DosViolines
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source nytimes.com
Toast of Paris Captivates New York, Too
From left: Jim Smeal/WireImage.com, next three photographs: Firstview, Jean-Luce Huré for The New York Times, Philippe Wojazer/Reuters, Firstview, Pierre Verdy/ Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By ERIC WILSON
Published: November 3, 2005
ON Oct. 4, the eve of his spring runway show during the height of Paris Fashion Week, Olivier Theyskens logged onto a computer in his studio to check out what Nicolas Ghesquiere had shown that morning at Balenciaga. The way Mr. Theyskens described that moment last week, miming the frantic dance of fingers across a keyboard, was like a lotto junkie checking the morning numbers.
Firstview
Languid silk pantsuit from Rochas's spring 2006 collection.
"I am curious to see what the others do," said Mr. Theyskens, the slight and dreamy Belgian designer with a nun's habit of silky black hair. "I was stressed. I wanted to know if it was too much like what I was doing."
Mr. Theyskens and Mr. Ghesquiere are held in certain fashion circles as the two most consequential young designers working in Paris today, although Mr. Ghesquiere, with the retail power of Gucci Group behind his Balenciaga collection and a few more years of experience, is better known to American consumers. Since 2003 Mr. Theyskens has been the quiet force behind Rochas, a label founded in 1924 by the French designer Marcel Rochas.
Mr. Rochas, who died in 1955, was a comparative blip on the timeline of fashion history, his achievements having included a small scandal in the 30's when several women wore an identical Rochas dress to the same party; the invention of a waist-cinching corset called a guêpiere; and, as his label's claim to immortality, a best-selling fragrance called Femme.
The German cosmetics company Wella, which was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2003, revived a fashion collection under the Rochas label beginning in 1989. When Mr. Theyskens lost his financing for the signature collection he had designed for three seasons (and was passed over at Givenchy at the age of 24 because he had asked for an absurd salary) just as the Rochas ready-to-wear designer was leaving the company, one of those rare things happened in fashion's obsession to spin gold from the ashes of dead couturiers: the right man was hired for the right job.
Nina Garcia, the fashion director of Elle magazine, credits Mr. Theyskens with being the first designer to play with silhouette in a way that inspired a rush of 50's Balenciaga references, like full-volume skirts, and the first to champion leanness in floor-dusting skirts, which is now influencing other designers.
"The thing about Olivier's clothes is that when you see them at the showroom or on a runway or in a store, you may think these clothes are not practical, but you cannot help but say, 'Wow,' " Ms. Garcia said. "You connect with his clothes emotionally, and I think that is why we are so captivated by Olivier right now."
Mr. Theyskens, who is now 28, knew the collection he would show last month would be a watershed moment in his career. It had been in his head for a long time before he was able to technically execute what he describes as a new minimalism - that is, "minimalism with references."
What Mr. Theyskens was doing could not have looked more different from Mr. Ghesquiere's baroque romp of mille-feuille antique laces and cabana-stripe pants with paisley embroidery, so opposite that Mr. Theyskens was led briefly to question his instinct toward simplification in design.
"When you are working, simplicity is something strange, because it is not simple at all," he said. Customers, he said, might not recognize the intricate craftsmanship or the many hours of fittings and calculations to solve a problem of construction - all the complexities that make a design look simple.
"For me, being creative is to work inside the clothes to bring allure to the outside," he said.
Mr. Theyskens's spring collection, shown in a tent in the Tuileries, was breathtaking in that gesture. In his lean pantsuits and the long skirts that skimmed the runway, little tricks were hidden: triangles of tulle sewn inside a dress to make the fabric fall more gracefully from the body; grosgrain ribbon sewn into the waistband of slouchy pants to keep them neat and lean; a bit of stretch fabric in the lining of a lace gown so that it hugs the body.
Halfway through the show, a sense of decoration became more tangible, in the faint traces of flowers painted at the train of an evening dress, then in a skirt made of many layers of lace so that it looked like Monet's paintings of waterlilies. This is what Mr. Theyskens meant by minimalism with references.
Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times
The designer Olivier Theyskens with Bee Shaffer at a fashion awards event last week.
"Olivier has a way of saying things that really make people listen," said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York, who brought him to New York last week to introduce his collection at the store. "People with a really well-honed eye recognize that these clothes are special."
There was something about Mr. Theyskens that made people take notice from the start, when the young designer was introduced to the world through an unlikely gray Goth outfit worn by Madonna to the Academy Awards in 1998. With his long hair and pale skin, and his penchant for white turtlenecks and black lipstick, the petite Mr. Theyskens was a Fabio translated for romantic underground types.
"He looks so fragile and so feminine, and then there is that sense of melancholy about him," Ms. Garcia said. "You couldn't dream up a better image of the designer who would make those clothes."
Looking back at the three collections he presented under his own name, there are traces of what Mr. Theyskens would become at Rochas: minimal suits and dresses that Ms. Gilhart described as "a beautiful package with an edgy ribbon." But there were also gimmicks of youth - evening gowns with bodices designed to look like miniature blouses - that seem as if they came from another hand.
Mr. Theyskens, who is very serious, calmly described his evolution from Goth to minimalism as a constant, intentional evaluation of design and a developing of the confidence to assert his feeling of the right thing to do now.
"I have a feeling of continuing on my way," he said. "Through the years, my work has become more conscious of matters in our world, matters of travel and working and meeting people." He is glad he started so young because he has a lot of time ahead of him. "If you felt that you had to run, it would be too much stress," he said.
Mr. Theyskens's upbringing in Brussels played an important part in the development of his aesthetic, not because a childhood of sketching imaginary dresses is all that different from the beginnings of many other fashion designers, but because it shaped his palette of pale and melancholy colors and instilled in him an underlying sense of severity. Mr. Theyskens said that his parents - his father was a chemical engineer - only recently acknowledged that they sensed his talent from a young age, recalling stories of the boy who professed until the age of 9 that he wished he were a girl and once spoke of pursuing a sex change.
"It turned out that I am happy today to be a boy," Mr. Theyskens said. "Really, I am."
Mr. Theyskens now leads a self-described quiet life in Paris that is driven by his work. Bee Shaffer, the daughter of Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, said she first met Mr. Theyskens at the Costume Institute gala last year, when her dress by the designer was nearly ruined during a rainstorm upon her arrival. Mr. Theyskens took her to a restroom where he rescued her evening with the slow and methodical application of paper towels.
"It was literally the first time we had met," Ms. Shaffer said. "He's really so sweet." She said it was unusual to meet a fashion designer whom she could not imagine doing anything else as a career, although Mr. Theyskens told her at a luncheon last week that he had also considered working as a florist.
"He said it was very hard to find a florist that he liked well enough to work for," she said.
Mr. Theyskens's puppyish charm belies an intelligence that is also uncommon in fashion. After he received an award last Thursday from the trade organization Fashion Group International, Ms. Gilhart took him on a tour of museums. At the Museum of Modern Art, he recognized almost every painting. On the sidewalk outside the Frick Collection, he remarked to her that a patch of concrete that had bubbled up in the cracks looked like a little version of a Matthew Barney sculpture that had been shown at a Guggenheim show the year before. "How does he connect the dots in such a way that is so amazing?" Ms. Gilhart wondered, then considered that it is Mr. Theyskens's mystery that holds allure.
"Mystery is a very interesting thing for a designer to have today," she said. "Women have a radar for that. It's like a scent."
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Great article, horrible headline.
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