In English accented more drippingly French than a ripe Camembert, Patrick Demarchelier recounts some recent assignments. He rattles, unmoved, through superstar shoots for Vanity Fair and various issues of Vogue , plus multimillion pound advertising campaigns aplenty. Then this foxish-of-aspect 68-year-old pauses, cocks an eyebrow and leans forward on the Claridge's velvet banquette: "You know," he says: "I don't care who I shoot. Sometimes, I do not know who they are."
Mon Dieu! : for somebody in Demarchelier's position, this is radical talk. For nearly three decades now, Demarchelier has been one of the world's pre-eminent celebrity portraitists and fashion photographers. Chief member in a tiny club of hugely paid lensmen that includes Bruce Weber, Nick Knight, Steven Klein and the two Marios (Testino and Sorrenti), this is the man Meryl Streep had to have in The Devil Wears Prada . And he has been around far too long to be impressed by most star subjects.
There are, however, exceptions. His best-known photographs are of Diana, Princess of Wales, who contacted Demarchelier after she saw one of his Vogue covers. "She loved this - on the cover the girl had a picture of a laughing baby inside her coat. And the shoot with Diana was fantastic. She was very charming." After that first Diana shoot - which produced that famous black-and-white photo of the Princess wearing a strapless dress, a tiara, and a megawatt-smile - she appointed Demarchelier her personal portraitist. This made him the first non-Briton to fill such a role for the Royal family.
"When people ask me which is your favourite portrait," he adds, "they expect it to be Diana, or someone famous. But the answer is my dog, Puffy. They think I mean Puff Daddy. No, it is the dog." Puffy, a handsome daschund, does photograph rather well.
Demarchelier has lived in New York since the mid-Seventies. Before that, when he was first learning his trade at the family home in Le Havre, Normandy, and then later Paris, he earned a crust taking passport photographs and shooting weddings.
Now, he says, "I do weddings again. I just did the wedding in Monaco, the Prince [Albert] and Princess [Charlene]. And the Formula One guy, Bernie Ecclestone's daughter who got married in Rome. This was amazing. Almost better than Monaco. There was so much money…"
The Ecclestone wedding cheers him, but Demarchelier only truly brightens when we sidestep from moneyed celebrity to focus on his latest fashion project. Dior Couture is a whopping new book shot entirely by Demarchelier over nearly three years that stars some of the most beautiful couture clothes ever produced by the house of Christian Dior. These range from the full-skirted, narrow-waisted, riot-sparking silhouettes of Dior's Forties' New Look through to the work of his successors Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan and, until last year, John Galliano. Dior dug the hibernating dresses out of its archives, then gave Demarchelier licence to shoot them any way he chose. There a few rather racy pictures, from Agyness Deyn wearing red PVC stockings and the high-concept Chinoiserie of autumn/winter 2007 (shot in Shanghai), to a hat-obscured model wearing a 1951 Mirza dress. More often, though, the images are elegant and delicate. "Photographers have to make the clothes look fantastic," says Demarchelier: "that's why we get paid. And I have positive eyes. But with clothes like this, couture, it is easy. Because they are so beautiful already."
Waving at the main image reproduced on this page of a cellophane-hatted cluster of models wearing the autumn/winter 2010 couture, he says: "This was in the grounds of the Musée de Rodin, right after the show. We decided to have a garden party. They went into the garden to talk and play, and we did the pictures. There were some magic moments. So many girls together…and they all look good."
The secret to getting a strong portrait, he continues, is "spontaneity. I like people to express themselves, so I make them comfortable…You put people in a certain place, and if they have a moment - fantastic. Usually it happens right away. Before they stop to think. Photography is an accident."
One of the lessons gleaned from his long career, he adds, is that fashion has a goldfish memory: "Things change. Then, after a while, they come back. So things get longer and longer and longer. And then they get shorter and shorter and shorter. And at the fashion shows, people say, 'Ah! Fantastique!' - but things were like that 10 years ago; they go around. Only amazing designers think of the truly new."
Dior, he rightly says, is one of these. And what's interesting about this book is how up-to-the-moment New Look Dior - such as the red, 1948 Arizona coat on this page - appears when photographed in a modern, Demarchelier manner.
His first fashion shoots were in Paris, for titles including Elle and Marie Claire , in the early Seventies. He moved to New York in 1975 but says his career really took off after he first worked with Grace Coddington at British Vogue : "It was the best magazine in the world, the one you really wanted to work for, so to be with her was a big breakthrough." Back then, sighs Demarchelier, only half-jokingly, "Ah, tout était mieux! There were not too many Vogue s, or too many Elle s - just three or four, that's it - and each magazine had a very strong personality." That was then: what of now? Demarchelier leans back in that banquette. "I am relaxing in 2012." He scoffs: "Non. I am shooting. For American Vogue , British Vogue , Vanity Fair , Dior..."
'Dior Couture' (published by Rizzoli), £68.25
