My total life in Paris could be summed up in three places: my condo, the Schiaparelli studio within the Place Vendôme and the Tuileries Backyard, which is midway between the 2. I stroll to work on daily basis, and I prefer to cease right here and sketch, sitting subsequent to a feminine determine product of stone. It’s a sacred time and area for me as a result of as soon as I arrive at work, it’s a nonstop schedule of conferences, interviews and cellphone calls. I realized through the pandemic how a lot I benefit from the feeling of working when nobody else is, that freedom you are feeling early within the morning or late at evening.
Right here within the park, there’s solely my imaginative and prescient and an idea, and nothing could be picked aside. It’s a second for me to report my creativeness on the web page and to place the concepts for a group in movement. In vogue, we’re always churning out new issues, so I’m perpetually each beginning one story and ending one other. I used to sketch with pencils, however now I solely use Sharpies. I just like the power of them — I can’t return and erase something, so I’m compelled to decide to massive, daring strokes.
One of many causes I take these walks is that they provide me an opportunity to bask in nostalgia. Earlier than I moved to Paris from New York Metropolis, I used to be pushed by the fantasy of “what if … ?” Now, I’m on the opposite aspect of that “what if.” These morning walks are the one instances I really feel creatively harmless once more. Once I obtained this job, somebody I like informed me, “Desires are costly.” It’s pricey on so many ranges, and you’ll’t actually think about how once you’re fantasizing about success in your 20s. I at all times take into consideration that as a result of I’ve found the emotional expense of placing your work on the market and having it judged and assessed, to not point out the price of time misplaced away from the individuals whom I like with a view to stay my most intense, wildest dream. However to me, being a designer means being a servant — a servant to your personal imaginative and prescient, to the shopper, to the atelier, to the method, to the expectations, to the strain and to the ecstasy.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
