DD: How do you feel about hauling over fifteen years of
Maison Christian Lacroix memories to Arles? Does the ‘Rencontres
d'Arles’ somehow represent a culmination of your work as you said on
the website that you felt it was ‘time’ to curate this event?
CL:
There is always timing in one's life. I felt that this year, with both
my installation/exhibition at the Musée Reattu and the Rencontres, and
with both in Arles, it was time for me to go back to my roots as an
adult. I loved doing my costume exhibition last year in Moulins, Allier
at the Centre National du Costume de Scène, and then the one at the
Arts Décoratifs Fashion and Textiles Museum, a kind of rEtrospective
celebrating the house’s 20th anniversary. Both events have been very
successful and encouraged me in going further and working beyond
fashion. At different stages in your life, you have several
'rendez-vous' with yourself. The Rencontres was the moment.
DD:
The main component of the exhibition is centred around the theme of
‘Photographing Clothes’. Do you think there is a perfect way of
capturing clothes on film? Does it exist? Or is seeing and
experiencing the clothes in real life always better?
CL:
Olivier Saillard, my friend from the Fashion and Textiles Museum, and I
wanted to work in an unexpected way and to show fashion without doing a
classic presentation in the present manner. It’s why at Montmajour
Abbey, a few kilometres from Arles, I show my favourite past and
present fashion pictures through a collection owned by the French
state. And at the Hôpital Van Gogh, there is an exhibition showing
everything connected with fashion but in an anonymous, unexpected or
unknown way : look books, videos, catalogues from the 20s’ until
today, sartorial blogs. As like any attempt of this kind, I think
that the purpose is desperate from the very beginning, since no image
or film could be faithful enough to a shop, a fabric, a color, an
allure, an attitude, a gesture, flesh, blood and movement. But we do
love fashion photographs because they optimize all of this on a bigger
scale than life, they go beyond, they help translate, communicate,
express the fantasy, the spiritual and conceptual side of fashion and
clothes.
DD:
In your statement for the site, you said that you wanted to use this
opportunity to look beyond fashion – do you see fashion as something
that has depth? How did you look to give fashion ‘depth’ with the
exhibition?
CL: Beyond clothes, I see a
deeper content in fashion, like an escapism, a way to escape reality,
banality and of course death. Under clothes there is flesh and nudity,
a soul and a skeleton, everyone is concerned by facing death or dealing
with age by searching beauty, sensuality, pleasure. It’s why I wanted
to show identity, presence, absence, uniforms, nudity, fantasy in the
guests I invited; Tim Walker, Georges Tony Stoll, Charles Fréger, Paolo
Roversi, Achinto Bhadra, Samuel Fosso etc.
DD:
Your recent couture A/W 08 collection along with your collections in
general defied the current atmosphere of economic recession with an air
of excess – do you feel like you have to react to the current tension
in the ‘real world’ or do you prefer to ignore this and create a
fantasy with fashion?
CL: I like it when
fashion - meaning self expression, creativity, spirit - is stronger
than a crisis. It's not about ignoring the recession, but on the
contrary, it’s about reacting against it. It would be silly if I did
not.
