“It is a very beautiful day. The woman looks around and thinks: ‘There cannot ever have been a spring more beautiful than this. I did not know until now that clouds could be like this. I did not know that the sky is the sea and that clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunk long ago. I did not know that the wind could be tender, like hands as they caress – what did I know – until now?”
― Unica Zürn
San Francisco, California
“A moment of crazy fun turned into a dramatic coronation.”
On a rainy day in Manhattan, I walked into the studio of Robert Lee Morris and all of a sudden, like a scene from a musical, we were pulling out drawers and drawers of jewelry! accessories! belts! crowns! cuffs!… a whole lifetime of creating extraordinary, one-of-a-kind pieces for the world’s top designers. “This walked down Calvin Klein’s runway and oh yes! This walked down Donna Karan’s!”
All around the studio were artifacts from travels, books for inspiration, sculptures and studies on the human form, work benches, sketch boards, mood boards, old ad campaigns and editorals framed and leaning on one another – layered through time and history. Taylor, Kelly & I were like giddy little girls finding treasures while Robert told all the wonderful fairytales that accompany each of his masterful pieces.
Coco Chanel once commented that Paco Rabanne was the “metalworker of fashion”. Known for pushing the limits on wearable fashion, Rabanne constantly questioned the conventions of clothing design.
Rabanne started his own fashion house in 1966 and retired in 1999 after his final collection. Since then, the house has been in the hands of multiple directors. Now 29-year-old designer Lydia Maurer is the creative director. In a recent interview, Maurer said, “This is not a fashion house that’s purely about style, but mostly about handwork and craftsmanship, and texture and material.”
This past fall, when we were in Paris, we had the honor of stepping inside the studio of this historic French fashion house the week before Paris Fashion Week. Watching the workers meticulously craft every garment by hand (especially considering most of the pieces are made of metal!) was really astonishing… and I hope you’ll gather that from the images below.
Welcome to the studio of an always-modern Paco Rabanne.
I love New York. We all do. After Sandy hit I went for a walk to see the bruises it left on our city. It is not in my nature to photograph things in pain — this post is not about that. In our life here I always carry a simple film camera around with me as a way to capture the beauty of our city in small fleeting moments as I run to meetings or kill time on photo shoots. These are images from the past few months the way she was… the way she will be again.
