Acne Paper Interviews Carine Roitfeld

Carine Roitfeld warms that jeans and mini skirts are aging:
I only wear jeans and flat shoes when I am on holiday, never for work. Jeans suit me very well but it’s not for me anymore. It’s horrible to say but it has something to do with age. I have good legs, so I prefer my skirt lengths and my high heels. It’s like my uniform. I never wear jeans. Jeans are for my assistants... I wear knee-length denim skirts. I never wear miniskirts because they make me look older.

She thinks people in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe don’t have a culture of clothes:
If people ask me to describe my look I always say: quite classic with an edge. Look at my dress. It doesn’t look like I have on anything special, it’s more the way you mix the clothes and how you move, how you open your bag, how you cross your legs — just little things that make a difference. With French women you first see the woman and then you see the clothes. Imagine other countries like Russia or China, even Eastern Europe. They don’t have the culture of clothes so they want to show that they can afford to buy a Dolce & Gabbana bag, they want to show labels. In France you cannot see what labels we are wearing. It is very snobby.

She loves the Yves Saint Laurent woman:
You know the idea of the Saint Laurent woman. What a dream she was: wearing trousers, hand in the pocket, no handbag, transparent shirt. I love that woman. It is exactly who I would have loved to be if I could choose. So I would have to go blonde because he loved the blondes, and I would have to have bigger breasts. But it’s the idea of the woman I love, and I try to repeat this in my magazine.

And Cartier too:
Do you know why? Because Cartier is the jewelry you give to your mistress. It is not the jewelry you buy for your wife. I heard that and it might be totally wrong, but it is this idea and I love Cartier because of that.

She has the power of making a model a supermodel:
It’s great to have the power. I understood some years ago that we have a lot of power. I never thought I would get power before. The power to make everyone you want successful. You have the power to make a photographer a big photographer. You have the power to make a designer a top designer. You have the power to make a model a supermodel. It is great this power, so you have to use this power in a good way.

But feels unrecognized:
It’s funny, because I never get awards for fashion. I’ve got an award for being the best-dressed person. I got an award for amfAR. I was on the Time Magazine list of the most influential people last year. But I never got an award for my fashion pictures.

She talks about her old Gucci days:
Now we have to put the foot on the pedal [with sexually charged images]. We can’t go as strong as [Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin] did back then. When I started doing all the Gucci campaigns with Tom Ford and Mario Testino we pushed so much and after that everyone copied it. Everyone tried to be this Gucci girl that we created. So I am sure we were part of this tendency. It was good at the time because we were the first ones to do these kinds of images to sell a product, and after that everyone kept on doing it. I think now it’s too much. It’s no fun. It’s not chic. We always had a chic eye on everything, even when we shaved the G on the girl. A lot of girls started shaving in different ways after that so it really became a trend. Many artists played with the pictures too, so it was fun.

Comments

[la couturier]

I love this. I do wish I was a Roitfeld!

Bisous,
La C.

[kellina]

Salut, La. C !

I am so glad you like it. Please do visit often.

Bisous,
K