Satellite Voices

Paris

Guillaume Steinmetz

September 15, 2011

Satellite Voices speaks to the founder of De Jeunes Gens Modernes

• Text by Jill Caytan

Fashion is said to be the spine of De Jeunes Gens Modernes, it’s a continuous manifesto of how one can breathe and live fashion in a global lifestyle, but in a not too obvious way. It’s subtle, presenting contributors' various favourite creative references, from the most cutting edge music videos to the latest in art and design. Founder Guillaume Steinmetz speaks to Satellite Voices of the vision and spirit he shares with his fellow writers.

Satellite Voices: Please introduce yourself?
Guillaume Steinmetz: I am the editor-in-chief of De Jeunes Gens Modernes, which is both the best and worst role. My main line of work is to make sure that the blog maintains the cape we’ve been aiming at since the beginning. I work with seven other people that are full of talent, with a real personality, and so everyone has to find his and her place, all the while being faithful to staying inside the marks.

SV: What gave you the idea for De Jeunes Gens Modernes?
Guillaume Steinmetz: More than an idea, it was more like an urge that motivated us to found De Jeunes Gens Modernes. We wanted to show the stuff we fall in love with, to bring our readers to discover new things. We had a very precise idea of what we wanted to share with them. We thought about the editorial line over-and-over, we wanted it to represent a true global “art de vivre”, not only another vision of fashion for fashion groupies.

SV: Can you introduce us to your team?
Guillaume Steinmetz: The eight founders (four girls / four boys) are a group of friends, we all met at school, during internships or through work. Our friendship began way before the blog. All work in some way or another in the fashion world. We have quite a free way of collaborating on the website. Everyone can say what they want because the guidelines were so clear from the start.

SV: Do you see yourselves as a fashion and lifestyle community?
Guillaume Steinmetz: I don’t know whether we can see it as a community, but we have our own vision and approach to fashion. Fashion has a core role on the site but it only makes sense to us if it sticks to a complete lifestyle. For example, we only speak of collections that are available at the same time, so that our readers can quickly go from the virtual to the real. It’s the same with music, art and food.

SV: You just launched a new section, with job offers linked to fashion and design, tell us more about it?
Guillaume Steinmetz: We thought from the simple fact that many brands with which we work have asked us to announce job offers on Facebook, the answers were always postive and right. So we thought it would be smart to offer a service half way between word-to-mouth and the big job sites like Fashionjob.

SV: According to you, what is the most modern creative phenomenon going on in Paris right now?
Guillaume Steinmetz: The new generation of stylists, journalists and artists who are now getting the key jobs. It’s a new state of mind, a new way of linking work to private life. The génération of Galliano, McQueen, Jacobs and Tisci does in no way look like the new one. The talent is just as strong, but the need to relate it to a real private life seems much stronger to me. To not throw oneself desperately into work, no matter how passionate it is, that is real modernism.

SV: What's next for you guys?
Guillaume Steinmetz: Plenty of very exciting things! But above all it is pursuing our work, De Jeunes Gens Modernes is still very young, our main concern is to consolidate what we do every day. We wish to federate more people around us, which is why we’ve opened to more writers. In fact we’re always looking for writers in food, music, art, design... the message is out!

Photo by Jean Etienne Portail