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Was there ever a point that someone told you that you had to choose between art and fashion?
VM: Yeah.
IVL: No. Do you?
VM: Well, people did say, “Are you art? Do you do fashion?” I would just say, “This is our work. We never choose ourselves.”
IVL: I think there’s a different way of communicating in a gallery than there is in a magazine or an ad campaign. It has a different purpose. For us it was exciting that in one way the work sort of finds its own venue or own context. And we like playing with the context of a magazine or a gallery and trying to twist things around.
You do blur lines.
IVL: At some moment, there was that big deal about art and fashion, and how it all sort of blends in. But we were like, “We just make our photographs.” To us, that discussion is not very interesting. Like we talked about before with the Lanvin. An art piece became an ad campaign became an art piece. Also, it’s kept us independent in a way from either world. It’s been very interesting in a way for us to see how the art world has become much more commercialized and how artists are now on the best-dressed lists. Everyone now understands the power of publicity, whereas before it was not done.
You guys aren’t known as quote-unquote celebrity photographers, but you’ve done some great ones. Do you find them to be a challenge?
IVL: Actually, one of our favorite moments is making an incredible portrait of someone that you admire that has done either an interesting movie or is a great musician. It’s scary sometimes but it’s always extremely rewarding. And you know, we’re very fast. Most of the portraits in the book were taken in the first 15 minutes that someone was on set.
VM: And I think they’re the most pure photography. There are no elephants, no motorcycles. Also we like to show a different side of a celebrity. Most of the people are thankful. They say, “Oh my God, I never saw myself like this.” Bill Murray was funny because when Inez put the flowers in his beard he said, “Do people ever ask why?”
IVL: Yeah, while I was putting them in, he said, “Do people ever ask you why?” I said to him, “No.” He said, “OK.” And that was that. No discussion. We’re always very direct. We always have some kind of fantasy on that person. I’ll just say, ‘My fantasy on you is this.’ And they’ll say, “OK, let’s do it.” Vanessa Redgrave came in and I said, “I have this fantasy of you in a hoodie.” And she looked at me like, “Oh!’ She brought evening dresses and the whole deal. But then she said, “If that’s what you feel strongly about, let’s do it.” The more direct, the better. We never try to cajole someone into doing something they don’t want.
Speaking of fantasy, you’ve worked a lot with Lady Gaga. What’s that relationship like creatively?
IVL: It’s interesting because she has literally 400 ideas a minute. And they’re all great. We’re very similar in our inspiration and she reminds me a lot of when we were young and starting out in the types of things that she’s fascinated by, and having so many ideas and wanting to put them all in one thing. We have learned in the last 25 years not to do that.
VM: When we took her picture for the first time, she said, “This is the first time I see myself as the pure me.”
IVL: The V cover (left). She cried when she saw it. She never really considered herself a beauty. And we think she’s incredibly beautiful and I think that was a big thing for her to sort of accept that she is really beautiful. That purity in her is what is exciting. She’s an incredible human being and she knows exactly why she’s here. It’s an amazing exchange.
You’re always tweeting back to her little monsters.
IVL: Oh, the monsters are so wonderful. They’re incredible. Her thing is all about love. And it’s not about her and that’s why it works. They respond to that. It’s all real. And all her feelings, she puts them on the outside and puts herself in a very vulnerable position. But everything comes from her. There’s no one saying to her, “Oh, you should wear…” Everything is a metaphor. Everything comes from very deep place.
It’s impressive that you’re on both Twitter and Tumblr and seem very adept. How did you start?
IVL: Because of Gaga.
VM: And then we started using it and especially the Tumblr; it’s like having your own magazine. It’s like you can do whatever you want.
IVL: Or just show your inspiration. Tumblr made us look at photography completely differently. It’s like “OK, this chair is great. Let’s take a picture of it.” It’s a wonderful way to communicate and it’s so direct. Everybody now is about real time. The immediacy of it is really rewarding and the fact that people right away respond is even more wonderful. Especially on Twitter, the atmosphere is so positive. You reach a whole new group of people. And it’s liberating for parts of our work that could never run in a magazine or that could never run immediately.
VM: And it’s 100 percent us.
You can tell that it’s not some assistant.
IVL: No, it’s too much fun to let someone else do it. It’s fascinating too to see which images get the most notes or what people retweet.
You’ve also been doing fashion films for a while. Do you get the same thing out of those as a picture?
IVL: Different. It’s a new challenge. And it came in sort of at the right time. Obviously there is a big difference. Nowadays almost every brand wants a BTS [behind the scenes] video for Web content. I think it’s a learning process for our clients to understand the difference between a BTS video and a fashion film. For us, it’s a very different type of thing. A fashion film is where it’s conceptualized. It’s a mini movie. And a BTS…
VM: It takes away the mystery. How many double chins do you want to see?
IVL: We’re kind of…
VM: Against the BTS.
IVL: That’s why we’re trying to steer our clients, saying, let’s make a fashion film instead of a BTS, where you see the model being made up, people panning over racks of clothes. It demystifies the process. And it doesn’t really add anything. Whereas now with making a fashion film, there’s music, there’s editing.
And animation like the Kate Moss one for Balmain with Jo Ratcliffe.
IVL: Yeah. There’s so much that you can do there and it’s just a shift in the minds of the client. We always say, maybe you just have to move your budgets around so you can make a video that lives on the Web…
VM: Forever.
IVL: People look at our Yves Saint Laurent video with Daria. You know we still get requests about it. It has a much longer life and a bigger reach.
Another one of my favorites is the French Vogue “Girls on Film” one.
IVL: We’re making a new one with Daria now.
M/M Paris designed the book, and you’ve collaborated with them for a very long time. How did that relationship start?
IVL: We were introduced in 1994 or 1996 by a mutual friend called Grégoire Marot, who had a PR agency called Favori, who thought we had a similar sensibility. We clicked right away, noticed that a lot of the movies we were watching or music that we were listening to or images that we referred to were very similar. Our approach to fashion was similar. We all had a certain longing to push things forward. Grégoire also introduced us to Nicolas Ghesquière. He said, “Oh, he did his first collection. You should check it out.” The four of us went to the next show and liked so much what he was doing that we immediately started thinking about campaigns. From then on it became a very strong collaboration with the four of us and Nicolas and Marie-Amélie Sauvé.
What’s made the relationship work for so long?
IVL: It’s never an easy way out. That’s what’s great. They don’t try to solve a problem quickly. They really go for it. But it’s a very happy and humorous relationship that we have, and still very fulfilling. They think differently about everything. What was great about the [early] Yohji Yamamoto and the Balenciaga campaigns, it was really about together figuring out what the life of the Yohji woman was or the life of the Balenciaga woman, and almost writing a script to derive the imagery. Another favorite was one that we did for Calvin Klein [in 2002] when Calvin was still there. Michael and Mathias had the naïveté or maybe the audacity to change the logo. They made it into a scribbled hand-colored red, white, and blue logo that looked like the doodles you make when you’re making a phone call. I remember having a meeting with Calvin Klein and suggesting this kind of a logo on the layout and all the cut-up layouts that we did for him. I remember Calvin going, “OK, they’re all going to think I’m crazy but I love it and I’m going to go for it.”
I remember being blown away by the Spring 2002 Balenciaga campaign with the collage you did with them (below). It was so different from everything at the time. How did that come about?
IVL: It was all at the right time and the right place. I think people needed something else to happen again. What was great was that us, Nicolas, and M/M Paris, together we were a very strong unit. All the inspiration came not from other things in fashion. It just came from our own backgrounds and ideas and interests. It was just such a fluid creative synergy. It was beautiful because we had no point of reference. I don’t think there has been more creative advertising around. And it was possible, which is something that was part of that time. The way the fashion world functions now, it’s very different from the way it was then. It feels weird to be able to say that. People were definitely more interested in pushing things a little.
You might have to sell the idea a bit harder today.
IVL: Yeah, I think so. And that’s what’s great about fashion. It evolves with the time and it’s a reaction to society and what’s happening. And it’s one of the most immediate reactions to what’s happening in society. And it’s all part of it. Things change but there’s always a good side to the change, too. That’s what fashion is: It’s change.
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