I don't like the collusion between high fashion design and high street. You have to know where you stand. I belong to luxury fashion. That's what I've always felt and embraced. I like the best quality, the best fabrics and the most creative field in fashion. I will stay consistent. I belong to this world.
When I was designing, I had in mind Jimi Hendrix, and I could hardly find skinny indie black kids to wear my clothes. I remember one telling me he had to swap his skinny jeans for baggy ones in the subway before going home, so he wouldn't get in trouble in his neighborhood.
Photography has always been about documentary, the depiction of the instant, a moment, sometimes a place. Each project is somehow an experimentation of a specific context or a character.
Fashion somehow, for me, is purely and happily irrational.
I always loved designing, but the context needs to be right, and have a positive perspective.
Men's fashion has a certain heaviness in the fabrics and construction. But also there is a heaviness in the mentality.
Just like zillions of children, album covers educated and informed me, and certainly did I later transpose organically, rather than by intent, those principles both in fashion design and photography.
The iPad needs to catch up with Flash before I put a hand on it.
I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.
With the rise of the Internet, fashion did become part of the global entertainment industry in the last ten years, and will follow the digital evolution of the music or film industry.
The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labeled.
I like the idea of paradox, between the authentic fabrics and sophisticated shapes and between masculine and feminine. I'm not so much for sportswear. I think it's over.
Sex is not a subject in my photographs, or would only be if it had to do with romance, sometimes vulnerability. The photographs are quite clearly about happiness, or search for happiness.
People always want an explanation about everything and I cannot give it to them. Because I don't know myself. 'Why did you do a pair of pants like that?' I have no idea. I'm not going to have a 20-minute political discussion about the necessity for slashed, painted leather jeans. Basically, I don't know more than you.
Music has shaped men's fashion, and transposed in a playful and witty manner its riding or military heritage. It is difficult to figure out who leads, but music and fashion are connected genetically.
David Bowie, for me, was the butchest guy in town. Jagger was like a truck driver.
An athletic man, or whatever you want to call him, will only look good in a very classic suit, a pair of classic jeans, athletic clothes or simply naked. Forget fashion. This is not going to happen, unless you want to look like a Chippendales dancer in designer clothes.
Hedi was and is still misspelled 'Heidi,' and my perception of genders ended up slightly out of focus from an early age.
I discovered Los Angeles in the late '90s. The city was not at its best at the time, but I fell for it right away. There is something almost haunted about it, a vibrant mythology I find rather inspiring.
I'm going to design again, but I come back when it's the right project, so I keep my passion for it intact.
