SOZZANI: You know, when you came to me the first time, you were being real hard on me. You were like, “You know, people in fashion—they understand nothing. What others do to the dress is not that important. What about the trade and what’s behind this system?” I understand that it’s how you talk with people. [laughs] So one night you talked about this, and in the beginning I didn’t exactly get the point, but then I got it when you were saying, “Well, if you wear a dress that is eco, it’s not that the attire should call attention, but people will say, ‘Look at her—she has such a beautiful dress.’ And that’s when you say, ‘Did you know that this dress is made with fair-trade ecological sustainability?’” Now we’re playing with the world, and the world, in a way, is like a boomerang, you know? The world is changing. Everything is going bad; something’s wrong around us. So one night you talked about this, and we started working on it together . . . It’s an education. We need to educate people. It’s not to be cool or spiritual, all “We want to save the world!” But you can do it in a different way. I think that we’ve become a very visual culture, and once the people understand that a project like this is not only about beauty but about sustainability, then that’s even better. People will eventually see it like us. But at the moment, they don’t understand, so we have to bring them into it.
FIRTH: Frankly, that’s what happened with the Armani dress [which Firth wore on the red carpet while accompanying her husband, the actor Colin Firth, to the 2012 Golden Globes] That’s a good dress made by a designer. It’s an incredibly beautiful dress. But then when you have the story about the fabric and how it’s made of recycled plastic and who made it and how they made it, suddenly people reconnect to it. Lucy Siegle, the British journalist who co-founded the Green Carpet Challenge with me, wrote a book called To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? She goes deep into the factories and the production chains and the issue of sustainability. Have you ever been to a factory in Bangladesh or India or China?
SOZZANI: Yes.
FIRTH: How can fashion not ruin our world?
SOZZANI: I don’t want fashion to wear out the world. Do you know what the main problem is when you read about these kinds of factories like in Namibia or even in Morocco, where there is so much criminal behavior? They just produce for the tourists. They produce for the people who come there, and they want to pay one euro because they think that the work has no value. It drives me crazy. All these people just work like crazy to make a shawl or all those bowls, and after they run after you and they say, “Ten euros! No, nine! No, eight, seven, six, five . . .” Come on, it’s purely insulting. So the work that the workers do has to be protected—that’s what I said when I met the presidents in Nigeria and in Ghana. I told them, “We have to protect your art. You have to protect your culture. You have to protect your ability to create, and we need to work together to find a solution so the Western people don’t feel like they’re buying something like when you buy from India or Bangladesh or Peru because there is no respect for these countries from our side—not for those poor guys. They work very hard, but we do not respect the work.
FIRTH: If you find a label on your garment that says, “Made in India,” or “Made in Bangladesh,” you evaluate it immediately: “Why was this made in that place?”
SOZZANI: It’s already over. You pretend that it’s completely inexpensive.
FIRTH: Yes. Because one of the big problems is also what is called “fast fashion,” which is one of the plagues of the last 10 years. It has changed the entire perception that people have of fashion. What do you think is the future of fashion?
SOZZANI: The future of fashion? I think it’s more and more separated—like, on one side would be big distribution, and on the other side there will be high-level prêt-à-porter and couture. I mean, the prêt-à-porter is already couture in a way for the prices and the way that it’s made. The big distribution will allow people to dress in a fashionable way, so this could be for everybody. This part of the big distribution will be stronger and stronger, but the other part we are coming up on is more and more rich people, because we’re always thinking about Europe and about America, but we are forgetting that markets have opened up in modern China, India, and, who knows, maybe even Africa. And so it will be on one side very sophisticated and very unique and very precious, and on the other side, it will be about very big distribution. I think what we have to do is try to protect every country . . . I am trying to go to Africa to see everything that they do and produce in China and send back to Africa. I think that Africa really needs to protect themselves more—more than we can do from the outside. We can’t do it for them. They have to do it alone to make it.
FIRTH: It’s the same with the World Trade Organization. I was talking to them about better trade routes because this has been a problem. There have been complications with coffee and chocolate for a long, long time.
SOZZANI: It’s everything. Everything.
FIRTH: It’s everything, exactly. Let’s talk about feminism. I know you studied philosophy when you were younger, and you speak four languages, and you’re a very strong woman, but at the same time you live in a very glamorous world with all the parapherna- lia that that world brings. Some women are able to have both of those aspects of their lives—and even use it to their advantage— but others find it contradictory. Do you think sometimes that feminism ever gets in the way?
SOZZANI: I think that you are younger than me, so maybe you don’t know, but I was living in the moment that feminism came out of, and I think it’s only through the work that women are doing today that they are making out better than men. So it’s important that you are a feminist in your mind but that you have an attitude sometimes like men. I mean, when I was younger I wanted to be a feminist, and I thought, “So you should be a bad dresser—really shabby, bad hair and makeup.” Everything that was feminine was rejected. But you learn that if you are glamorous, if you are very well dressed, if you are human, you can arrive. Because in the moment in which I am better than a man in my work, I already show everybody that women can do better—I don’t have to dress a certain way to show that . . . The world is not in favor of the women. It’s pretty dramatic.
FIRTH: Let’s do some quick ones, Franca. What would you like to learn next?
SOZZANI: I would like to go to China and explain my point of view . . . I would also like to learn how to make a movie.
FIRTH: What inspires you?
SOZZANI: Everything. It could be a movie. It could be a book. It could be a house. It could be one word— I’ll think for hours and hours about one word sometimes. It could be anything.
FIRTH: Who inspires you?
SOZZANI: People who are interesting. It doesn’t matter if they are beautiful or not beautiful—interest- ing people. Do you know when you go to a very boring dinner and you sit down and you have the chance to talk with somebody and it’s so interesting that you learn so much that night that you go back and say, “Oh, finally, I met someone who inspired me”? I love that. It could even be parts of a person—the way that they exclaim, their dream.
FIRTH: How do you challenge yourself?
SOZZANI: I like to be risky every day, changing minds every day. I’m not reliable at all in my ideas. I can change my ideas three times a day. I change different things, the parts of the content. But I never change the content of who I am. So my challenge every day is to change and to take risks.
FIRTH: What is your relationship with men and sex? We need to talk about the sex, too.
SOZZANI: [laughs] Very good.
FIRTH: We couldn’t be having a conversation between two women and not talk about sex for a little bit. Because you travel a lot, and you are never in the same place for more than a day, do you have a—
SOZZANI: No. You know what? I already got married a few times. I had a fantastic husband.
FIRTH: So you’ve had enough?
SOZZANI: I didn’t need to get married again. It’s great to be in a situation in which you’re happy. But, you know, I’m not tortured by love. I’m not tortured by chagrin d’amour. I’m old now.
FIRTH: What is your relationship with your son?
SOZZANI: It’s a very good relation because there is a mutual estimation between us, you know? He believes me, and I trust him, and we share a lot of things in common, like movies, books. We have more a relation like . . . I don’t want to say two friends, because it’s always my son and I’m always his mother, and when I want to be his mother, I’m his mother. I don’t want to be his friend. But we have a very good relation—more like an aged person and a young person. He did philosophy too, so it’s really good. You know what? It’s a very grown-up relation.
FIRTH: What is your relationship with money?
SOZZANI: Quite bad. Very bad. Very bad because, for me, money is to use—it’s only to use. So I never have money because I always spend. That’s why in a way I protect myself in having houses. But if I had just cash or kept it in the bank, I’d spend it immediately. But not for stupid things. [laughs] So I don’t like to have money. I never have money in my pocket.
FIRTH: Last question: You have a magazine. You run a magazine online. You are a goodwill ambassador. You travel all the time, you go out, you meet people. What is the secret of doing it all? How do you do it?
SOZZANI: I think that I’m still very enthusiastic about every single thing that I do. I’m still very passionate. I never feel tired because I feel so involved and so com- mitted, so I enjoy it. And you know what? I have a lot of irony. I love the humor, and when I really, really want to just say, “You know what? I can’t stand all this,” I find an ironical way. I say, “You know, maybe you presume to be more intelligent than you are.” So I respond in a more humoristic way.
A Retrospective: Chanel under Karl Lagerfeld (1983- 2019)