The Look of Love

0:04Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Cheat. And today with me on the show are Inez and Vinood. They chat about photography, working together for 40 years, love, marriage, image making, the state of fashion, and so much more. before we get going i wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast you'll definitely love puck where i send an email called line sheet if you're a fashion person you get that reference it's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries line sheet is scoopy analytical and above all fun along with me a subscription to puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more.

0:58If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope everyone is having a great week. I hope you're really well. Hope you're beating the heat. I'm in the air conditioning in Milan right now. Apparently it's going to be 104 degrees in Paris on Monday. I personally booked a hotel room around the corner from my apartment because I was like, that's crazy. I'm not going to have a five-year-old in 104 degree weather with no air conditioner. I guess it won't be 104 at night, but anyway, it's nuts.

1:39Anyway, just landed in Italy from London where I attended the big Hermes store opening the party and then I hosted a dinner with Shamai but first of all let's discuss Hermes the London store this is the nicest single brand store you will ever see but it was owned by Asprey which like many of you know this but it's one of these British companies that has like a seal from the queen or whatever it's a lot of silver you get like an Asprey frame or there's jeweler it's a jeweler essentially it's kind of like the tiffany of of the uk although it's it's not you know i don't know if the people from tiffany would love that but anyway they owned the building for like well over 100 years and then hermes bought it in 2009 but then i think they had to like wait it out for the lease and then also it just took a long time to redo it it's an incredible structure but it's also just gorgeous and fun, whimsical, and it's a marvel.

2:41The only other single brand store I love as much is the Prada store in Soho, which is incredibly special store in a different way. This is like super textural and you should check it out. I went in the morning to the opening. I said hi to Pierre-Alexis, Hermes' artistic director, who really kind of managed the whole thing it's really a labor of love and then the Hermes people took a bunch of us to Tracy one of Tracy Emmons homes and she and and she also like does a bunch of work there was her studio as well and her I don't want to call him a studio assistant because he's obviously more her like thought partner and I think they've been working together for 18 years uh showed us around and it was really amazing.

3:30We got to see all this never before exhibited works and we also went into her bedroom which like I don't know I asked about it I think it's just interesting that she's so comfortable but I guess like you're an artist and she kind of puts her thing is putting it all out there so we put it all all out there she's very neat and clean it's not like if you go to the Tate and you see the bedroom there. It's not like that, the big piece that she's really famous for. But she had dresses hanging from the row on her door. I was looking at all the brands. She wears a lot of designer clothes, really beautiful stuff, but they were like hanging perfectly.

4:13It was interesting. And then, so we got to see that. I had lunch by myself. I did some work. And then we all went to this country club in Southwest London for the sort of requisite Hermes party, which had tons of kitschy stuff, but like kitschy in the most elegant way ever. So they did a pub with a pub quiz and their chandeliers made out of carrots and leeks. And they had all these like makeshift restaurants. Someone said, I heard this cost a million pounds. I was like if it only costs that they're very frugal I can't imagine it must have been more but but I really don't have any idea I'm not going to speculate on the actual number but it was wacky it was amazing they hired like all these British musicians and artists and famous people to put on performances it was pretty incredible I did miss the fireworks though because I went to Vesper, this new restaurant from this chef here called Jackson Boxer, who's extremely famous.

5:14I had never heard of him before, but I started getting served his, I don't know, like he's in my algorithm. The restaurant was in my algorithm. And so Alex Bigler and I from Bigler from Puck, we went, it was really great. It's get the crisps and the dip and the cucumber salad for sure. It also looks really good and it was funny because at the Hermes party I met the designer of the space Jermaine Gallacher who also edits Ton magazine um so it's it's all of a piece and also two of the guests Isabella Burley and Tallulah Harlech who were at the dinner the next night the dinner I host to a shop my were also at Vesper the night that we were there they were there earlier because they did not have to go to their mass party.

6:02But yeah, I do think that London is the best eating city in the world right now. And it was very nice to be at Cafe Deco with for this party with Shop My. Just huge thank you to Tiffany, the CEO of Shop My and also Aisha who does strategic partnerships for them. It was really great. It was a great, we always have great people, only nice people say yes to this stuff interesting smart people but this was a really fun mix like Christopher Kane and Connor Ives two generations of designers based here Elle's Kenya Hunt came I've known her forever and then there were you know tons of reps from brands like Burberry, Jimmy Choo, McQueen it was a really nice mix and fun we had a great time I didn't smoke a cigarette Oh, because I don't smoke.

6:53Anyway, huge thanks also to the team at DLX, especially Sarah, who runs their office here in Justin, who is the partner in New York, Justin Padgett, very famous line sheet and fashion people star. They support us on many of these dinners. And this one was just perfect. Like the flowers by Flavia, Anna's food, the photographer was amazing. it was just it was a great night anyway i'm coming back in two weeks for another dinner so more from the uk soon but this week on line sheet we've got a lot of great great stuff there were many media scoops there were many ovo scoops thanks to malik morris there was glossier scoops thanks to rachel schugatz and malik also went deep on the future of the victoria's secret he's kind of taken over that beat for me and he's doing a really amazing job with it so if you're interested in understanding how Victoria's Secret somehow is doing well even though like a turnaround seemed impossible he has the answers and I will be back on line sheet on Monday with the report from the men's shows and I have I'm sitting on a lot of stuff so we're we're rolling it out there's gonna be men's shows next week then there's couture there's gonna be a lot of news in the next couple weeks.

8:12And I hope you enjoy this interview with the truly wonderful Inezah Minoud.

8:19Inezah Minoud, welcome to Fashion People. Hi. Hi, Lauren. So great to be here. I am honored. And I was just, to describe to the audience, you're both wearing corded AirPods, iPods matching. And I don't think we've ever had, we've had two people in the same room before but not wearing the uh corded i don't even know what their car they just called airpods i don't remember headphones i guess apple headphones yeah apple headphones yeah what did you all have for breakfast this morning oh wow what a good question uh breakfast is our favorite meal of the day i like the only most important meal um so we always have yogurt and berries and wiseley and that kind of stuff and it it's endlessly satisfying every time what do you have oh what did i have i had i had an avocado toast pretty good yeah it's delicious and don't always eat breakfast but i had a mid-morning breakfast and a mid-afternoon lunch today instead of a early lunch do you all always eat breakfast together we do everything together there's like no not one moment that we don't do together except you know when either of us has to go to the dentist or the doctor and that would be like an hour and a half separation quite enough and then we're happy to be back it's an ongoing creative process where you have to be very flexible so you two met in the early 80s or in the mid 80s well the 80s yeah was it mid or early Almost mid-early 80s.

10:12Mid-early 80s. How did you meet? Was it as collaborators? Did you fall in love immediately? We both went to the Fashion Academy, which is in Amsterdam, where we met. And I decided after two years trying to design and sew clothes that I wasn't cut out for that. and that I kept taking pictures all the time and moved on to art school to do photography at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. And that was kind of the same year when Vinod graduated from the Fashion Academy. And I was making clothes to photograph because I had all these... I was so inspired by Jean Corteau and all these movies. And the reason I wanted to make clothes is to make images.

11:05and when i did when i graduated i started working on my first collection at the idea of going to paris after that so when i was midway i was like i need to find somebody who can really photograph this and my business manager at the time said oh remember inez pondek academy i said yes of course so i called inez and i explained what i was doing and she said well you know i want to do it but um i want to see the clothes and if i like the clothes then we can work together and that's how we started that's it and then we kind of we did those first pictures together and um you could say we fell off immediately but we were both involved with other people so didn't really say anything about that to each other but we kept on working for the six years from then on me shooting his clothes every season where we would work together on his fashion shows I would sometimes model in them and we kept having all these conversations about what we liked what we were inspired by and it was always the same thing like no matter when we would find each other again in those six years there was always this connection on feeling exactly that you are at the same point.

12:29Then six years later, we were both without partners and bumped into each other at the cash machine and then went for coffee. Very good stuff. And that was it. Then it was done. And been together ever since. But we started working together. That first picture was in 1986. six. And when you got together, did the not being without each other start immediately? Or how did you go from being collaborators to lovers to inseparable and creating everything together, your life, your work, everything? Yeah, I mean, actually, quite from the beginning, right from the moment that this was clear we he kept it the secret for a few months yeah we tried to be sort of subtle about it but then in the end i guess we we gave into it and then moved actually straight like a year in uh we moved to new york because we were invited um as artists in residence at ps1 um which uh you know then was still in queens uh only and um had its little clock tower outpost in manhattan and it was actually the first time for me that i came to new york and um uh the moment we landed here it was immediately clear that um we were going to do everything together and um venu decided to stop designing and really focus um with me together on image making and on creating the exhibition that comes with that artist in residency thing at PS1.

14:20So that's kind of how we really started, you know, fully being into it all together every day. And it was pretty tough that first year in New York, we knew pretty much no one, we didn't understand American culture as much, but we're fascinated by it. And, you know, watched a lot of television and absorbed as much as we could of the thought process and ideas that were swirling around here, which was to us very foreign and interesting, specifically this idea of physical perfection and the focus on that, which in Europe at the time wasn't really big of a thing. But here we noticed that there was this idea of trying to be as perfect as you can.

15:16But then when we started out at PS1 and started making our autonomous work, it was really clear to us that with the birth of the internet, which is 1992, which was when we were here, and the fact that CNN became this 24-hour news cycle and news became entertainment, We said, okay, so if everything is going through a screen eventually, if all contact goes through computers, why would you want to be so perfect? Why is there this focus on physical perfection? What use is it when no one's touching you? When you're only having any connection through a screen and you could virtually be anyone who...

15:59You can be any gender because it doesn't matter anymore because we're all in a digital life. Yeah, you could have this whole other life online. This was in 1992 and we started thinking about that and that's what propelled the work that we made while we were at PS1 called Thank You, Thy Master based on the Suzanne Somers commercial. and the two other series following that called Final Fantasy and The Forest, which then were shown in Venice at the Biennale and in Amsterdam at the Stéhler Museum. So that kind of push from that really got us out there in the art world. But at the same time, while we were in New York, we were you know trying to work as as fashion photographers and uh in those days it wasn't about you know there was no instagram no cell phones so you had to call uh and try to get through and like you know we as dutch people we were taught that when you phone someone you go like hi my name is ines van lemsweer i'm a dutch photographer could i speak to and like halfway through they already hang up because it was like that's too long that's not happening and so i learned after a while that you just have to go look hi as richard there and then they put you through so that you know eventually that works it was actually really nice to be so isolated in the beginning because we really had time to develop our thinking and way of working because we didn't have a job every day we only had to think about what to make for an art piece and we had a year the time for that so it was really good to have time to read and study and looking through America like almost like through a microscope you know.

17:54Was it common then to work on art photography and do fashion photography and at the same time or no? No it wasn't and and you know back then it It was, as an artist, it was so not cool to be commercial or to even appear in the party pages of Vogue or any of that. There was a real separation between high art and quote-unquote commercial low fashion. Even when Ines was still in art academy and I was working already on my own collection, it was a big no. The school was like, you can't do that. Yeah, for me to work for you and to straightaway say, look, I'm going to bring my rolls of film to a lab because my reality will be that I'm going to shoot like 40 rolls a day.

18:47I'm not going to develop them myself. So it was sort of like then for sure not done. And it did in the early 90s, you know, it did start that whole thing, fashion and art and how it could, you know, feed of each other and inform each other, which we were always a part of. Like the other person that that mom does was Wolfgang Tillmans. He did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. we kind of started working at the same time in both worlds, both the art worlds. We had shows in galleries at Matthew Marks and such in New York while we were shooting for Vogue. And it was really, you know, for us so important to be kind of independent of either world in order to just keep our vision, quote unquote, pure, as you say, as you could say.

19:39It was the main thing for us was to not really be dependent on any of these two different worlds, but to try to merge them and get inspired by either way of thinking and working. But we also, when we went to fashion school in the 80s, the Japanese designers were the thing, right? this was when Yoji and Calm hit hard. And I think that aesthetic and way of approaching fashion, you know, really informed like our years, you know, at art school and at the Academy. What was it like shooting for Vogue in the early 90s? You must have been so young compared to so many of the other photographers, even that they were using even then.

20:30Yeah, I mean, it was. We were also different because we were using the computer and that was for them almost like a new thing and almost a thing that they couldn't understand how it worked. Yeah, because what we used to do was how it all began was we were shooting models in the studio and then later on the computer, on the Quantel paintbox, we would take a stock slide of a background, say, of the Golden Gate Bridge or something and put that behind the girl that we shot in the studio. So that process of actually shooting something and then altering it on a computer and being able to place her anywhere was at that point not then at all.

21:16We were like the first to bring that kind of technology to the fashion world. But also we brought like an unreal world but looks real into the world of fashion and into the world of art. Yeah, because when we started, it was kind of grunge time when everything was sort of black and white, low, no makeup. And you're poor. This kind of thing. The next irradiator. Yeah, we were always saying like, you know, we're not interested in reality so much. We are interested in creating a sort of hyper real image or a different way of looking at glamour. And because a fashion photograph is essentially saying to you that the road to happiness is through glamour.

22:05And, you know, for us, it was interesting to play with all the preconceived notions, all the ideas around that by using the computer, by using the idea of, okay, I'm shooting this now, but then I have a chance to go into it later and change it and reconstruct an image to kind of disrupt this idea of time and disrupt the idea of a photograph being a purveyor of reality. Like for us, truth is not in a photograph. Love is in a photograph, but not truth. And we always, you know, said that from the beginning. And so at the early days when we would do this kind of work for Vogue, it was like we said it was hard for them because it wasn't like, oh, here are, you know, 10 different shots of the same outfit, choose the best one.

22:55now we would choose it and then we would manipulate it and put a background behind it and and that was it which was a very different way of working for them it and it was hard like for Anna Winters like can I see another option like no it would be because it would take so much time then and work to to merge the two images together and it um so it was a different uh a different way of working for them, but I have to say hats off to them for immediately recognizing that it was something else and that it was, you know, a different vision and it had a new approach, which they did embrace immediately, which had to do with, you know, their art directors being extremely, you know, forward in a way.

23:44Well, it's interesting you say there's love, but not always truth, because there's a certain magic to what you all do and what any amazing photographer does. But it's interesting, like, how did you find in using new technology and experimenting in this way, how did you find the emotion and the love through imagery? Like, what do you think it is about your process that the end result is emotional? Well, when we started, we started doing everything ourselves so basically we came up with the idea what would we wanted to say in an image and then we especially in the beginning we did the styling ourselves we did the casting ourselves you know from everything from every detail in our image was done by us and even that we were working on the layouts ourselves and on the text you know what is the headline what does it say all that was part of it but we were very involved in the beginning in every aspect yeah but then in terms of our process it's really so much about the person that sits opposite us in front of our lens like whether it's a fashion photograph or a portrait it's for us the main thing is that we love people and we're endlessly fascinating first of all by how people look and the specificity specificity of how someone looks like, whether it's the way their eye sits in their sockets, the way the space between your nose and your lips is slightly longer than in someone else's face.

25:30We can endlessly study someone and are completely mesmerized constantly. When we meet someone for the first time, when they come into our studio to be photographed, you know there's you know the hello and you know I'm so glad you're here kind of thing but in reality I kind of don't hear what they're saying because I am studying and I'm looking and then at some point you see what's so magnificent about someone and I'm not saying just like only like in the beautiful sense of the word but what it just makes this person this person and then you know we know that is what we're going to bring out as much as we can in the photograph and then the idea of this exchange of trust between us and the sitter is the most precious, most beautiful experience because you have to establish this relationship very fast.

26:27Sometimes, you know, like when there's a celebrity coming in, it's like you have five minutes to connect and then within 15 minutes you have to have the picture. And for us, that really intense focus on that person is what makes it it that's why we're here and that's why we're doing it it's it's that exchange and that exchange of in our feelings of love and attention on the other all the energy lines of everyone in the studio going towards that person and sort of lifting that person up to their most magnificent version is what we're in too and that's how we create and it's it's the most precious, unbelievable, rewarding thing, whether it's in a fashion photograph or a portrait or any other type of shoot, it's that connection.

27:23That's also why our exhibition, you know, our 40-year retrospective is called Can Love Be a Photograph? Because it's a statement for us, it is. It's, you know, as Simone Weil beautifully said, that, attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. And for us, it's that. It's that exchange. And then now with seeing the work, having it hang on the walls in a museum, there's this triangular relationship between us, the sitter, and then the photograph and the viewer and how they communicate. So that moment is literally everything to us.

28:08Is this the first major retrospective of your work? No. No, we had a big show 15 years ago that opened in Amsterdam at the Foam Museum and then traveled to several different locations throughout the world. But I feel personally, I think we both say that this is really, this one, this 40-year one, it's kind of a new baseline for us. It's a suit perspective. Exactly. Not a retrospective, but a retrospective. And it feels for us the way we took two years to construct the exhibition and it's thematically organized, not chronologically. So we kind of took time out of the equation. It's, of course, a historical exhibition, but time is not involved.

28:56um you know the rooms are organized per theme per ideas that keep coming back to us that have been there from the beginning but also the works that are there each work for us sort of holds clues for new work to make so there's so many ideas in these pictures that we feel oh we could do a lot more with that or we didn't fully build out that yet and so to us it's like a like an endless resource for more work it was actually amazing to study your own work for two years and really re-editing it and and really make it you know like what we said future expected because from now on this is the base of our work and and this is how the future will look for us plus the combination right of all the the work that's been made for art shows and others that have been made for clients or editorials, it's all there together and it all informs each other.

29:56And, you know, a lot of people might think, oh, I'm going to see a fashion photography exhibition and actually the clothes are definitely there and you'll know them all, but they are secondary. It's really the people on the images and what the images say that is important to us. And, you know, someone said to us as we were working on the show, and they said, but why, like, what if there's an incredible black dress by John Galliano? Why isn't that on the wall when the dress is so amazing? And we would say, like, yeah, it's just not enough. It's about what the person is doing in the picture, what the picture is saying, that for us then holds the value for it to be on the wall.

30:44I forget what I was watching a few days ago or talking to someone about this specifically that you need the person for the clothes or it doesn't work. I forget who was. Oh, my God. Too many conversations and too many watching too much stuff. But it was I don't know if every designer works like that. but it feels like the great ones often do where they're really designing for the person in mind, not just because the garment is cool or what happened. Do you all feel like the nude, because you were a designer and a nes, because you went to design school and because you all understood design and fashion design in particular, do you think it's just made your work so different from every, is that a big reason why it's so singular?

31:40Yes, I really think so. Also, of course, we started both as fashion designers. And also, we know, we play with the language of clothes, basically, and all the codes that comes with it. And then we always wonder, who created all these codes, and why are we still following them? You know, that is our big question always. But there's something so brilliant about fashion, I think, that we keep, you know, never getting enough, we never get enough of it because essentially we feel that nostalgia is at the base of old fashion. And, you know, there is this idea around when you formed your own identity in your teenage years, what music did you listen to, what movies that you see, what books did you read, who were your friends, what were they wearing?

32:33I think that particular period of sort of shaping and collaging your own identity is what's at the base of everyone in a creative field where they draw from and it's this sort of constant remix of things that we all remember into something new that fashion thrives on and in our opinion is at the base of it. And we all recognize that in the 80s, a white shoe meant something very different than what it means now, but we all remember what it meant in the 80s. And then now when we put it in again, to see that thing that you remember, but in a completely new context is what keeps pushing fashion along and i feel that that's the story and that's what is for us endlessly exciting like the little details the small moments of of like female said the codes of fashion the language of fashion is is is something we all recognize and you know a lot of people like no i feel maybe less so but you know people people say oh fashion is so superficial and and we always say what do you mean like you get up every morning you decide who you want to be even if you're saying you're not interested in fashion you're still thinking every morning okay what's my day like who do i want to be and what am i going to wear to say that in one instant without words i'm already saying oh i'm you know today i'm this person or today i'm feeling like this or i want to project this and i think that's the other thing for us that's so incredible in the work that we do is this idea of projection, like we project ourselves, our ideas, our feelings, our emotions around nostalgia, around memories onto the model that's in front of us in order to create this fashion image.

34:34And it's this exchange then that happens once we project our thing onto her and then whatever she gives back to us is what creates the picture. And fashion is, the great thing of fashion is always changing. The moment you think, oh, now I know it, it's moving on already. It's like New York. It's the great thing of living in New York and working in fashion, I guess. It's never the same. Yeah, I want to ask you about both of these things. So you really have witnessed from the 80s, the last 40 years in fashion have been, I guess they are always transformative. But in terms of how the business works, and you were part of that.

35:13You all are photographers for a lot of the really big advertising campaigns for many, many different brands over the years. And I'm curious. I really hate asking two part questions, but I will. A, what do you think of how the fashion has moved and changed? And then B, are you still inspired by it? because I think it's harder today sometimes because of the direction it's moved in and become more corporate to feel as inspired by a collection. And I wonder as people who are involved in that image-making process, A, what do you think of how it transformed? And B, do you think it's still as powerful as it once was?

36:05I mean, I think personally that a couple of years ago, corporate fashion has decided that fashion needed to become entertainment. And I think that's the world we're living in right now. They became production companies. Exactly. Defense companies. I think that's where we are at the moment. And I understand it from a corporate perspective of the world we live in today that is so over-satiated with imagery and all that. And the word I personally dislike the most in our current life is content. I think the word content sort of alludes to a vacant type of meaningless filling holes type of thing. And I think that's the one part I do not like about it is this need for content.

37:09We're always saying, you know, you might as well just put your logo on a tile on Instagram. It's the same thing. And why not do that and save your money for something else? than to just make meaningless stuff that just keeps rotating. But, you know, I feel that, you know, this need for entertainment is now the way to communicate. And it's exciting in a way. It's amazing, you know, all the different possibilities and directions that it's going into. I'm not sure if it's necessarily producing the clothes we all want to wear. and I really loved like a while ago a couple years ago I think Vanessa Friedman she wrote an amazing article saying that basically you could divide the fashion industry into two areas one that is the service industry that it really set out to be from the beginning and like it's It's supposed to work for us to wear stuff, feel good, look good, and be warm, etc.

38:17And then there's the other side where fashion has turned into merch, where a souvenir of a group you belong to or a moment in time. And I think when a designer is able to combine the two, that's when it's really successful and has longevity. I think personally, someone like Virgil Abloh was very, very good at that and understood all the different notions of entertainment, merch, service, etc. Humanity. Humanity, kindness, growth, youthfulness, etc. And we were lucky to work with him on his first few campaigns when he started at Louis Vuitton. And I feel he kind of kept the fashion world in check because he was focusing on kindness and on development and on play and kind of unexpected moments.

39:15And I feel like we're really lucky that we experienced that with him, with his art director, Lina Kutskovskaya and Christine Centenera. It was a very, very beautiful, beautiful experience. And I think for us, it was similar when we started working in 2020 with Chanel, with Virginie Villar, when she had to take over from Carl. And, you know, we worked with her on everything for the Pret-a-Porter except the clothes. But that relationship, again, was such a precious one because, you know, we would start our conversations with her, you know, way before she was designing the collection. It was more like images or movies we were looking at and would sort of bounce back ideas with her.