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PARIS — In the third and final video for season four of the "In the Studio" series, Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of Louis Vuitton, discusses what scares him, compulsive shopping and the importance of stability. And those are the outtakes. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)
Q. Was this giant space on the top of the Louis Vuitton building always the design office?
A. No, it was the showroom. I asked for it. The fashion heart of Louis Vuitton is divided in two spaces: this one on the fourth floor, and the second floor, which is the workshop, fabric selection and everything. It's a real labyrinth, Louis Vuitton, and I was getting lost for the first few months. Apparently it's a very usual thing at Vuitton: when you arrive, you get lost. Everyone has a pass, and you can't move without it or you find yourself locked in a room or locked in a corridor.
Q. Why did you ask for this room in particular?
A. It is important for me to be in an open space where I can really exchange with my team. I don't know what I would do in a private office, because my job is to interact with many, many people. Sometimes I meet with 60 people in the same day. I love the energy of developing something with people. But at the same time, what can be a little scary is arriving in that environment where you know you'll be requested to have new ideas, definitions of things, precisions of things. If you're not ready with all those elements, you can really find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation. So sometimes I need time alone in my home or somewhere else to make sure I prepare all my ideas in order to be ready when I arrive at Vuitton.
Q. When you decided to move in here, did you change it a lot?
A. We cleaned up the floor. It was very dark and we put a few mirrors on the walls. We wanted to have the full view and make sure this beautiful Parisian light was coming inside the studio.
Q. Does it look like your house?
A. Not really. The furniture is parallel. But my house is a more cozy. This is very functional. I'm a big fan of architecture, a big fan of design, but I really need neutrality to leave room for creation. So the chairs are very generic in the most beautiful way of being generic. The desk is glass on top of metal feet. It's like they don't exist. The shelf I found in the flea market in Paris. I love that it is attached to the wall. Sometimes you need things that are stable, and will not be moved. I think in design the timeless is even more important than fashion. You usually keep your furniture a bit longer than your clothes, even if I wish sometimes that you would keep my clothes as long as you have some furniture.
Q. The furniture is very modern.
A. I have special tastes for the '70s, obviously, in design, and from part of the '80s. I also have a taste for a certain part of the '90s too. It's when I moved to Paris. Recently I've had a fascination again for this period of design. Sometimes you love and reject something, and then suddenly there is some thing that is appealing to you again. I love to mix.
Q. Do you collect things?
A. I start, and I stop when I feel that I'm going to get too addicted and move to something else. So I've got a few fascinations personally, like ceramics. But I try to moderate myself. I can be compulsive in shopping. So if I start to really love something, I will go too far. I will fill all my rooms. So, I prefer to stay with a certain moderation.
Q. How important to you is comfort?
A. I'm never staying too long in the same place, so comfort matters for a moment , but not for the rest of your life. If you love the shape of a chair, you have to accept that it might not be the most comfortable, but there is a comfort you will find spiritually to be sitting on that chair, and I think that is interesting, too. I feel the same for clothes.
Q. Do you approach clothes the same way you approach the rest of your life?
A. I really think at the end of the day, being a designer is a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle I was wishing when I was a kid, when I was a teen. It's the capacity to transform everything you see into fashion. That sounds a little superficial, maybe, but it's the way I express what I love. You can walk in the street and see someone that you will find inspiring and have an amazing food in the restaurant and the co lor of the plate will be that, and strangely you can have this association in your brain, and that will become a dress.
Q. Is that how you start a collection?
A. I start with a discussion with my team. We discuss our intention, our reaction to the last season, what is the need, what is the desire for the next season, what we did, what is important at Louis Vuitton, what are the key elements we want to highlight. We put everything on the table. And in parallel, I am thinking about what I want to propose. I'm taking in information, and at the same time I'm building in my head and in my drawing alone. Then, I have what we call the brief here. It's something I was not really doing before Vuitton. I have to brief the fabric people, brief the leather people, br ief the bags, brief the shoes. So for that I put together pictures and I do what I call workshops, which are basically very childish: We have a fitting model, and I start to build the shape or I take a shape that I did a season before and transform it, and there is this playful moment where we look for volumes and we look for emotions. And once we find that it's about finding the right fabric, the right construction, the right association, and the woman we want to define. And for that, I need dialog. I try to define each outfit of the show, months before. From look No.1 to look No.50, 55, or 45, I will try to define every look: the texture, the shape, the colors.
Q. That's a lot.
A. The acceleration of the seasons, of the proposition you have to do, is the h ardest thing. You have to stay focused. Sometimes you are so short of time that you can be scared of that. You have an ultimatum. But I know how to protect myself from the pressure now. I know very well how to say no, and how to take distance now.
