Before being appointed to helm Lanvin, the French designer was often described as “under the radar” or a “best-kept secret.” In an industry where party circuit exhibitionism and social media visibility is often lionized, she reasons that her discretion may be her strength. “One can exist through the power of one’s signature, like the plume of an auteur” —or, as she otherwise puts it: “My work has always spoken for me.”
Indeed it has. She was anointed an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres—one of France’s highest honors—in 2017 and has been immersed in the milieu since graduating from Paris’ prestigious École Duperré in 1994. She embraces the fact that the profession requires not simply the whimsy of design but, just as crucially, a harmony of management and operational savvy. Fashion, she says, is “a chain of people; it’s not just glitter.” Jarrar began her career at Jean-Paul Gaultier before moving to Balenciaga, where she directed the studio under Nicolas Ghesquière for a decade, and eventually to Christian Lacroix, where she was head of haute couture design for 18 months, until the label closed in 2009.
↑
Jarrar is an avowed city girl, but she loves taking a breather in nature. She frequently drives to Parc de Saint-Cloud, west of Paris, to walk in its sprawling forests.
One can exist through the power of one’s signature, like the plume of an auteur. My work has always spoken for me.
Having completed a kind of fashion cycle—le début, la fin—she launched her own label in 2010. “I wanted to experience independence. I was motivated despite the crisis in 2008. I didn’t know how I would hold up,” she admits, “but with instinct and passion, you stop calculating.” She sustained her eponymous self-funded label for seven years, selling her clothes at retailers like Bergdorf Goodman and Milan’s 10 Corso Como.
She shuttered the label in March 2016 to steer Lanvin, a much-scrutinized stint that lasted 15 months (fashion critic Alexander Fury preemptively wrote in March 2016: “It is something of a mission—to many an unenviable one”). Ultimately, the fit wasn’t right. “I wanted to preserve myself and move forward, strong in my creativity,” she says diplomatically of the departure.
Jarrar decided not to revive her namesake label, however. “I’m in my full maturity,” she says. “I take my time, because our knowledge and our work is precious. Our achievements must be placed at the service of beautiful projects.” Without knowing what those projects are, she is open to possibilities and enjoying independence—a sentiment echoed by her favorite Comme des Garçons shirt, which reads, “Wear your freedom.”
One current side project away from the spotlight that Jarrar has been participating in is a nonprofit association initiating women in difficult situations into the world of fashion. The endeavor is not a school—rather, it is a means of helping women who endured unspeakable hardships reintegrate into society, by gaining a new skill set and a sense of self-esteem. “The goal is to make them perceive a horizon line,” Jarrar says. “To tell them: You can get out of this.” †
Raised in Cannes and the second-to-last of seven siblings in a family of Moroccan origin, Jarrar attributes her interest in education to the household she grew up in. “My parents always taught us that you had to provide guidance for the sibling who came after you,” she remembers. “So I like transmitting.” Fashion has been the way she relays this connection. Throughout her youth, she made things for her sisters, “sewing, knitting, being a tiny old woman,” she laughs.
That sisterly attitude extends to her approach at large. “I want to accompany women, to help them face things,” she says. “I like to channel things that I feel intuitively— I find that word suits me—into making something that helps you stand up straighter, because we are not always feeling our best.” She finds that “a vêtement accompanies you, and it relaxes you.” A garment can even provide a helpful directive for one’s fluctuating moods: “One jacket versus another provides a different attitude.”
Overall, Jarrar loves all sorts of artistry: any endeavor that “works the hand and the brain and the eye,” she says. But she does have fashion favoritism: “It’s still amazing to start from scratch, with a flat cloth, and to imagine the volume. It’s sculpture.” She marvels at the possibilities. “I am a gourmand,” she says of her creative voraciousness. “When I have the best technicians at my disposal? I will try anything.” *
Our knowledge and our work is precious.
→
Moralioglu cites the worlds of David Lynch, particularly the cult drama Twin Peaks, as an early influence.
Erdem Moralioglu
Erdem
→
Despite dropping out of Boy Scouts, Moralioglu told Harper’s Bazaar that he was a sporty kid.“There was a big, beautiful lake at the end of my street, so I hung out there a lot,” he says of the idyllic suburban setting he grew up in.
I wanted to create something that people would identify with me.
Designer Erdem Moralioglu wakes himself up with a strong coffee and a sobering dip in his local London Fields pool most mornings. “I’m a creature of habit,” he admits, “and I think there’s something about being underwater that helps me to start my day.” The founder of the eponymous fashion label Erdem doesn’t like to deviate from his professional routine either. “I work very much in the same way now as I did when I was in college,” he explains. “I’d always sit in the same seat in the library and just research and draw, research and draw, research and draw,” he says. “I tend to draw everything.” And while he is no longer a card-carrying member of his alma mater’s library, he still frequents one when he needs to focus.
“I recently joined the London Library. Have you been? It’s amazing,” he enthuses, waxing lyrical about the largest independent lending library in the world. He likes to sequester himself in its magnificent Victorian Reading Room—a favorite spot when he’s craving solitude, which he singles out as an imperative part of his creative process. “Sometimes I need to withdraw, be in my head and hide out,” he explains. “It helps to be alone and just look.” Although he is admittedly introspective, Moralioglu is also insatiably curious. “I always have my eyes and ears open; I’m constantly questioning everything,” he says. “I went straight from college to starting my own label, so in a way it’s the only job that I’ve ever had, and the only way I could get from A to B was to ask lots of questions.” He says he had to feel his way through everything. “And I still do,” he laughs. “It’s a work in progress.”
Born in Canada in 1976, Moralioglu and his fraternal twin, Sara, were the only children of Erkal, a chemical engineer from Turkey, and Marlene, a housewife from Birmingham. He became interested in women’s fashion at a young age. “I was fascinated with how women look from very early on, even when I was a child,” he says. “I was interested in how they spoke to each other. I loved to watch my mother and her friends—my mum was a huge influence on me.” Moralioglu credits her with his love of art, history and travel. The family lived in Montreal but spent holidays abroad with foreign relatives. “I traveled with my family from an early age, which I think was really important. We’d go to the street markets of Istanbul and to the Tower of London,” he remembers. “It was so amazing to see and experience those contrasts as a child.”
If he could be anything other than a designer, Moralioglu says he would own a bookstore. He collects works from contemporary and historical photographers, including Wolfgang Tillmans, Anne Collier and Cecil Beaton.
I always have my eyes and ears open.
Despite his desire to travel, Moralioglu remained in Canada to study fashion at Ryerson University before a scholarship awarded by the British Council brought him to London, where he attended the Royal College of Art from 2001 to 2004. A year after his graduation, he launched his label at London Fashion Week’s Fashion Fringe with a debut collection of overtly feminine frocks and bold floral prints that would soon become synonymous with his name. “I wanted to
create something that people would identify with me; to create my own platform and my own language, one that hopefully speaks to a lot of different women,” he explains. “There’s no greater pleasure than seeing a woman wearing your work,” he says. “I still remember when my first collection was bought by Barneys New York on Madison and I got to see people wearing my designs. It was the most wonderful feeling.”
Since then, Moralioglu’s clothes have been worn by some of the world’s most recognizable women: Michelle Obama, Keira Knightley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Chung, Julianne Moore, Linda Evangelista, Emma Watson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Claudia Schiffer and the Duchess of Cambridge to name a few. He has received numerous accolades as well, including the inaugural British Fashion Council and Vogue Designer Fashion Fund award in 2010, an honor that came with a £200,000 prize—the largest sum on record given to a UK-based designer. The former editor of Vogue Alexandra Shulman described his designs as “womanly without being stodgy and exuberant without being garish” in a 2015 profile. Romantic is another adjective often used to describe the label. For its founder, it’s all about storytelling. “I’ve always been inspired by the visual and the cinematic, and if you pay attention, there’s always a cause and effect in my stories,” Moralioglu says, alluding to the dramatic narratives at play on the catwalk at an Erdem show. “As a child, I was equally obsessed with Hitchcock and Merchant Ivory films, and I still am,” he adds. Cinematic inspirations for previous collections have included Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951), Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) and the actresses Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau, Goldie Hawn, Vivien Leigh and Adele Astaire. The legacy of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent is another recurring influence. “I have always loved Saint Laurent,” Moralioglu says. “I think that he created something that is forever. He was so incredibly independent and visionary.”
This idea of forever was also an important factor when the designer opened his debut Erdem boutique in London in 2015. “What was so wonderful about it was that I had complete creative freedom to design the space that I envisioned,” he says of the flagship store, a 2,000-square-foot, two-story shop in Mayfair. “I want it to be like a pied-à-terre—when you walk in, you should immediately understand the Erdem woman and her world.” The process was extremely gratifying, and one he hopes will continue, but he admits that his biggest challenge is time. “I think there’s tremendous pressure on any designer working today to deliver a lot of work in a very short period of time,” he explains. “There’s this idea that once you get on the treadmill, you have to keep running.”
For Moralioglu, knowing when to take time out is as important as maximizing his day. “The hardest thing is knowing when to close your eyes and block your ears, you know? It’s important that I know my own limitations and when to shut off,” he explains. With several projects in the pipeline and a new collection to start researching, Moralioglu doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, but he’s happy with the status quo. “If in 10 years’ time things were to continue the way they are now, that would be really fantastic,” he says. “I’d be happy with that.” *
CORYBANTIC GAMES
Seeing The Nutcracker as a child inspired Moralioglu’s enduring love of the ballet— as he recalled in an interview with The Guardian, his “mind was blown.” Achieving a lifelong ambition, he was commissioned to design the costumes for Corybantic Games, a new piece in the Royal Ballet’s 2018 program. Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, the one-act ballet is part of centenary celebrations paying tribute to the late composer Leonard Bernstein.
←
Rodin values her health above all else. The style icon is a vegetarian and keeps fit by walking her dog.
LINDA RODIN
LINDA AND WINKS
LINDA HOPP
RODIN OLIO LUSSO
Silver-coiffed, bright-lipped and brilliantly bespectacled, fashion icon Linda Rodin has been immortalized in the pages of Vogue, and in campaigns for the Row, Karen Walker and J. Crew. She’s spent the past five decades wearing many different hats—as a model, boutique owner, stylist and, most recently, entrepreneur. Having left the beauty industry last October, she is about to launch a new passion project very soon—one she would never have thought of even a year ago.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t working,” she says in her Long Island lilt. “When you’re creative, you can’t switch off. You’re stimulated by everything around you, so even if you go out for dinner, the smallest thing—a tablecloth, for instance—could give you an idea.”
For Rodin, inspiration isn’t hard to find if you’re present in your surroundings: “I think it’s about keeping your eyes open, you know?” She believes in the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that anything and everything can spark the imagination. “It can be something mundane, like these folds in my bedspread,” she says from the bedroom in her Chelsea apartment.
Rodin is undoubtedly an expert when it comes to transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary and spends most weekends foraging at flea markets. “Markets are my idea of heaven because you never know what you might see!” she exclaims. Spotting a diamond in the rough—a “beautiful fender on an ugly car”—keeps this magpie motivated. “That’s what makes life glorious, you know?”
It is this attitude in particular—“there’s beauty in simplicity”—that led her to create the skincare brand Rodin Olio Lusso in 2007. Her signature product, Rodin Olio Lusso Luxury Face Oil, was born of necessity. “Everything I create is for myself because if I like it, I feel like someone else might like it, too,” she explains. And for Rodin, there always has to be a personal connection. “I don’t understand how someone could create something they don’t have a passion for,” she says. “If I don’t like it, how can I make it great?”
She also says that creating for someone else is a guessing game. “You know, you can never make everyone happy,” she explains. “You’re either creative and do something to please yourself, or you’re commercial and you assume people will like something because it’s got a track record.” She shrugs. “It depends what type of person you are.”
For Rodin, it wasn’t until 1979, when she opened Linda Hopp, one of the first clothing stores on West Broadway, that she realized she might have a future in a creative space. The Soho boutique was filled with Bauhaus furniture and sold Rodin’s own designs alongside clothes she liked. New Yorker writer Kennedy Fraser described it as “wonderfully intelligent” at the time, while Rodin recalls “a fabulous shop, completely unique and offbeat.” It closed in 1980 “because of very practical things like money. But it gave me the green light to be creative,” she remembers. It also highlighted her desire to go at it alone. “I was running the show, and I think that was really important to me,” she adds. In fact, Rodin has always been freelance. “I’m better at structuring myself. I get a lot more done,” she admits. And while she likes to make to-do lists and sets herself daily goals, she doesn’t respond well to a traditional office environment. “I’ve always worked the same way no matter what. I like to work at home. I don’t know how people go from meeting to meeting,” she says. “Nothing gets accomplished.”
In 2004, Rodin flew to Italy to style her idol Bob Dylan courtesy of Victoria’s Secret. The company’s “Angels in Venice” campaign was highly controversial at the time, not least of all for its unlikely spokesman. Rodin, long an admirer of Dylan, recalls the experience as a career highlight.
I always say one step informs the next.
←
“He is much smarter than me,” Rodin says of her dog, Winks. “He knows every morning when I wake up what kind of day it’s going be—one with me around or one that involves our dog walker.”
As for her creative process, Rodin finds it hard to pinpoint her “eureka moments” but says she feels “very lucky” to have them. Ideas,
she says, can become a reality “when something makes total sense to you. I think that’s the key.” Since stepping down as creative director of Rodin Olio Lusso in 2017, the polymath has been working on a new project and is full of enthusiasm. “It’s not like I get a lightbulb or anything,” she explains. “It takes time before I can start to put the pieces together. Then I get really excited and start moving full steam ahead.”
Rodin carries scraps of ideas with her at all times. “It’s all in my head,” she says—and in her phone. A self-proclaimed “collector of images,” she prefers Instagram to mood boards and inspiration walls. “Instagram is like a magical encyclopedia,” she enthuses. “I’m not looking at what people are wearing, their food or vacation. But I do really enjoy finding pictures of things I never knew existed, people I never knew existed, islands I never knew existed.” Her own Instagram account highlights snapshots of her mini-me gray poodle, Winks (her “muse”), as well as still lifes from her colorful apartment, New York tableaus and evocative family photos. “I’m a very nostalgic person,” she reveals. “I’m very melancholy and very sentimental about certain things.” Thinking back on her mother, a woman who “did what she wanted to do and definitely followed her own beat,” she remembers returning from school to find that the kitchen had been redecorated with new wallpaper. “It was black with these big royal blue flowers on it—and remember, this was pre-Warhol. My sister and I were horrified, but it was so creative and beautiful.” Rodin’s brother became an architect and her late sister was a photographer. “We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were learning so much by osmosis,” she says. Their father was a dentist, “and to him that was very creative, like a puzzle—making people’s teeth look perfect.”
The Eye Page 4