Fashion Neurosis with Haider Ackermann

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Haider Ackerman. Thank you. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? I did not really choose them. I think it's the accident of the morning. It's kind of invisible, workman's clothes. It's very abstract. Can you give me some more detail? Because I'm looking at you and I've seen so many charming, subtle things. like you have workwear blue trousers and a shade of lavender finely knitted sock. And that is totally killing me with pleasure.

2:06I don't know, I don't even, you know, the mornings you just grab your phone, you look at your email, so you don't even think about what you're going to wear Are you going to put it together? I didn't think about this. You just remind me. God, it's such a naturally kind of harmonious thing. Well, there's quite a lot of contrasts happening as well. Like you've got this black silk shirt with a white piping underneath your shirt jacket. And what have you got around your neck? Oh, it's a chauvet scarf. I don't know I always wear scarves it's kind of protection yeah this kind of accessory that you drag with you everywhere you can hide behind it or you can cover yourself it's just protection it's interesting the areas in your body that you feel inclined to protect I I always feel around my stomach somehow.

3:15I wish I could wear a corset because it just always feels so wild, like it will just take over my body. It's where I feel all my emotions. The throat is where, you know, all your language and your feelings come from. Yeah, and you know, because I grew up in Africa and you always, you had those big scarves around you to protect yourself from the sun, from the wind, from everything. So perhaps due to my childhood, it remained in a more subtle way. And you're a very highly regarded fashion designer, much esteemed by your peers. And you'll be showing your first collection as the creative director of Tom Ford when this fashion neurosis, the day it comes out.

4:01I wondered how you generally handle pressure. Well, I'm just first questioning what I'm doing here two and a half weeks before the show. Quite anxious to talk to you at this very moment where you don't know. It feels like a little break for my daily life. I lay down, I sit down. Yes, you're in this very strange moment where you don't know what's going to happen. You're just on the road, you have your mission. Yeah, it's strange to be here. it's interesting that because I find as I go forward in my life I I have these moments that are a big deal for me and this is you know a show for any designer is such a big deal and it's that thing of not wishing yourself done that you even though it's so nerve-wracking that that you appreciate the moment or that you not even appreciate because sometimes it's too stressful, but that you stay in the moment because that's where the ideas suddenly germinate.

5:14Are you finding that at the moment? Yeah, but you know it makes your heart beat faster. It makes you alive. The nervous and anxieties are very helpful to move forward in life. There's nothing negative about it. it can be exhausting but at the same time it pushes you forwards it makes ambitious and it helps you to think and overthink I think it's a good thing basically. I spent some of my childhood growing up in Morocco and my mum went to Algeria and I think part of my love of tailoring comes from watching Arab men and how they wore their tailored jackets with their jellabas and I've always loved that look and do you have a favorite look that you refer to even if it's not immediately apparent oh yes you just mentioned I grew up in Algeria partly for seven years um the elegance of the Arabic man the way he puts his jellaba his blazer over it the gestures the big hands it's just you know we're all searching for elegance but when you go to countries like morocco when you go to bhutan to india it's natural there's no research for it they are just very elegant and the way they lay it everything by the movement it's so beautiful it's just yeah it's so lovely having this kind of um this edit this this tailored strict edit and then I loved the babouches as well.

6:53And when I lived there, me and my sister, we used to wear turbans and I used to be really good at putting a turban on her. We'd get a strip of fabric and just wind it round our heads and I always dressed like an Arab girl and I have a real fondness for that long caftan over a pair of trousers. What was the first piece of clothing that you became obsessed with as a child? Oh, simply the sarong. The sarong. We used to put a... We were mostly naked running around and we just put a piece of fabric around our waist. There was a sarong, so whenever I'm on holiday, I'm always wearing one. It's just one piece of fabric.

7:39and it does it all. It's very refined, actually. It's so strange that we designers are searching for all kinds of coupe patterns. Well, it looks like a sari. It's like a basic piece of fabric, metres long, and you just fold it with your hands. And the elegance of the gesture is amazing. And you made the most beautiful dress out of it. We're complicating our lives so much more than they are. I know, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? I mean, that's how you push an idea, isn't it? Somehow, something that's been completely satisfactory is suddenly not good enough. Yeah, but are we not drawn to simplicity as well?

8:24You just mentioned the jellaba. I mentioned the sarong or sari. Yeah. But then I like the shirt and tie underneath the jellaba. And I like these kind of references to other traditions from other people and the way they get subverted. I find that very, it just wakes me up and I feel like I could be like that. You know, this, I like to have an element of strictness about my own way of dressing. but then I love this feeling of wild well not wild but just this freedom and the way those things combined and you do that very well I love your description just now of the gesture to of putting on the sarong and how how the gest that gesture makes you know you've got it right I know when I put a tie on, if I do it in a rush, it just won't come out.

9:31I have to give it a little bit of time so I can get that gesture right. To take the moment to take care of how you fold your clothes, how you care about yourself, those are very selfish and precious moments, but really, really important. And for them, it's like daily ritual, which I find quite extraordinary because there's something also eccentric about it, slightly. How do you mean? Well, you know, to be very like, everything looks so natural, but everything is so well thought at the same time, there's an eccentricity to it that we might have lost here a little bit. Maybe that's why you, when you describe what you're wearing today, you said you hadn't really thought about it, yet it's such a, it's so elegant, the composition of the clothes you're wearing.

10:24And I find if I give too much thought to my outfit, it becomes static and I have to be a bit chaotic and throw things on and then suddenly they settle. Is that what you do? Yeah, but I'm looking up, back in the days, I would have done it with Mr. Lagerfeld and I was obsessed by how everything was so immaculate and sharp and just two centimetre sleeves. And I wish I would have been this kind of person. I tried sometimes, but after one minute, I was just a mess, a completely mess. I can't do it, but I do admire it. I do admire the preciseness. I'm very much watching American Psycho at the moment.

11:10Oh my God, I love that film. I love, yes, fantastic. I love this preciseness. I will never be that guy, but I do look up to him. I know what you mean but I suppose trying to adopt the regulation that other people use when it doesn't fit your own response, your sort of internal response, I've tried to do that unsuccessfully too and I suppose it's a way of remembering that your own process is very effective. Yeah, but the embarrassment of not succeeding it the embarrassment of not being perfect well i think that's a really big deal for designers i i think that we often have a lot of anxiety about imperfection and it's part of why people become designers so we can make other people perfect yeah but i think we're all searching for certainly designs we're all searching for kind of beauty whatever it is and it might not yet exist and that's fine and we will never find it.

12:17But the road that you take and the travel is interesting. It's actually very romantic. You're searching for, in German we say, you're searching for the blue flowers, which doesn't exist. We have quite romantic jobs actually. And you describe being kicked out of fashion school in Antwerp for being untamed and losing yourself a bit in the darkness for a few years around that time. And how did you get back on the rails? It's a part of me, this whole business. It's what I am, it's what I'm dreaming of, it's what I want, it's what I desire. I can't do anything differently, so you always get back on track.

13:03And you always, somewhere perhaps despite all the insecurities, you have something to say. And you would like to say, even if your voice is trembling my moments, you just do. So yes, I lost myself in the nightlife, but I'm happy I did. It was needed. I'm coming out of a very Catholic family where everything was so strict and clean. And then at 17, I moved to Amsterdam, observed the wildlife, didn't take part of it. So everything came much later. It was good. it was needed it's good to lose yourself by moments but you always find your way back well I think it's a it's not a given to find your way back I mean not you personally but it is a big fire that people can go through and get lost in there so it's quite a big feat to get back on track and to become so productive as a result of that And I agree, you know, with what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that.

14:13But I think it's really something to be commended, to be able to go through that path and go through those wild, dark times that are very unhinging. And then come out with all this kind of extra knowledge and resources. is when i say you need it it's it's really i needed to go through this i needed to have lived it um i can't explain no i know and i enjoyed it very much i have to say um yeah i know exactly what you mean um and you have a definitive and recognizable handwriting and And you've also talked about experiencing lack of confidence. And as we were saying, lack of confidence is quite a signature in designers.

15:09And do you have an area where your self-doubt crops up the most? Oh, my self-doubt, it's every morning when you look at yourself in the mirror. That's where it starts, basically. yeah self-doubt it's it's present but it's also as i said before it's what helps you to move forward there's no there's no limitation to it and i like that it puts you in a very dangerous zone but it's good it might have by some years it might have hold me back and i wish i had it less but um but you know to be secure is not everything either I agree. I think I find there's a certain amount of insecurity that I need in order to feel secure in an odd way.

16:01Yeah. To do with walking a tightrope, which is so exhilarating because the danger is so present and the adrenaline is so focusing. But how can you not doubt yourself when you are almost naked in front of an audience when you're showing your work? I mean of course there's so much self-doubt you put yourself out there you do your show and then five minutes later everything is finished yeah and you're a designer that inspires belief in confidence in other designers and Martin Margiela himself asked you to become the creative director when he retired how do you know? you told me I remember you telling me this story which I've never forgotten and you decided at the last minute against it and now you're taking on another mantle and I wondered how that felt.

17:02Well, you know, I'm coming out of Belgium school and Master Magella is one of our heroes. You can never replace your heroes. You never can stand. I could not. I would not have his talent and his very avant-garde way of seeing things. I'm not that kind of designer. Perhaps I wish I was, but I'm not. And yet here I am, stepping in the shoes of Mr. Ford. It's a different story. Perhaps Mr. Ford and I are more aligned in our aesthetics. We have many references which are the same. We understand one another. So perhaps that language might be more fluid for me. Perhaps I'm more mature and older and ready.

17:51I once had a dream. I mean, it was so long, it must have been 30 years ago, that everyone wanted to know who Martin Margiela was because he never had his photo taken. And then in the dream, I realized maybe I was Martin Margiela. How interesting. And it was one of the most exciting dreams of my life because like you, Marta Margiela is a genius and somebody whose ideas are just... It's one of the designers where you see something that is sort of inexplicable and immediately feels like you want it, you want to be it, you want to wear it. And so even having the dream felt like imposter syndrome, but I interpreted it as a very good sign of a moment of kind of confidence that was lurking about somewhere.

18:50But just to say he's one of the most charming persons I've ever met. But it's so strange how you see, like for instance, the collection he did for Hermès back in the days, his first collection which was so criticised and totally not approved by the fashion industry, became the collection that everybody's copying still nowadays. God. So many years later. It's impressive. I mean, what he left us is just simply impressive. Yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, it's very impressive that you didn't take on that role at that time. And it's so interesting when, as a creative person, something feels right. Well, you have to know your place.

19:42It wasn't my place to be there. Yeah, because also you talked about Karl Lagerfeld, who is such a big figure in all of our lives. and he named you as someone he would have liked to take over from him at Chanel and were you good friends with him? But I don't think, yes, he mentioned that sentence, but I think it was more like trying to put a light on me than really thinking that I should take over Chanel. It was just saying to the industry, look at him, just look at him. And that's how I felt. we never spoke about it I never mentioned it to him but that's how I took it as a kind of backbone as a kind of also for me to stand straight and to take myself seriously that I had something to say because if Mr.

20:38Lagerfeld would say this it means that I might have been someone something for this industry at least so yeah I took it as okay how to put yourself together and put your confidence aside and just go for it. He was very generous like that with certain people. And very faithful to it as well. Faithfulness is something which is really very important in our industry. Loyalty, friendships. And did he have any funny habits? Oh, it's hilarious because he and I speak German. So when we would be in front of a photographer, he would make so many funny remarks, and all in German for me, for just the two of us to understand what he was saying.

21:29He was hilarious. He had the biggest sense of humor and the biggest sarcasm. Admire him on many levels. And if you fancy someone and you don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them? Oh, totally. Totally. I remember one day meeting this most gorgeous person. And basically we start kissing. One of the best kisses ever. And then the person took his sweatshirt off. And he had a t-shirt with three buttons. I think you call it at hand in English. And I stopped. I couldn't. I couldn't I could not kiss him any further I have a phobia for buttons I'm just you can't put my hand I can't put my hand in a box of buttons it's impossible so for him to wear this t-shirt with three buttons no he must have thought I was mental but I could not continue I just left quite extreme isn't it it is but you describing that you have a phobia of buttons it makes it kind of forgivable in a way.

22:47I'm not understandable for him, trust me. You're not like Stefano who said if he's in a frisky mood he doesn't really mind about those cutaway socks and skinny jeans that he has an aversion to. No, I could not. He must really thought that I was mental. You didn't say, I'm sorry, I have a phobia and I can't. I have to leave. How can you explain this? You can't. I just walked away. Gosh. And when you dress, are there certain things you consciously like to reveal or hide about yourself? Yeah. Well, for years I would not wear shorts or T-shirts with short sleeves because I had very skinny arms. Yes, I didn't wear shorts before my 40th birthday.

23:46I can identify with that. I had so many hang-ups about my body and I think it's probably why I became a designer, so I could have a kind of way of handling it. But it's always so peculiar when someone else says it and there you are lying there, beautiful as possible. I think it's a common trait in the fashion industry that people have so many judgments about their physical self. Oh, but we're all hiding something. Therefore we project on others. I think so. Yeah. And how does it feel to create a combined identity in your collections? and Tom Ford is synonymous with the slinky kind of sexy irony and I associate you with a sexy boy-girl soldier elegance like how Edie Campbell wears your clothes.

24:46What kind of feeling are you looking for? You know, I think also when Mr. Ford was at the helm of the fashion industry it was also a very different period. Things have changed over time. we speak about sexuality very differently than back in the days so I will need to find my rhythm in there I will need to find my way but I do trust that as much he as I are searching for desire seduction I think it's a big word of his vocabulary and certainly mine so if I would play around those worlds I think we will find a common way that I respect his story, but lead it somewhere else. It's a fun line. It's very strange.

25:35The person is still there in the back of me, breathing. So it's a very strange situation, but I feel very humbled and honored by it. But yeah, it's just searching for desire and seduction. We all want to be desired. We all want to seduce. we all like that game and that play so yeah let me play it fox creative this is advertiser content brought to you by nature sunshine new marine glow collagen

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28:15So I knew that he respected my sensibility and vice versa. I mean, his legacy is enormous when you look back at the 90s. You can't go around Mr. Ford. So yes, we always flirtatious with each other. So it's really wonderful now to really get to know him and to have conversation, exchange. change yeah he has a an authority and a kind of vision about that whole thing to do with desire and seduction that is very he's one of the most seductive men let's be honest yeah i mean i've only met him a few times but he's one of those people that makes you want to you know be in his radar because he's so witty and urbane and tremendously he's marvelous and you said your work ethic with all the deadlines make means you like to be like a soldier and one of the things I particularly love about your work is your military style stripes and I want that sort of sportswear thing I wondered where that comes from I don't know where it comes from I have no family my mini army I'm far away from it but I like to have perhaps the German side of my father I like to have this kind of rhythm and this kind of you trace your line and you follow the steps I don't know how it comes from I find it whenever I've seen Edie out and about I'm always completely kind of knocked out by her outfit and it's always you and it has this masculine and feminine thing going on and it's just got so much charm and it's renegade as well because I always love the military that's been adopted by the freedom fighter and the way people in reggae music and reggae stars they like Lee Scratch Perry the way he used to wear all that amazing stuff with all the all the adornment from the military but subverted and you do that but you bring something about nature into it because the way you use the stripe is also like when you see a bird and it opens its wings and it has this other kind of amazing thing flash of color or a bit of you know some sort of attractive signal and you do this so well and it works for boys and for girls and it has this intensity to it but why are we so seduced by military certainly in the world they were living now which is kind of more scary one why is this attraction to it do we need authority do we need it to maintain our line or road but at the same time, authority nowadays has not much to say.

31:24Yeah, I think the authority aspect is really unattractive, but the uniform is fantastic. Oh, yes, absolutely. Especially when someone messes with it, which means that they're not under the jurisdiction of an authoritarian figure. Yeah, but you know, it also helps you to stand straight, the uniform. And to refer to Mr. Ford, I do remember I did a Met Gala back in 2015, wearing my first Tom Ford suit ever. Even 2009 it must have been. I remember putting the pants on and it made me stand straight. You have to stand straight in a Tom Ford suit, which is kind of uniform. So yeah, perhaps this standing straight and tall in life is important.

32:18and perhaps that's why we adore everything that's coming from the military and the uniform. It helps us. Yeah, sometimes a garment will remind you of how to be, really. It's like when you describe the gesture of putting on the sari, the physical movement will kind of wake up what you want to project and how you want to be seen. I think that's what clothes are doing nowadays we have been so laid back in our way of dressing recently so perhaps this this reflecting now about beauty that people are searching more than ever for or when you see the craftsmanship of new collections perhaps this is all helping you to stand straight I don't know in fact there's a lot of encouragement these days is about relaxation, which I actually find quite hard.

33:20It's too relaxed, isn't it? I like to do a relaxation that's progressing something, like reading, and I wondered what things you enjoy or what is a relaxing action, because sometimes it sounds like the opposite to some people, but what are your things? To lose yourself in the nature is the only thing that relaxes me. Because I think we're searching for space, for silence. And when you're in a rhythm like us, you hardly breathe. You just trace your road. So just to lose yourself in nature and having the space for it is the only thing that relaxes me nowadays. do you take specific trips or what are the things you do oh recently i go camping for god's sake um yeah like what literally putting up a tent or is it a bit more of a luxury no literally a tent above the car oh can you believe it i traveled through namibia with my partner for two weeks.

34:37We had a tent above the car. Last year we did British Columbia. Gosh. When I met this person on the first date, he asked me, should we go camping? Would you ever come camping? And I was like, obviously this is not going to work. And now my greatest joy is to go camping with this person. It's funny, these kind of organized intimacies really it's such a lovely thing to take part in oh you spend time together you have to deal with each other you're depending from the other you really connect with each other it's just the most beautiful adventure if you're wanting to be romantic or wanting to get to know each other just go camping do you find that part of that is the way the practicalities of having to put the tent up and light a fire.

35:36It sort of takes care of some of the suspense of actually being together. And the trust in each other, the trust that you're going to take care of each other. One lights a fire, the other one puts up the tent. The cooking, the wildlife, I mean, we pretty go wild. Yeah. We lose each other in the wild nature. It's wonderful. film so that's the only thing that really relaxes me because you have to think about your next step also quite nice to find that someone else has an idea that you don't immediately respond to and then you find there's so much in what that person has offered you and that you actually really love it a calmness you step out of your life it's a good thing, it's a break and you fought successfully to regain ownership of your name from an investor who almost held you hostage and became over controlling and obsessed with you and this happens quite a lot to designers and that the money person wants the limelight and how did you cope with that negative possessiveness you resign i resigned from my company i left for a designer to leave his own company it's quite a hardcore thing to do.

36:57I don't like to look back at the spirits as well and interesting but what's interesting like when I was young I was telling in interviews I was always telling the young kids like dream your dream alone it's only a dream and dream together as reality which are the words by your corner which I really stand by and never forget to dream follow your dreams but nowadays I would tell them also be anchored in reality surround yourself by lawyers protect yourself for being able to continue to dream but many of us has been through this yeah um it's been a challenge it's not been easy but i gained my name back which i couldn't do differently honestly as an adopted child the only thing i've got for my parents is their name so no one can take this away from me, trust me.

37:49And then you had this moment of trying also to find your way. It's been a very educative moment for me because I understood what I don't want to do anymore. Well, I will not accept any longer. So it gave me also a sense of freedom that I might not have had before. But mentally, like, knowing where I want to go and knowing how I want to do it. Yeah, it's a, it's very, I mean, it's not something that's talked about much in our business, because it's, it's like someone taking possession of you, literally. It's like Stranger Things, when all those weird creatures go into your body, and you're, you're just taken over.