Françoise Sagan

Carine Roitfeld's favorite book is Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness), the first novel by French author Françoise Sagan who was dubbed "the Bardot of literature." Bonjour Tristesse was published in French in 1954 and tells the coming-of-age story of a sophisticated seventeen-year-old girl, Cecile, her hedonistic widowed father, and the women in his life. This powerful novel, at once sympathetic and unsparing, was an instant scandal upon publication as well as an international bestseller that was made into a movie. Not bad for a seventeen-year-old author that wrote the entire manuscript in 32 days! Read an interview with Sagan conducted by The Paris Review in the autumn of 1956, her views on everything are quite amusing, particularly her success.

Françoise Sagan photographs © 1955 Life Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
Françoise Sagan photograph © 1956 Jeanloup Sieff. All Rights Reserved.

Helmut Newton

Carine Roitfeld believes that we all dress with a fantasy in mind; hers is to look like the subject of a Helmut Newton photo — erotic, stylized, fetishistic, existing in black and white. Newton is renowned internationally for his particular style of fashion photography, helping to shape the look of Vogue Paris and Harper's Bazaar beginning in the 1960s and clearly still a major influence on today's issues. Fantastic news for those that need a primer on Newton's seminal work: Taschen is publishing a new edition of the infamous and elusive Helmut Newton: Sumo slated for release 1 September 2009. Unfortunately I do not think it comes with the chic Philippe Starck stand (pictured above).

Helmut Newton: Sumo and Philippe Starck stand image courtesy of amazon.com

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele, Self Portrait (1912)

Carine Roitfeld's favorite artist is Egon Schiele. I agree. So does Lou Doillon. If you are not familiar with his work, take the time to look at his drawings. His renderings of the human form are unmatched. He calls attention to parts of the body in ways that look unnatural. In fact, they are much more natural than the measured poses of most artists' figures. I own two books of Schiele's masterpieces and I heartily recommend both. Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors by Jane Kallir is in hard cover and a little more expensive but worth it—a quality printing and very comprehensive. It's tough to lie abed with it though and since that's my favorite way to spend time with any artist I am getting to know, I needed a soft cover as well: Egon Schiele 1890-1918 by Reinhard Steiner.

Source: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.