“Is Anthony nervous? Everyone keeps asking that, but he’s not, at all,” says Lucien Pagès, laughing. Lucien handles press for the house of Yves Saint Laurent, which, at 8:00 p.m. Paris time tonight, will pass the baton from Hedi Slimane to Anthony Vaccarello, the Brussels-born designer who was hired this past spring. It’s a sunny Monday Paris afternoon about thirty or so hours before his debut, and I’m at the Grand Palais, in a labyrinthian arrangement of cavernous rooms, to preview and chat with Anthony about the collection, and how it feels to take on one of the most storied houses ever.
Full disclosure: I’ve known him since the earliest days of his own label, the one he shuttered recently to focus on YSL. I think the first show of his I saw was at the Joyce Gallery in the Palais Royal, in a near-pitch-dark room with half a dozen girls wearing some of the tiniest, sexiest, and coolest dresses in aeons. Since then, he has carved out a solid place for himself as a designer who has the ability to make girls look hot: Remember Karlie in that black swimsuit dress? Gisele in the metal encrusted mini at the Met Gala? Who doesn’t?
This past summer, I had gone to visit him at the YSL HQ at Rue de l’Université, but now in the Grand Palais, where a whole room of technicians and seamstresses have been installed just to complete the fittings, the monumental role he has taken on hits home. Still, yes, indeed: Anthony does seem relaxed and in good spirits, taking time to chat after he and Arnaud Michaux, his life and his design partner, fitted a runway look on . . . well, you’ll see.
It’s more than 24 hours to your first YSL show. What are you doing between now and then?
We are doing fittings. We did the looks yesterday, waiting for the girls to arrive to decide which looks they should wear, which direction, to build the story of the show.
What did you think it was important to say about your Saint Laurent debut—the mood, the idea, the attitude?
I wanted to have fun. I wanted to have a clin d’oeil—a wink—to Yves Saint Laurent, rather than. . . . He did so many things, I don’t want to repeat the things he has done. It’s not about the garments, my idea of YSL lies in the attitude and how we handle things. There are fabrics like leather, vinyl, velvet, lace, but then they’re put on a girl of today.
When you say a girl of today, do you mean it’s more casual, is it more about the street?
No, it’s a girl who knows Yves Saint Laurent—maybe she had a mother who wore YSL, or she just knows what he did in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and she is taking those references, and she is mixing it with her own personality and her own wardrobe, to make it personal. She has a lot of respect for the past, but she’s not dressing like she’s stuck in the past, she’s dressed for now.
Was there anything in particular you were looking at from all the things that Yves Saint Laurent did when you were doing your research?
It is a dress from 1982.
One dress?
One dress. I mean, I was obsessed with this one from the time I started. And it’s funny. When I met Pierre Bergé—he had asked me to come visit Fondation Yves Saint Laurent—that dress was just next to the office of Yves Saint Laurent. So when I left that meeting I was like, okay, that is a sign, the dress that I have to continue working from. So with that dress, we deconstructed it, we changed the fabric—it was in crepe de chine; we did it in leather, for example—we cut it up: we had a lot of fun with that one dress.
What was it like to meet Pierre Bergé?
It was amazing, very impressive—he is Yves Saint Laurent, he built Yves Saint Laurent, so knowing him, knowing all the stories around them, it’s so important. It would be impossible to start here without meeting him.
How did you meet?
I emailed him the day of the announcement, and said I would like to meet him. I think he was touched by it. In the end, the meeting was quite long; we talked for two, three hours.
What did you chat about?
The first thing he told me, and I really had and have it in mind: Do not copy Yves Saint Laurent. That’s why I wanted to meet him, I wanted to know things, his opinion; it was important for me to hear that. That’s why I can’t be literal: even if I start with that one dress of his, you will never see that dress in the show, it’s always a wink to that dress. It’s also not the most famous dress he ever did—you would really have to know the story of Yves Saint Laurent to understand where the collection started, I think.
What does it mean to be coming into a house that is so iconic? Is it daunting? Or is that a stupid question to ask?
I’m trying to not think about it; just to see all the archives and the whole story of the house, your head can turn, but it’s important to go forward, to see what you can do with it, without copying the past. If you attempt to do the amazing things he did, the incredible things he brought to fashion, you will never re-create the past, so you always have to think of now for Yves Saint Laurent. It’s not even really thinking about the future with this house: it always has to be about the now.
YSL did all those incredible couture collections, but he also built a really modern wardrobe for women. Was the idea of a modern wardrobe important to what you’re doing?
It’s actually both. You don’t only want to do the classic wardrobe he did, because, I think it would look like, like, not . . . so interesting for me to do that. YSL is also couture, it’s also ateliers, it’s French. It’s a luxury to have all these people working with me, it’s important to see that Saint Laurent can be high level, even with the most street things.
Tell me about that; I have known you a long time, I know how hard you and Arnaud worked with a tiny, tiny team, so suddenly to go into this huge house. . . what’s the adjustment you needed to make?
You learn to lose a bit of control, which is good, because we were always controlling everything. I am learning to trust people who have a lot of experience. It is a different way to work. But at the same time, we start with lots of people around, in a huge group, and at the end of the day, I realize that he and I have ended up in the smallest room in the atelier, working on the mannequin, and then we’re like [laughs], ****, we’re back where we started. It’s like a reflex. I also used to try things on my assistant in my own atelier, and sometimes when the fit model isn’t around, I am calling Emily, who’s my assistant here, and it’s just the three of us, trying on stuff.
Tell me about your first campaign, which you did earlier this year, which was your first, but basically had no clothes in it; only a sense of the casting you were drawn to. It was quite radical to remove the fashion, and just focus on your idea of female and male beauty today.
To me, that first campaign was like a white page. We wanted to start with something clean, something fresh, no clothes, skin, only face, and a touch of jeans, because that is to me, that is the most modern thing to wear, jeans.
Didn’t YSL always say that he wished he had invented jeans?
Yeah, he did! It was another wink to him; jeans and skin.
What about the casting?
There was in the casting, a mix . . . I don’t like to say that it’s white, black. It is just the world of today. It’s not something I needed to do. It’s something I wanted to do. It is the reality of today, without being too political about it; it can seem forced when you talk about it. It’s just natural to have those women, who are amazing, no matter where they’re from.
What was also quite radical was to do a second campaign, which just broke in some October magazines, and online too, of Anja Rubik wearing some looks from this first collection, before it’s on the runway. I feel like in the past a designer’s debut has always been shrouded in the deepest secrecy before the show . . .
Why I did it? To show the collection, to make it more present than just from being seen in the show. I don’t think it even matters if the clothes in the campaign aren’t available now—they’re not—but I think it’s about image. Advertising doesn’t have to only be related to the selling of what you make. It also prolongs the life of the show, beyond those 10 minutes it takes to happen. And the fact that Anja is on the street gives the clothes another context, and one of them—the swimsuit and the denim jacket—won’t even be in the show. It’s another viewpoint on what I am doing.
And you brought Anja from your own world to this new one . . .
I really wanted to work with Anja. I don’t think you can do this on your own. You need to have your people around you, those that have helped you. You’ve grown up with them.
I wanted to ask you a little about what you were saying to me recently about good taste, bad taste, and walking the line between those two things . . .
I think that even Yves Saint Laurent, even if it became bourgeoisie in the end, he didn’t like the idea of good taste. With Saint Laurent, it’s always chic in your mind, but it is a chic that has to be fun sometimes. There has to be a twist. You can be chic with the wrong pair of shoes, the wrong lipstick. To see the failure of the woman, that’s chic, and it’s what brings emotion.
Obviously, YSL is a very iconic French house, everything is beautifully made—I’ve just looked at those samples! But we live in a world now where the definition of luxury is in a state of complete change. How do you feel you need to express the luxury of Yves Saint Laurent now?
I think luxury shouldn’t look like “luxury” today. It’s about the finishing inside the clothes, or the quality of the fabric without it necessarily looking luxurious. It’s about the attitude of the girl, also, it is not necessarily the clothes; you can have a luxury T-shirt and luxury jeans with some really great accessories. You can find really good clothes everywhere now. It’s the attitude. You can look cheap or you can look luxurious because [laughs] you are cheap or you are luxurious.
