Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



    August 27, 2006

    Ann of Antwerp


    Thomas Struth


    By CATHY HORYN


    The setting of the Le Corbusier house where the designer Ann
    Demeulemeester lives and works in Antwerp reflects her place in the
    fashion world. It stands at the edge of a treeless lot near a highway
    overpass, isolated both aesthetically and physically from the apartment
    blocks in the southern part of this Flemish city. The original owner of
    the house, built in 1926, had hoped to establish a Modernist community,
    if only to counter the local gingerbread, but it never came. What came
    instead was a world war and senseless urban planning. In 1985, her
    career not yet begun, Demeulemeester and her husband, Patrick Robyn,
    who was trying to establish himself as a photographer, bought Belgium’s
    only Le Corbusier house and started to restore it. Now, except to
    travel to their country home, 30 minutes away, they rarely leave
    Antwerp.


    ‘‘I’m not confused about what’s happening in fashion, because I follow
    my direction and go,’’ Demeulemeester says one afternoon at her dining
    table. She has laid out plates of salad and cold tuna and opened a
    bottle of wine. She is 47, and the lines of her face have begun to set
    in, but it is still a fascinating face to look at, pale and vigilant
    and framed by dirty-blond hair. Victor Robyn, the couple’s only child,
    an art student in Brussels, has dropped by and left with friends. When
    Victor was 3, his parents built a studio next door, with offices and a
    private entrance for the family, so that Demeulemeester wouldn’t have
    to feel like she was actually leaving her son to go to work. Today the
    family compound consists of four buildings. Although the house is by no
    means a shrine to its architect, Demeulemeester and Robyn are eager to
    play host to Le Corbusier’s ideas. There are the original paint colors
    — chocolate, azure and cream for the main room. There are simple light
    fixtures and cool, black-tiled floors. There is, as well, the grid of
    windows facing a small walled garden. Demeulemeester seems oblivious to
    the traffic beyond the open windows. She says she doesn’t pay attention
    to other designers’ work: ‘‘I never study what others are doing because
    it doesn’t help me.’’


    This seems strange. At a moment when many designers, along with
    architects, star chefs and art dealers, feel driven to be everywhere in
    the world — in China, at the latest art fair, opening a hotel in Dubai
    — Demeulemeester is interested in only her world. Her influence is
    pervasive this season. Among those designers like Marc Jacobs and
    Miuccia Prada whose power we readily trust, if only because they more
    easily monopolize one’s attention, there was a strong sense in their
    clothes of Demeulemeester’s proportions, her asymmetrical cuts, her
    blunt, northern femininity. Discharging their ladylike tweeds and
    presumably the women in them, designers now spoke of ‘‘urban females’’
    and ‘‘the warrior woman,’’ ignoring, as Sarah Mower of Vogue pointed
    out, that this has been Demeulemeester’s single-minded view for 20
    years.


    Demeulemeester says she was unaware of her influence until a journalist
    mentioned it, and then, even in the collections where it seemed most
    obvious, like Marc by Marc Jacobs, it wasn’t evident to her. ‘‘When I
    looked at the clothes, I didn’t see my thing,’’ she says. She is at
    least sensitive to the prevailing rhetoric. ‘‘I hate when people
    suddenly say, ‘And now we are going to do the glamorous woman, now
    we’re going to do the strong woman,’’’ she says, studying me. ‘‘Sorry,
    I am a strong woman. And I go for it. I don’t have to play this game.’’


    Demeulemeester and the other Belgian designers of the late 1980’s,
    among them Martin Margiela and Dries Van Noten, made their reputations
    by opposing and even mocking the barbarism of the decade — none more so
    than Margiela, who made clothes from recycled garments and plastic
    trash bags and set himself up as a virtual designer, remote and
    unanswerable, before the term was fully understood.


    It may be that in the current climate of opportunism, with its
    what-do-I-get-out-of-this attitude, people again want clothes of
    substance and surprise. Clearly Demeulemeester thinks so. ‘‘I don’t
    think women can take superficiality much longer,’’ she says. ‘‘They
    want a soul again. I’ve always worked with this emotion. That’s why
    people are turning toward me, I think.’’


    Demeulemeester graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in
    1981, the same year that Rei Kawakubo showed her first Comme des
    Garçons collection in Paris. Kawakubo, with her almost brutal cutting
    techniques, proposed that women were strong and selfdetermined.
    Demeulemeester, born a generation later, just assumed that they were.
    Both her father and her grandfather earned their living drying chicory
    for the coffee market, and when she was 16, she met Robyn, a local boy
    who already had leanings to become an artist. Demeulemeester says the
    only time fashion entered her consciousness in her girlhood was when
    she made drawings of classical portraits; she noticed the relationship
    between the subject and his clothes.


    At the academy, she says, she felt like an outsider ‘‘because I was not
    fashionable in the eyes of the others.’’ Though Belgium produced
    children’s clothes and fine tailoring, it had no fashion identity, and
    of the two old women who taught Demeulemeester pattern making, one
    sewed her own clothes and the other was extremely rigid. She believed
    that you should not put white and black in the same outfit. ‘‘That was
    my big discussion with her,’’ Demeulemeester says, smiling.


    ‘‘And she was, like: ‘Ann, you can’t use white. It’s not chic. Use
    offwhite. Chanel used off-white.’ Chanel was her ideal. So I had a big
    fight with her. All these things were happening, punk in London, and
    she was living in her Chanel, off-white world.’’


    ‘‘The Antwerp Six’’ was a media appellation born in London in the late
    1980’s to help manage foreign-sounding Flemish names. In reality there
    was little communal spirit in the group. ‘‘Everybody was doing his
    thing,’’ Demeulemeester says. ‘‘We weren’t doing things together.’’ By
    the early 90’s, the Belgians had established themselves as devout
    individualists at the Paris shows, with Demeulemeester projecting a
    militant, and often tender, modernism. Her women looked cool and tough,
    as if they had just finished a gig in Rotterdam. Though she has always
    pursued experimental cuts and fabrics, like the papery leather she used
    this past spring for a stunning white shift, her clothes follow a
    narrative, which was a problem in the 90’s, when designers fell under
    one extreme influence after another. ‘‘I had the impression, around
    1995, that all of a sudden the weather changed,’’ Demeulemeester says.
    ‘‘It was all about these big houses. Gucci had started. For me, it was
    the opposite of freedom. I couldn’t understand.’’


    Demeulemeester wants to show me her studio, and we head upstairs,
    which, like the rest of the house, has black-tiled floors and wall
    colors so deeply pigmented that they resemble velvet. We follow a
    passage into the adjoining building and enter a large white studio with
    a copy of Man Ray’s hanger mobile. Few independent designers have the
    luxury of such space. In the mid-90’s, Demeulemeester asked Anne
    Chapelle, an acquaintance and businesswoman, to run her company, and,
    as Demeulemeester says, Chapelle restructured the business ‘‘as a
    little multinational.’’ Later they created a holding company that today
    includes the rising Belgian star Haider Ackermann.


    We pull out photographs taken by Robyn of early collections, beautiful
    portfolios produced despite the fact that the couple had little money.
    Demeulemeester is often associated with Patti Smith, but to my mind her
    clothes have never resonated more emotionally than when she
    collaborated with the artist Jim Dine. ‘‘I saw his photos in a gallery,
    and it was one of those moments that you don’t have often,’’ she
    explains. ‘‘I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick. I
    came home and wrote him a letter. I had to do it. And four or five days
    later, he was sitting here in my studio and saying, ‘O.K., we’re going
    to work together.’ Can you imagine?’’ The result was exquisite
    asymmetrical dresses with silvery-gray photo prints of birds of prey.


    For fall, as other designers were paying homage to her past work,
    Demeulemeester explored drapery, creating wrapped dresses that lent
    mystery to her tailoring. She has her store in Antwerp, which each week
    sends hard-to-find pieces to clients in New York, and I know women who
    have as much Demeulemeester stashed in their closets — skinny T-shirts,
    boyish black boots — as they do Prada. She recently expanded her men’s
    collection and would like to do a perfume.


    ‘‘I never organize or plan things,’’ she says. ‘‘I go step by step.
    Maybe it’s safe like this, I don’t know.’’ Demeulemeester smiles,
    coyly, and you know that this thought doesn’t trouble her in the least.
    She says: ‘‘I just wait because I think people will find me. And I’m
    not the kind of person who will knock on somebody’s door. I wait. If
    they’re good for me, they will come towards me.’’
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    #2
    Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



    Ann Demeulemeester is my favorite designer, and the way Cathy Horyn this article really disappointed me. I don't even know why she wrote it - she has NEVER given a positive review to Ann's collections. I guess she was filling her articles quota sinc she was in Belgium following Raf Simons anyway. There is very little in the article about Ann's designs and more about her house and what she eats, which is pretty irrelevant. Very disappointing.





    I love the picture, though. She seems so serene. And I love that she always wears her own designs.

    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine

    Comment

    • kucejoe
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2006
      • 348

      #3
      Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



      While it is true that the article doesn't talk too much about clothes, I really like the mental image of Ann arguing with her Chanel loving teacher. Other than that, I have to ask, what would her perfume, maybe Eau de Ann, smell like?



      And hi Faust, since you were the person who opened my mind to Ann D. (good for me, but bad for my wallet) I think it is appropriate that my first post on your site is about this particular designer.

      Suspension Point Store (Online + Montreal, QC) / Tumblr / Instagram
      ...

      Comment

      • Faust
        kitsch killer
        • Sep 2006
        • 37852

        #4
        Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

        [quote user="kucejoe"]

        While it is true that the article doesn't talk
        too much about clothes, I really like the mental image of Ann arguing
        with her Chanel loving teacher. Other than that, I have to ask, what
        would her perfume, maybe Eau de Ann, smell like?



        And hi Faust,
        since you were the person who opened my mind to Ann D. (good for me,
        but bad for my wallet) I think it is appropriate that my first post on
        your site is about this particular designer.



        [/quote]





        Hey,
        welcome to SZ! Yes, I also like the part where Ann talks about
        refusing to create images (the glam woman, etc.). The Chanel
        loving teacher must have been traumatizing, because she has mentioned
        it in other interviews. Here are more interesting interviews with
        Ann.



        http://www.lumiere.com/fashion/97/01/ann/



        http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/ann_demeulemeester.shtml

        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

        Comment

        • baizilla
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2006
          • 379

          #5
          Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

          I would love to see her garden.. I remember reading the last issue of A Magazine.. where Jun and Terry talked about her garden.

          Comment

          • droogist
            Senior Member
            • Sep 2006
            • 583

            #6
            Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



            Hey faust! I agree that the article is largely a yawn; Ms. Horyn has not been in good form lately. But I have to say that I don''t quite see where you get this "Cathy hates Ann" notion...in any case I can't recall CH giving her any particularly negative reviews, And as I remember it, her review of Ann's A/W 2006 was actually quite positive. [:^)]




            P.S. Not to be a bitch about it, but I really don't like these smilies. :flower: Ha ha.


            Comment

            • Faust
              kitsch killer
              • Sep 2006
              • 37852

              #7
              Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

              [quote user="droogist"]

              Hey faust! I agree that the article is largely a yawn; Ms. Horyn has not been in good form lately. But I have to say that I don''t quite see where you get this "Cathy hates Ann" notion...in any case I can't recall CH giving her any particularly negative reviews, And as I remember it, her review of Ann's A/W 2006 was actually quite positive. [:^)]




              P.S. Not to be a bitch about it, but I really don't like these smilies. :flower: Ha ha.



              [/quote]





              Hi droogist, it's great to see you here! Yea, I recall one, I think it was in 2004, she said something like that they should've been playing the carpenters at Ann's show because it looked like a dreary funeral. Yes, maam. I don't remember seeing the review you mention, but I'm glad to be wrong. Truth is, I think CH is a good journalist most of the times (today's article included, which I'm about to post in a separate thread).



              Sorry about the smilies, I'll see if I can get better ones :-)

              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

              Comment

              • bellapietra1501
                Senior Member
                • Sep 2006
                • 152

                #8
                Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

                absolutely love her! great article! thank you very much faust for introducing and making me fall in love with her at tfs! sadly i havent bought anything of hers yet. ive been saving topurchase something of hers hopefully soon.

                Comment

                • Faust
                  kitsch killer
                  • Sep 2006
                  • 37852

                  #9
                  Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



                  An interview with CNN asia (from cnn.com)

                  Ann Demeulemeester Talkasia Transcript










                  POSTED: 0832 GMT (1632 HKT), November 20, 2006




                  Adjust font size:




                  AD: Ann Demeulemeester
                  AR: Anjali Rao



                  Block A



                  AD:
                  I don't believe in on mass thing for everyone. I am not somebody who
                  analyzing the markets. I try to make clothes with a soul.



                  AR: Hello, I'm Anjali Rao and with me today is the Belgium fashion designer, Ann Demeulemeester. This is Talk Asia.



                  AR:
                  Born in Belgium she left onto the style pages in 1980 as a member of
                  the much lauded Antwerp six group of designers famed for their so call
                  deconstructionist approach to fashion. A cult figure Demeulemeester has
                  turn trends on their heads brining the funky and punky into mainstream
                  fashion. And she joins us today and welcome to Talk Asia.



                  AR:
                  Now, I guess the first thing I want to ask you is you know, people say
                  clothes make the person. Do you think that's true or that the person
                  makes clothes?



                  AD: I think clothes can help to explain better a
                  person. But one can also fake with his clothes. One can play a role
                  with his clothes. I think the best thing is if there's something honest
                  about the way you dress yourself, and if your appearance is...how do
                  you say that... right with your inner, then I think you're really well
                  dressed.



                  AR: You're known as a deconstructionist. Tell us exactly what that means.



                  AD:
                  This is kind of a stamp, a label that they put on my back. But I don't
                  agree with that because I don't deconstruct. I construct. So, I'm
                  starting from zero and I really construct new silhouette, so it has
                  everything to do with construction, not with deconstruction.
                  Deconstruction is breaking down. That's not what I'm doing. But this is
                  maybe because I sometimes let the soul of a garment speak. I sometimes
                  show something from the inside of the garment, something which is not
                  classic. I'm breaking rules. That's maybe why they give me this little
                  title.



                  AR: Well, I know that you like fabric and texture. Why have you chosen those two aspects to focus on?



                  AD:
                  I think fabric and texture are just two tools, it's material. It's like
                  paint for a painter? For me, it's my material. And the most important
                  thing for me is to construct new silhouettes to do a lot of work, on
                  the cut, to bring emotion into a garment, the way a garment is
                  sculptured. It's a three dimensional job, in fact that's my job and I
                  try to make clothes with soul. And people who wear it can feel it by
                  the way it's cut, the way it's hanging on the body, the way it moves.
                  So I think my main thing of concentration is to cut movements in three
                  dimensional form and to add emotion.



                  AR: So fashion, by its very
                  nature, is cyclical so we do see the same things coming and going. How
                  do you make sure that you keep your work fresh?



                  AD: I think I'm
                  somebody who really looks forward. I don't go back in time to... I
                  think the job of fashion designers is to look forward, is to be
                  sensitive, is to feel what we want for tomorrow. I do believe in the
                  future. I think my work is like a live work. Every collection is like a
                  step into...Yeah.. Into a live work. Every collection could not be
                  there, if the collection before wasn't there. It's an evolution.



                  AR:
                  Looking through your pieces here in this shop, there's a lot of black
                  and there's lot of white. Does that describe you as a person? Are you
                  black/ white, all or nothing or is there shades of grey as well?



                  AD:
                  I don't know if I'm black and white. I think I'm both. And I think
                  black for me represents the most poetic color, but... it's the color of
                  the poets, it's strong. But it can't live without white, which is for
                  me, the purity. So I need both. For me, it's the essence of my work.
                  It's like an architect. I construct garments. And for me, color is more
                  like decoration. Color is something that comes after the pure forms. So
                  sometimes I leave it with black and white. I have the feeling I have
                  enough with that to explain what I want to explain. I want to focus on
                  the shape and silhouette. But sometimes I feel like using color too,
                  and in every collection there is color, but it's more about shades,
                  about subtle variations. It's not "screamy" colors.



                  AR: Fashion
                  is all about taking risks. But, how do you know what's going to work?
                  When you designed garments out of parachute nylon, how do you know that
                  people would go for it?



                  AD: I never know. I go with my feeling
                  and I think it's important. I don't have fear. I just follow what I
                  feel as a woman, as a designer. Like I said, it's my job to throw it
                  open, to think again, to come up with new ideas. So, I don't know, no
                  guts, no glory, I try, I try to give the best of myself. I can only
                  hope that people will like it.



                  AR: Any risks that you've taken that you've regretted?



                  AD:
                  No, no regrets, I think that every step you take in life has its
                  meaning , has its purpose so, even if I make a fault, I learn from it.
                  So no, I don't have regrets.



                  AR: Ann, just stay with us just for
                  a minute. we're going to take a short break at this point though when
                  we return we'll get Ann's thoughts on whether Asia really is as fashion
                  forward as we'd like to think it is.



                  BLOCK B:



                  AR: Hello you're with Talk Asia, with us today is fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester.



                  Ann,
                  you're often described as a member of the Antwerp six, a very famous
                  group of Belgium fashion designers. What do you think made you
                  different as a group from everything else that was out there at the
                  time?



                  AD: I think that as young kids we were really ambitious, we
                  were really believing in our talents, we really wanted to work very
                  hard and I think that in Belgium there is no fashion tradition, and we
                  were like, I think it made us quite free of finding new voice. At the
                  same time I realized that what I was doing had to be really good and
                  had to have his own voice, otherwise nobody was expecting something
                  coming out of Belgium. So it was like um...I don't know what the secret
                  is, the only thing is sometimes in history, it happens that people find
                  each other, certain energies come out together, and I think although
                  we're very different, the impact of these different people at the same
                  time coming out with something new, made it exceptional.



                  AR: When
                  you're known as being part of group as you are in, the Antwerp six,
                  does it make more difficult to stand out and assert yourself as an
                  individual fashion designer?



                  AD: We never had the intention to
                  form a group. It's just six people who came out of a country where
                  nobody was expecting something from. Six very different individuals,
                  and six very difficult names, so it was more easy for the press to say
                  these six Belgiums, than to pronounce Dries Van Noten, Ann
                  Demeulesteer, or Walter Van Beirendonck or Martin Margiela, it was too
                  difficult.



                  AR: As far as Asia goes, I suppose we've got fashion
                  hub of Tokyo, but other than that, what Asian cities do you think will
                  be up and coming?



                  AD: I'm somebody who creates clothes. I'm not
                  somebody who analyzes a market. I'm not functioning like that. I have
                  people who work with me who are very talented in doing this. So, I
                  prefer to concentrate on creation to give my work to the world. And I
                  think it's a natural selection that which city or which people are
                  attracted to my clothes. It comes naturally.



                  AR: Still your Asian
                  operations have done pretty well. Why do you think they've been so
                  successful why do you think people here are so receptive to your work?



                  AD:
                  Emotions are universal. They are not linked to a certain country. I
                  think people who are sensitive, they're attracted to my clothes they
                  come, like that, just by itself. I think it's, for me it's a beautiful
                  present to what I'm doing. When I was young I chose this profession
                  because it looked like, to me, a modern wave of communication. And, it
                  looked to me like a profession where I could communicate to a lot of
                  people. It's like a painter who paints, or a musician who makes a song,
                  or a writer who writes a book. I make clothes to communicate. And the
                  beautiful thing is that you send something out to world, and the world
                  comes back to you. And for me it's amazing.



                  AR: How would you define Asian style at the moment?



                  AD:
                  I believe in individuality. I don't believe in one mass thing for
                  everybody. So, I appreciate personality, but what I can feel when I'm
                  here is that there's a lot of energy. There is a belief in the future
                  which is very beautiful I think. And I think Asian women are amazing.
                  You can feel a strength, a will to a lot of things. I like that, this
                  energy, and if you just look at them, they have beautiful skin; you can
                  see spirituality in their eyes, which make them very attractive to me.



                  AR: How do you see the future of fashion trade in Asia taking shape?



                  AD:
                  I think that people are discovering different fashions now. I think
                  that the first things that get here were like the main conventional big
                  houses. But, I think that Asian women are now also discovering that
                  there is something more than a label. That you can have clothing with a
                  soul. That you can have an emotion that it's not only about labels. And
                  I think they are discovering this. What I try to do is I really want to
                  express a respect for people who are wearing my clothes. That's why I
                  never put like big labels or branding. If I meet somebody I want to
                  meet a woman or a man. I don't want to meet a label. So, I think this
                  is important for them to understand. You don't need to show off with
                  labels to be well dressed. I think but, it's ok. It's evolution.



                  AR:
                  Ann, just stay with us for another couple minutes we're going to take
                  another quick break here. When we return we'll peer inside Ann's life
                  away from the style spotlight.



                  BLOCK C:



                  AR: Welcome
                  back, you're watching Talk Asia. And we're with the fashion designer
                  Ann Demeulemeester. Ann, was fashion always the dream for you? Was it
                  what you always wanted to do?



                  AD: No, I don't know, it just came
                  up at certain moment in my life. What I always liked to do was to
                  create. I think that's the most important thing that I knew since I was
                  a child that I wanted to create, to invent, but it could be all kinds
                  of things. But what I like the most was to draw, to make drawings, to
                  make portraits of people and if you make portraits automatically you're
                  also drawing clothing, and from that I started to be interested in
                  who's wearing what and why. So, at a certain point I thought ok, maybe
                  that could be my profession. This study, this personality study, but
                  that's where the idea came from. It was when I was 15 or 16 when I got
                  this idea. But I was never a child who was making clothes for my dolls.
                  No, not at all.



                  AR: Now your husband, Patrick Robert, he was your
                  childhood sweetheart. And you do collaborate together which some might
                  say is the dangerous thing. People say never work with your husband or
                  your wife. How does it work for you?



                  AD: I just love it. It's a
                  very natural thing for me. I do believe you meet certain people in your
                  life because you have to meet them. And my husband is one of these
                  people. When I saw him the first time, I just knew that this was my
                  soul mate. I think the fact that we grew up together, that we became
                  adults together made us like one voice and made us stronger together.
                  My husband is like an artist, he is a very creative person who is very
                  inspiring to me, and we live together, we work together. It's so
                  natural. I can't imagine that it would be different.



                  AR: You've got a son, Victor, who's 20 years old. Has he shown any aptitude for the artistic way of life?



                  AD:
                  Yeah absolutely, I think that he's our child so it's bit in the genes.
                  He's very creative. He's a person who has an open mind, who likes to
                  experiment. All these elements he got bits from his parents I think.
                  But he's not somebody who's interested in fashion. I think he has to
                  find his own voice. And that's what he's doing now. He's in arts school
                  in Belgium. He's experimenting, working, which is good.



                  AR: Where do you get most of your inspiration from when you're trying to come up with designs?



                  AD
                  I don't know where it comes from. It just comes, but if I want to
                  create inspiration, I ask questions to myself. Like very difficult
                  questions, and by trying to find an answer, the moment I find the
                  answer, I have the inspiration. That's the way how I try to create
                  inspiration for myself. It's thinking, it comes from inside.



                  AR:
                  In a trade, where products are really down to personal taste, I
                  suppose, how important is it to listen to people who may not like what
                  you do?



                  AD: I think it's always very interesting, to listen to
                  people. What do they like, what do they don't like, whether they're
                  interested or not, I always learn about human nature, if I listen to
                  that. But at the same time, I'm somebody who follows his own voice. And
                  I'm convinced that people who think like me, who appreciate what I'm
                  doing, they find my product.



                  AR: Many fashion designers love the
                  glamorous party life styles. You seem to shy away from that. What's so
                  good about the quiet life?



                  AD: I don't know, I'm just somebody
                  who tries to be honest, who tries to concentrate on pure things. I
                  don't know, I'm just myself. I'm it's a difficult question. I'm not
                  hiding, I'm just, I like... how I can I say, I don't like
                  artificiality. But I do like good music; I do like to meet friends. I
                  do like good contact. I do like to amuse myself. But I'm not somebody
                  who absolutely wants to be in a spotlight. I just try to do my job. I
                  try to do it good. And voila!



                  AR How much of what you design is
                  an extension of you as a person saying things you're feelings, things
                  that you're thinking at the time, which may go into the way you design
                  the piece?



                  AD: It's very hard to say where I begin and my work
                  stops, it's...I can't figure this out. Everything's mixed. But this
                  doesn't mean that I work for myself. I'm very aware of the fact that
                  I'm working for thousands of people but I do have trust in my own
                  feeling as a woman and as a designer. I don't know where the woman
                  begins and the designer stops.



                  AR: You must get this asked all the time, but I'm going to ask you this anyway. What are your biggest fashion Do's and Don'ts?



                  AD:
                  My biggest fashion dos and don'ts? Like I said, I'm not a dictator. I
                  hate these kind of games. Everybody can do what he likes. I'm an
                  anarchist in that...



                  I don't want to say you have to do this, you
                  don't do that. It's really too ridiculous. We are adult women, adult
                  men, I hope we know how we want to dress and voila.



                  AR: Ann it
                  was great to talk to you, best of luck with new opening of the store in
                  Hong Kong. And that is for Talk Asia this week, my guest has been the
                  Belgium fashion designer, Ann Deumeulemeester. I'm Anjali Rao, thank
                  you for watching.



                  Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                  StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                  Comment

                  • xcoldricex
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2006
                    • 1347

                    #10
                    Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



                    there's a new Ann Demeulemeester interview in the new issue of HE magazine, it's pretty good, check it out.



                    also an interview of Takahiro Miyashita of Number (N)ine...

                    Comment

                    • interman
                      Member
                      • Dec 2006
                      • 88

                      #11
                      Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

                      Do any of you know of an audio or video clip where her name is pronounced?

                      Comment

                      • Faust
                        kitsch killer
                        • Sep 2006
                        • 37852

                        #12
                        Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



                        [quote user="interman"]Do any of you know of an audio or video clip where her name is pronounced?
                        [/quote]



                        Hahaha, there is no consensus. It's either De-myu-le-mister, De-myu-le-meister, or De-myu-le-maister. I need an official version, dammit.



                        Thanks for the heads up, coldrice. Where do I get the He magazine. Don't tell me it's Japanese.

                        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                        Comment

                        • xcoldricex
                          Senior Member
                          • Sep 2006
                          • 1347

                          #13
                          Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)



                          it was in my local B&N.



                          she talks about her growing up in a cloister, hints at why her patches say what they say, her opinion on the antwerp six, etc. it's quite a long interview actually for a fashion magazine (oversized magazine, two full pages of text).

                          Comment

                          • nqth
                            Senior Member
                            • Sep 2006
                            • 350

                            #14
                            Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

                            [quote user="kucejoe"]


                            Other than that, I have to ask, what would her perfume, maybe Eau de Ann, smell like?




                            [/quote]




                            I am currious, too. Silver leather and paints, maybe:-)

                            Comment

                            • Faust
                              kitsch killer
                              • Sep 2006
                              • 37852

                              #15
                              Re: Ann Demeulemeester article (Ann of Antwerp from NYT)

                              [quote user="nqth"][quote user="kucejoe"]


                              Other than that, I have to ask, what would her perfume, maybe Eau de Ann, smell like?




                              [/quote]




                              I am currious, too. Silver leather and paints, maybe:-)



                              [/quote]



                              It would smell like Patti Smith, of course.

                              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X
                              😀
                              🥰
                              🤢
                              😎
                              😡
                              👍
                              👎