Acne Paper Interviews Carine Roitfeld

Carine Roitfeld warms that jeans and mini skirts are aging:
I only wear jeans and flat shoes when I am on holiday, never for work. Jeans suit me very well but it’s not for me anymore. It’s horrible to say but it has something to do with age. I have good legs, so I prefer my skirt lengths and my high heels. It’s like my uniform. I never wear jeans. Jeans are for my assistants... I wear knee-length denim skirts. I never wear miniskirts because they make me look older.

She thinks people in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe don’t have a culture of clothes:
If people ask me to describe my look I always say: quite classic with an edge. Look at my dress. It doesn’t look like I have on anything special, it’s more the way you mix the clothes and how you move, how you open your bag, how you cross your legs — just little things that make a difference. With French women you first see the woman and then you see the clothes. Imagine other countries like Russia or China, even Eastern Europe. They don’t have the culture of clothes so they want to show that they can afford to buy a Dolce & Gabbana bag, they want to show labels. In France you cannot see what labels we are wearing. It is very snobby.

She loves the Yves Saint Laurent woman:
You know the idea of the Saint Laurent woman. What a dream she was: wearing trousers, hand in the pocket, no handbag, transparent shirt. I love that woman. It is exactly who I would have loved to be if I could choose. So I would have to go blonde because he loved the blondes, and I would have to have bigger breasts. But it’s the idea of the woman I love, and I try to repeat this in my magazine.

And Cartier too:
Do you know why? Because Cartier is the jewelry you give to your mistress. It is not the jewelry you buy for your wife. I heard that and it might be totally wrong, but it is this idea and I love Cartier because of that.

She has the power of making a model a supermodel:
It’s great to have the power. I understood some years ago that we have a lot of power. I never thought I would get power before. The power to make everyone you want successful. You have the power to make a photographer a big photographer. You have the power to make a designer a top designer. You have the power to make a model a supermodel. It is great this power, so you have to use this power in a good way.

But feels unrecognized:
It’s funny, because I never get awards for fashion. I’ve got an award for being the best-dressed person. I got an award for amfAR. I was on the Time Magazine list of the most influential people last year. But I never got an award for my fashion pictures.

She talks about her old Gucci days:
Now we have to put the foot on the pedal [with sexually charged images]. We can’t go as strong as [Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin] did back then. When I started doing all the Gucci campaigns with Tom Ford and Mario Testino we pushed so much and after that everyone copied it. Everyone tried to be this Gucci girl that we created. So I am sure we were part of this tendency. It was good at the time because we were the first ones to do these kinds of images to sell a product, and after that everyone kept on doing it. I think now it’s too much. It’s no fun. It’s not chic. We always had a chic eye on everything, even when we shaved the G on the girl. A lot of girls started shaving in different ways after that so it really became a trend. Many artists played with the pictures too, so it was fun.

I Want To Be A Cowgirl

I hope by now that you have had a chance to savor Todd Selby's thoughtful photos of Julia Restoin-Roitfeld's New York City space. His lens dwells on her exquisite collection of jewelry, shoes, books, and objets d'art. We also get a nice look at Julia's beauty products. I absolutely love the timeless, classic quality of the shot above; the colors, the light, the textures, the knowing innocence of Julia's expression blend to evoke a winsome mood.

Julia Restoin-Roitfeld as a cowgirl photograph © 2009 Todd Selby. All Rights Reserved.

The Roitfelds in Cannes

With Carine Roitfeld co-chairing the Cannes Film Festival this year, the Roitfeld dresses are sure to be incroyable. Since they rocked the Balmain and the Lanvin so royally last year, we're sure to see more of these designers.

Look at how beautifully Julia Restoin-Roitfeld has done so of late, not in the black on black we crave, but in glistening emerald Balmain at the Museum of Natural History's Winter Dance...

Then of course she looked amazing in sizzling hot pink Balmain to fête the David Lynch/Christian Louboutin Opening at The Garage in Moscow.

All this goodness aside, I'd like to see the Roitfelds spend Cannes clad head to toe in Alaïa. Though Carine is sublime in the Alaïa shoes in the first photo, I vote for all-Alaïa ensembles for both to help sooth the insults he received from some people with regard to the Met charity. I don't even want to add to it by voicing the actual rudeness displayed by some people, but Julia and Carine are lovely in Alaïa and j'adore the sentiment.

Carine Roitfeld and Juila Restoin-Roitfeld mother/daughter photograph © 2009 Sugar, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Juila Restoin-Roitfeld in pink Balmain photograph © 2009 Condé Nast Digital. All Rights Reserved.
Juila Restoin-Roitfeld in green Balmain photograph © 2009 New York Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Update on vendredi 22 mai 2009 by kellina

Carine chose a Givenchy gown paired with Alaïa shoes for the sixteenth annual amfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala event so I was partially right. Best of all, they are the same shoes as last year at Cannes! Carine Roitfeld is the best thing that ever happened to fashion.

The Roitfeld Family

I can't feign any longer, it's time to unleash my primal urges at last: I want to be a Roitfeld. And so do you. Hence I Want To Be A Roitfeld is established as a mechanism to communicate this desire among all similarly cursed. Because life would be so easy as a Roitfeld, so glamorous, so chic. We'd be blessed with brainy beauty, effortless appeal, and les talons—oooo la la ! Browse the site for all of the information about the family that is made publicly available. Because I know that you can never get enough Roitfeld.