Alexandre de Betak sat down for a chat with the guys from Opening Ceremony. Read the interview here !

SC: What was your first show?
AdB: My first shows and events were for Sybilla, who you may know. She was an amazing Spanish designer in the 80s who decided to stop what she was doing once she got really big. I was just a kid; I was 17.

SC: Wait, you were 17 when you produced your first show?
AdB: Yes, I started working with her when I was 17, after I finished high school. She started showing a year later, and by the time I turned 20, I opened her first store in Paris with a huge event. But it all really started when I was a kid taking pictures. I was very into it, and I still am, by the way. I still make images––but they are 4D, they are live, and they last a certain amount of time in a certain place.

SC: How old were you when you picked up your first camera?
AdB: I was seven. My grandfather gave me a plastic 126-millimeter Instamatic camera. And ever since, I’ve been completely obsessed with framing and making images look the way I want them to. I still have the negatives from back then. So in high school I kept taking pictures of things here and there. I started working for trendy magazines, taking pictures of parties at night. I remember shooting Kid Creole & the Coconuts at four in the morning at one party, when I must have been about 16.

SC: So you were just out-and-about photographing in Paris in your late teens. What drew you to working in Spain?
AdB: Well, in Paris I had been shooting for this small Madrid-based magazine called Primera Línea, which was somewhere between what Interview and Paper were back then. So it made sense to go to Madrid. Coincidentally, it was the time of the Movida in the late 80s––when Almodóvar, Juan Gatti, and a 20-year-old fashion designer named Sybilla were starting out. I had met Sybilla in Paris. Back then her team was about five people. It was just her, three seamstresses, and her right hand. But one thing led to another, and before I knew it I was helping her do anything and everything––working with her on her brand’s image, the art direction, the shows, the PR. I didn’t even know what my job meant or what it was called, but Sybilla’s brand grew into a successful label pretty quickly, and I opened my office right away.

SC: So your business card could have easily just had one big question mark on it!
AdB: [Laughs] Exactly! Which was quite fun and suited me well. I went very intuitively from making pictures as a kid to doing visuals for a designer who was starting out. Then one day, Sybilla felt she had reached the point in her career that she’d always dreamed of, so she just stopped and moved to Mallorca. And that’s when I moved to New York, almost 20 years ago.

SC: What other projects were you working on from your Paris office at the time?
Adb: I was doing PR and art direction for Sybilla, as well as for another Spanish designer, Joaquín Berao, who was doing jewelry. I was art directing and producing shoots for a photographer called Juan Carlos Retamar, I was doing work for the magazine Per Lui of Condé Nast in Italy… It was quite diverse! I was doing exhibitions for Sybilla and a few others. What else was I doing? I was scouting for a Japanese modeling agency in Tokyo. [Bursts out laughing]

SC: A true jack-of-all-trades!
AdB: I mean, do you really want to know everything? [Laughs] It was trying to invent pluridisciplinarity, not because you were talented in every discipline but because you didn’t know any of them! And the truth is, it laid good foundations. And you could do that back then. I didn’t have any restrictions. I literally started when I finished high school. Back then, I would go down to my grandmother’s newsstand in Paris and I’d spend hours copying in a notebook the top name of the masthead of every fashion magazine, with the phone number of the magazine––back then there were no e-mails. And I would call and say, “Hello, can I speak to Anna Wintour please?” [Laughs] And they would ask, “What do you want?” And I’d reply, “I don’t know, I have something to show you!”

SC: Unreal! So which editors answered?
AdB: The editor of French Vogue at the time, Irène Silvagny––an amazing lady––was one of the first. She came to see me where I lived. It was on the ninth floor of this 70s building in the 15th arrondissement. You had to walk through the service elevator, outside a little balcony, and through a little glass door to get to my apartment, where I had hung clothes by Sybilla from the shower curtain rack in my bathroom! Just thinking of it now cracks me up! [Laughs] It worked though. It led to something.

SC: That’s incredible! What did you show her?
AdB: A few pieces by Sybilla and some photographs by Juan Carlos and Javier Vallhonrat, whom you might know––he is an amazing photographer who was big then. The truth is, what you never know until you look back in life, is how different the times were. Back then, it was more relaxed and less professional. It was just me. I was 17 and I didn’t know any better.

SC: Did you think about higher education at any point, or you were just going to go with the flow?
AdB: I wouldn’t say I was going with the flow. I knew what I liked and what I didn’t. I didn’t want to accept that there should be any boundaries, and I wanted to do something creative that didn’t necessarily have a name. Being a creative pluridisciplinary was much harder then. New York in general has always been more open to anything. In Paris, which is considered more creative maybe because it’s more culturally ancestral, there are boundaries. Even when I was having fun doing all of these things in France, once I reached the point of success I felt like I was hitting a wall. New York was where you could say, “Hi, I design, direct, and produce fashion shows. Give me a fashion show to do.” And eventually, someone said, “Why not?”

SC: In what year did you arrive in New York?
AdB: I arrived in 1993. After the Gulf War, the beginning of the recession. In terms of trends, it was the start of minimalism again––the post-80s, early 90s look that started with Prada, Calvin Klein, and all of them. It was the right time to be here. It’s also when the fashion weeks started. So you felt that you were at the start of something.

SC: What were the shows like before then?
AdB: There were two extremes. You had big, amazing, spectacular fashion shows in Paris––Gaultier, Mugler, Alaïa, and Montana. But it wasn’t like today where you have 10 shows every day for 10 days in every city. There were less shows, and they were done internally in a very personal way. There weren’t even stylists back then, really. They didn’t have much outside help. And what I decided to do was precisely bring that outside help. And the other extreme is just having a girl model the looks in a showroom. No spectacle, no nothing. I purely wanted to design, direct, and produce shows and events, and I did that right away.

SC: What was the first project you took on in New York?
AdB: When you move, the first projects you get are tied to the people you used to work with. So the first thing I did was the launch of Jean Paul Gaultier’s corset perfume. Another was the launch of Miu Miu for Miuccia Prada. Then I worked with John Bartlett and Ghost. Very quickly, I took over Donna Karan and DKNY producing the shows. I did Prada in Milan, and I began taking on others: Dior, Galliano, Victoria’s Secret… I didn’t really have a portfolio, and I still don’t––we’ve had Coming Soon on our website for the past 15 years! We’re coming soon, I swear! [Laughs] I guess it’s all the love and dedication, and from there it’s just being patient, having people know and see your work. What I was doing was very different from what was being done. I try to always do it very sincerely, very personally, and very passionately. I try to think for the brand I do it for, not just for me. I fight for what I believe to be right for the brand to go in the direction it should.

SC: What is the collaborative process like with brands and designers?
AdB: No one lets you do whatever you want. But it’s about analyzing the person, the brand, and the company you work for, and trying to use your objectivity and knowledge to tell them what they should do to be more “them.” My job is to advance the inner qualities of the brands we work with. It’s just a subtle exercise in taking everything you have to make the brand be everything they are.

SC: What’s it like working with a brand over time? Is there always innovation?
AdB: That’s a good question. I think it’s like life and love. The deeper the relationship––for friends, love, and work––the more you need to reinvent yourself so that the relationship never becomes too comfortable. And yes, we live in a world that wants more novelty, faster and quicker every time. But I think people still understand depth and savoire faire. So if you have deep qualities as a designer, you shouldn’t change who you are every six months. You should dig deeper into your core identity and make it better every time, not drastically different. You can be attracted to many things, you can be inspired by different topics, but if you’re generally creative, you’re going to reinterpret them in a personal way, which is always going to be yours. Therefore it’s going to be consistent with what the brand is and what you are. You have to keep understanding that the world evolves, and that you have to evolve with it. Otherwise, you get old.

SC: Do you find that exhausting?
AdB: I find it exhausting when it’s a race and it’s not natural. Personally, I’m not exhausted because I don’t go against what I believe. I stay away from people who change every season because they think they have to.

SC: Your creations are ultimately so bracketed in time and space. Do you wish something like the snow tunnel you created for the JOHN GALLIANO FW09 show wasn’t so ephemeral?
AdB: John’s briefs were always very short, like, “Make it dangerous and S&M” or, “Make it surreal.” For that show, he wanted Slavic winter tzarinas. The idea for the snow came up very naturally and spontaneously. I wanted to put the models in no space and no time. I wanted to be completely abstract, modern, and futuristic, yet also completely narrative and realistic. So I wondered, “What happens if you throw a laser into real snow?” And it made something completely crazy and mad.

And the great thing was that when you arrived in the room––this gigantic, empty, ugly, all-concrete industrial hole in Paris––there was only a line of benches. You couldn’t even tell where the light would come from, since we frontlit the space with two followspots from far away. I remember when we opened with Tom Waits’ cover of “Roxanne,” and the snow started falling. It was magic. It’s a show I still love and I think people remember.

But the night before the show, I had been ready to kill it all! At 4 or 5 in the morning, I remember kicking the machine, thinking, “It’s not working, it’s crap!” All night. Because it felt like a laser in one of cheap clubs in Ibiza. That extra little thing that makes it magical was not there. There’s a fine line between something that’s really bad and meaningless, and something that’s wow. And that hair-thin line is one of the reasons I do what I do, and why I get the adrenaline of doing it.

SC: Do you collect anything?
AdB: I don’t like the word collecting. Real collectors are academically anal about the rules of what they collect. I don’t believe in rules. I’ve loved robots since I was a kid and I’ve never stopped amassing them; I have hundreds everywhere. I love kinetic art and its late 60s artists of South America and Italy. So I have a lot of kinetic pieces that I like. Kinetic art sums up very well what I do, in a way, because it’s putting live action––movement, light, and sometimes sound––into an object in a very controlled manner, but with mathematically live discordances or events. At any given time, movements can produce shapes that are slightly different when done live. Which is what I do.

SC: Because what you do is live, there is also room for a lot of last-minute surprises, for the better or worse. What’s your most memorable production?
AdB: What we do is very planned yet it’s very live, so it’s true, anything can happen. PETA jumping onto the Victoria’s Secret runway one year and running after Gisele is one example. For god’s sake, it’s not like they produce fur or anything! But she had just come out in a fur campaign for a brand, and it happened to be her first time back on the runway. This kind of crazy thing created emotions and nightmares, yet made it a memorable experience. I’m not saying PETA should go ahead and jump on everyone so people can remember it. But unexpected problems can create memories.

SC: Do you have a favorite production that you have worked on?
AdB: Yes. But I haven’t done it yet. It’s yet to come!

read the original interview here

Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women

Every year Forbes Magazine compiles a list of The 100 Most Powerful Women and this year Diane Von Furstenberg has been ranked number 33.

Congratulations Diane!

By Forbes Magazine

MY LIST: MICHAEL KORS IN 24 HOURS 

12 Splendas a day, 50 black t-shirts, 60 aviators… The designer shares his schedule .

6:15 A.M. First, I feed my cats, Bunny and Viola. They are feline alarm clocks. I named them after my madcap great-aunts. They turn into gymnasts and start leaping over us and jumping over our heads. I can’t remember the last time I set an alarm at home. Then I grab the newspapers. I read a lot of papers — too many. But I grew up waiting for the paper to be delivered, and I still am that way. I can hear it drop at the door, and the day begins. I actually like to crawl back into bed after I’ve fed the cats, who aren’t hungry. My husband, Lance [LePere], is a better sleeper than I am, so he’s probably still asleep at that point, in most instances. And I’ll kind of do my overview, just scan everything and see what’s going on in the world. If there are things that I really want to read intently, those I save for the end of the day.

8:00 A.M. If I do yoga, my instructor will come to the house. If I’m going to the gym, I’ll do Pilates. If it’s nice out, I’ll walk over to the river and take, like, a month to walk down to the Battery and back. I never shower before any of it. I shower after, and if I’m not working out, then it’s the last thing I do before I leave the house. I’m pretty low maintenance, I would have to say. I’m chamomile shampoo from Klorane. I have used it my whole life, and I think it’s every blond’s best friend. I use Kiehl’s moisturizer, Jergens tinted moisturizer for the face (it stretches the tan whenever we can’t get out of town), a little bit of lip balm from Creme de la Mer, and I’m out the door.

9:15 A.M. We don’t even make coffee; that’s too much for us. I am so boring. Every day I have a bialy with a little bit of butter on it delivered from Murray’s Bagels, and I don’t drink hot liquids at all, but I’m iced tea obsessed. So every day, no matter what the weather, it’s a large iced tea with three Splendas. Those three Splendas make all the difference. And lemon. Maybe on the weekend I might combine breakfast and lunch and get a little salmon on the bialy, but that’s about it. I definitely have a fashion uniform — that is an understatement. It is always something black and knitted with a crewneck. And then either dark jeans, white jeans, olive cargos, or chinos. The shoe changes. It can go from a black crocodile Tod’s driving loafer to a black New Balance sneaker that I have custom-made for me — all black on black on black. I probably have a good 15 pairs of New Balance in black, and I don’t always wear black. In the summer I’ll go to this dusty putty color. That’s my summer shoe. I’ve also found someone to custom-make crocodile Chucks. No one would know to look at it that I’m having fun with accessories, but I am. I change my color of aviator. That kind of indicates my mood. Like, the silver aviator if I’m feeling nasty, an olive aviator if I’m feeling sporty, and black if I don’t want to think about it. I have about 60 pairs.

10:00 A.M. The car picks us up at home. I’m definitely a man who loves his tote collection. I’ve learned not to carry a big one because I’m bringing things I don’t need. I have an L.L.Bean leather tote from the ’40s that’s small and really beaten-up and that I was very fortunate to find while I was vintage shopping here in New York. As soon as I saw it, I was like, Oh, my God. I can just throw my sunglasses in there, if I have papers I have to bring back and forth to the office, and you know, really not much else. I’m not one of those people who sit in the car talking on the phone. The car is my moment to kind of zone out before I jump into the day. And in New York, it’s great for people-watching. I count Michael Kors handbags on the street.

10:15 A.M. The only thing that’s always the same in my workday is that it is never the same. The only thing that stays consistent is that lunch out is not part of the Michael Kors day. The minute I walk in the office, my assistant will show me e-mails we have gotten, what phone calls have come through and slap another iced tea into my hand so I can feel like an Olsen. The iced tea is always there. I think when I quit smoking, the cup in my hand became my new cigarette, so to speak.

10:30 A.M. I’ll start with, say, a phone interview, then I could jump into a review looking at jewelry samples and then into looking at prints that we are working on for the women’s collection. I think that kind of changing my head all the time, after over 30 years, is what keeps me interested and excited. If it was formulaic, I would probably be bored.

1:30 P.M. Lunch, however, is unbelievably formulaic. I have either sashimi every day or a salad from Chop’t. Four pieces of salmon, four pieces of tuna, and then I’ll have maybe a spicy tuna roll, and that’s lunch. If it’s a really lousy day, like one of those days that you never want to get out of bed, then I’ll say ‘To hell with it’ and have a hamburger. It’s always delivered in, and it’s always in the office. I probably eat lunch out, truly, four times a year. And I’ll always have four large iced teas a day. I’m caffeinated. By the time the afternoon comes, it’s kind of like, you know, telling the drunk at the bar it’s last call so, like, cut down on the caffeine, and then we switch to ice water and lemon when five o’clock rolls around.

2:15 P.M. Every day, no matter what, there is going to be a minimum of two design meetings. And there is always going to be something like deciding on models or reading copy for the catalog. I look at all of it. Or my display team will ask if I want to take a look at the new mannequins for Rockefeller Center. It’s a lot. I don’t know what to do with what I call a gray day. I either need to be on a beach passed out with a Jackie Collins novel or I need, like, a day that is jammed with too much information and too many tasks. Our wedding day last year was our dream day. We stayed with friends in Southampton. We both had massages. We had caviar for lunch — gobs of it. We went to the beach and got married barefoot. Then we went to see The Help in East Hampton and afterward went out for pizza at Sam’s. Give me beach, give me a movie I can cry at with someone I love, and within that day have my favorite junk food and my favorite indulgent food.

5:00 P.M. On workdays I’ve got to have two pieces of Ghirardelli dark chocolate for a jolt. I think I’m being good, but I’m not.

7:30 P.M. We usually go out. We go to the theater a lot. That is truly my favorite escape. We do not go fashiony, we go the opposite and pretend that we are theatrical folks. We go to Joe Allen on 46th Street and sit at the same table. I always have a Caesar salad and a hamburger. When I was in Paris, we ate dinner literally four nights a week at Joe Allen in Paris. I think Marc Jacobs and I, between the two of us, we were in Joe Allen every night. And if we don’t go to the theater, most instances we’ll go directly from the office to dinner. We stay in the Village for the most part. We love I Sodi, the Little Owl, Cafe Cluny, or Gene’s for that old-school Village feeling. During the week we never, ever cook. If we watch TV, then it’s something that I can just take my brain out for, like RuPaul’s Drag Race (it kills us — we die laughing), Restaurant: Impossible, or Fashion Police. I never have a cocktail at home. Going out to dinner, absolutely. I’ll have a Ketel One on the rocks, and if I’m having Italian food, I will have white wine, like a Gavi, and never red wine. I wear black and drink white.

12:30 A.M. I sleep in black Michael Kors briefs, but my bed is white. I can’t sleep on a sheet that’s colorful; it freaks me out. I need the pillows all situated in different spots. I’m one of those people who wake up in the morning with all the pillows on the floor and the covers gone.

As told to Anamaria Wilson

By Harper Bazaar 

Wonderkind : Ulyana Sergeenko

“Ulyana Sergeenko is a Russian designer, photographer and serial socialite, who launched her first collection last year. Living in Moscow, she is a cult figure at fashion weeks, appearing in her own, unique designs. She talks to Wonderland about street style, Soviet cartoons and the unusual Russian-and-1950s influenced silhouettes of her self-made empire… 

How would you describe your designing style?
It is strongly influenced by my childhood, with all its memories… also, old Soviet cartoons, small towns in Kazakhstan and Russia, family traditions. And then there are movies; it can be anything from Visconti and Fellini to Nikita Mikhalkov and Wong Kar-Wai. I love old Soviet films. Also, I was mesmerised by the way my grandmother looked; I guess she was the one who has influenced my style the most: she wore printed cotton dresses worn with hand-knitted sweaters or cardigans and heels.

Are your designs influenced by life in Moscow, too?
In my work, there are a lot of references to Russian culture, especially Russian cinematography. I find inspiration for my collections in works by Mikhalkov, Kalatozov, Khuziev, Gerasimov. And I like traditional Russian crafts – all those embroideries, bead-works, hand-made laces and knits. They combine naivety with intricacy of technique.

Your looks outside shows have gained you a lot of popularity with street style photographers.What do you think of the street style phenomenon?
Of course it’s useful – street style photography is often viewed by huge numbers of people. The thing I don’t really like is that often it’s all about the clothes. Notice the popularity of detail shots – you see nothing but accessories, and I find it to be quite boring. There is nothing special or intriguing in the ability to buy a trendy bag or a runway hit. As Diana Vreeland said, “I don’t go to the theatre to see a great play. I want to see an interpretation.” It’s the same with street style – I don’t want to see clothes, I want to see interesting, unique people.

How do you feel Russian women differ in their approach to fashion compared to women in London or New York, for example?
In Russia we had no fashion for almost 80 years, then there was the 90s with all that fake glamour. There are still a lot of clichés about luxury in Russia, but it is not about wearing logos anymore, today people have become more sophisticated. There are quite a few women with a great sense of style here. Globalisation has influenced women around the world and for me it’s sad, because they all started to look the same… I like people who are a bit crazy, who dare to provoke and surprise.

What are your plans for this year? 
2012 is a very important year for us as we are planning our first show outside of Russia. Since there is no fashion industry in terms of production in Russia, it makes the working process very complicated. We create, produce, photograph, style, and do PR all in-house. And I’m very happy, as my team is what makes the Ulyana Sergeenko brand so unique. It’s not another clothing line, but a small world we invented here in Moscow. ”

By Olivia Gagan for Wonderland Magazine

RODARTE : OUTSIDER ART

Kate and Laura Mulleavy X TIME Magazine

Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind the fashion brand Rodarte, are strolling the grounds of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., finishing each other’s sentences and often speaking in unison. They discuss the delicacies of a certain Victorian rose. They agree that the stem of an antique lightbulb inside the library reminds them of a carousel. They recall childhood trips to the Huntington estate to visit their maternal grandmother, who worked there as a docent. What they don’t talk about is fashion. Kate, 33, and Laura, 31, are dressed down in jeans and matching navy moccasins; Kate wears a Three Stooges T-shirt under a Kurt Cobain—ish fuzzy cardigan. An eavesdropper might guess them to be eager Ph.D. candidates in plant sciences—in fact, their father is a botanist who specializes in fungi—not internationally acclaimed fashion designers whose celebrity fans include First Lady Michelle Obama, actress Natalie Portman and Star Wars creator George Lucas (who attended Rodarte’s New York Fashion Week show in February). Now the sisters are designing the dramatic, couture-like costumes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s star-studded production of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting and with sets by Frank Gehry. 

Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour recommended the Mulleavys for the Don Giovanni gig. “They have a theatrical, couture approach to their work and often weave a narrative into their runway ‘stories,’ which made me think how intriguing it would be for them to work for the stage,” she said in an e-mail to TIME. (…)

By FEIFEI SUN / SAN MARINO 

Read more: 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2114433,00.html#ixzz1yRKdA000

Making of The Collection-Jason Wu Resort 2013

The inspiration for Jason Wu’s latest Resort offerings came from an unlikely source—artist Mike Libby and his taxidermy beetles. In Wu fashion, however, the designer translated insects into elegance, creating intricate “mechanical” bugs by using hundreds of Swarovski Elements crystals and then attaching them to brightly colored cocktail dresses.

By Kristin Studeman

Click to discover the full collection of Jason Wu 2013 Resort.