Jean Charles de Castelbajak on Lego Caps and Korean Bohemian

Look At Me launches new rubric "What the author wanted to say", in which the creators of certain works of art will tell stories and anecdotes how this beauty is created and obtained, and most importantly, why it is needed.

The second material is designer Jean Charles de Castelbajac, whose exhibition of drawings was opened in Moscow with the support of Mercedes-Benz and Martell. Castelbajac told Look At Me about where he met little Kanye West, how he broke his arm 7 times and why nobody needs extravagance anymore.

Interview: Margarita Zubatova

Oh, this is from my collection of Physical Graffiti, I made it, probably, in 2003.

In 2001

And really, in 2001 It was a collection of pop culture, the show even featured the guys from One Trip. Everything happened in a large room, like a spaceship. And this girl in a glowing dress was like a stranger. I made it out of the fabric that the Italian police use for their uniform — it glows in the dark.

In the collection of many prints from comics. Do you read them yourself?

In fact, I just like the graphics of old comics. I read only Tin-Tin. On this shirt with hair (this is the first time I used hair on the show) - Francoise Hardy. And this one is another artist who painted Barbarella. Look here, on the belts - the explosive sounds: "Dzin!", "Boom!", "Bach!", "Weas!", "Kling!". Funny item.

When I created this collection, I thought about my friend Malcolm McLaren - producer of the Sex Pistols. Malcolm all his life owned a shop called Too fast to live too young to die, and once I asked him: "Why did you call the store that way?" He called me to a bar in the East End - a very cheap bar with a jukebox. I looked around: "Why did you bring me here?" He replied: "Sit down, skip a couple of beers". There was a bunch of guys in the corner, you know, that kind of bad guys. They drank and talked very loudly. Suddenly, a fight began, and one of them went to the joukbox and put the song Summertime Blues. The rest suddenly stopped, turned to the machine and poured a whole handful of pounds on it. At this point, the first jumped on his bike and sped away - in fact, he circled around the bar until the song was over, after which he abruptly drove inside and grabbed all the money. So this guy was called Too fast to live too young to die.

Is that so close to you? I'm not talking about looting friends, of course.

Oh yeah. I have no driver's license - I have been riding a motorcycle since I was eighteen. Now I drive Triumph, and then Harley Davidson. During all this time, I broke my hand seven times, apparently because I was guided by the same principles as this guy. I felt like a hero, and a hero always means danger. And here is the result. Foolish youth.

I saw ski suits on your shows several times. Honestly, not the most familiar thing in fashion shows.

You know, I so often showed something unusual in shows. I put my life on doing things that are not expected of me. Sportswear on the podium, coat of teddy bears on the podium, the podium was a scene for me where I could endlessly express myself. And, god, I've been doing this for forty years.

And almost all the forty years you do celebrity T-shirts. Here, for example, Edie Slimane. I can understand. 2003 is the time of crazy hype around him. Did you wear his costumes?

Oh, I was never thin enough (in the original - slim., Approx. Ed.) To wear Edie Slimane. But he is really a talented person, in some way an architect, an artist. Another designer who is balancing between fashion and art, like me. And he has a subtle sense of drama. Sometimes he even reminds me of Bob Wilson.

And which young designers do you sympathize with now?

I really like Christopher Kane, Bushra Zharar, Alexander Vautier. Interesting things makes my niece. This is a stamp for older ladies - The Old Ladies' Rebellion.

For some of their things, I'm ready to age.

Do you know this brand? This is great! And yes, I forgot about my favorite among the younger generation - Jonathan Anderson.

Well, you just want to bribe me.

Oh yeah. I love it. He could be my son.

Here you have a dog running down the runway. Was it easy to work with her?

This is a collection that I made after four years of stagnation. She was called Honni soit qui mal y pense. Yummi's dog belonged to a girl I met at that time. At the show, she behaved well.

In the same show, the model goes in a dress-lock.

Oh, this is a very funny dress! I started talking about the name of the show. Honni soit qui mal y pense is an inscription on the English coat of arms, which means "Damn one who thinks bad of it." It all started with King Henry IV. One day, his Queen Anne Boleyn dropped her jacket, and someone from the entourage began to laugh. Then he said: Honni soit qui mal y pense - "If you don’t like it, get out." Here is the motto of the collection. And the dress is a castle, my castle!

Your castle?

Yes, in my country there is an old building with such a carved tower (showing on an iPhone). So the coat was a metaphor of the castle, the fortress in which I live. The print in the top can even be seen soldiers. It was an attempt to say that I was innocent. That has nothing to do with me anymore.

On this model, the cap JC / DC. Is it something like AC / DC?

Oh, it's a long story. I was in London at my retrospective show in 2006. The receptionist came up to me and said that a gang of black boys was waiting for me at the door: "They look freaky, so I did not allow them to enter." I went downstairs and saw ten guys in hoodie. As soon as I opened the door, they said in chorus: "Youou, JCDC!". I'm like, "What's that?" They undid their hoodies and showed vintage cartoon sweatshirts, which I did a long time for Iceberg. It was so cool! I almost cried. I never thought about JCDC! In France, we do not pronounce De, so I was sometimes called JCC, but that's about it.

But the beginning of this story lies in the 1990s. I was still friends with Malkom McLaren and was not experiencing the best period in my career (Prada and Helmut Lang took off all the above, and I was a loser, an outstanding loser). Then we went to the Bronx Kraftwerk concert. I think we were the only whites on this celebration of life. And then I saw a crowd of twenty-five - thirty teenagers in my cartoon sweaters for Iceberg. Nobody bought them at that time, and they were happy to tear them off at a super price on sale. And who were these teenagers? They were Jay-Z, LL Cool J and Kanye West - they all became my friends. In fact, it was these teenagers from New York who inspired those from London to call me JCDC.

Now I can say that my life was literally saved thanks to hip-hop, I started my career again. Cartoon sweatshirts became the object of desire of every second guy who wanted to be like those hip-hop icons from the 90s - and I returned to the business.

Do you like hip-hop at all?

I like electronic music more, but I respect Kanye. He is the most talented guy in this business, and I often meet him now. He comes to my studio, examines everything for six hours, comes up, jerks: "What are you doing here? And what is there?" He loves design very much.

And here is more about headgear. There is a hat ...

Oh, this is a monster hat! You can see a lot of the same at my exhibition. I adore monsters. Actually, it paired me with Lady Gaga. My ideas about beauty are generally far from classical. For example, I like people with broken noses. I do not like perfection, I love the strange, the unexpected. Errors touch and touch deep.

There was also a T-shirt with Debbie Harry. Not only designers you chant in your collections.

Oh yeah. Debbie was the girlfriend of my best friend who passed away a few years ago. In childhood his name was Denis. In honor of him, she wrote the song Denis-Denis. Denis-Denis ... (sings).

Do you plan to make T-shirts with today's pop stars?

Yes, I am planning a project with K-pop-artists ...

God, do you love everything we do? And this we have not yet moved on to your obsession with Mickey Mouse.

Oh, do you like K-pop? Do you even know 2ne1? I will work with them. And CL?

Yes of course.

She is very cool! We were introduced to Kanye. Do you know Verbal?

I don't know him.

You should listen to him! Verbal is a Japanese producer, while a jewelery designer, he is actively working on the Korean market.

Oh, I'll see.

Record now, sounds like V-E-R-B-A-L.

Already on my recorder. You still had a child in this show ...

Yes, here and in a variety of shows. Previously, I generally followed the rule - to release one child on the podium every season. I spent a lot of time accepting what I'm getting old. And so, in my shows, you could always see some kind of childhood symbol - Teddy Bear, a cartoon print, a child ... But now I don’t think about it at all. Humbled.

I made this collection in difficult times for myself. Designer's income is not a cornucopia. You then fly up to heaven, then hit the ground. You must always be alert, ready to fight. In fact, lack of money is even better than their abundance. It stimulates the imagination, you have to get out of the situation with minimal means. Now designers have a lot of money. They make huge dramatic shows, but they think less. Here I had to come up with something strange - something that would hook the audience. Some cheap trick. I always liked the strange, awkward, unexpected, absurd. And I came up with these hats, piercing the heads of the models.

I remember the time when nobody cared about Lady Gaga, and I began to dress her. I created for her a jacket of dozens of Hermites, after which the New York tabloid People said that it was "the ugliest coat in the history of mankind." I was so proud! It was really cool. Who needs the most beautiful coat in the history of mankind? We did the most ugly! ... In fact, Gaga is a bad girl: she does not want to give me the jacket back! Says: "Oh, and I lost him!" And then I turn on the TV, watch a tour of her wardrobe and see my jacket! And immediately write the SMS Formichetti: "Hey, she did not lose him, I see him!" (laughs)

And how did you even think of doing it?

Oh, this is again a story about my friend Malcolm McLaren. He always called us, the French, frogs. And I thought - why not make a frog coat, French mascot. At that time I was doing things from the strangest and sometimes cheap materials, for example, from the curtain of the shower.

Oh, the FW 2010 collection was a real hit. It was a time of huge hype on sites like High Snobiety, Hype Beast, Kanye West's blog. Suddenly, all the hip-hop stars remembered that I was the “king of the cartoon” (Dazed & Confused called me that), they were expecting just such a collection - maximalist, extravagant, truly “castelbazhakovskaya”. And they got it. True, it was not all that the show remembered. Suddenly, in the middle of the action, this crazy guy from the "Dictator" ran out on the podium, how was he?

Sasha Baron Cohen?

Right, Sasha Baron Cohen. So, I stand backstage and see a running towards me right among the models of Sasha Baron Cohen. It was wildly funny. And then he finds me, starts to tug at the sleeve and shout: "Oh, is it you the designer? And what is this going on with you here?" At this moment, the guards are running towards us, starting to push him away from me, and he take it and run away to the podium. Here the lead singer of the band that played there suddenly turns, takes off his pants and starts shining with his ass! All managers are shocked, they don't know what to do. The guard runs after Sasha Baron Cohen, and I shout: "Leave him, let him do what he wants!" Oh god, it was a wild show, so many excesses at the same time.

What a madness. But still about the collection - did you manually collect the cap?

My assistant was a real Lego genius. At that time I was doing a collaboration with New Era and suggested that he build lego caps. He collected them with his own hands, yes.

Oh, this collection was also a success. See the faces on the print? This is a picture of me in the image of a sailor with lipstick. It was the first and last time when I put on lipstick. From the photo everything went. It turned out the story of Tahiti, here in the coat, for example, you can see postcards with palm trees. It was a very cool collection, a real shot.

And here you have a coat with Donald Duck. In other collections you can see Mickey, 101 Dalmatians and other Disney heroes. You seem to love them very much.

Yes! I like these old cartoon icons, drawn by hand. Well, and yet - this is my love for children.

In fact, the collection of SS 2011, probably the last crazy collection that I saw from you. The following look more commercial or something. It only seems to me?

I will tell everything as it is. The guys who help me run a business gave me advice: you have to do "real" clothes, people now do not look like in the 1980s - then people wanted to dress extravagantly, eighty Lady Gag walked on the streets, and now they are alone. And I understand them, everything that I did before this was not “real” clothing, these were exercises, experiments that are incompatible with the modern state of the economy. And I want to continue to work in my home. I worked in it for forty years, I want to stay forty more and transfer the rule to my son. So if I want to sell my clothes, I have to stop doing crazy things. And it actually worked - the last three collections (which are really less extravagant) I finally sold at Selfridges, the last three collections finally appeared on Style.com. Well, you know, everything is brilliantly wild, what I did for this, does not need a modern consumer.

Oh, that's sad.

But wait, I have a solution. The next collection will be in all the traditions of the house JCDC. In the second line, which will appear very soon - you will see quite wearable things. But on the show - the result of my sick imagination. And, you know, I am glad to say that I am officially returning to the world of these wild things.