is a reminder of how much of McQueen’s life and departure is locked in noble silence.

Maybe it is time to bring to a close the retelling of this sad story of Lee Alexander McQueen’s brilliance and burn out. After all, his clothes – gothic, savage, and frighteningly untouchable – speak louder in life than on any screen.

↑Clockwise from top left ¬ Fitting Naomi Campbell for Givenchy Haute Couture S/S 1997 ¬ At Isabella Blow’s country house ¬ With Shalom Harlow about to be spray-painted by robots for his S/S 1999 show ¬ With Kate Moss at the Pharmacy Club (circa 1991) ¬ With Isabella Blow, in McQueen, in 2003

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Dave Benett:

Front Row “I always photograph Suzy, because she’s one of a kind, an original, whatever she wears and whatever she’s doing!”

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← The front row, from left ¬ Tinie Tempah; Douglas Booth; Serena Williams; Sergio Pizzorno; guest; Suzy; Jefferson Hack; and Ben Cobb at the Burberry Menswear S/S 2014 presentation in London

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Shopping for Green Growth in Brazil Iguatemi in São Paulo celebrates its 50th anniversary by showing there’s more to a successful mall than buying and selling 26/10/2016

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Iguatemi; Luprezia

“TO BE 50 IN BRAZIL is an achievement!

It is quite a challenge in a country that is 500 years old,” says Carlos Jereissati Filho, President and CEO of the Iguatemi Group, when we meet at the Iguatemi mall in São Paolo – not only the first mall in Brazil, but in Latin America.

“Things here change so much and everybody is always looking for the next thing,” he explains.

“I believe in the Charles Darwin philosophy that it is not the strongest or smartest that survive, but whoever is more adaptable. I have always tried to follow that philosophy, so that Iguatemi adapts to the new and is attractive to the customer in terms of design, service, content, and experiences. That has been key: We search for the best retailers, not the most obvious ones, but the ones who are interesting and fresh to the market. It is about creating a unique experience.”

Since Iguatemi has Louis Vuitton at the top of the steps at the main entrance and all the familiar high-end international brands mingle with local boutiques across the different floors, I ask Carlos which key things marked a major change in retail over the last five years.

“We visited places all around the world for ideas – the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan [one of the world’s oldest shopping malls, which opened in 1877] has all these restaurants outside – but how can you create a restaurant in the middle of a garden inside a mall?

How can you bring that

experience to Brazil? Look at where we are right now, on a veranda at the back of a bookstore.

How could people believe that this could exist?

“We had a regular technology shop and we told the owner, ‘Why not create something that is not just a technology shop but an experience shop for technology? People would love to see what the next happening things are.’ We wanted to bring more knowledge into our malls. So we created this huge bookshop full of rooms where people can attend lectures about many different things as well as hear writers discuss their books.

“It is important for people to connect with the space. No one invests more in landscaping and the environment than us. I told everyone, ‘Let’s bring in fitness centres, let’s bring in live theatres, let’s bring all the excitement to where you spend time.’ When you are here you can shop, but shopping is the consequence of where you want to be rather than the place you come to shop. It is totally the other way around.”

Since the essence of most shopping malls all over the world is a feeling of being contained in a space, I ask Carlos if, with his trees and orchids, he has set out to create a feeling of open air and a

general desire for a greener world. “We’ve had flower arrangements all around the mall for more than 20 years,” Carlos answers. But having an in-store loyalty programme that includes a private bathroom and a lounge for people to rest – rather than a discount off a pair of shoes – does seem to take this retail group to a different level of attention to its customers.

Other ideas for embracing Iguatemi clients into one big family include inviting important guests to celebrate their private anniversaries and, for a day out with the kids, providing Iguatemi bicycles for specially-built cycle lanes that connect São Paulo’s three Iguatemi malls.

When Carlos tells me that Iguatemi’s focus on health includes “Blue November” for cancer of the prostate and “Orange December” for dermatology, I ask how this ‘better shopping for all mankind’ arrived.

“We really want people to feel happy, because then they will want to come back,” he says. “We developed this skill long ago and it became part of our DNA. That’s why we put more money into content and design than people normally do.

When the technology came, we were ready.” ↑Clockwise from above ¬ A typically lush, green café space at Iguatemi, São Paolo ¬ Suzy and Carlos Jereissati Filho ¬ Iguatemi in 1966, when it was the first luxury mall in Brazil

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@SuzyMenkesVogue Those Poodles!

AT MAISON Martin Margiela Artisanal, John Galliano got tangled up in his inventions, from street art to gender play. But sometimes the Galliano codes were so powerful that you forgot the clothes on the runway were just plain weird – and that you couldn’t, as used to be said so long ago, ‘tell the boys from the girls’.

Alessandro Lucioni / GoRunway

23/01/2019

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↑From left ¬ Chopard jewels for Giambattista Valli S/S 2019 ¬ Chopard’s ‘Magical Setting’ cluster ring

Woman-to-Woman Jewellery

Chopard

11/02/2019

IT MAY HAVE STARTED with Coco Chanel offering clients fine jewellery with a fashionable touch. But a century on, womanto-woman jewels are the story of the moment.

Boucheron’s grand boutique on the Place Vendôme has been restored back to its original ‘Maison de Famille’ by Hélène Poulit-Duquesne, the CEO who is indicative of the female power flowing through the fine jewellery world.

Today, haute joaillerie houses are making their boutiques more appealing to women; normalising women buying for themselves; and focussing on service for busy female customers.

Chopard’s Co-President and Artistic Director, Caroline Scheufele, sent a clear message about the latest jewellery collection “celebrating freedom and empowering femininity”. Her other jewel decree is: “Let there be light!”

The collection focuses on the intense lustre in the heart of each gemstone, to create modern, light-filled, classics. The radiance was described

as “magical setting”, making a light show of traditional pieces such as decorative flowers set in contrasting coloured stones. So, a frame of rubies around a single diamond, emeralds with a crush of diamonds at the centre, or rubies encasing a flower all offered a modern spin on the time-honoured cluster.

In the same spirit, Chopard partnered with Giambattista Valli on his Spring/Summer 2019 couture collection, where Valli’s youthful spirit was a fine fit for Chopard’s fairy lights.

Chanel’s new collection is an elevation of do-it-yourself. Nearly half the 50 pieces can morph into another form, so a diamond cluster, for example, can be added to or subtracted from a necklace. This is a thoughtful development, for changeable stones are appropriate to women of today, who are more likely to go to an event straight from a boardroom than from home.

The focus is on the camellia, Coco’s fetish flower, and single blooms are convertible in five

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Chaumet

OBSERVATION

different ways to look either conventional or more daring. The precision of this collection is seen also in the restrained palette of just three colours: red rubies and spinels; pink sapphires and quartz; and white diamonds, pearls, mother-of-pearl and moonstones.

Guess who thought up this mix-and-match idea? Coco Chanel herself, who said, “My jewels are flexible and detachable. You can take apart the jewellery and match it to a hat or fur. In this way, jewellery is no longer an immutable object, life transforms it and bends it to its needs.”

The Boucheron transformation is built into the four-storey corner building that looks out on the statue of Napoleon in the Place Vendôme.

Favoured clients might look instead at the Hôtel Ritz, for, if you are invited for a very private visit, you walk up a historic, newly revealed stairway, past north-facing windows offering jewelfriendly light, to a private suite of rooms. The invitation extends to an overnight stay with dinner from the Ritz as the ultimate ‘experience’.

As part of the Kering luxury group, Boucheron has been given an all-embracing make-over, but at the heart of it all is the jewellery.

Creative Director Claire Choisne insists that a jewel should not “impose itself” on the wearer.

“Jewellery should enable women to express their singularity,” says the designer, who found herself changing the creative process. “Traditionally, a design first takes shape as a gouache sketch, but more often we find ourselves skipping that stage to work directly with the material – and, above all, seeing the piece being worn. For me, creation becomes real when it is embodied by a woman.”

At Chaumet’s Left Bank boutique is a dramatic display of high jewellery. Very high indeed, as stones gleam and wink and one of the flickering tiaras is named Josephine. That can

only be a reference to Napoleon’s Empress, so are these historic-seeming pieces primarily a Chaumet history lesson? “No!” says house Ambassador, Bertrand Bonnet Besse, explaining that these are tiaras designed today, primarily for mature Asian women who have reached the pinnacle of a career and wear them in the boardroom to stun (and perhaps intimidate) their colleagues. Empowered women, indeed!

“In the 1950s, men bought the jewellery; then women started working, had their own incomes and started buying bijou jewellery,” Besse said.

“A lot of the women buying a tiara today will place about seven special orders a year, buying for themselves with their own money. A diadem is an object of power for them.”

Cartier’s store in London’s New Bond Street has been restored to its original size, running straight through to Albemarle Street. Like so many stores that want to attract the super-rich, there is an entire floor devoted to very special customers. That means an apartment for evening events, although not a full night’s stay.

As Laurent Feniou, Cartier UK’s Managing Director, puts it, “This is not a hotel. There is no bedroom, but you stay for a few hours when you fly in from Dubai or Doha, Moscow or Beijing – and you land on Bond Street.”

Female customers are only just now being discussed as powerful jewellery purchasers. But haven’t rich and strong women always bought their own? In London’s Cartier store, I saw a great brick of an emerald held up by diamonds.

This was made in 1932 for Jane Beatrice Forbes, Countess of Granard, an American heiress. I bet that feisty horsewoman chose her own rocks.

Like all fine jewels, the magnificent pieces are about beautiful workmanship and the emotion that evokes, not the gender of who buys them.

↑From left ¬ Chaumet Haute Joaillerie, S/S 2019 ¬ The Countess of Granard’s emerald and diamond necklace, made

by Cartier in 1932 ¬ Boucheron’s newly restored Paris store includes a grand apartment with views of the Place VendÔme

Mature women at the pinnacle of a career wear tiaras in the boardroom to stun their colleagues

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Nick Knight, SHOWstudio:

In the Studio “Suzy is at every show and every presentation, every season. As a result she is not only the hardest-working woman in fashion, but combine that with her sparkling wit and stupendous insight, it makes her the greatest chronicler of our industry.�

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↑Above ¬ Image by Zoe Hitchen for SHOWstudio, on the occasion of Suzy’s auction, ‘In My Fashion’, 2013

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What does it take to build forever?

Forever doesn’t just happen. It takes planning for the future before it arrives.

It takes conserving six hectares of land for every one used for mining. It takes protecting 200,000 hectares across three countries to safeguard endangered and vulnerable species. It takes moving 200 elephants 1,700Â km to benefit two ecosystems in the largest and furthest elephant translocation on record.

Forever takes time.

Learn more at www.debeersgroup.com/buildingforever

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↑From left ¬ Designer boutiques in Central, Hong Kong were the historic home of the Tai Tai ¬ Anna May Wong (with Marlene Dietrich, right, and Lene Riefensthal, 1928), known for her ‘Dragon Lady’ and ‘Butterfly’ roles

In Praise of the Tai Tai

For the launch issue of Vogue Hong Kong, Suzy recalls the heyday of the ladies who lunch and their fashion perfection VO G U E H O N G KO N G P R I N T E D I T I O N M A R C H 2 0 1 9

Getty

A faint, sea-salty

tang drifted from the waterfront as I walked up to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. It was the late Eighties, and the city seemed so exotic to a European journalist sent by the International Herald Tribune to research fashion in ‘the Orient’, as some referred to it then.

I had packed my summer clothes – flimsy, patterned ‘holiday’ outfits as if for the sunny Mediterranean. I was shivering in fierce airconditioning, wrapped in a multi-coloured shawl, when I saw a crowd of Tai Tais sweep in, the first cuddled in a snowy-white fur jacket over an ivory silk dress, elegant, super-fine stockings and cream satin, high-heeled evening shoes.

The equally glamorous women who joined her were all impeccably dressed and coiffed. Their perfect make-up created flawless faces with lipstick miraculously untouched as they chatted in small groups. All this for coffee at 11am.

How elegant they looked, this troop of women, so divinely presented from head to toe.

And how ashamed I felt in front of these examples of female perfection. I did not desire to share the Tai Tai lifestyle. But I did register

them as a particular tribe. I realised later that they must have been ripe more than a decade earlier for the arrival of Joyce Ma, who had founded international fashion boutiques in Hong Kong back in the Seventies and was by now queen of the fashion scene.

Living a Tai Tai life seemed to depend mostly on a wealthy husband and a bevy of maids. Yet at the time it was rare to find such a glossy posse of wealthy women back in Paris, and certainly not in London. The Tai Tais had chosen a consumer lifestyle and followed it to the max.

While individual, international designer stores were only just beginning to challenge Joyce or Lane Crawford, the Tai Tais were way ahead in the material world. Before designer boutiques took over Central, and while Hong Kong was not so densely populated that it could still expand without pushing up to the Peak, the Tai Tais kept the flag of glamour flying. Even after Hong Kong was returned to China by the UK in 1997, glorious women still reigned after Elizabeth II was gone.

More recently, I find Tai Tais are becoming parodies of themselves, as they announce on YouTube that an Hermès Birkin bag was chosen

from among Chanel, Chloé, Gucci, Pucci, and Valextra – all laid out on a king-size bed.

As they clutch their treasures in Instagram pictures, who can say whether the designer shopping bags are full or stuffed with paper?

But the expression seems to reference the Dragon Lady persona of the early-19th century, later exemplified in the Thirties by Anna May Wong, the Chinese-American movie star.

Then there was the arrival of the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, popularised by Kevin Kwan’s book and film, which present three generations of women who live lives of ultimate luxury; the older mothers kowtow to super-wealthy husbands, emptying their deep pockets when displeased, while their daughters have wealth of their own.

As women throw themselves into work and a changing world, the classic Tai Tai, dedicated to her appearance and acquisitions, seems to be going out of fashion. A new generation, often educated overseas, might even join the activist groups on social media and kick against the idea of putting perfect looks before everything else.

Much as I have always supported education for all and relish the success of high-achieving women, I shall miss the Tai Tai; so elegant, so graceful, such a symbol of gorgeousness in Hong Kong. I hope she will not leap on a super-yacht and leave the ‘Fragrant Harbour’ too soon.

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↑ This page and opposite ¬ Jil Sander (right) with a model at her boutique in Hamburg, 1968 ¬ A display at her Frankfurt exhibition

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Jil Sander: Fashion’s First Feminist

“I am not a minimalist, but a purist”

The German designer discusses her first museum exhibition in Frankfurt 11/12/2017

JIL SANDER IS FRESH-FACED and smiling as a brisk wind blows through the garden of the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt.

This intense, pretty, exceptionally driven woman, who has worked all her life – she founded her business at age 24 in 1968 – is a purist and perfectionist. This is confirmed by the personal vision that underlines ‘Present Tense’, the exhibition of her life and work, where curator Matthias Wagner K has collaborated with her to make something intensely powerful out of spare simplicity.

Jil Sander is best described as fashion’s first feminist. Whatever merit might be given to Coco Chanel in the 1930s or Yves Saint Laurent’s launch of women’s trouser suits in the 1960s, Jil has the strongest claim for empowering women

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↑This page ¬ A collaboration with artist Aligheiro e Boetti brings a rare burst of pattern and colour

through what they wear. Although, the designer says, “I never thought of myself as a feminist, but maybe I was, since I was not happy with the way women presented themselves.I think my work was more about the rapprochement of the sexes and a more androgynous look for men and women. I was looking for more supportive ways to dress myself as a working woman. And since my needs were collective needs in the era of women entering the business world, my work turned out to help them.”

Describing an era of sweeping change, Jil reflects, “It was very important to give class, quality and personality to clothing. It was a time when women had to ask their husbands if they could work, or if they could get a driver’s licence! We had to give a lot of strength to women and give them the power that men knew.

It was the start of globalisation, we were travelling, and needed clothes to feel strong.”

“I was quite young when I started, nothing was easy and I always said you need a lot of strength to do what you want to do when you have a vision and want to build a company.”

The exhibition succeeds in telling a great deal in a minimalist way, to reflect Sander’s aesthetic.

For example, an installation of natural textures of leaves and branches, pieces of cloth in straw colours, and drawings provided from Jil’s descriptions. The basic construction has a secret, Matthias Wagner K reveals, with a display cabinet deliberately set at a sloping angle.

“This is an idea from her atelier,” he explains.

“All her shelves, displays, and window sills were always angular, so nobody could put anything private on them. You couldn’t even put a mug there. She always made the shelves angular so she couldn’t clutter. It all focused on the work.”

The background music for the exhibition, produced by French sound artist Frédéric Sanchez, creates a mesmerising effect of moving “sound clouds” that reflect the minimalism of the displays. These include a trio of architectural wooden mannequins, rolls of white paper with faintly different shades and textures, and men’s tailored jackets that might, in fact, be women’s.

But where are the rest of the clothes?

Turn a corner and there are a few words from Jil written on the wall: “My aesthetic ideas develop out of what I sense from the Zeitgeist” or “What interests me is the new, the emerging”.

Then a display of Jil Sander clothes from

1997-2014 is reincarnated. There is virtually no Sander archive because, the curator says, of company changes and Jil’s interests being in the present, not the past. The number of surviving early pieces is as minimal as Jil’s designs.

Exceptions are a sprinkle of archival clothes: a black sweater with a white skirt patterned with circles; dark garments illuminated with gold spheres, like a glowing moon; a black and white dress with the texture of feathers; and a dress with horizontal fringes. There are also handbags and shoes, especially those made in collaboration with Puma, starting in 1996 when sneakers were still seen mainly as sportswear.

The designer’s explanation for recreating most of the clothes on display, all in the same Japanese material, is so that viewers should focus on the cut. But for the curator, the sparse-and-spare outfits, impeccably tailored, send out an important message, whether the clothes are from the high-end collections or the functional, low-cost +J designs for Uniqlo.

“That’s where she got her talent from, her craftsmanship,” Wagner K says. “She is a textile engineer and not a designer. So, for her, structure and sculpture were interesting. She fitted on the

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty; Museum Angewandte Kunst / Paul Warchol

“I never thought of myself as a feminist, but maybe I was, since I was not happy with the way women presented themselves”

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mannequins and somebody came afterwards to do the drawings.”

The curator is eager to look beyond stereotypes and shows an unexpected burst of pattern and colour when Jil’s clothes meld with the wall coverings in an assemblage of vividly coloured Afghan embroideries by the Italian conceptual artist Alighiero e Boetti.

A video of the garden at Sissinghurst Castle in England immediately suggests a different, romantic side of Sander – one linked to her friendship with the late Dickie Mommsen.

“I shared a passion for gardening with Dickie for more than 30 years, and the garden room in the exhibition is my way of including her,” Jil says. “We started this garden in the country. First you start small and then you think, ‘I am creative’ and have a vision. The film in the museum… I was not sure if I wanted to show it,” she says.

“It’s not like a BBC garden film – it’s more emotional, more spiritual. It’s a life job and a garden is also a lot of responsibility. But my heart is in nature. So I love to do that wherever I am.

My friend Dickie was also very delighted to be able to, so we would sit on the bench together and cut roses. As you know, she is gone and I have to go on, so I felt the film is a little salute to her and our garden.”

Like plants pushing through the earth, the few words among the photographs in the museum catalogue come in clusters: “L for luxury, language, lightness” or “G for garden, gender, glasses”. Among them is a rallying cry for simplicity in the letter M. “My roots are in the Bauhaus movement, which applied functional rationality to the design of practical everyday life,” Jil explains.

“Streamlined beauty, clear structures, reduction to the essential and free movement. But functional rationality is only the backbone of my work. I always look for contemporary forms of sophistication and sensual simplicity. I want fashion to be liberating in a subtle way… If there

↑From left ¬ “My roots are in the Bauhaus, which applied functional rationality to everyday life,” Jil says

is such a thing as my own signature, it lies in a sense of structure, in quiet beauty and serenity.”

The show ends in an airy room, its wall of windows overlooking the river and Frankfurt’s skyline, mixing classic and modern buildings.

The space was inspired by the Jil Sander flagship store on Avenue Montaigne in Paris in 1993, created with the American architect Michael Gabellini. She tells me Dickie said that the store was so modern, all the other Paris brands would have to raise their game to compete.

What about Jil Sander today? The brand has had a lurching progress since the designer first fell out with Patrizio Bertelli of Prada (which bought a 75 per cent stake in the label in 1999) – an on-off relationship that ended with her final departure in 2013 – and has seen a variety of passing Creative Directors, including Raf Simons. Lucie and Luke Meier, a married team, took over earlier this year and gave their interpretation of modern purity in a show held in a stark Milan building by the late Zaha Hadid.

“I want them to be successful,” Jil says. “It’s like a mother wanting their child to be...” Her voice trails away.

I ask a final question: Does Jil, the founding mother of female modernity, think the position of women today has moved forward?

“Yes,” Jil says, emphatically. “But as you see now, there is the whole story in the United States of Weinstein and others. Women have to be strong. And we have to support women so that they are able to be in important, responsible jobs. I was always a believer in both, and with my company, I thought women and men needed to work together. I think a woman’s situation is much more open today. It has changed a lot.

There is still a lot of need but we have to be optimistic and move forward.”

Although she does not say it, Jil Sander herself has moved forward from sharp severity to sweet serenity, making her an icon of feminism yesterday and today.

suzymenkesvogue 11 December 2016 Darcel Disappoints

At the Frankfurt exhibition honouring the work of Jil Sander, captured here by the great photographer Peter Lindbergh in 1991

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11 December 2016 Here we are – Jil Sander, Franca Sozzani, the late editor of Vogue Italia, and me – at Gucci’s party for Helmut Newton in Milan, 2003

suzymenkesvogue 11 December 2016 Darcel Disappoints

I found this in my archive! Jil Sander in her design heyday as head of her own label, in the studio with a house model

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↑Clockwise from top ¬ Eveningwear from the ‘20th Anniversary at the Cirque d’Hiver’ collection, A/W 1995 ¬ Thierry Mugler in his archive with Suzy, 2018 ¬ Scarification effects from the ‘Longchamps’ collection, S/S 1994

Manfred Thierry Mugler:

Back in Fashion For the first time in a decade, the designer gives an interview, and speaks about his passion for nature, famous clients from Beyoncé to Ivana Trump, and his new exhibition 1 6 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 8

Thierry Mugler – or ‘Manfred’ as the reclusive designer now calls himself – walks me along a row of his extraordinary creations.

“This is the famous green jacket that David Bowie wore; that’s a suit for Ivana Trump – she was one of my best clients; and this is the scarification effect for Iman, in the same colour as her skin,” Mugler says, explaining the story behind each and every outfit.

Nearly two decades after he swapped fashion for show business and rebuilt his body to alter his appearance dramatically, the first presentation of his fantastical creations is being prepared for a museum show in Montreal: ‘Thierry Mugler: Beyond Couture’.

Mugler, who reached the pinnacle of fashion in the Eighties, tilted towards performance clothes, with an enticing list of artists following his sharp, body-conscious cuts, his exceptional materials, and extraordinary accessories.

We look together at a naked figure laid out in sculpted silver garments, as if inside a coffin.

“She’s our goddess,” he announces, showing me other people in metallic pieces, from an openwork Victorian crinoline to a Nefertiti figure in a silvered robe.

Together with us in this anonymous storage area on the outskirts of Paris is Thierry-Maxime Loriot, Exhibition Curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). In 2011, Loriot launched the blockbuster exhibition of Jean Paul Gaultier that subsequently spent four years spinning across the globe to 12 cities: ‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk’.

Loriot is excited about this new Thierry Mugler project, which will be on show in Montreal from March to September 2019 before travelling to Europe and beyond. “Fashion now is sweatpants and Instagram,” Loriot says, explaining how he chose 150 pieces that not only show the wonders of Mugler’s imagination and technique, but also celebrate his exuberant energy and exceptional work that still looks fresh and relevant today.

Manfred’s manager, Jean-Baptiste Rougeot, reveals that 9,000 pieces [“10,000 if you include accessories,” Loriot says] are “in secret places in Provence”. “Everything has been stored and the company is very proud of that, because many other designers’ original pieces do not exist any more,” says the man who believes that the Mugler spirit has remained alive in the stage clothes that Manfred has created for Beyoncé and in the über-successful fragrances for American beauty giant IFF, starting with Angel and on to Alien and Aura.

As he holds up the different objects, Mugler laughs a lot. Although his face has changed almost beyond recognition and his body has

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It feels as though the clothes were designed yesterday, as he shows me pages of drawings, all with an angular elegance beefed up several sizes, he has the same energy and enthusiasm as before. I vividly remember sitting in a theatre watching model Pat Cleveland rise upwards to the heavens, and how I crouched on the floor to absorb an extraordinary display of insects translated into clothes.

“Staging was important for me, but also the most important thing is to be inspired – by fish, insects, or symbolic animals like a boar,” says the designer, who turns 70 in December.

“Then there are objects like a motorcycle or a car,” he continues. “The idea is to find the human in there and to transform all these inspirations, but also to simplify the femininity.”

Looking at the Mugler creations – the upside-down triangle silhouette of the Eighties’ suit; pleated gold lamé decoration; an animalshaped bodice made of hair; ‘fur’ fabricated from layers of feathers; paillettes that might have been scarabs, with their eerie translucent colours – the wonder is how relevant these clothes still seem to contemporary eyes.

The heart of the work is in the cut – so precise and certain, whether on a curving sweep of a neckline, a pleated jacket draped to the body, or the line of those rigid metallic bodices somehow melted into a curvy corset.

“And here is my way of paying homage to an Italian icon: lace,” Mugler says. “It’s all in rubber and moulded. There was no 3D-printing then.”

Loriot will have to convince today’s museum audiences that clothes that seem so modern were designed in a pre-digital era, before the days when a mighty waterfall of earrings would have got in the way of a smartphone.

Now enjoying phenomenal success at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam with an exhibition devoted to 25 years of Viktor & Rolf, the French-Canadian Loriot is an inspired choice of curator to bring Mugler to a museum.

It feels as though the clothes were designed yesterday as Mugler shows me his pages of drawings, all with an angular elegance.

“Shoes of the impossible” is his description of sculpted footwear, looking like predecessors to Alexander McQueen’s fantastical shoes a quarter-century later.

“People recognise my influence on the cut, because since the Seventies I did all of this,” Mugler says, holding up a sharply tailored red

↑From left Mugler in 1995 ¬ Sketches for A/W 1983 ¬ A Harley Davidson bustier from the ‘Cowboys’ collection, S/S 1992 ¬ Demi Moore wears S/S 1992 in ‘Indecent Proposal’

suit. “But I am not sure they realise the extent of the influence I had.”

The designer was indeed ahead of his time, with his feathered extravaganzas and a belief in nature that led him to create a pair of couture gloves from porcupine needles that were actually “made especially fake, in plastic – my fantasy of reinventing animal skin because I never did fur. I don’t kill animals.”

Mugler says his stand against destroying nature goes back to 1972, when he “wanted to get as close as possible to the beauty of real mink” by using “layers and layers of chiffon, embroidered with pieces of gold”.

The designer remembers another ‘fur’ creation – ”traditional haute couture dresses made of horse hair that Jerry Hall wore with her daughter Lizzy Jagger on stage”.

“And then there is this from the ‘Atlantes’ collection in 1989,” he continues. “Fish gills on the front of the dress. The tailoring of this fabric is really great – like a statue – it stays on your body but stands up gracefully the way we want.”

Loriot has studied the entire archive. “It was a revolution at the time to make things like this,” he says, of an evening swimsuit from 1986.

Who is Thierry Mugler? He was born ‘Manfred Mugler’ in Strasbourg, on the German edge of France, trained as a classical dancer from age 9, and joined the ballet corps at 14. His first collection was in 1973, showcasing his angular power-dressing in blocks of solid colour or glitter decoration, sparkling through to the Eighties. His bold styling led him to dress Demi Moore in 1993’s Indecent Proposal and to work with George Michael on the video for ‘Too Funky’, although that ended in a bust-up.

He built a regular clientele, including Ivana Trump (“who was ordering one suit in 12 colours”) yet financial backers pulled the plug on money-draining couture and then his entire fashion business in the new millennium. His

brand was later revived with other designers. But for Mugler, it was a relief to stop turning out ten collections a year made by 11 floors of workers.

This madness was replaced by continuing support from the Clarins beauty group and a new role for Mugler, who moved to New York in 2002 to concentrate on costume design, some for risqué cabaret. Loriot is bringing together such wide-ranging creativity from Mugler’s life and career into the exhibition.

“I always work with a living artist or designer, and the whole presentation is about his vision,” Loriot says. “It’s about how he has translated his passions and his obsessions through clothing, ever since age 14 when he joined the Opéra national du Rhin as a ballet dancer. He toured with the company for six years.”

I remember so clearly a conversation with Thierry Mugler in the Nineties, when he told me that his first fragrance, Angel, with its faceted bottle of an exploding star, came directly from his personal turmoil as a young gay man. Too guilty to go to the cathedral in Strasbourg, he lay on a bench outside, looking up at the stars that would become a symbol of his lifelong work.

“I know what being alone is – really deeply,” he says. “I had a difficult childhood and I was very alone for years and years. I would watch the stars because for me this was a new reality. There was something there, new, different, beautiful.

“When I started dancing, it was an incredible, fantastic help because it was a magical stage. The theatre was made for me. But after the beauty of the light, the red curtain and applause, everyone had someone to wait for them backstage, but me? Never. I had years when I was alone.”

Turning that sorrow into luminous, imaginative, original clothing was a personal triumph. And how richly Manfred Thierry Mugler deserves to be recognised and applauded as a unique and important player on the international fashion stage.

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Remembering Hubert de Givenchy The late couturier was interviewed in 2017 by Suzy Menkes at an exhibition of his work in Calais, the lace capital of France. As well as offering insights into his design vision, he shared stories about dressing Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, and the Duchess of Windsor 12/03/2018

I VISITED A WINDSWEPT Calais last June for an exceptional opportunity to talk to Hubert de Givenchy. The great couturier was showing his work in the Cité internationale de la Dentelle et de la Mode de Calais (the Museum of Lace and Fashion), on France’s north coast.

I was overwhelmed to learn, in the designer’s own words, the legacy of the clients and Parisian haute couture world that made him unique.

Here is his story. May he rest in peace.

Clockwise from below:

Hubert de Givenchy with Suzy in Calais at his exhibition in 2017; with Audrey Hepburn in Paris in 1982; a short Givenchy evening dress in shantung silk, with an under-skirt embroidered with braid and strass, early 1960s

Hubert de Givenchy – tall, noble and impeccably tailored – is telling me about dressing the Duchess of Windsor, whose husband gave up the throne of England for the woman he loved.

“The Duke didn’t speak French; he spoke Spanish, German and, of course, English,” the couturier remembers. “He said to me, ‘Givenchy, I really like what you do for the Duchess.’ But just as I replied, ‘Thank you, it’s very kind of you to tell me that. It’s very encouraging,’ he suddenly asked me, ‘Why is the price so high?’”

Enter the Duchess, with a new bouffant hair-do by Alexandre, trying to smooth things over: “Do you think the price is so high for all the joy and pleasure I give you with all the lovely dresses Hubert has designed for me?”

Givenchy has a wicked twinkle in his eye as he relates more tales of the ladies he loved to dress.

He gave up his couture house in 1989, after it had been bought by LVMH. But he still has a precise memory of the key moments in his long career and brings all to vivid life in the clothes displayed in the Museum of Lace and Fashion.

While visiting gallery displays, I have often thought, “If only these clothes could speak.” But I needed no magic spell to discover why Audrey Hepburn chose a lacy, racy, little black dress for the Sixties film, How to Steal a Million; or to learn what French President, General de Gaulle said to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as she glided into the Palace of Versailles in a swish Givenchy dress with embroidered silk and pearl flowers.

“Jackie was very modern; her spirit was modern, she was a new image for America

because he was a young president,” Givenchy says as he conjures the young couple to life, as they were at the dawn of the 1960s.

“It was not the same relationship or friendship that I had with Audrey,” the couturier continues. “The American people felt emotion for Jackie, but they preferred to have an American couturier design her dresses when they came to France for a state visit. Jackie asked for more than ten or 15 pieces, saying, ‘I don’t know if I can be dressed by a French designer.’

We did all the fittings in secret. Then after the event at Versailles, Jackie sent me a little postcard to tell me that General de Gaulle gave her a very nice compliment. He said, ‘Madame, this evening you look like a Parisienne.’”

Having the designer tell me the story behind the 80 outfits on show, brings to life what might have been a pleasant but predictable exhibition.

Similar shows have already been held in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, in The Hague and in Switzerland.

I gazed at two visions of the Duchess of Windsor: laughing over the black-and-white striped dress that both she and the Baroness de Redé were wearing at the same Paris event, and dressed for her husband’s funeral in a tiny coat, dress, and pillbox hat. The all-black outfit, produced by Givenchy through two days and nights of work, was finished just in time for the plane arriving to take the Duchess to an icy reception in England.

She greeted the designer with the words, “Hubert, it is really marvellous.” “But I said, ‘No, it is normal; it is my job to do that,” Givenchy recalls. “Although there is a lot of criticism about the Duchess, she was very amusing and entertaining.”

The concept of clothing as a direct relationship between couturier and client is now a distant memory, but brand Givenchy has continued to function, first with John Galliano as designer (before he went to Dior), then Alexander McQueen, Julien Macdonald, and more recently given an international hip

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‘Le Grand Hubert’, as the French describe him, has an elegant enchantment that stands as a memory of fashion’s once consummate elegance

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From left:

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Thierry Chesnot / Getty Images; Philippe Huguen / AFP / Getty Images; Pool APESTEGUY / SOLA / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

An evening dress in silk satin, with feather, crystal, and mother-ofpearl embroidery, 1989; Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy at the ‘Oscars de la mode’ at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, 1985

and cool style by Riccardo Tisci, who has now passed the baton to Clare Waight Keller.

Against the current background of the house, it is hard to understand that almost every garment in the exhibition has a personal story, be it the white cotton froth of a blouse beloved by model Bettina in the 1950s, at the start of Givenchy’s career, or the black sheath dress, set off with pearls, worn by Audrey in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961.

The list of private loans – from the Countess de Borchgrave to the Duchess of Cadaval and the Marquise of Llanzol – suggests a society so profoundly different to that of today that it appears to belong to a different universe. And Givenchy, who retired in 1995 and is now 91, knows that not only does he personally no longer have clients, but that his fashion world no longer exists. Yet he says, rather touchingly, that he continues to draw, as he has always done, but especially in memory of Audrey. A video tucked into a narrow alcove of the museum shows the designer and his coloured pencils at work.

One dress that ticks all the boxes in this museum, devoted to the creation and treatment of lace and housed in an original lace factory, is a voluminous yet fluid ballgown from 1952 for the Versailles ball, made for the French model and later actress, Capucine. When I compliment him on this, Givenchy’s comment is that Balenciaga was the couturier who knew better than any other how to use lace.

The overall impression of Givenchy as a designer is that he liked to have a powerful role model to subsume into his own work. His great fashion hero was Cristóbal Balenciaga, but the 1980s Givenchy outfits – such as the scarlet dress printed with the motif of an ostrich feather fan as held in the model’s hand – suggest a penchant for Yves Saint Laurent.

But ‘Le Grand Hubert’, as the French describe him, has an elegant enchantment – not least in a display of hats, feathered and flouncing – that stands as a memory of fashion’s once consummate elegance.

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Chinoiserie-on-Sea: Stephen Jones Hats at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion The milliner to the stars reignites King George IV’s passion for Chinese inspiration 06/01/2019

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Tessa Hallmann / Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; Lesley Robeson; Ben Toms / Luncheon Magazine

→Clockwise from right ¬ Stephen Jones with ‘Royal Crescent’ from the ‘Chinoiserie-on-Sea’ collection, 2012 ¬ Stephen Jones for Claude Montana, S/S 1994 ¬ ‘Crown’ for Comme des Garçons, S/S 2006

STEPHEN JONES STOOD among the Chinese-inspired rooms – the figurines dressed in Mandarin robes, the mahogany handrail carved like bamboo, the copper ‘pine trees’ in the royal kitchen, and the music room’s lotus-shaped chandeliers – all part of Brighton’s extraordinary Royal Pavilion.

“I grew up in a seaside town, but Brighton to me seemed exciting, exotic, and it symbolised art and freedom,” said the milliner, who in 2012 researched the curving creations of King George IV and the historic royal vision of Chinese elegance.

“I designed a collection called ‘Chinoiserieon-Sea’, and showing my hats at the Pavilion is like a homecoming,” he said. “I have never had an opportunity to display hats in the environment that inspired them.”

Some designers might blanch at facing so much competition – from the elaborate decoration that puts drapes at every window, candelabras hanging in limpid shapes from the ceiling, and panels of Chinese wallpaper.

But the designer – who dressed petite pop star Kylie Minogue in an explosion of a hat for the Sydney Mardi Gras in 2012 and who produced giant cherries for designer Thom Browne’s Spring/ Summer 2019 collection – was unlikely to be intimidated by a royal palace.

‘Stephen Jones Hats at the Royal Pavilion’ (until 9 June 2019, in partnership with Harvey Nichols) will be displayed in the decorative rooms.

The haute couture headwear includes wild pieces made for John Galliano shows, the milliner’s current work for Dior, and striking creations for Giles Deacon and ‘Antwerp Six’ designer, Walter Van Beirendonck.

It might sound like a crazy leap into the wild, but Martin Pel, Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Royal Pavilion and Museums, has been planning this event for seven years with the ‘mad-hat man’. Together they have found a place, and a meaning, for each object.

“The opulent interiors of the Pavilion become even more fantastical as nearly 150 of Stephen’s incredible creations take centre stage,“ the curator said. “His craftsmanship and superior designs are perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the former royal palace.”

But as he explained, the approach has to be subtle. That has meant placing each hat in an appropriate position, but never touching pieces of royal furniture or decoration that were stripped from the building by Queen Victoria, installed in Buckingham Palace, and have since been discreetly sent back to George IV’s former residence by the reigning Queen Elizabeth.

The buildings are a significant tourist attraction, and since they now officially belong to the town of Brighton in the county of Sussex, Meghan and Harry, the Duke and

Duchess of Sussex, have paid a visit to the Pavilion. And, of course, Stephen Jones has already made Meghan a beret.

Chinese visitors will surely feel a sense of pride at George IV’s fascination with their heritage two centuries ago for his seaside pleasure place. Hats inspired by the interiors of the Royal Pavilion will be displayed, as well as a modern piece made especially by Stephen Jones for the New York exhibition, ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2015.

Visitors may also be excited by the name plates for a list of celebrities invited to ‘dinner’.

The guests (read ‘hats’) at the long table in the banqueting hall include pieces made for Cindy Crawford; Princess Diana; Lady Gaga; Mick Jagger; Kate Moss; Rihanna; Tilda Swinton; and so many more.

Harvey Nichols’s Group Creative and Marketing Director, Deb Bee sees the exhibition as more than a “major retrospective of incredible hats”. The store is creating a limited-edition collection of ‘diva-like’ Stephen Jones hats, on sale from April 2019.

For Far Eastern visitors, the concept of chinoiserie may seem strange, even alien.

But to the hat designer, the exhibition seems like that proverbial dream come true.

“I feel amazingly privileged,” Jones said.

“I am inspired by everything, every day, but some things are special, and the Pavilion has always been one of the most special places that I know in the world.”

‘Stephen Jones Hats at the Royal Pavilion’ runs until 9 June 2019

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School of

Christian Dior Can the work of a unique fashion artist live on through a series of successors after the original designer has left the stage?

Tony Armstrong Jones, 1957; Adrien Dirand

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From Van Gogh to Matisse and Picasso, it would be impossible to imagine an artist from the 20th century whose work was taken over completely by someone else, as opposed to that vague description, ‘School of’. Even Damien Hirst, with a team of assistants, summed up the importance of life in artistic work when he titled his pickled shark, ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’.

So how could Christian Dior, back in 1957 before his sudden and untimely disappearance at age 52, have imagined that his work – so personal; so tied up with artistic friends from his early years; so deeply and viscerally attached to his mother and her turn-of-the-century style – would generate a troupe of six successors?

Some, like a young Yves Saint Laurent, the first replacement, went on to greater things.

When Marc Bohan took over in 1960, he followed dutifully, if elegantly, for a long period in the founder’s footsteps. Gianfranco Ferré, who took over in 1989, was rooted in Italian grandeur. John Galliano was a wild card, rarely playing by the Dior rules, until he was drummed out in disgrace in 2011, while Raf Simons struggled for just three years (2012–15) with his own instinctive minimalism in the shadow of the floral flourishes of Monsieur Dior. Finally, today, Maria Grazia Chiuri has brought a strong whiff of forceful feminism as an unlikely link to the shy Christian, a mother’s boy.

‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris aims to be an exhaustive survey of a designer brand with lasting power. Yet it is only in the second half of this enormous tribute to the 70 years of the Maison Dior that the six acolytes are in full view.

The sextet who sing Dior’s aria reach their crescendo in a mighty, high-ceilinged room that looks like a Christian church (pun intended).

All-white, it suggests a heavenly atelier of hand-workers, with the petites mains of today from the actual couture atelier on the avenue Montaigne working on rotation in the museum.

Who was Christian Dior, and why did he become a fabled fashion character, whose name is better known than lofty Balenciaga and equal in fame only to Mademoiselle Chanel?

“The Dior brand is so famous, everybody knows the name, and they knew it even in his first ten years,” said Maria Grazia. “I found this unbelievable book and realised that in 1954, after only seven years, he offered it in different languages with projects from scarves and socks to perfume. I never knew that he was so worldwide, and that gave me another point of view of the brand.”

At the Paris museum, which in its 112-year history has never before devoted both sides of its nave to a single exhibition, the curatorship is also divided in two – between Olivier Gabet, the Director of the Arts Décoratifs, and Florence Müller, Curator of Textile Art and Fashion at the Denver Art Museum in America.

Gabet leans towards the artistic side. “We wanted to show the universe of Maison Dior and how his inspiration is extremely sophisticated and cultivated,” he said. “What is important is that you have everything at the same level – a piece of couture and a great painting. You have to put them on the same scale and you soon have this line of art. Even before Galliano imposed himself as an artist, Monsieur Dior had created a visual culture, including 18th-century painting, Surrealism and Art Nouveau.”

So one side of the museum is devoted more to art history than to the endlessly promoted ‘Bar’ jacket that kicks off the second part of the exhibition. That fitted jacket and flaring skirt is now so entrenched in the Dior history that Melania Trump turned up in a Maria Grazia version for the recent presidential visit to Paris.

The show starts with a curvy, full-skirted red ‘Diablesse’ dress from 1947 and an informative but dull visual history of the founder, on loan from the Dior Museum in his birthplace of Granville in Normandy.

It then comes to life as we are introduced to the young Christian Dior, who apparently ignored the family business of farm fertilisers and hung out instead with his arty friends, who included Christian Bérard, Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau and even Pablo Picasso. Dior’s father gave him money for investment on

condition that the family name was not included when Dior became director of an art gallery. And although this dilettante period came to an abrupt end with the beginning of the Depression, the museum has devoted a room to modernist art linked to Christian’s own statement: “We were just a simple gathering of painters, writers, musicians and designers under the aegis of Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob.”

Alongside these pieces are further signs of fashion encompassing art in connection to photographers. They include Cecil Beaton’s 1951 photograph of a luscious young Princess Margaret and the famous Richard Avedon ‘Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955’. These are digital projections that then fade to reveal the actual dresses behind.

Fine art, interspersed with vignettes of Dior’s creations and those from the later designers, is interspersed with ‘Colouramas’. They are visions, actual size or petite, of clothes and accessories, including distinctive high-heeled shoes, displayed to promote a single colour.

The result is both charming and artistic.

Significantly, the clothes from the later designers at Dior are in this introductory area.

They are deliberately selected to fit in to the earlier Christian Dior themes. This applies in particular to examples of the founder’s love of gardens and flowers, especially his roses and favourite Lily of the Valley. A different approach underscores the disparity between Dior’s style and the urgency of Galliano’s designs or Raf Simons’s modernist work in conjunction with American artist Sterling Ruby.

Another introduction is to the witty furs of designer Frédéric Castet. His lush coat with an Eiffel Tower motif, more like a Leaning Tower ↓From opposite page ¬ Christian Dior at home in the South of France, captured by the future Lord Snowdon in 1957 ¬ Dior’s letter to his father about his sister’s release from prison, 1945 ¬ The ‘Round the World with Dior’ installation

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Richard Avedon Foundation; Adrien Dirand

The young Dior ignored the family business of farm fertilisers and hung out instead with his arty friends, including Picasso

of Pisa, is inconceivable today, but an interesting peek at how far the Dior offering stretched.

Sidney Toledano, Chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture and of the LVMH Fashion Group, eagerly pointed out that of the many recent Dior exhibitions at home and abroad, this was the most important and ambitious presentation of the art, life and history of the designer. “For Paris, we have pushed the heritage to the limit with many new dresses and by displaying them with works of art,” he said.

Would it have been enough if the exhibition had ended with the respectful addition of the satellite designers and a heart-warming look at the origin of the Miss Dior perfume? It was named for Christian’s sister, Catherine, who had worked for the French Resistance, was captured, and only released from Ravensbrück concentration camp at the end of the war.

A letter Christian wrote to his father in April 1945 concerning his sister’s release is both moving and insightful, suggesting a depth of anguish behind the flower-strewn exterior.

When a label moves from the founder’s personal vision to a brand, there is inevitably a change of tone. Moving on to the ‘School of Dior’ designers, the display is less museumworthy – especially when it ends with a ballroom installation of dresses worn to the mythic Bal Oriental organised by Charles de Beistegui in 1951 at the pinnacle of high society, and of gowns worn in the more recent celebrity era. Think of Princess Diana’s Galliano dress at the Met Ball in 1996 or the pink gown worn to the Oscars by Jennifer Lawrence in 2013, when she tripped up.

Dramatic, dynamic and steeped in social history, the overall effect of ‘the Dior Ball’ is still more about entertaining the public than offering any suggestion of how Dior will move forward.

So, what does this mighty exhibition say?

That Christian Dior has grown from the roots planted by one poetic soul seven decades ago?

That however different and disparate the aims of the successive creators, it all comes back to Monsieur Dior? Is this overall system of designer replacement, which Dior has led, good for fashion? Or does it cream off emerging talents and oblige them to design according to an evermore-distant master’s voice?

As an increasing number of big names stagger on beyond the usual retirement age, will their ultimate departure create a gulf that needs to be filled with yet more designers, when they should be free to create personal visions?

I left this huge and stunning show with more questions than answers about the legacy of the founder and where fashion goes from here.

↓

Clockwise from top ¬ An installation of Christian Dior toiles ¬ Maria Grazia Chiuri, current Creative Director of Dior ¬ The ‘Dior Gardens’ installation of clothes inspired by his love of flowers ¬ Modelling Dior in Richard Avedon’s ‘Dovima With Elephants’, 1955

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Glamour That Came In From the Cold

A New York exhibition shows how extreme weather, such as the East Coast’s recent ‘bombogenesis’, has influenced fashion across continents and centuries 03/01/2018

↑Clockwise from this photo ¬ John Cowan’s Arctic shoot for Vogue, November 1964 (coat by Georges Kaplan, hat by Halston) ¬ Norma Kamali’s ‘Sleeping Bag Coat’, 1977 (gift of Linda Tain) ¬ Joseph Altuzarra, A/W 2011 Explorer Roald Amundsen, 1909, by Anders Beer Wilse ¬ George LePape’s Vogue cover, August 1917

The Condé Nast Archive; The John Cowan Archive; GoRunway; Courtesy of the Museum at FIT; National Library of Norway

So the temperature in New York has risen to minus

eight degrees? Phew! After breaking a few records – including the one for the entire 20th century – next weekend is expected to drop further to a shivering minus 16 degrees (and that’s not even counting the wind chill).

I could have predicted that back in September, when, gasping from the heat, I dashed into ‘Expedition: Fashion From the Extreme’ at The Museum at FIT (the Fashion Institute of Technology). There were outfits worn by Arctic explorers who reached the North Pole in 1909, while a century later Chanel launched a furry collection for Autumn/Winter 2010 that Karl Lagerfeld set against massive glaciers imported from Sweden.

No need for that extra ice right now, but currently it might be difficult to slip through the snow to see the New York exhibition.

Fashion continues its eerie ability to predict the future. This is nothing new, but can be traced back at least a century, as Polar exploration was mirrored in the clothing invented for protection.

Even for the lucky few spending January on a tropical isle, the Thames & Hudson book that accompanies the FIT show gives much food for thought: How clothes may be born from necessity but are swiftly followed by fashion; and how Vogue interpreted the worldwide fascination with climate extremes as glamour that

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Natasha Cowan; Grumman Aerospace Corporation; Horst P Horst; Collection of the family of Leonard Matero; Courtesy of The Museum at FIT

came in from the cold. Artist George Lepape’s illustration of a woman in white fur, with blood-red undergarments and stabbing a polar bear, is chilling in every sense.

The heroic era of Polar exploration at the turn of the 20th century was the origin of the parkas and puffer coats that dominate today’s winter wardrobe. And I believe Patricia Mears, the museum’s Co-Curator and Deputy Director, when she says that this is the first museum study to address the relationship between survival wear and high fashion. She was inspired by designer Joseph Altuzarra’s play on the mid-century military parka. But it might equally have been Norma Kamali’s 1973 ‘Sleeping Bag Coat’, still on offer online today; or Moncler’s 1952 mountain wear that went on to be a hip-hop uniform and bring cool to its high fashion, down-feather puffer coats.

Mears might have gone back even earlier to the strangely erotic and exotic images of the late-19th and early-20th-century French actress Sarah Bernhardt, dressed first in a fashion portrait beside a deep-sea diver, and then alone in ‘Ocean Empress’ clothing.

Two subjects from the extremes of dressing are skated over.

First, the focus entirely on the sporty male: For example, The Explorer’s Club, founded in Manhattan in 1904, which would not let women in until 1981; and NASA’s famous Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Neil Armstrong proclaimed as, “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

The other awkward, but not sexist, subject is fur. The materials that might have seemed natural for the Inuit of Greenland are increasingly questioned today, when there are other high-tech materials – or even the familiar neoprene – to replace fur in dangerously cold and blustery weather. Animal skins were often chosen for their natural patterns, but when Rick Owens designed for Revillon, he revelled in the raw to create high-fashion furs.

Is bringing clothing from the extreme to the elegant a normal process? Magazine covers have offered Björk, the Icelandic singer, in a frozen landscape wearing Jean Paul Gaultier in 1994; while Grace Coddington worked with photographer Arthur Elgort on an outfit of layered skins by Yohji Yamamoto for Vogue’s September issue in 2000.

Given the relatively small display area at FIT, the book does better than the exhibition at showing the ingenuity and originality of clothes for extreme weather conditions.

And the images prove that we can still project beauty, even with legs encased in hairy hose, body wrapped in puffer jacket, and head held high in a furry hood.

The heroic era of Polar exploration at the turn of the 20th century was the origin of the parkas and puffer coats that dominate today’s winter wardrobe

↑Clockwise from top ¬ Parka by Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga, A/W 2016 ¬ A Charles James evening jacket. Photo by Horst P Horst for Harper’s Bazaar, October 1938 ¬ Evening dress by Michael Goma, 1967-69 (gift of Fortunée A Lorant) ¬ Sunglasses by André Courrèges, S/S 1965 (gift of Abel Rapp) ←Clockwise from far left ¬ The Apollo Moon Landing, 20 July 1969. The moon’s temperature ranges from minus 173⁰C to 100⁰C ¬ Pierre Cardin’s ‘Dynel (Cardine)’ dress, 1968 (gift of Lauren Bacall) ¬ Leather boots by André Courrèges, 1965 (gift of Sally Cary Iselin)

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Martin Margiela:

a Double bill in Paris The elusive iconoclast is celebrated in a retrospective of his personal legacy at The Palais Galliera, and in a study of his tenure at Hermès at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs 23/03/2018

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Left and above: Exhibits at the Palais Galliera retrospective of Martin Margiela include this apron-skirt made from scarves from S/S 1992 – an exploration of deconstruction and upcycling

Françoise Cochen / Galliera / Roger-Viollet; Stany Dederen; Marina Faust; Julien Vidal / Galliera / Roger-Viollet

The alliance between the classic

French house of Hermès and the Belgian iconoclast Martin Margiela seems unlikely. But his spare and conceptual aesthetic is being revisited with renewed admiration.

‘Margiela: The Hermès Years’ has transferred from the Mode Museum in Antwerp (MoMu) to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) in Paris.

A fascinating fashion story about his own label is told in a parallel exhibition at the Palais Galliera, ‘Margiela/Galliera 1989-2009’, curated by the elusive designer himself.

At MAD, the decision to show Margiela’s work was encouraged by Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Artistic Director of Hermès and the museum’s President.

“We want to make the museum more exciting and appealing, especially to the new generation,”

he said, as he stood amid the crowd of visitors studying this rich, yet often-neglected, period from a designer who became known as the king of the undone, recycled and what lies beneath.

Pierre-Alexis’ late father, Jean-Louis Dumas, surprised the fashion industry when he chose Margiela as Creative Director. He seemed the antithesis of a brand with roots in saddles and accoutrements for the horsey set. A thoughtful innovator, he appeared to deplore the excess of the Eighties and focused on deconstruction and renovation of existing clothing.

His most famous statements for his own label included the 1990 show held on a bleak wasteland outside Paris, where he dispensed with the usual hierarchical seating plan and presented a rather pretty collection on models

wrapped in plastic dry-cleaning bags. The local kids came to laugh at, and ultimately watch, the show with us. Another was held at a Salvation Army store, where we perched on old furniture amid racks of old clothes; and in 1992, there were two ‘sets’; one where everything was shown in white, the other in black.

The brilliance of Hermès was to appreciate that behind Margiela’s contrary approach was a love of tailoring, a deep understanding of fabric and its sensuous appeal, and a modern attitude.

While his co-stars at the time were Tom Ford at Gucci with his high-gloss sexy approach and Miuccia Prada with her ugly-intellectual aesthetic, from 1997-2003 Margiela produced clothes that were elegant in an edgy way, making a clear statement about a masculine aesthetic

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Margiela’s torrent of creativity at his own brand – exposing seams, playing with proportions, and celebrating humble details – found eloquent expression at Hermès (centre right)

but using tactile fabrics for a feminine allure.

In the 12 collections he produced over that period, the Margiela/Hermès collaboration had a nobility that was a powerful antidote to the extremes of fashion in the new millennium.

Since no one has previously considered this Hermès period as an entity and studied it in relation to Margiela’s work for his own label, it is an intriguing curatorial exercise.

The fact that his influence today is a powerful component of the anti-fashion brand Vetements – whose c0-founder, Demna Gvasalia is, like Margiela, an alumnus of the fashion school of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and once led the design team at Maison Margiela – makes the two exhibitions especially relevant.

At the Galliera, 20 years of Margiela’s own label are displayed, including the two-toed ‘Tabi’ shoe-boots and a collection from 1997 built entirely on his Stockman dressmaker’s dummy.

At MAD, the most dramatic effect is that juicy Hermès orange shown against the monochrome world of Margiela, who painted every item in his studio stark white – from floor to ceiling – and asked his staff to wear white lab coats.

The classic brand and the imaginative designer are not so far apart. Margiela’s Hermès is about a modern elegance and fresh approach to traditional French style. The silhouette is desexualised: soft, long, and unstructured with no shoulder pads, it is almost Japanese in approach. “Fluid is a word we often used. It had

to hang off the body,” Margiela told me. He also introduced the effect of oversize, around 2000.

Using the deep, plunging V-neck of the Vareuse cut, the effect is streamlined and graceful. Some pieces look almost like haute couture, such as coats with a semi-transparent silk cover flowing over fine wool for protection.

There are some bizarre Margiela looks too: a ‘glove story’ using nothing but unmatched pairs to construct a slender dress; or Hermès’ hand-rolled scarf technique used to edge blouses and tunics. He also played artfully with logos and identity, creating a way of button stitching in 1997 to produce the subtle ‘H’ motif, while the cuff on one jacket had six buttons instead of four to indicate an ‘H’ with a flourish.

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* Includes extracts from ‘Martin Margiela: Re-visiting the Hermès Years’, 09/11/2016 and ‘Martin Margiela Discusses His Hermès Years’, 30/03/2017

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Margiela never speaks publicly, but we spoke at length at MoMu in 2017, and I vividly recall him telling me that he wanted to show work that had languished for years in cold storage at Hermès. “The memory was lost,” he said, explaining that two decades of creation from 1989-2009 just missed the Internet era.

Kaat Debo, Director of MoMu, who was instrumental in the original Antwerp exhibition, rejoiced in its move to Paris: “If you really want to understand Martin, you have to see both shows.” She continued, “These are not entirely divergent worlds. One creates the DNA, and the ideas and techniques keep coming back. But I think also of the overall vision of Martin, resisting the fashion system, resisting some of

the obsessions like the ideal body, eternal youth, constant innovation and renewal. At Maison Martin Margiela he resisted in a very conceptual way. And at Hermès, there was a slowly evolving wardrobe. That’s why the garments can be worn in two or three different ways. It is ‘slow’ fashion before the concept even existed.”

“Margiela/Galliera 1989-2009” is unique.

In an exceptional collaboration with Alexandre Samson, Director of Contemporary Collections, Margiela is the Artistic Director of the show, able to write his own history and show how he developed his aesthetic from his fashion training and early days at Jean Paul Gaultier. He would deconstruct garments, revealing the hidden sewing skills behind linings, stitching and

shoulder pads, and once had his mother knit an openwork sweater using broom sticks.

“He never used the word ‘recycling’ – it was giving life to pieces he liked, and he loved vintage,” Samson says. Hence a huge American mannequin from 1936, which Margiela used as the foundation of his oversize collection.

A true pioneer, in 1999 Margiela made an entire collection from old duvets, anticipating by a decade the fashion for padded puffer coats, while his oversize outfits appeared at the fashion moment devoted to body-clinging clothes.

As Olivier Saillard, the Galliera’s outgoing curator, says: “Young people should understand that not being able to create new fashion is not about a lack of money – but of imagination.” *

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Above:

Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé at home in Marrakesh, 1970s

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Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakesh: A Life in Colour A tribute to the designer and his lifelong partner, Pierre Bergé, the new Marrakesh museum and its sister site in Paris share and preserve Yves Saint Laurent’s groundbreaking legacy 16/10/2017

“This museum is dynamic,

has exemplary work, it’s alive,” said Madison Cox, the partner of Pierre Bergé in his final years, who is now the keeper of the Yves Saint Laurent flame since Bergé’s death in September. “But I hope it opens up a bit.

“Pierre would never have allowed a dialogue between Saint Laurent and his generation, and the one that followed. But what was going on at the same time the ‘Mondrian’ came out?” he mused, referring to the famous colour-block dress of 1965, which opens the exhibition. “What other designers were inspired by that African collection or by mixing fuchsia, turquoise and lime green?”

I was immediately taken with the idea of sneaking the work of another designer into the exquisite line-up of painterly evening gowns by Saint Laurent – say Haider Ackermann. And why not place beside the raw, tribal African outfit from 1967, with its conical breasts, the same look by Jean Paul Gaultier in the 1980s, and later worn by Madonna in 1990 on her ‘Blond Ambition’ tour?

Since the Marrakesh museum – a homage to North Africa’s influence on Saint Laurent – was complete before Bergé died, it is no surprise that the ‘compare and contrast’ idea of Madison, inviting other designers to this fashion festival, is not in evidence.

It was Bergé who laid out the plans to display what he believed the YSL history stands for – his mission since Saint Laurent retired in 2002. (The great couturier died in 2008, at 71.)

The Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent brings together 5,000 clothes, 15,000 accessories, and manifold sketches, to create a vast, visual archive of the designer who changed the face of fashion in the second half of the 20th century.

In Paris, Yves Saint Laurent’s home at 5 avenue Marceau has been completely remodelled so that different rooms bring to life particular garments and show the studio where the designer and his team, including his muse Loulou de la Falaise, once worked.

Bergé financed the Marrakesh and Paris sites, although he was grateful to the brand’s current owner, François-Henri Pinault, CEO of the Kering luxury group, for some financial support.

The legacy of Yves Saint Laurent deserves this unique position. He was the first living designer to have been granted a retrospective at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, back in 1983. This set off a slew of fashion exhibitions that

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seem to become more numerous each year. So, he was not only an innovator of fashion, but also of museum shows.

In Marrakesh, the cavernous, curving, museum walls; the well-crafted auditorium; and the excellent bookshop and library are precise and Yves-centric. Yet at the same time, the modernist African architecture by Studio KO, set against the poetic and artistic YSL creations, succeeds in catching the essence of the couturier who invented so many things we now take for granted, from trouser suits for women to the concept of black as a colour.

At the museum opening, Betty Catroux, model-muse and one of Saint Laurent’s inner circle, laughed at her passion for black.

“I have so many memories – of being with him, also here in Marrakesh – and I feel that he is watching over us,” she said.

Indeed. For there is a giant image of a young Saint Laurent

by Jeanloup Sieff dominating the display. Below the gaze of this sensitive, elegant Yves, the visitor is faced with two contrasting visions. On one side are black outfits, the depth, texture and decoration of the fabrics creating a sense of shaded tones; while the area opposite is alive with colour and the African influences that he had deep in his soul, which could be traced back to his childhood in Algeria, and his discovery of Marrakesh in 1966.

Throughout the Marrakesh show – in a more powerful way than at the more enclosed Paris museum – digital projections bring the tall, dark walls to light. Dominique de Roche, who has worked for Saint Laurent for three decades, was responsible for choosing the most evocative outfits and images for this section.

There are also films of key moments in YSL’s history, such as the Spring 2002 couture show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which marked his retirement by sending 40 years of groundbreaking outfits on to the runway. The same film was shown at a mighty public screening on the Jemaa el-Fnaa in the centre of Marrakesh.

Even residents who were more committed to the simultaneous Friday prayers than the museum opening could only be impressed by the fact that one of their roads has been named ‘Yves Saint Laurent’ – a feat of delicate diplomacy, Madison says.

The pinky-red museum building, with its Cubist Moroccanterracotta bricks, had its ribbon cut by Princess Lalla Salma, wife of Morroco’s King Mohammed VI. Madison enthused, “Even

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Congratulations, Suzy, on your 5th year at Vogue!

We celebrate you and all that you have accomplished.

Thank you for your unwavering support for the growth of fashion in Africa.

We wish you continued success in your career.

L AGOS FASHION WEEK 2018

Africa : Shaping Fashion's Future

23 -26 OCT 2019

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From above:

*Includes extracts from ‘Pierre Bergé and the Saint Laurent Legacy’, 08/09/2017 @SuzyMenkesVogue; Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent; Getty

Decades of YSL couture; the Marrakesh museum; Pierre and Suzy in Yves’ Paris studio, 2017; Yves and Morroccoinspired accessories Moroccans who don’t know Yves’ work are proud of him; they’ve sort of appropriated him. They’ve realised that he was so enthused by them and they in turn have embraced him.”

The challenge of solo shows is that it is impossible to recreate the moment that leads a designer to capture what the French call ‘l’air du temps’ – the spirit of the times. The shock and awe of women wearing trousers in public, ready to break the glass ceiling and stride into the boardroom, means nothing to millennials, who see 60- and 70-somethings such as Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel wearing them to stride through the political universe.

It is a tough call for a curator to explain, visually, how sensual and daring such outfits seemed when Saint Laurent proposed them as a way for dynamic young women to dress. Maybe that is why the famous tuxedo or ‘le Smoking’ of 1966 plays such a minor role in the museum, appearing in a small group of trouser suits after an opening corridor of four decades of fashion photography.

In this museum, it is the ‘hippie de luxe’ style that leaves a lasting impact. Marisa Berenson, wearing her own vintage YSL high-waisted trousers and tribal jewellery, said: “I had tears in my eyes remembering that time, hearing those voices of Yves and Pierre. We were so lucky to have lived through that period.”

The joyous display of accessories shows Saint Laurent’s inventiveness and inspirations to great effect, especially when using historic Parisian gloves or chunky, Berber jewellery. The museum also shows beautifully the exceptional and artistic workmanship, such as the jackets embroidered by Maison Lesage of Van Gogh sunflowers and irises from Spring/Summer 1988.

Thinking of Madison Cox’s comments, I imagined how YSL’s work might look even more dramatic in the context of a Comme des Garçons outfit from the same period.

How involved was Yves with Marrakesh? Photos from the period suggest a young man in a dream world of the “Even Moroccans who exotic, yet a few steps away from the museum is living proof of the effect Bergé and Saint Laurent had on don’t know Yves’ work Marrakesh in the Jardin Majorelle, a 12-acre, are proud of him and landscaped artist’s garden that they rescued from have appropriated him; bulldozers in 1980. Its palm trees and greenery swaying they’ve embraced him” in the breeze against lapis-blue walls, its sculptures and Berber museum, show that Saint Laurent gave as much to the city as he drew out in inspiration.*

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IT WAS THE FRONT ROW of dreams:

Cate Blanchett and Glenn Close gleaming in their white trouser suits; Leonardo DiCaprio hiding behind his beard; Tina Turner applauding wildly; Hilary Swank crossing her slender, workout legs; Lauren Hutton’s gap-toothed smile; and eternal sex-pot Sophia Loren, proving that life still sings at 80.

Giorgio Armani, celebrating 40 years of his fashion house, brought Hollywood to Milan for a reprise of his ten-year-old Armani Privé couture line – and to view the Silos building that the designer has transformed from an old grain factory into a vibrant, four-storey display of those years in fashion, from bold androgyny to dreamy elegance.

Armani’s Hollywood Army 01/05/2015

↑From top ¬ Giorgio Armani’s new dedicated exhibition space, the Armani Silos ¬ Cate Blanchett, Armani ambassadress, with Giorgio Armani

“I had to come – for him,” Cate Blanchett said, echoing the warmth that surrounded the designer throughout an evening that ended with a prolonged standing ovation.

That was after the ten different show themes, from echoes of the ethnic to Chinoiserie with the shine of lacquered boxes, which were digitally projected on to a runway, filling the background with intense pattern and colour.

“I am very emotional,” Armani admitted to me earlier in the day, as he opened the Silos building for his guests. “It’s a walk through 40 years, reminding me of all the people who have worked with me.”

Giorgio greeted me outside the minimalist stone-and-glass building facing his Milan headquarters, looking as we all know him so well – in navy sportswear, illuminated at top and bottom by his silver hair and white sneakers.

With his particular, quiet elegance, he gave me the privilege of a tour of the four floors, showing me the exhibits. They started with the signature beige of his early daywear, in which trouser-clad women broke the sexist glass ceiling, and led on to the glamorous evening gowns worn by Hollywood stars. Thirteen separate display sections include outfits that are not curated by year, but by mixing different pieces from the Italian maestro’s long career.

“I am nearly 81 years old, and I have given my life to this,” the designer said later, when we had crossed over to the original Armani building designed by Tadao Ando, where I have seen so many fashion shows and where that evening’s elegant extravaganza would take place.

The Silos, which Armani said cost him some €50 million to convert into its current brutal elegance, includes the fashion displays, an area

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Giorgio Armani; Stefano Guindani; Davide Lovatti

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of digital screens where clothes can be studied in detail, and offices for his Milanese staff.

“I decided to call it Silos because this building used to store food, which is, of course, essential to life,” Armani said. “For me, just as much as food, clothes are a part of life.”

Timed to open on the eve of Expo, an international exhibition in Milan with a focus on food, the Silos is designed to become a local landmark, with a coffee bar and shop as further attractions to visitors. The arrangement with the city is that part of the building will be used for cultural and art exhibitions. “Milan has a new space it did not have before, with easy access,” Armani said. “Anyone can come in. It’s a gift to the public, but the clothes are mine!”

The designer seems to have planned for his heritage from early on, although there is not so much from the Eighties on display here. One of the earliest pieces is a jacket and trousers from Spring/Summer 1980 worn by Richard Gere in American Gigolo, the movie that implanted Armani in Hollywood legend. As early as 1978, Diane Keaton received an Oscar for her role in Annie Hall wearing an Armani jacket. And the show includes a sharply tailored floor-sweeping dress worn by Sharon Stone to the Oscars in 1996 when she was nominated for Casino.

Wall-sized screens show the stars arriving, larger than life, before the viewer, so that the front-row line-up later at the show just seemed like a little more enhanced reality.

I would have liked to have seen a bit more context, for I remember the battles of words and styles as Armani faced off the bravura of Gianni Versace, the sexiness of Tom Ford’s Gucci and Miuccia Prada’s deliberately ugly aesthetic.

But I respect Armani’s wish to do things his way and to emphasise not just the style but the substance in the craftsmanship.

“Made in Italy is something else,” he said, as he showed me the intense handwork on shimmering dresses on the third floor. Ask the designer about any single piece in this show of 600 outfits and he tells its story, recalling a photo shoot with the model Amber Valletta “shot by Peter Lindbergh in Cyprus in tones of sand and grey” that is now in the digital archive of the Armani Silos. Reminiscences about Jodie Foster at the start of her career and Lauren Hutton followed.

Does he have any regrets?

“Only for those who are no longer with me,” he said, referring obliquely to his dear mother, with whom he dined every night; and to the late Sergio Galeotti, his partner in business and life.

An autobiography, Giorgio Armani (Rizzoli, 2015) has also been orchestrated by Armani, documenting his life – and not just in fashion.

Meanwhile, was he looking forward to this sumptuous night of stars?

“I really like being at home, having dinner with my cat, Angel,” said the Maestro of Milano and world-famous fashion icon.

↑From top ¬ A portrait of Armani in the lobby of Armani Silos ¬ An installation of evening gowns from the Armani archive ¬ Sophia Loren and Roberta Armani at the Silos opening

I remember the battles of words and styles as Armani faced off the bravura of Gianni Versace, the sexiness of Tom Ford’s Gucci and Miuccia Prada’s deliberately ugly aesthetic

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Chris Moore:

from catwalk to gallery An exhibition of the runway photographer’s half-century in fashion reveals the evolution of changing style 1 1 / 0 7/ 2 0 1 8

NAOMI CAMPBELL, HER SUIT

sucked in at the waist, casts a sexy pout from way on high. Beside this giant photograph of the eternal British model is the suit itself. The image in the picture is easily the more compelling.

This is the story of Catwalking: Fashion Through the Lens of Chris Moore, at the Bowes Museum in Darlington, in northern England.

Christopher Moore’s presence in the sweaty, heaving photographers’ press pit in London, Milan, Paris and New York made the British snapper a fashion fixture for more than 50 years – an exceptional position recognised by the photographer himself.

“The fashion show is a collective experience in itself, not merely a vehicle for viewing clothes.

You get the smell of it, the whole embrace – the music,” says Chris, now 84.

The Bowes Museum, a grand, 19th-century wedding cake of a building, has held several fashion exhibitions, most recently a study of

Yves Saint Laurent. But rarely can there have been such a conjunction of photographic reportage with fashion artistry.

“I am so proud of the museum, and that fashion people responded the way they did,” says Joanna Hashagen, Curator of Fashion & Textiles, who pronounced herself astounded at the number of high-fashion pieces on loan.

Accompanying the more than 200 photographs are significant couture creations including an elegantly decorated Chanel dress and – in complete contrast and a favourite of Chris himself – a ballooning scarlet creation by Comme des Garçons. “What the houses have lent is amazing,” Hashagen says, referring to the show’s finale of a ‘runway’ of looks for evening and day, including embroidery, sequins and plastic. She says the loans are “a great privilege”.

Yet equally extraordinary is the depth and range of photographs that Chris and his partner, Maxine Millar, helped to select from more than

one million images in his archive. The exhibition focuses on the runway, with all its bravado and merriment – at least until the Japanese school, led by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, drained the smiles from the models’ faces.

Images from the Sixties and Seventies are shown with models in movement, suggesting the new energy and freedom of fashion, and also of the photographer, who started his career in the Fifties working with conventional elegance for Vogue magazine.

Between them, the curator and photographer have produced a balanced variety of looks. These include backstage reportage, my favourite being a picture taken by Chris from atop a chair. Spread out below his lens is a throng surrounding Yves Saint Laurent, who embraces Catherine Deneuve while eager American high-society client Nan Kempner looks on.

The Bowes Museum illustrates the fine balance of clothing and imagery in its handling

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; Bowes Museum; Chris Moore

Clockwise from above: Chris Moore at the ‘Catwalking’ launch (2017); Karl Lagerfeld’s debut for Chanel Haute Couture, S/S 1983; Jean Paul Gaultier A/W 1995; Chris’s ‘pit box’ that he stands on at the shows; an installation of his work at the Bowes Museum; Comme des Garçons, S/S 2017

of Alexander McQueen. From a bold display of clothes, Chris’s images express the solemn and sometimes disturbing beauty of the designer’s work as well as its sensitive continuation under current designer Sarah Burton.

“I was the only one who photographed the show after his death. The music alone was enough to make me cry,” remembers Chris, who was McQueen’s in-house photographer and the one person invited to document what would be the designer’s final collection.

Having worked for more than two decades with Chris Moore when I was Fashion Editor at The International Herald Tribune, I know well his passion for perfection, but worn lightly. It is fascinating for me, and surely for others, to see

the development from the early years of fashion as a business, when photographers were not allowed into the client-only haute couture shows and had to come back the following day to take pictures. That evolved into the era when Moore and his peers snapped away from the sides of the catwalk, and their current position hunkered down at the end of the runway.

The most dramatic change was the move to digital photography. Having spent years dashing across Paris with a roll of film in my hand to be developed at a lab, and later passing this duty on to a runner, the arrival of the digital age was a game changer. Maxine pushed for a switch to uploading the photographs online, believing, rightly, that without change the Chris Moore company could not have kept up the pace.

Chris feels no nostalgia about the pre-digital era, saying, “I think it’s better than film. When it started, definition was low, but it gradually increased. When I look back at film, it’s better and cleaner now. I salute it.”

A museum show can fall heavily on the light spirit of fashion. But the Bowes Museum, with its quirky permanent displays, such as a wind-up silver swan, provides the right spirit for Chris.

Fashion images from his early career are displayed in the first of three large rooms. Here, music from the period accompanies the

different eras of clothing, from the first moon landing in 1969 and the Space Age looks of André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, to the colourful textures of Kenzo and Sonia Rykiel in the Seventies, to what the photographer describes as the ‘Four-City Circus’ of London, Milan, Paris and New York in the Eighties.

Perhaps the high point of the exhibition is the arrival of the supermodels – Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista et al – and the extraordinarily inventive presentations by John Galliano.

And this photographer’s favourite model?

“Christy Turlington was the best – she was fantastic,” he replies. “She wore the clothes well, came to us to be photographed, would turn around again – she was so professional.”

Every picture and every garment tells a story.

For example, the elegant geometry of a flowerpatterned YSL dress, photographed in black and white, beside a vision of the colourful real thing.

Chris answers decisively when I ask which image, including those in a fat book of his work, Catwalking, is his favourite.

“The one of Karl Lagerfeld’s first show for Chanel [in January 1983],” Chris says. “We were by the famous staircase. As I turned my camera to where all the photographers were, by luck there was a mirror reflecting a model. I don’t say I’m perfect. But I like to get some poetry.”

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“The clothes speak from her soul, sometimes as a whisper, occasionally with a shout, always with grace”

@suzymenkesvogue; Arumjigi Culture Keepers Foundation

Couture Korea: From Far East to West Coast 2 7/ 1 1 / 2 0 1 7

I WAS SURPRISED and proud to see my name on the wall of an exhibition in San Francisco. When I saw that the words were about Korean designer Jin Teok, I recalled the layers of thin, white fabric, like wispy clouds, that the celebrated designer had shown me in her Seoul boutique – and what she had told me about her reverence of her country’s past. I also vividly remembered the trail, as fine as thread, that she had traced through her family’s origins and native culture over the last half-century.

“Jin Teok’s clothes are like a poem. They speak from her soul, sometimes as a whisper, occasionally with a shout, always with grace,” I wrote after that trip to Seoul in 2015.

Until I saw the newly opened ‘Couture Korea’ at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, I had not realised the steadfast history – from the 13th to the 19th century – that had defined how the nation dressed. In Seoul, I was charmed by the sight of young women returning to the colourful Hanbok (mostly to take selfies, according to the curator, Hyonjeong Kim Han).

But the Californian museum gave me an infinitely wider vision than my memories of K-Pop, G-Dragon, Gangnam Style and Seoul Fashion Week, where the shows seemed to fuse men’s and women’s fashion in a modern way.

My ideas about that gender-neutral dress sense were challenged when I saw the richly detailed his’n’hers clothing traditionally worn by boy and girl babies to this day. The baby boy’s colourful outfit, each piece symbolising luck and hope, had a tiger hat to protect him from evil spirits; while the baby girl’s bonnet was decorated with chrysanthemum-shaped knots, symbolising the sun and perfection.

Hyonjeong Kim Han has provided a lesson in Korean culture through this display of exquisitely delicate dress, although the curator reconstructed most of the historic clothes to reveal how the garments were made, as well as their sophistication, choice of materials and social purpose. The final rooms of the exhibition show the work of two designers using 21stcentury fabrics and vision. For example,

Im Seonoc’s fashion brand, Parts Parts, is made entirely from Neoprene, specially constructed to prevent waste; while Jung Misun re-imagines delicate traditional fabrics in sturdier materials such as jersey, wool and cotton.

‘Couture Korea’ is an inspirational title from the curator, for the long history of the Hanbok is entirely of handwork. Each historic article, noble or delicate, was made to order, mostly, of course, for the high end of society.

Alongside Jin Teok’s outfits, which she showed during Paris Fashion Week in the 1990s, is the Korea-inspired collection from Chanel Cruise in 2016.

According to Hyonjeong Kim Han, at the time Karl Lagerfeld felt that Korean art was still unknown to the international fashion community and hoped that his work would inspire future fashion generations.

The Chanel collection included a silk organza dress inspired by mother of pearl, and another

↑Clockwise from opposite page ¬ Dresses by Jin Teok from the ‘Earth’ series, 2000; and ‘Blood’ series, 1995 ¬ An 18th-century Joseon Dynasty robe ¬ Chanel Cruise 2016

recreating traditional Korean fabric with a Korean alphabet pattern that Karl described as being “like Cubism”.

Between the rooms showing the extraordinary historical pieces and the space devoted to Jin Teok and Chanel, is a film that reveals the lightness of the garments in motion, capturing them wafting across the screen.

Hyonjeong Kim Han says that this exhibition is the first in the entire United States to focus on Asian clothing. Perhaps the flow of people from the Far East to the West Coast – and the overall focus of the museum – has made San Francisco an obvious destination for the subject. But the Asian Art Museum seems to be particularly dynamic, with an expansion plan imminent and a new pavilion to be built in 2018.

‘Couture Korea’ proves that in the often choked calendar of museum fashion exhibitions, there are still fascinating new subjects to explore that are fresh and full of feeling.

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Not For Persons Under The Age Of 18.

Enjoy Responsibly.

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@SUZYMENKESVOGUE INSTAGRAM EDIT

“The ambiguity is that she wants to be attractive, but she also wants to be left alone,” Nadège said of the Hermès woman. “You want to be strong and you are vulnerable”

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

2 May 2017 Rihanna says it with flowers at the Met Ball in her homage to Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. The Real Rei – read my story

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

2 July 2018 Stephen Jones, super hat-man, with Maria Grazia of Dior. Together they imagined a new look for beamy berets

Darcel Disappoints

12 January 2019 Catherine Deneuve, at the Christie’s Paris sale of her Yves Saint Laurent couture. Which piece did she love most?

Darcel Disappoints

20 January 2019 With Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Artistic Director of Hermès, surrounded by the botanical colours of Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s pre-collection

2 May 2017 Alessandro Michele doesn’t seem to notice that he has Kendall Jenner displaying (almost) all, right behind him at the Met Ball

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

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17 February 2018

Simone Rocha in close-up at London Fashion Week for Autumn/Winter 2018

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suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

16 July 2018 Manfred Thierry Mugler is back in fashion as Thierry-Maxime Loriot (left) stages a retrospective of a designer who made history

8 November 2018 Happy, happy, happy FIRST birthday, Edward Enninful and your great British VOGUE

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

27 February 2018 When the light is bright at Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

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Comme des Garçons: The Future of Silhouette Recent collections and a solo exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art prove that Rei Kawakubo is as bold and enigmatic as ever 05/03/2017

¬ This page: ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body’ (also known as ‘Lumps and Bumps’), S/S 1997 ¬ Opposite, from top, Comme A/W 2013; A/W 2008; and S/S 1997

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@SuzyMenkesVogue; InDigital.TV; Paolo Roversi, Collier Schorr / Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The costume institute at the Met has defined its exhibition on Rei Kawakubo as ‘The Art of the In-Between’. Those words seem as enigmatic as the Comme des Garçons collections that the Japanese designer has shown recently – and that includes this season’s display of perambulating figures trussed up in what Kawakubo describes as “non-fabric”.

At her Autumn/Winter 2017 show, models in moulded material walked around the pale pink set like moving sculptures as I mulled over the show notes I had been given: ‘The Future of Silhouette’.

And that was the story from the very first looks: A pair of figures with white, round bodies shaped as if they were plus-size shop mannequins – or perhaps the kind you find at every haute couture house, creating with exactitude a client’s form.

The duo turned – and I had a little ‘Ping!’ of understanding. For there were rear views of just the exaggerated proportions that have appeared in fashion on Kim Kardashian.

Had Rei Kawakubo gone populist? The show conveyed another message with its materials, for many of the outfits seemed to channel waste, made with what looked like upholstery stuffing, rubber, duct tape and even carpet underlay. The wig for another ensemble was made from the Brillo pads used to clean saucepans.

As the last model walked out, deliberately jostling the foam lumps on her skirt (the better to see the Nike Flyknit sneakers customised by Comme), I thought, “When did it come to this?”

Rei Kawakubo’s collections have always been enigmatic, but they could once be seen as interpreting a life story: Marriage, all white and beautiful; punk, with an angry take on plaid; love, with big, flat printed flowers. Some of the clothes were difficult to imagine worn. Others, like a treatise on cut-up scarves, were more straightforward. The designer’s unforgettable, and oft referenced, collection of 1997, ‘Dress Meets Body’ had clothes growing like cancerous lumps and bumps. So at what point exactly did Comme turn clothes into statements? Or is there another way to see the recent collections than as perambulating art?

“In general, I am always angry,” Kawakubo recently told me, as we sat in her Paris showroom on the Place Vendôme – she a tiny, tense figure, her face hidden under a clothes brush of a fringe.

“I wasn’t particularly angry at the time of the punk collections,” she continued, “but ‘Dress Meets Body’ came out of anger – not something specific, but a more abstract anger at the unfairness and contradiction in the world.”

Adrian Joffe – Kawakubo’s husband of 25 years and the CEO of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market – explained, “From the very beginning, her search was always to look for something new – and in the natural process of time passing, that becomes harder and harder, so inevitably clothes became more than just clothes.”

‘The Art of the In-Between’ is the first exhibition the Met has dedicated to a living designer since Yves Saint Laurent, in 1983.

Although not a retrospective, A-to-Z view of Kawakubo’s past four decades, curator Andrew Bolton has a clear vision of his subject.

He positions the designer not in the context of fashion’s development through the 1980s – when there was a dramatic split between an orgy of gorgeousness on the one hand, and the simple lines of Japanese and Belgian designers on the other – but in Kawakubo’s native Japan.

The show titles – those few words that Comme offers for each collection – echo Zen philosophy, especially ‘Mu’, which “roughly translates as emptiness”, Bolton says. This links to ‘Ma’, meaning the gap, pause, or space between, hence Bolton’s title. His displays reveal a face-off between fashion and anti-fashion; the high and low; then and now, and many more of Kawakubo’s designer-isms.

But to the museum visitor, the effect is primarily visual and

emotional, not so much Japanese as a reflection of the world, from the tiny, red, baby outfit to the all-black lace, suggesting mourning.

Bodies covered in parcels of white cotton tied with bows, with black hair shielding the face, have a label that reads ‘Life/Loss’.

I asked Kawakubo whether she felt that her creativity was rooted in her Japanese identity and if she could ever envisage working outside Japan – perhaps in Paris, where she has shown her collections since 1981? Her emphatic response surprised me.

“I have no consciousness on a day-to-day basis of being Japanese,” she said, “and yes, I could work somewhere else – it doesn’t have to be Japan.”

For me, the exhibition is about a visionary blurring the distinction between art and fashion and pushing the boundaries of design. This applies as much to the extraordinary headpieces as to the clothes, and there are many examples of hair craft by Julien d’Ys, Comme’s creator of wigs and hair wonders: a fuzz of scarlet curls contrasting with animalistic garments in furry deep pile or feathers; or punk peaks rising above velvet dresses.

The exhibition shows the different phases in the development of Comme collections, each one starting with a rupture that Joffe says expresses “the torture and hell of making something new”.

I asked specifically about ‘White Drama’ – a powerful vision from Spring/Summer 2012 in which all-white clothes led the show through the rituals of birth, marriage, and death from a lacy christening gown to wide papal sleeves.

Kawakubo explained, “It was not a conscious decision to make a sad collection, but it is totally understandable that people have that reaction because it comes from a very sad place.”

I did not see the early Comme work as sad, although the models were almost entirely dressed in black, as they were in the presentations of Yohji Yamamoto and the audience’s own clothes. Passers-by who saw us gathering at the obscure show locations would whisper, “Who’s the funeral for?”

The effect of the pieces selected by Bolton for the Met show is very different. The overall impression is of colour, especially the vivid scarlet splashed like blood stains on white dresses or shaped as big whisks of red roses. Or a delicious display of 18th-century punk from Autumn/Winter 2016 – all rose patterns and elegant, courtly frills, as if Kawakubo had switched the 1970s with the 1790s.

Many of the clothes look more elegant in the museum than they did on their original outing. I remember Comme shows presented in raw and drab spaces – the cellar of a Paris bank, filled with water pipes, comes to mind – that take on a different perspective in the Met setting.

The exhibition catalogue goes even further to impress beauty on tortured shapes, and includes the work of sensitive photographers such as Craig McDean, Inez & Vinoodh, and Paolo Roversi. The Comme history is given a quirky prettiness in the catalogue, while my memory of the actual shows is of a much harder and tougher aesthetic. The absence of videos of the original presentations is a great loss.

According to a conversation with Bolton that is reproduced in the catalogue, Kawakubo compared her work to ‘outsider art’.

This “schism or big change”, as Joffe described it to me, started with the Spring/Summer 2014 collection, called ‘Not Making Clothes’. Its dramatic direction was to exchange recognisable materials for what looked like garbage recycled into clothing.

This rupture had a dramatic response from even the most vaguely fashion-conscious general public, as I saw when I posted a video clip on Instagram – and had one million hits. That went up to more than 12 million, many of the comments downright nasty. →

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¬ ‘18th-century Punk’, A/W 2016 ¬ Below, S/S 1997; steel-wool wigs and carpetunderlay wraps for A/W 2017

@SuzyMenkesVogue; Getty

“‘Dress Meets Body’ came out of abstract anger at the unfairness and contradiction in the world”

While Joffe was astounded by the figures made by a company that was until recently “very selective, very secretive” – and under most people’s radar, Kawakubo herself had an interesting reaction.

“Let’s hope the turnover goes up as much,” she said.

Kawakubo’s status as an artist – so successfully illustrated by Bolton – has to be viewed alongside her business acumen, which is intensified by Joffe’s skill as an exceptional retailer, especially with the Dover Street Market stores.

Equally important is the fact that Kawakubo has always created space for other designers in her business, including her nurturing of Junya Watanabe, who entered the company as a pattern cutter and was given his own label in 1992. Other protégés are Chitose Abe and Junichi Abe, who went on to found their own brands, Sacai and Kolor. Kei Ninomiya’s Noir is another example of Comme’s support of others.

Whether for Comme or for her mentees, Kawakubo says that every show she has given over the past 40 years has been designed to create a sale. Certainly her elegant, subtle designs for menswear have legions of loyal fans all over the world, who return season after season for the clever and highly wearable cuts.

“Because I’m the first to see the work, sometimes I have panic attacks, thinking, ‘What are we going to sell?’” Joffe admits to me.

“But then I am almost blown away by the way Rei interprets the show into a collection.”

At our meeting in Paris, Kawakubo led me towards the sales floor. From the woolly tangle that I had interpreted from the front

row as a horse blanket put though a washing machine, emerged knits, tailored coats and jackets – clothes in the Comme spirit interpreted from the deliberate oddities on the runway.

Who makes these interpretations? A team of designers? The store manager? The answer is, of course, Rei Kawakubo herself, who draws each outfit and then creates them with her team of pattern makers. The ‘outsider artist’ is in fact an astute fashion designer and talented businesswoman.

Nothing of this is to be found in the Met exhibition.

That is understandable perhaps, as Bolton wants to focus on the designer as artist. But my unstinted admiration of the designer’s ethic and aesthetic is that the two fit together. And I would like to have seen a reference, even an explanation to visitors, about how these extraordinary creations can turn into a buck.

I asked Thierry Dreyfus, who has created the lighting for the Comme shows for the last decade, whether he considered Kawakubo to be an artist or a fashion designer – or an artist who expresses herself through clothes.

He replied, “When Alberto Giacometti was asked if he was an artist, he answered, ‘I am a sculptor.’ Picasso was asked the same question and he replied, ‘I am a painter.’ Rei is a poet, working freely on the human form.”

Includes extracts from ‘Rei Kawakubo: Abstract Anger’ (first published in Vogue online, 2 May 2017)

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4 July 2018 Celebrating backstage at Valentino after a show of gorgeous and glorious REAL couture. A chance to dream again

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4 March 2017 Caroline de Maigret (left) on the Haider Ackermann A/W 2017 front row, beside Nicki Minaj in what they’re calling a ‘half top’

Darcel Disappoints

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4 April 2018 Hanging out with Paul Smith before his tripette to launch his first store in Berlin, celebrate his cool store in LA, and touch down in Tokyo.

This is his London office – the tidy part!

1 March 2018 From the Suzy archive, June 2010 at Givenchy. Riccardo Tisci – now going to Burberry

25 April 2016 After our CNI Luxury Conference in Seoul, designers Steve J and Yoni P sent me this (not-so) traditional Korean porcelain

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

23 February 2018 Versace – rock royalty is back!

30 July 2018 400,000! My office surprised me today with this mighty blow-up of my Instagram landmark. Half a million, here we come!

“Students at the Royal College of Art had to wear white gloves when they went to a fashion show,” Paul Smith tells me, reminiscing about his early days back in the Sixties

16 October 2018 Hooray to Tilda Swinton! She is about to present herself as wicked female dance teacher/80-year-old male doctor in stylish horror movie ‘Suspiria’ by Luca Guadagnino

suzymenkesvogue Darcel Disappoints

22 December 2016 Alber Elbaz and John Nollet surprised me with this gift when Alber interviewed me in Paris. It almost resembles a Picasso vase

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Index a

Bergé, Pierre, 25, 201–203

‘China: Through the

de Lapuente,

Technology), 192–195

A Single Man, 19

Berluti, 22, 25

Looking Glass’, 187

Christopher, 25

Folarin-Coker, Folake

Abe, Chitose, 217

Bertelli, Patrizio, 177

‘Chinoiserie-on-Sea:

de Redé, Baroness, 182

(also known as Tiffany

Abe, Junichi, 217

Bettina, 185

Stephen Jones Hats at the

de Roche, Dominique, 201

Amber), 20, 130–131

Abloh, Virgil, 35

Beyoncé, 74, 179

Royal Pavilion’, 187

Deacon, Giles, 187

Folawiyo, Lisa, 83

Aboagye, Nelly, 83

Birman, Alexandre, 99

Chiuri, Maria Grazia, 189

Debb, Bee, 187

Fondation Pierre

Absolutely Fabulous, 111

Anderson, 99

Chloé, 32, 67, 78, 94–97

Debo, Kaat, 199

Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent,

Ackerman, Haider, 201

Bizzarri, Marco, 28, 29, 87

Choisne, Claire, 167

Deneuve, Catherine, 203

201, 203

Adara Foundation, The, 20

Björk, 195

Chopard, 165

DiCaprio, Leonardo, 205

Ford, Tom, 19, 27, 77, 79,

Africa, 20, 49, 57, 83,

Blanchett, Cate, 205

Christian Dior (brand and

Dion, Céline, 48

197, 207

68–69, 130–131, 132–135

Boetti, Alighiero e, 176

person), 22–23, 41, 85,

Dior, see Christian Dior

Fornasetti, Barnaba,

Aghion, Gaby, 97

Bohan, Marc, 189

188–191

Dior, Catherine, 191

26–27

Ahrendts, Angela, 144–147

Bolton, Andrew, 215, 217

‘Christian Dior, Designer of

Dolce & Gabbana,

Foster, Jodie, 207

Akerele, Omoyemi, 20, 83

Bonnet Besse, Bertrand, 167

Dreams’, 188–191

and Dolce & Gabbana Alta

Fragrances: Alien, Angel,

Alber Elbaz, 5, 102–109

Bos, Nicolas, 56, 57

Christian Louboutin, 51

Gioielleria and Alta Moda

Aura (179); Burberry,

Alexander McQueen, 17,

Boss Curated, 47

Christopher Bailey, 73, 144

35, 41, 54–55

Chanel No5, CK One,

44–45, 78, 181, 182, 208

Boucheron, 165, 167

Christopher Raeburn, 143

Don Giovanni, 26–27

Gucci Bloom, Gucci Guilty,

Alexandre, 182

Bourdin, Guy, 97

Choupette, 112, 115

Dover Street Market, 215

Jil Sander (p139)

Alhambra, 56–57

Bowes Museum, The

Cipriani, Simone, 83

Dreyfus, Thierry, 217

Alta Gioielleria and

208–209

Cité international de la

Dries Van Noten, 64–65

Alta Moda, see Dolce

Bowie, David, 179

Dentelle et de la Mode de

Duaba Serwa, 83

& Gabbana

Braque, Georges, 189

Calais, 182–185

Dufat, Nadine, 15

Gabet, Olivier, 189

Alta Roma, 83

Brazil, 5, 99, 163

Clarins, 181

Dumas, Jean-Louis, 197

Gaga, Lady, 187

American Gigolo, 207

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 185

Cleopatra, 139

Pierre Alexis, 197

Galeotti, Sergio, 207

Anacapri, 99

Brunschwig, Serge, 118

Clark, Judith, 35

Duro Olowu, 46–47

Galliano, John, 78, 164, 182,

Ando, Tadao, 209

Bulgari, 23

Cleveland, Pat, 181

d’Ys, Julien, 215

187, 189, 209

Andrew, Paul, 46, 155

Burberry, 77, 137, 139, 144,

Clinton, Hillary, 203

Annie Hall, 207

147, 160–161

Close, Glenn, 209

Apple, 144–147

Burton, Sarah, 44–45, 209

Cocteau, Jean, 189

e

g

Gabellini, Michael, 181

Garavani, Valentino, 51 Gardiner, John Eliot, 27

Ebony, 48

Gehry, Frank, 7

Coddington, Grace, 195

Eco-Age, 132–135

Gere, Richard, 205

Cologni, Franco, 32–35

École de l’Amour, Gucci, 29

Ghesquière, Nicolas, 67,

Cadaval, Duchess of, 185

Comme des Garçons, 203,

Elgort, Arthur, 195

94, 111

Arnault, Alexandre, 63

Calvin Klein, 79, 137, 139

208, 209, 214–217

Elizabeth II, Queen, 75

Giacometti, Alberto, 217

Antoine, 22–25

Campbell, Naomi, 52, 53,

Cook, Tim, 144

Erdem, 77

Giambattista Valli, 51, 77,

Bernard, 22, 115

208, 209

Coppola, Sofia, 51

ESMOD (École supérieure

165, 167

Delphine, 79, 115

Capasa, Carlo, 133

Costume Institute at The

des arts et techniques de

Giorgio Armani, 205–207

Asian Art Museum, The,

Capri Holdings, 41

Met, The 214–217, also see

la mode), 104

Givenchy, 22, 25, 77, 75,

210–211

Capucine, 185

Met Ball

Etro, 77

182–185

Audran, Stéphane, 94

Cardin, Pierre, 195

Coty, 137–139

Evangelista, Linda, 209

Givenchy, Hubert de 78–79,

Avedon, Richard, 189

Cardinale, Claudia, 55

Courrèges, André, 43,

Evans-Anfom, Mina, 83

182–185

Azzedine Alaïa, 52–53

Cartier, 35, 167

195, 209

Casino, 207

‘Couture Korea’, 210–211

Castet, Frédéric, 189

Cunningham, Bill, 148–153

Bader Ginsburg, Ruth, 104

Castiglioni, Consuelo, 155

Balanchine, George, 16

Arezzo & Co, 99 Armani, see Giorgio Armani

b

c

f

‘Glamour That Came in From the Cold’, 192–195

Fargo, Linda, 99

Gobbetti, Marco, 75

Cunningham, Merce, 27

‘The Fashion World of

Granard, Countess of, 167

Catroux, Betty, 201

Cox, Madison, 201, 203

Jean Paul Gaultier’, 179

Green Carpet Fashion

Balenciaga, 67, 77, 78, 94,

Cattaneo, Simona, 137–139

Crawford, Cindy, 187

Fasinro, Yvonne, 20

Awards, 132–135

189, 196

‘Catwalking: Fashion

Fellini, 17

Gucci, 18–19, 28–29, 79,

Balenciaga, CristÓbal, 185

Through the Lens of Chris

Fendi, 23, 62–63, 111,

84–87, 137, 139, 207

Balmain, 42–43, 77

Moore’, 208

Dadd, Richard, 17

115–117, 118–119

Bambi, 74

Celine, also Céline, 47,

Dante, 87

Fendi, Silvia Venturini,

Museum, 29

Barrère, Hubert, 14

81, 94

de Bascher, Jacques, 117

62–63

Guerlain, 25

Barrie Knitwear, 15

Chalayan, Hussein, 35

de Bestegui, Don

Feniou, Laurent, 167

Gvasalia, Demna, 58–59,

Beaton, Cecil, 48, 189

Chalhoub, Ingie, 121

Carlos, 191

Fenty Beauty, 25

195, 202

Beckham, Victoria, 93

Chanel, 35, 41, 77, 112-117,

de Borchgrave,

Ferragamo, 111, 155–157

Guram, 58–59

David, Brooklyn, 93

121, 209, 211

Baroness, 182

Ferragamo, Salvatore and

Belperron, Suzanne, 112

Chanel, Gabrielle (Coco),

de Gaulle, General, 182

Wanda, 53, 155

Benett, Dave, 160–161

111, 139, 165, 167, 179, 189

de La Bourdonnaye,

Ferré, Gianfranco, 189

Bérard, Christian, 189

Chanel Métiers d’Art,

Geoffroy, 67, 79, 94, 97

Fiever, 99

Hall, Jerry, 181

Berenson, Marisa, 203

14–15, 33, 41

de la Falaise, Loulou, 201

Firth, Livia, 133–135

Hartley, Caren, 33

Bergdorf Goodman, 99

Chaumet, 167

de la Fressange, Ines, 117

FIT (Fashion Institute of

Hashagen, Joanna, 208

d

ArtLab, 28–29

h

Hadid, Zaha, 177

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Haute Joaillerie, 167

118–119, 196, 209

Merkel, Angela, 203

Oprah (Winfrey), 122

Rupal, Anju, 25

Trump, Ivana, 179, 181

Heatherwick,

Lagos, 20, 83, 131

Met Gala (also known as

Oscar de la Renta, 43

Rupert, Hanneli, 33, 57

Trump, Melania, 189

Thomas, 7

Lagos Fashion and

the Met Ball), 107

Owens, Rick, 195

Rupert, Johann, 32–35, 135

Turlington, Christy, 209

Hepburn, Audrey,

Design Week, 83, 131

Metropolitan Museum

Rykiel, Sonia, 209

Turner, Tina, 209

78, 182, 185

Lauren, David, 123

of Art, 187, 201

Hermès, 77, 196–199

Lawrence, Jennifer, 191

Michael, George, 181

Hirst, Damien, 55, 189

Le Divelec Lemmi,

Michael Kors, 40, 41

Parts Parts, 211

S

u

Homo Faber, 32–35, 135

Micaela, 155

Michelangelo Foundation

Paul Poiret, 106

Saillard, Olivier, 199

How to Steal a Million, 182

Lemarié, André, 14

for Creativity and

Pavlosky, Bruno, 14

Saint Laurent, see Yves

Hudson, Kate, 99

Leopard, The, 55

Craftsmanship, The,

Pel, Martin, 187

Saint Laurent

Hugo Boss, see Boss

Lepape, George, 195

32–35, 135

Perry, Katy, 99

Salvation Army, The, 197

Valetta, Amber, 207

Hutton, Lauren, 205, 207

‘Les Journées Particulières

Michele, Alessandro, 18–19,

Phillips, Arianne, 18–19

Samson, Alexandre, 203

Van Cleef & Arpels,

LVMH’, 22–25, 77

28–29, 1137, 139

Philo, Phoebe, 47, 67, 79, 94

Sanchez, Frédéric, 180

56–57, 165

Lesage, François, 14

Middleton, Kate (also

Picasso, Pablo, 189, 217

Santoni, 33

Van Gogh, 189, 203

Idol, Billy, 87

Lescroart, Maud, 17

known as the Duchess

Piccioli, Pierpaolo, 48–51

Sarandon, Susan, 139

van Herpen, Iris, 89

Iguatemi, 163

Lindbergh, Peter, 207

of Cambridge), 111

Pinault, François-Henri, 87,

Scheufele, Caroline, 165

Veil, Simone, 78

Il Gattopardo, 55

Llanzol, Marquise of, 185

Minogue, Kylie, 187

49, 51, 201

Schiaparelli, Elsa, 14

Versace, 40–41

Iman, 179

Loewe, 23

Missoni, Rosita, Angela,

Poiret, Paul, 107

Schutz, 99

Gianni, 27, 41, 207

Indecent Proposal, 181

Lognon, 15

Margherita, 111

Poulit-Duquesne, Hélène,

Scott, Jeremy, 18

Donatella, 40, 41

Inez & Vinoodh, 215

Loren, Sophia, 205

Misun, Jung, 211

165

Scott Thomas, Kristin, 51

Vetements, 58–59

Ingie Paris, 121

Loriot, Thierry-Maxime,

Mode Museum (MoMu),

Prada, 18, 77, 177

Seoul, 211

Viktor & Rolf, 181

178–181

Antwerp, 200–203

Prada, Miuccia, 18, 27, 197,

Seonoc, Im, 211

Visconti, Luchino, 17, 55

Louis Vuitton, 22–25, 67,

Mommsen, Dickie, 177

201, 207

Sephora, 25

Vivienne Westwood,

Jacob, Max, 189

85, 94, 111

Moncler, 195

Princess Diana, 187, 191

Shakespeare, 74

74, 133

Jagger, Lizzy, 181

Fondation, 7

Montenet, Madame, 121

Princess Leila Salma, 201

Sher-Gil, Amrita, 47

Vodianova, Natalia, 22,

Mick, 187

LVMH, 22-25, 63, 133, 182

Montex, 15

Princess Margaret, 189

Sieff, Jeanloup, 201

23, 111

Jean Paul Gaultier,

Prize 79, 133

Montreal Museum

Pringle of Scotland, 78

Silos, Armani, 205-207

Vogue Arabia; Czech

of Fine Arts, The,

Proenza Schouler, 77

Simons, Raf, 51, 140–141,

Republic and Slovakia;

178–181

Proust, Marcel, 35

177, 189

Greece; Hong Kong;

Ma, Joyce, 171

Moore, Chris, 90–91,

Pucci, 23, 155

Slimane, Hedi, 77, 81, 115

Poland, 124–127

Jimmy Choo, 99

Macdonald, Julien, 182

208–209

Puglisi, Fausto, 18

Smith, Paul, 35

John, Elton, 87

Madonna, 18–19, 201

Moore, Demi, 181

Puma, 176

Sophie Hallette, 17

Jin Teok, 210–211

Magic Flute, The, 27

Morreale, Ines, 139

Joffe, Adrian, 215

Maison Lesage, 14, 203

Moschino, 18

Joseph Altuzarra, 195

Maison Margiela Artisanal,

Moss, Kate, 187

164, 197

Müller, Florence, 189

‘Margiela/Galliera

Musée des Arts

Kahlo, Frida, 19, 46

1989-2009’, 196–199

Décoratifts, Paris, 189,

Karan, Donna, 144

‘Margiela – The Hermes

Kardashian, Kim, 41,

i

j

61, 179, 197, 199 Jean Patou, 16 Jil Sander, 174–177

m

p

Palais Galliera, 196–199

q

Sacai, 217

Uniqlo, +J for, 176

v

Valentino, 14, 41, 48–51

Sozzani, Franca, 48

w

Wagner K, Matthias,

Stein, Gertrude, 65

179, 181

Stella Jean, 83

Waight Keller, Clare, 22, 51,

Stephen Jones, 22, 35, 107,

67, 78-79, 94, 182

186–187

Walter Van

Rabanne, Paco, 56, 209

Stone, Sharon, 207

Bierendonck, 187

200–203

Ralph Lauren, 79, 111,

Surridge, Paul, 157

Wang, Alexander, 18

Years’, 196–199

Musée Yves Saint Laurent,

122–123

Sussex, Duchess of, see

Watanabe, Junya, 217

111, 215

Maison Michel, 15

Marrakesh, 200–203

Ramsay-Levi, Natacha,

Meghan Markle

Weinstein, Harvey, 177

Kattan, Huda, 137

Manfred Thierry Mugler,

Museum Angewandte

67, 94–97

Swank, Hilary, 209

West, Kanye, 41, 74, 111

Kawakubo, Rei, 208,

178–179

Kunst, Frankfurt, 179

Richemont, 32-35

Swarovski, 16

Wilts, Ingo, 47

214–217

Mao, Chairman, 139

Rigucci, Massimo, 28–29

Swarovski, Nadia, 17

Windsor, Duchess of

Keaton, Diane, 207

Marc Jacobs, 25, 69

Rihanna, 25, 187

Swinton, Tilda, 79, 187

(also known as Wallis

Kempner, Nan, 208

Marine Serre, 77, 135

Kennedy, Jacqueline

k

n

Quinn, Richard, 77

r

Simpson), 182

Neilan, Toby, 124–127

Rimowa, 23

Martin Margiela, 196–199

Ngxokolo, Laduma, 57,

Robert Four, 35

(Jackie), 182

Markle, Meghan, 22,

68–69

Roberto Cavalli, 33, 157

Kenzo, 25, 209

78, 187

Nigeria, 7, 20, 130, 131

Rocha, Simone, 77

Thatcher, Margaret, 75

Kering, 28, 87, 133, 201

Marni, 157

Nike Flyte, 215

Romeo Gigli, 26–27

‘Thierry Mugler: Beyond

Kim Han, Hyonjeong, 211

Matisse, 189

Ninomiya, Kei, 217

Ronze, Xavier, 17

Couture’, 178–181

Yves Saint Laurent (brand

Knight, Nick, 168–169

Maxhosa by Laduma,

Nocturnal Animals, 19

Rougeot,

Thom Browne, 187

and person), 7, 56, 78,

Kolor, 217

68–69

Noir, 217

Jean-Baptiste, 179

Thyssen-Bornemisza

102-109, 106, 109, 111, 179,

Kunsthal, Rotterdam,

McCartney, Stella, 67, 77,

Nollet, John, 104, 106

Rousteing, Olivier, 42–43

Museum, The, 182

185, 189, 200–203,

178–179

79, 94

Norma Kamali, 195

Roversi, Paolo, 215

Tiffany Amber,

208–209, 215

Royal Academy of Fine

20, 130–131

l

McDean, Craig, 215 Mears, Patricia, 196

O

t

Wintour, Anna, 109

Tai Tai, 171

y

Yohji Yamamoto, 195

z

Arts, Antwerp, 58, 59, 198

Tisci, Riccardo,

Off-White, 77

Royal Pavilion and

74–75, 77, 78, 185

Meilland, Guillaume, 155

O’Keefe, Georgia, 45

Museums, Brighton, 187

Toledano, Sidney, 22, 79,

Contemporary Art

Merchants on Long, 69

Okapi, 57

Ruby, Sterling, 189

81, 191

Africa, 7

Lacroix, Christian, 16–17

Meier, Lucie & Luke, 177

Lagerfeld, Karl, 7, 14, 17, 62–63, 67, 97, 111, 112–117,

Zeitz Museum of

The CNI Luxury Conference team would like to thank the following for their generous support in realising this project: Alber Elbaz and John Nollet; Natasha Cowan; Simon Dane; Juliette Di Marco; Stuart Everitt and Ariel Artur Souza Dos Santos; Ladurée; Robert Lyons; Flavio Nunes; and Andrea Pinza.

SUZYMENKESVOGUE.COM

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