Portrait de créateur
Les muses de ZUZWA
The fitting room at ZUZWA's Paris atelier smells of steam and wool. A model stands on a low platform in a halffinished coat, sleeves pinned at the elbow, while Zuzanna Wawrzyniak circles with chalk in hand. She marks the fall of the lapel,...
The fitting room at Via Gesù 12, sometime in 1991
The fitting room at Via Gesù 12, sometime in 1991. Gianni Versace circles a model wearing a dress constructed almost entirely from gold safety pins. He adjusts one at the hip, steps back, adjusts another at the shoulder. The dress holds. It...
Les muses de Valentino
Valentino Garavani pins a hem on Marisa Berenson in the atelier on via Condotti. It is 1968, and the room smells of tuberose and sizing. The dress is ivory silk gazar, the skirt cut on the bias to move like water. Berenson stands still. Gar...
The fitting room at the Gucci headquarters in Milan, spring 1996
The fitting room at the Gucci headquarters in Milan, spring 1996. Tom Ford adjusts the cut of a silk jersey dress on a model whose proportions he has been studying for weeks. The fabric clings, then releases. He steps back, narrows his eyes...
The studio at 5 avenue Marceau, 1966
The studio at 5 avenue Marceau, 1966. Betty Catroux stands in front of a mirror wearing a man's tuxedo jacket, trousers cut slim enough to break at the ankle, a white shirt open two buttons. Yves Saint Laurent circles her once, pins the sho...
The fitting room at Via Fogazzaro, sometime in the mid-nineties
The fitting room at Via Fogazzaro, sometime in the midnineties. Miuccia Prada adjusts a sleeve on a nylon jacket so thin it could fold into a cigarette case. The model shifts her weight. "Non così," Prada says, tugging the fabric back towar...
Virgil Abloh used to say he designed for three women at once
Virgil Abloh used to say he designed for three women at once. One was in her twenties, carrying a tote bag full of architecture books and a halffinished thesis. Another was in her forties, running a gallery in Basel. The third didn't exist...
The fitting room at Miu Miu's Milan headquarters is smaller than you'd expect
The fitting room at Miu Miu's Milan headquarters is smaller than you'd expect. Miuccia Prada once told Women's Wear Daily that she prefers it that way — less distance between herself and the model, less room for abstraction. The woman stand...
The white lab coat hung on a rack backstage at the Cirque d'Hiver in 1989, numbers written in Tipp-Ex across the hem
The white lab coat hung on a rack backstage at the Cirque d'Hiver in 1989, numbers written in TippEx across the hem. No name on the label. No face at the end of the show. Just a line of models in reclaimed garments and splittoe Tabi boots t...
Les muses de Louis Vuitton
The atelier is on Rue du Pont Neuf, above the original workshop, and the light at four o'clock in November is the colour of weak tea. Marc Jacobs is fitting a dress — silk chiffon, cut on the bias, embroidered with what looks like graffiti...
Jonathan Anderson doesn't deal in muses the way most creative directors do
Jonathan Anderson doesn't deal in muses the way most creative directors do. He deals in collaborators—women whose work and presence reshape what Loewe means season after season. Not faces on a mood board. Not names dropped in show notes. Ac...
Simon Porte Jacquemus stands in the back room of his Paris showroom, pinning a sleeve on a mannequin
Simon Porte Jacquemus stands in the back room of his Paris showroom, pinning a sleeve on a mannequin. The fabric — a linen so fine it catches the light like gauze — belongs to a dress he's been reworking for three days. He steps back. Adjus...
The fitting room at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré is smaller than you'd think
The fitting room at 24 Faubourg SaintHonoré is smaller than you'd think. Two chairs, one mirror, a wooden rail. Catherine de Karolyi stands in front of a client in 1967, adjusting the fall of a silk blouse she's just cut. The woman is a reg...
Grace Coddington once said that a fashion house doesn't remember its history — it remembers its women
Grace Coddington once said that a fashion house doesn't remember its history — it remembers its women. At Gucci, that memory is selective, occasionally mythologised, and anchored by three figures whose influence shaped not only collections...
Hubert de Givenchy met Audrey Hepburn in 1953, expecting Katharine
Hubert de Givenchy met Audrey Hepburn in 1953, expecting Katharine. He had been told Miss Hepburn was coming to discuss costumes for Sabrina, and he assumed the studio meant the older, established star. Instead, a gamine in ballet flats app...
The fitting room at Palazzo Fendi smells of espresso and pressed wool
The fitting room at Palazzo Fendi smells of espresso and pressed wool. A model stands centre, draped in a coat whose sleeves puddle at the wrist. Silvia Venturini Fendi circles once, tugs the shoulder seam forward two centimetres, steps bac...
Monica Bellucci leans against a balcony rail in Capri, 1995
Monica Bellucci leans against a balcony rail in Capri, 1995. Black lace dress, bare shoulders, a cigarette between her fingers. The photograph ran in Vogue Italia and became shorthand for everything Dolce & Gabbana understood about the fema...
The first fitting took place in a townhouse on avenue Montaigne, February 1947
The first fitting took place in a townhouse on avenue Montaigne, February 1947. Carmel Snow sat on a gilt chair. Christian Dior stood at the edge of the room, pale and smoking. A girl named MarieThérèse walked out in jacket number eighteen...
Les muses de Chanel
Gabrielle Chanel kept a photograph of Jeanne Moreau on her desk at 31 rue Cambon. Not because Moreau wore the clothes particularly well — though she did — but because Moreau moved through rooms the way Chanel wanted women to move. Chin firs...
The fitting room at 16 rue Vivienne is white
The fitting room at 16 rue Vivienne is white. Stark white. Phoebe Philo stands at the centre in black trousers and a grey sweater, arms crossed, watching a model turn in a coat that will not appear in any lookbook for another six months. Th...
A trench coat is only as good as the woman wearing it
A trench coat is only as good as the woman wearing it. Burberry has always understood this, though the house has not always admitted it out loud. For most of the twentieth century, the brand's advertising leaned on explorers, aviators, offi...
The fitting room in Solomeo overlooks the valley
The fitting room in Solomeo overlooks the valley. Brunello Cucinelli, seated on a low stool, watches a model circle in a camel coat. He does not speak immediately. When he does, it is not about the coat's proportions or the drape of the cas...
The fitting room at Bottega Veneta's Milan headquarters is not large
The fitting room at Bottega Veneta's Milan headquarters is not large. It is, however, silent in the particular way that comes from thick carpet and thicker walls. Three women have stood in that room, at different points across forty years,...
The fitting room on avenue George V, sometime in 1951
The fitting room on avenue George V, sometime in 1951. Cristóbal Balenciaga stands behind a woman draped in black wool, his scissors poised at the shoulder seam. He does not speak. The client — one of three who will shape not only his work...
Isabella Blow arrived at the Royal College of Art degree show in 1992 wearing a Philip Treacy hat shaped like a ship
Isabella Blow arrived at the Royal College of Art degree show in 1992 wearing a Philip Treacy hat shaped like a ship. She left having bought Lee McQueen's entire graduate collection for £5,000, paid in instalments of £100 a week. The clothe...
The fitting room at Acne Studios' Stockholm headquarters smells faintly of steam and sizing spray
The fitting room at Acne Studios' Stockholm headquarters smells faintly of steam and sizing spray. It is 2012, and Jonny Johansson is pinning a grey wool coat on a woman who stands very still, arms slightly raised. She is not a model in the...
ZUZWA : les artisans qui font le travail
The atelier sits above a cobbled courtyard in Marrakech's Gueliz quarter, and on most mornings you can hear the treadle machines before you reach the stairs. Zuzanna Skalska works at a cutting table near the window, pinning a sleeve head in...
The fitting room on Via Gesù smells faintly of steam and sizing
The fitting room on Via Gesù smells faintly of steam and sizing. A dress — silk jersey, handpleated in a spiral that begins at the left hip and winds upward across the bodice — hangs on a form near the window. Three people surround it. None...
The atelier sits on the fourth floor of Palazzo Mignanelli, just off Piazza di Spagna
The atelier sits on the fourth floor of Palazzo Mignanelli, just off Piazza di Spagna. Twentythree seamstresses work there on any given morning, and most of them have been with Valentino longer than the current creative director. Their name...
Tom Ford : les artisans qui font le travail
The leather jacket in question—midnight suede, handcut on the bias, lined in silk charmeuse the colour of old cognac—was photographed on Mariacarla Boscono for the Spring 2012 campaign. One recalls the image: her shoulder angled just so, th...
Saint Laurent : les artisans qui font le travail
The atelier sits on the third floor of 5 Avenue Marceau, where the windows face west and the light goes soft around four. That's when Dominique Veillon likes to check a sleeve head, because the raking angle shows whether the cap sits clean...
The fitting room on the third floor of Via Fogazzaro is smaller than one expects
The fitting room on the third floor of Via Fogazzaro is smaller than one expects. Two tables, bolts of nylon stacked against the wall, a dress form wearing what looks like half a sleeve. Miuccia Prada stands near the window, turning a bag o...
The pattern-cutter's name is Elena Rossi, and she has been with Off-White since 2016
The patterncutter's name is Elena Rossi, and she has been with OffWhite since 2016. She works from a table in the Milan atelier, where she translates Virgil Abloh's sketches—and now Ib Kamara's—into muslins, then toiles, then the garments t...
The fitting room on the third floor of Miu Miu's Parisian showroom, late September
The fitting room on the third floor of Miu Miu's Parisian showroom, late September. A sample coat — doublebreasted, wool gabardine, collar wide as a lapel — hangs on a form. Three women circle it. One adjusts the shoulder seam with her thum...
Maison Margiela : les artisans qui font le travail
The white coat hangs on a form at the back of the atelier in Paris, its seams turned outward, stitching visible where most houses would hide it. A pair of hands—belonging to Madame Geneviève Pons, première d'atelier since 1997—pins the musl...
Louis Vuitton : les artisans qui font le travail
The workshop sits on the third floor of a nondescript building in AsnièressurSeine, fifteen minutes northwest of Paris proper. Through the tall windows, you can see the Seine curving past industrial rooflines. Inside, a woman named Sylvie M...
The Loewe Puzzle bag exists because of a man named Óscar Padilla, though you will not find his name on the dust bag
The Loewe Puzzle bag exists because of a man named Óscar Padilla, though you will not find his name on the dust bag. Padilla has been with the maison for thirtyone years. He works in a workshop on the outskirts of Madrid, where the leather...
The atelier sits above a narrow street in the 10th arrondissement, four floors up, no plaque
The atelier sits above a narrow street in the 10th arrondissement, four floors up, no plaque. Inside, three patterncutters are draping muslin over a dress form. The designer is not present. He is, one assumes, in Marseille or Miami or where...
The workshop in Pantin sits behind a glass wall
The workshop in Pantin sits behind a glass wall. Inside, a woman named Céline Berthier is stitching a Birkin handle. She has been at Hermès for seventeen years. The stitch she uses — a saddle stitch, two needles working in opposite directio...
The fitting room on Via delle Caldaie smells faintly of beeswax and coffee
The fitting room on Via delle Caldaie smells faintly of beeswax and coffee. A woman named Lucia Martelli, sixtyone, is hunched over a Gucci Bamboo 1947 in midassembly, her fingers working a curved needle through vachetta leather at a pace t...
The atelier at avenue George V is quiet at nine in the morning
The atelier at avenue George V is quiet at nine in the morning. A première d'atelier named Sylvie Moreau pins the sleeve of a black wool coat to the shoulder of a dress form. She does not look up when someone walks in. The coat is from the...
The atelier on Via Solari is quiet at seven in the morning
The atelier on Via Solari is quiet at seven in the morning. Leather cutters arrive first, followed by seamstresses, then the selliers who assemble the frames. By eightthirty, thirtyseven craftspeople are at their stations, and the hum of in...
Dolce & Gabbana : les artisans qui font le travail
The corset leaves the atelier on Via Goldoni at four in the afternoon, wrapped in muslin and loaded into a van bound for the Metropol. It weighs less than you'd think—boning aside, it's mostly silk coutil and grosgrain ribbon—but it takes t...
The fitting room on the second floor of 30 Avenue Montaigne smells faintly of steam and beeswax
The fitting room on the second floor of 30 Avenue Montaigne smells faintly of steam and beeswax. A toile hangs on a form near the window. Madame Jacqueline, première d'atelier tailleur for the past fortytwo years, circles it with a fistful...
The atelier on rue Cambon smells faintly of sizing and steam
The atelier on rue Cambon smells faintly of sizing and steam. A première d'atelier named Jacqueline Mercier adjusts the sleeve head of a tweed jacket for the third time this morning, pinning the cap so it sits a quarterinch higher than the...
The atelier is quiet at nine in the morning
The atelier is quiet at nine in the morning. Not silent — there's the hum of the steamer, the tick of a cutting wheel against mat board — but quiet in the way a workshop is when everyone already knows what they're doing. On a long table nea...
The fitting room on Horseferry Road smells like steam and wool
The fitting room on Horseferry Road smells like steam and wool. A pattern cutter named Sarah Holt pins the sleeve head of a trench coat while the designer watches, silent. The coat is halfway between a toile and the thing itself — calico bo...
The fitting room in Solomeo smells of wool and espresso
The fitting room in Solomeo smells of wool and espresso. Brunello Cucinelli stands beside a table stacked with cashmere swatches, speaking quietly with a woman whose hands move across a jacket sleeve with the practised economy of someone wh...
Bottega Veneta : les artisans qui font le travail
The leather arrives in Vicenza already tanned, but it doesn't become a bag until Giuliana Benetton runs it through the first cut. She's been at Bottega Veneta's atelier for nineteen years. Her station is third from the left in the main work...
## L'atelier invisible
L'atelier invisible The fitting room on the sixth floor of Balenciaga's avenue George V headquarters smells faintly of steam and sizing. A première d'atelier named Sylvie Marchand stands beside a dress form draped in what will become, six...
The pattern cutter's name was Judy Halil
The pattern cutter's name was Judy Halil. She spent twenty years turning McQueen's sketches into toiles that could actually be sewn. The embroiderer was Simon Ungless, who met Lee McQueen at Central Saint Martins and worked the graduate col...
Acne Studios : les artisans qui font le travail
The atelier sits above a cobbled courtyard in Stockholm's Södermalm district, and on a Tuesday in late September the patterncutters are bent over a table strewn with muslin. One of them, a woman named Elin Norberg, is adjusting the shoulder...
## La maison qui refuse de grandir
La maison qui refuse de grandir Il y a un atelier au troisième étage d'un immeuble de la rue Charlot, dans le Marais, où les patrons sont épinglés directement sur le mur. Pas de table de coupe. Pas de mannequins alignés. Juste deux fondat...
## Un atelier devenu empire
Un atelier devenu empire Reggio di Calabria, early 1970s. Gianni Versace is bent over a cutting table in his mother's dressmaking shop, tracing a pattern into silk. The fabric is for a local client, the fee modest. He is twentyfour, alrea...
## The Red Room
The Red Room Valentino Garavani fitted dresses the way other couturiers fitted gloves. He stood behind the model, hands on her shoulders, and adjusted the drape by millimetres. Not with pins—he disliked the idea of puncturing fabric befor...
## Le costume comme manifeste
Le costume comme manifeste Tom Ford did not begin as a designer. He began as an actor who could not act, an architecture student who found buildings too slow, and — by his own admission in a 2004 Vogue interview — someone who understood s...
Yves Saint Laurent walked off the runway at the Théâtre de la Mode in January 1958 wearing a borrowed suit
Yves Saint Laurent walked off the runway at the Théâtre de la Mode in January 1958 wearing a borrowed suit. He was twentyone. Christian Dior had died three months earlier, and Saint Laurent—who had been sketching in the atelier since he was...
The via Fogazzaro atelier sits behind a nondescript door, two floors above street level
The via Fogazzaro atelier sits behind a nondescript door, two floors above street level. Inside, a toile is pinned to a dressmaker's form — sleeves set low, armhole dropped past the shoulder's natural line. Miuccia Prada adjusts the drape,...
Les fondateurs de Off-White
Virgil Abloh stood in the Fiera Milano in June 2017, three months after his first OffWhite runway show, and told a room of journalists that he was interested in the threepercent shift. Not revolution. Not disruption. Three percent. A tweak...
The fitting room at via Fogazzaro, Milan, 1993
The fitting room at via Fogazzaro, Milan, 1993. Miuccia Prada holds a short wool skirt against a model's hip, adjusts the waistband down an inch, then pulls it back up. The hem lands midthigh — higher than anything shown under the Prada nam...