Starck challenge to fashion fans
Updated on 10 July 2009
Emily Reuben finds out why renowned French designer Philippe Starck has turned his attention to clothes, but is shunning fashion.
Say the name Philippe Starck, and you think taps, toilets, and see-through chairs. For three decades the influential French designer has become synonymous with re-imaging the world.
He has refashioned everything from lemon squeezers to hotel lobbies. Hotels like Sanderson in London regularly top lists of the world's best.
Now he is turning his eye to fashion - or to be precise, designing clothes. In fact, he is most definitely NOT doing fashion.
That industry, he says, is unsustainable, relying as it does on launching new seasons twice yearly, a cycle that leads to huge over consumption. So, this autumn he is launching a range of clothes. It is just a single collection, in collaboration with the Scottish cashmere label Ballantyne. Creating not fashion, but clothes that are built to last forever.
"Today perhaps the most avant garde word is longevity," he says. "Today when you buy a dress you buy it for you for six months. When you come in our company you buy a dress for you, for your life, for your daughter and your daughter's daughter. It's a different way of thinking. It's the beauty of the timeless."
Full Phillippe Starck interview
He had granted us a rare interview in Milan. Only when we arrived did I realise quite what interviewing one of the world's most celebrated designers would actually entail.
We had arrived early to film some of the clothes in the collection - a not unreasonable hope given they were the subject of our story. But on arrival we were told this would not be allowed. Mr Starck was not happy with the lights in the showroom. They would not adequately show off his creations.
This attention to detail continued once the master himself arrived.
My trusted cameraman, who has been filming war zones and historic events for as long as Philippe Starck has been designing toothbrushes, stood patiently by as Monsieur Starck repositioned his camera and questioned his use of lights.
This was more of a performance than interviewing the prime minister. But then I suppose this is a man who spends his life looking at the world and trying to make it look better. "It's what happens when you work with a genius," shrugs an assistant.
A genius, an eccentric, a self-indulgent obsessive. There are many ways to describe Mr Starck. But in the interview he was charming, interesting persuasive and funny - if not sometimes a little contradictory.
"My job is not to create beauty. I don't care what it is and I don't know what it is. Beauty is like fashion."Philippe Starck
At one point he tells me earnestly that women are more intelligent that men, because they choose their men for their brains not their bodies. Men, he said, were becoming more like that. He then proceeded to introduce me to his fourth wife, Jasmine, no doubt very bright but who also happened to be elegant slender and very beautiful.
But back to the clothes, and his vision. Mr Starck wants people to buy one item of clothing, say a coat and keep it for life. The only problem is his coats cost a grand. I put it to him that only a small number of people will be able to afford this - not quite the mass fashion revolution that will save the planet.
He dismisses me: "What is the most expensive? To spend $1000 on a coat for life, to keep for your son, for your grandson. Or spend $500 every six months on a new coat."
But how many people spend $500 twice a year on a coat, I ask. Most people spend between £20 and £80.
"Yes but if they spend that every six months - you will see the calculation. Every six months for six years. It's an investment to the future."
Perhaps the time is right for him to promote his new philosophy. The recession is hitting designers hard. Prada's earnings are down 20 per cent this year.
'I am structurally ashamed of what I do'
But now in his 60th year Mr Starck says he does not care whether he influences the big fashion houses. He is proud of what he has achieved, despite having once described his job as "useless".
"I am structurally ashamed of what I do. It's why I can continue. I always think the next project will be the best. I become more and more radical. I have spent thirty years on the revolution that we win on democratic design. Raising the quality, lowering the price to give to everybody. And we can say that is done.
"My job is not to create beauty. I don't care what it is and I don't know what it is. Beauty is like fashion. Today we say this is beautiful. I care more what is good for us. I prefer to replace beauty with goodness. If something is good for you, made in intelligent way with honesty, with ethics, with creativity, it becomes a new type of beauty."
Philippe Starck believes that in the future, designers should focus on meeting people's needs, not simply create things.
By way of example he tells me I might ask him to design me a heater to warm my house: "Yes, of course, I am Phillippe Starck; I can create you a beautiful heater. But perhaps this is not what you want. Perhaps you are cold, perhaps you need love. Come in my arms. You feel warmer. I have done my job."
To emphasis the point, he suggests we film his answer again, but this time with actions. The action part of it being him giving me a cuddle, and the real warmth I am apparently craving.
And with that he is away, off to put the finishing touches to a collection he says he has spent 20 years designing.
Can the man who has done so much to reshape the products we use in our daily lives really reshape the throwaway world of fashion? Well that is up to his customers.
You might agree with his philosophy. But agreeing might not be enough. If you want to buy his clothes, you will need an awful lot of money in the bank too.
