The artist behind the masterful beauty looks at CDG shares his sketchbook of illustrated inspirations for S/S16
This season, Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons collection was themed around benevolent blue witches, and a potent sense of supernatural power. It seems appropriate, therefore, when long-term collaborator and hairstylist for her shows Julien d'Ys repeatedly describes their relationship and its manifestations as "magical." Their creative relationship – as is true for all of Kawakubo's collaborations – is slightly bizarre; d'Ys doesn't see the clothes until the day before the show, long after he has designed and formed whatever sculptural creations are to grace the models' heads. "The way I work with Rei is special," he explains. "I have no idea how, but what I create is somehow always right for the clothes. This time, the only word I knew was ‘sorceress’ but with sorceress you can only go so far... it's lucky that it worked! And so far, it always has."
This stoic, magical silence is the same way in which Kawakubo works with Frederic Sanchez, the illustrateur sonore who designed the music for the show. Luckily, he brought along Blue Velvet Revisited – an as-yet unreleased album of David Lynch-esque music that had an unnerving syncronicity with the blue velvet fabrication of the looks, for which Isabella Rosselini served as a direct inspiration. In a world that relies on ever-more frenzied and constant communication (something Kawakubo has resisted through her reluctance to facilitate e-commerce and complete avoidance of social media), the unusual manner in which the CDG collections are created serves as yet another facet to the brand's consistently avant-garde innovation – and is, perhaps, partly responsible for their extrordinary impact. Here, we speak to d'Ys about his relationship with Rei as he talks us through his illustrated sketchbook of inspirations for the frothing red concoctions he conjured for S/S16...
On a blood moon palette...
"The show was just after the period of the eclipse, the one that everyone was calling the ‘blood moon.’ When I saw everyone’s pictures of it all, I realised that you could see all these different details of the moon, all these different shades of red reflected by its mountains. Some places were darker, some places lighter – and that was the inspiration; there are all of these different colours in the wigs, they aren’t just one red."
On Lady Gaga...
"In 2009, I did a story with Grace Coddington and Lady Gaga, shot by Annie Leibovitz. It was inspired by Hansel and Gretel, and the Brothers Grimm, and we gave Lady Gaga all this red hair. Recently, I put up a picture of it on my Instagram, and I thought, ‘This could be a good idea for Comme des Garçons’! But afterwards, I had to find a way to do it… it’s different process, making hair for a picture and making hair for a show. I have to use all these special techniques to make the wig almost solid, sort of like a hat."
On mouthfuls of angel kisses...
"The first thing I tried for the lips was red – but it looked almost too beautiful, too perfect. The girl ended up looking like some glamorous old picture of Grace Coddington! So I tried the black, but I just put my fingers in the colour and then did a little ‘angel kiss’ with my fingertips onto their mouths. I didn’t want to make them ugly – you know, sometimes Rei likes the word ugly, she’s punk, she’s funny. But sometimes it’s good to make the girls beautiful."
On Rei Kawakubo herself...
"I think that knew from the beginning that I was creative, I feel like she read it from the way that I worked because I never like to do something I’ve done before. It’s always so mental how the collections come together, I can’t explain – sometimes I’m in shock! Many years ago, for S/S10, I thought that we should do something colourful, so I made wigs in reds and yellows and oranges. With Rei, the main colour is always black, white or red: she loves those three colours. I had no idea that the collection itself would be a colourful one... it just worked! I don’t know, it’s magical. It always works perfectly. I’m lucky, because she always like what I do, but that makes the pressure even more intense because I want to make her so happy, and to do something completely different, something special every time. It’s a big challenge each season... I can go a bit crazy."
"This time, she was happy; you can see on her face when she’s not. She’s demanding; but I'm demanding too. That’s why the connection has worked all these years, and it’s why I only do her show. She knows exactly what she wants. She doesn’t talk too much… well, I think she’s talking more now. But she knows what she wants. I’m very happy and lucky to work with her; she’s one of the most creative people in the fashion business. I used to work with Azzedine Alaïa, one of the last couturiers, and they are the same kind of people. They are talented; they know what they want to do with clothes; they are truly unique.”
