‘Beauty is everywhere’: Carine Roitfeld on breaking down barriers, her new Dior exhibition and ‘uniforms’

[SINGAPORE] For Carine Roitfeld, fashion presents a chance to break the rules – and look good doing it. The founder and editor-in-chief of biannual magazine CR Fashion Book has spent her career playing with norms, turning them on their head and opening up new opportunities for others.

“Beauty is everywhere,” she tells The Business Times. “I’ve always liked to push the boundaries and open fashion to more and more people.” During her stint helming Vogue France, for instance, it was among the first mainstream publications to have a transgender person, Andre J, on its cover.

“I’m sure some people were surprised, even shocked,” Roitfeld recalls. When her higher-ups at the time tried to have the cover changed, she simply told them: “No, and it’s too late, because it’s already at the printer.”

Today, she notes, the fashion landscape has changed substantially. “Now, finally, it’s possible for everyone to be on a cover.” Being among the early champions of diversity, she adds, is something she’s “quite proud of”.

That persistence and keenness to subvert expectations has carried through in Roitfeld’s career. She’s even had Kim Kardashian on the cover of CR Fashion Book with a shaved head.

And at 71, Roitfeld shows no sign of slowing down, having taken on an impressive number of collaborations, including with Chanel and cosmetics brand MAC.

Showing in Singapore

Among Roitfeld’s latest projects is an exhibition that tells the story of fashion house Dior through its couture creations. First shown in New York, UBS House of Craft x Dior has now landed in Singapore and is set to open to the public on Friday (Nov 21) at the New Art Museum.

Young Jin Yee, UBS’ Singapore country head and co-head of global wealth management for Asia-Pacific, says the city-state, with its “intersection of heritage and innovation... provides a distinctive backdrop for celebrating craftsmanship at the highest level, sparking dialogue and discovery”.

This is certainly no simple retrospective tracing Dior’s eight decades of history. Roitfeld shares that the goal was to adapt the brand’s archives for contemporary eyes.

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To this end, she worked closely with director of heritage, Perrine Scherrer, to better understand each piece and how everything formed a broader tapestry of Dior’s story. She also experimented with the looks and models on set, where photographs were taken by her long-time collaborator Brigitte Niedermair.

Central to the Dior identity is the style known all around the world: the “New Look”, made famous by Christian Dior in the late 1940s. Characterised by a nipped-in waist that creates an hourglass shape, the New Look combined wartime fashion’s more masculine elements with the exuberant femininity of the post-war era.

As a defining icon of the New Look, the 1947 Bar suit – so named supposedly because it was a get-up for evening tipples – was chosen as the starting point for UBS House of Craft x Dior.

The original suit, with a cream jacket over a calf-length skirt, is on the first mannequin one sees on entering the exhibition. Right behind it is an image of the same jacket reinterpreted through Roitfeld’s eyes, with a black latex skirt and gloves.

This mix-and-match approach continues throughout the exhibition. In the next room, the Miss Dior dress from 1949 is paired with a light-wash denim jacket, for a look that could well have come off from a runway today. Later on, the Bar jacket is again seen, this time over a magnificent red gown by John Galliano, who was Dior’s creative director from 1997 to 2011.

“I tried to put everything together in a very contemporary way, so no one would say ‘oh, this is historical’,” says Roitfeld. “It’s historical, but when you look at the final picture, you can wear everything; everything is up to date.”

Beyond the fashion in and of itself, Roitfeld says another key to building UBS House of Craft x Dior was understanding the intentions of each creative director who has helmed the brand, from its eponymous founder to Maria Grazia Chiuri, who ended her stint earlier this year.

“All of them in their own ways tried to keep the DNA of Mr Dior,” says Roitfeld, pointing to the enduring house codes that have found their way into every collection. “You can feel in all the different designers a link to Mr Dior... I think this was very important. The more we talked, the more we saw the clothes, the more we understood.”

On bringing the exhibition to Singapore, Roitfeld says she wishes to have used more Asian models to cater to audiences here. (South Korean model Kim Du-gyeong – incidentally the only male model, and the only one wearing a creation by Dior’s former menswear director Kim Jones – does appear in a photograph towards the end of the exhibition.)

“I hope the people of Singapore don’t feel upset that they are not so represented in the exhibition,” says Roitfeld. “This was my big regret... If I had known we were going to Singapore, maybe the choices would have been a bit different.”

There are some differences between the New York showing and the version here. For one, sketches and photographs from the archives were added showing three Singapore-inspired designs. Two were created by Christian Dior, while a third was made by Yves Saint Laurent in 1960.

Even with her depth of knowledge in fashion, Roitfeld says working on the exhibition has been a major learning experience for her. “When I saw the first show by (Dior’s new creative director) Jonathan Anderson for Dior womenswear... I could see a lot of pieces really inspired by Mr Dior.”

Building on experience

While UBS House of Craft x Dior marked Roitfeld’s first experience with putting together an exhibition, it certainly wasn’t her first rodeo working with a brand. In the 1990s, for instance, she worked with Tom Ford, who was then creative director at Gucci, to turn the fashion house into the sexy, glamorous brand that it remains even today.

“It was a big moment for me,” says Roitfeld of her time with Gucci, adding that the opportunity to partner an American designer on an Italian brand with a global presence turned her from “just a French editor” into an international figure.

The experience also opened her eyes to new possibilities in fashion. While she was “not a bag lady” before meeting Ford, creating looks for Gucci, where leather is a core tenet, forced a new way of working: putting together outfits with the bag in mind from the get-go.

“Everything was created together”, she adds, so the bags would not look like an afterthought on the runway. “It would be exactly the perfect accessory for that look.”

Ford also taught Roitfeld the power of diversity. “It was important for him, since the first show, to offer diversity on the catwalk,” she recalls. “Clients are everywhere; they’re not just Caucasian. I think it was very smart, and I think it made him successful, too.”

The power of clothing

Like many influential figures in fashion – think Anna Wintour and her oversized sunglasses, or Michael Kors with his black blazers – Roitfeld, too, has an iconic, instantly recognisable look.

“When I started working at Vogue... I saw all the other women were mostly wearing jeans,” she recounts. “And jeans look very good on me, but I decided not to be like the others.”

Her solution, she adds, was to create her own version of a uniform. “I decided on a knee-length pencil skirt – and I’m lucky I have good legs – with a jacket or sweater... My make-up was always the same, with a lot of black, and my hair was always the same, in my face.”

A pair of high heels was the finishing touch. “Everyone else was wearing sneakers, so I always wore high heels.” Those extra inches of height allowed her to look taller people in the eye, which had an empowering effect.

When it comes to her wardrobe, Roitfeld says it’s all about the power of clothing. “The moment you wear a tight skirt and high heels, it totally changes your way of walking, your way of sitting. It gives you a new attitude, and it’s become my attitude,” she explains.

Just as importantly, her look is one that’s been cultivated from years of experience. “I know exactly what is good for my body.”

Over the years, Roitfeld says she’s found herself wearing trousers more often, and her heels have become ever so slightly lower. “I’ve gotten a bit lazy,” she quips. “But if I have to ‘be Carine’, then I will wear a skirt.”

UBS House of Craft x Dior is open to the public from Nov 21 to 23 at the New Art Museum Singapore. More information and registration details are available at http://www.ubs.com/hoc-sg.