So, here we are in the Jardin des Tuileries.
Three days before your show.
Three days before the show.
It's being constructed over there.
I was reading about your thoughts, the things that informed you about the show, and you immerse yourself a lot in art and poetry. And I wondered, are there things that you return to a lot?
Yeah. I think for me, I'm kind of a slight creature of habit. Sometimes it might not look the same, but I think maybe the way in which I've got to it might be the same process for me. So I think for me, when I'm building like a character, I work with the same group of people. So in a weird way, it's like kind of like a paintbrush or kind of using the same people that you trust to kind of build the look. This is kind of a weird collection because it's sort of, it's very daywear, which is more daywear for me and a bit more ready-to-wear. It's been an interesting process, this one. Sometimes I'm like, does that work or does it not? You know, it's a strange feeling, this one. So it's either to be really right or really wrong.
Well, there's something so luxurious about fashion in the day, and Paris is the place for that to be really dressed up, whereas London is sort of the grunge center really. And so it's great to make clothes for those opportunities. I think I love seeing people who have made an effort, and it must be wonderful to create for that.
Yeah. And I think that's what's quite interesting about parks somehow, you know, historically Dior has always shown here. I always think of like kind of like pleasure gardens or like even in Britain that you have this idea of the promenade or like people used to dress up to go somewhere. And there's been something I've been quite fascinated in, that this idea to dress up and what does that mean today? What we're trying to say about, you know, the psychology of people. It's more about psychology now than status. It used to be you would dress up for status purpose. Now it's more about the psychology or what kind of clan you were part of, like what group were you part of, you know.
Because you were talking about Louis XIV's having a code that people who came into the park had to have a code for dressing to do with their rank. And I wondered how important codes of dress are for you, because your own code is quite inscrutable.
From my own self, how I dress is more like a school uniform. I went to school, I had a school uniform. So I need some sort of like tight formula to work from. But I like this idea of like, you know, by staging the show here and looking at this idea of like the promenade, this idea of the bridge, this idea of like what is that day in the park, you know, like what is that look in that singular moment? You know.
Is this coat part of your code? Because this is coming wearing your coat. This looks fantastic. Coat, and it feels like, you know, you were talking about liking some of my dad's paintings, and you even own some. And in the new show at the National Portrait Gallery, there's a lot of drawings of coats a bit like the ones we're wearing, and the detail of the stitching and everything. And it's so evocative and it's so meaningful to someone, you know, who's making clothes as well. You know, that's what I've always loved in your father's pictures, is that you have this immediacy of like the wearer or the sitter. You can feel the closeness of texture or something in his images.
Or even himself. He had such great style. He had such an amazing way of wearing, especially like those amazing images with falcons and the orchestral. Amazing. I've always had that on my mood board because I've always thought like that for me is just like I would want to look like that or something. There's a poetry in that image, I always think.
And do you find a certain tension that you look for in the works that you look at, or even the poems that you're interested in?
Yeah, I like things that I can get obsessed by. People that I can get obsessed by. Sometimes I can get obsessed by a singular painting that is more that you fall in love with the sitter, or it can be the landscape, you know, like sometimes it can be something where I'm like, how do you become part of that landscape? How do you get to that final result?
You're showing here in the Tuileries, and when you choose a setting for a show, is that something that happens early on, or does it come later to the story?
Usually the set comes first because of the time that takes to like work out the process to build it. This one's kind of unfolded in like a very weird way because I was struggling with the tent concept because you end up being in a white box. And then I was like, we are in this such a beautiful garden. So this time it was like we built a piece of architecture around something, and it's this idea of what is fake, what is real. You have the water fountain which is real. You've got the water lilies which are fake. Nearby you've got the painting by Monet of water lilies which is real. I've always been kind of obsessed by that. Like what is real, what is not real, or how do you find a subtlety in it. It's like these chairs. I've always been really obsessed by these chairs because I feel like it's the perfect example of the readymade. You just represent it. You know exactly you're in Paris. You can show it out of context. You know where you are from an object. And I've always been kind of interested in like objects that create iconography in that way.
Because you seem to have a particular talent for getting people to look again at sort of ordinary things, everyday things that they have looked at many times, and you draw attention to them in a new way, or you recast them so that they suddenly become really meaningful. And you know, it's quite such an intimidating place, this garden in the middle of France. And how do you feel as an Irish-Englishman coming in here and taking possession of it?
Well, that's what I think you have to go to what is a level playing field. I think that's what's interesting about the chair in the Tuileries is that it is for everyone to use. It is not a hierarchy. It is for everyone. And there's something quite humbling in that. That's why I love when I walk home, when I walk through the Tuileries. It is a place of congregation and at the same time it is a place for reflection. You know, that's why in the invitation there's two chairs, excited that you are talking to someone or at the same time you can sit in isolation. And I quite like this as a backdrop to a show. For me this is Paris, and like I always will feel like a tourist in Paris.
Sometimes being a tourist is quite good because you see the thing you kind of edit. I suppose it's a way of finding the things that attach you to a city, especially Paris, which is such a grand and it's so composed. And you know, here you are coming into one of the biggest houses in the world, a fashion house. You have to kind of take hostage from within. You have to sort of invade, and then you're running the show and setting the tone. And the thing about Dior sometimes is, you know, for a designer it's quite scary because the name is so hefty. It's quite a big name.
And in a weird way, it's sort of like you're kind of taking the salon chair and you're swapping it for the garden chair. And I think it's about playing on these odd realities to make yourself feel you're in the small brand even though it's not the small brand.
So interesting that you bring it close to you in that way, and that's where you can start to build out.
Yeah, that's by bringing the audience closer because I'm, you know, as much as we have to show to a thousand people, I'm always trying to think of how do you take it outside, like how do we take it to people online, or how do they experience it as well?
Well, how do you get people involved in the process of it, you know, and see the kind of like vulnerability in it, or see the grandeur of it, or see the kind of craft in it, or there's different ways to kind of get in ultimately.
I suppose those are all the intimacies that you're creating. Like I always think of Gulliver held down captive by thousands of tiny strands, and it's like that's what you're creating. People are being captivated in this love for all these different details that you bring to life within the collection.
And you're using a Donegal tweed in this.
This is like one of my favorite fabrics in history.
I love that. And it's like, you know, it's very chic when a French woman uses the materials from another country or another sort of movement or whatever. And it's...
I think for me that was like, how do I bring my own self into the brand? And I come from Ireland. For me it was like a fabric that I was so used to having blankets in it in the car. You know, you would always have these Donegal gold blankets and they would be incredibly itchy, or like these sweaters that were very itchy. So for me, what I love about a Donegal tweed is that you have like something which looks kind of mundane from afar, but when you get close to it, it is like thousands of colors in it. Like little tiny bits of color. This always reminds me of where I grew up because you, in a weird way, gray. It's very green or gray, but then in it you start to see these tiny fragments of color somehow.
And you made a new colorway as well.
Yeah, for the show we did a yellow, a kind of strange yellow, a weird beige, and a purple. And it's quite nice because you just, by subtly changing just a little tiny bit, they become very radically different as a piece.
That sounds so beautiful because French women know how to accessorize in a way that English women certainly are always rather envious of. And so the idea of like what kind of jewelry or heel or anything that someone would wear with Donegal is an exciting...
