Vogue Editors’ First Thoughts From PARIS! | PLUS Sally Singer on The New Guard of Designers

0:01Right now we are in the back of Callie's van. Hi Callie. Hi. Bonjour. Kelly's the best driver in Paris. We just ran into Francesca Ragazzi from Vogue Italia. Hello. Ciao a tutti from Paris. Guys, I have to admit, I lost Nicole. I lost Nicole. I'm going to find her, though. This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. And I'm Mark Holgate. And today is the first day we're recording from Paris Fashion Week.

0:41So how does this work exactly? Every episode this week, we'll spend a few minutes with editors as they debrief their live reactions to and from the shows. We're going to be talking all week with special guests. Different guests are going to come in the van. Today, Choma talked to longtime Vogue editor and current president of art and commerce at WME, Sally Singer. my former boss, about what she's looking forward to in this pivotal moment in fashion and how her early days at Vogue went down. But before we hear from her, I am here with my dear colleague, Mark Holgate. So Mark, tell me, where are we at this exact moment?

1:20We're driving on the other side of the river from the Eiffel Tower, and I'm doing my usual gawping at the Eiffel Tower. It's as if I'd never seen it before, which I do every time I see the Eiffel Tower but that's where we are right now we're just uh driving along past the Seine and it is a beautiful sunny it's the autumn leaves and it is a beautiful sunny day here in Gay-Paris. The traffic is not as bad as it could possibly be and we are on our way to Jonathan Anderson's Dior. We are indeed which I think I to say anticipation is probably not a strong enough word for the kind levels of excitement and intrigue and curiosity that we have for Jonathan's debut women's wear collection.

2:05I think we're all probably playing up the show as we imagine it in our head before we see it. You know, is the peplum gonna be there? How's he gonna tackle the bar jacket? But we don't know until we get there. Before we talk predictions, let's backtrack a little bit, Mark. We were together at Saint Laurent, again underneath the Eiffel Tower at night on Monday night. It's twinkling. There are about a million, maybe a billion hydrangeas arranged in the logo YSL. I was glad I took my Claritin. And opium being piped through the show space for sure. Opium, the fragrance. I have to say, you know, with Anthony Vaccarello, do you wonder if the success of Saint Laurent Productions, the cinematic division of the House of Saint Laurent, has encouraged him to think even more kind of dramatically and cinematically about his shows.

3:02And I really like the way Anthony kind of revisited and always revisits the codes of Saint Laurent and kind of twists and turns them. When I saw all of those leathers done in kind of quite a kind of couture-y kind of way, but the leather was kind of roughed up, but the shapes were beautiful, those kind of narrow skirts, leather skirts, it did remind me of a very, very early, early Saint Laurent for Dior collection, the kind of beatnik collection, because it was at that point seen as being so transgressive. And then it moved into the kind of utility dresses that Saint Laurent himself always did for many, many years, but done in this kind of almost like parachute silk style nylon.

3:47And then the finale with those dresses, which were kind of billowing, very kind of Nan Kempner 80s ball gowns, but were literally treated like T-shirts. I mean, they moved with such kind of fluidity and ease. And that's the one thing I feel like I keep seeing is like movement, movement, movement. Yeah, totally. I mean, think about Julian Klausner's show at Dries Van Noten yesterday. He was thinking about surfers. And so on the one hand, there were these scuba type shapes, but then very light printed in electric colors, caftans. And they, too, had that really nice floating sensation as the models walked by in the Palais de Tokyo.

4:32And, in fact, when I talked to him in the studio the day before the show, he was talking about how the reactions to his men's show in June and how the sarongs and the ease of that collection, people came up to him afterwards and said, oh, you know, it just felt so optimistic and light and joyful. And he loved that reaction so much. He wanted to reproduce it in the women's wear, is what he said. Yeah, I think Julian is successful at Dries Van Oten because he understands those clothes need to elicit an emotion. You know, it's not just about sitting there saying, well, that's really kind of conceptual and kind of interesting.

5:09It's not that played out at some intellectual-only play. And even though I think he's actually a very thoughtful designer, but he really understands Dries has to give you an emotion. And I think he brought it. I have to say, I thought that collection looked great. What other emotions were conjured for you yesterday? Avouiton or Stella McCartney? Well, kind of all at Louis Vuitton, because I believe, I know that Nicolas was looking at the idea of home, the idea of the domestic environment. Believe me, I would love my domestic environment to look like a wing of the Louvre. I mean, I can't remember which aristocrat that was apparently.

5:44Queen Anne, Anne d 'Autriche, Anne of Austria. Do you think she Airbnbs it? you know we can like maybe rent it those were just her summer residences let me clarify i wonder what the winter maybe it's like that but with like a central heating i don't know anyway i i do think again you know having had the privilege of seeing nicolas uh resort collection in the south of france and then to go to this i i i love the way that he's just really leaning into the experimentation with the silhouettes, with the techniques, with the finishes. I think he's just really intent on being as out there and kind of interesting and creative as he possibly can, which, you know, isn't that what we need right now?

6:29Talk about the innovation that we saw at Stella McCartney last night. You wrote the review and you called out something in particular. I did. There was two things that really impressed me about Stella McCartney's show. one thing was this uh and look i'm not a tech person um certainly not a scientist um i can barely read a shampoo bottle label but uh she did this thing called pure tech which um is something that could be woven into a pair of jeans and it helps clean the air and i do like the way that there's always this conscience but then it's always delivered with wit and kind of humor and I think a very female-centric approach to design.

7:11All right. Well, I see that our colleagues are already live blogging from Dior. So we have only a few minutes left before we get out of this car. What are you expecting from Jonathan Anderson at Dior? I, oh, I don't know. The crystal ball might be a little bit murky. I feel like, I think Jonathan is really going to want to lean very heavily into pushing the ateliers to make the most kind of fantastic creative things. I think when you look to the men's show, you saw all of those beautiful kind of, I'm going to call them Louis Cannes jackets. I don't know if that's what they were. But, you know, those remarkable jackets, which I already feel have taken over my Instagram feed.

7:58So I feel like he'll push the craft. He He already did that at Louave. And I think for him to then be able to work with ateliers that can do exceptional work, and also in a way grounded within a very strong language of fashion, you know, the bar jacket, the new look, all of these things that are kind of so kind of historically important in fashion. I think he's just gonna run with it and have fun. All right. We'll be back later to talk all about it.

8:31This is Alex, the producer of the show. I'm standing outside Tom Ford. Tons of people waiting for celebrities right now. All right, I see Mark Holgate and Nicole. Hi, guys. We have a special appearance. Hello. Hi, Claire Thompson, Johnville. Okay, amazing. Where are we coming from, guys? An excellent Tom Ford show. Incredible Tom Ford by Hader Ackerman show. Really stunning. Beautiful. He has found his place. He really has. Well, he really has. I just thought it was an incredible piece of such tightly controlled theater and then incredible clothes. And then David Bowie on the soundtrack singing this very...

9:19Acapella-ish. Acapella-ish version of Heroes. It's very theatrical and the smoke. and I love like a sexy black sheer leather situation. It was just, yeah, it was good. I would say that probably Haydor Ackerman has recuperated the term sexy because I have heard designers say continuously, I hate the word sexy. It's old fashioned. Hate sexy. It's all sensual. He is, that was sexy and he's proud of it. And he did it beautifully. I am 100 % aligned. and how interesting that the dresses with the one sort of the very thin strap up the middle are a total callback to a Hyder Ackerman show, only he did them in brights.

10:04They were like in red and yellow and green. And I like that he's plumbing his own archive. Great casting. I mean, so great. I always love it when the models, you can tell that they feel really good in what they're wearing. Like that's the sign. That's when you know. We also have to talk about where you were before this because you caught up with Stephanie on the way to Dior. How was Dior? Dior was a kind of trip through Jonathan Anderson's kind of imagination with a bar jacket. It was really, I thought, him showing every aspect of the house, every aspect of what he could do. You had the kind of the soft flowing kind of dresses.

10:46You had things that were much more constricting. I know Claire had a very particular love of some of those clothes. It's funny, like shout out for the video at the beginning, which was so slick and really quite emotional and very, I love an Ethel Kane moment. But I have to say, I am a Glaswegian. I love a mini skirt and a high heel, like a little bow and a high heel and a tiny denim mini. I'm sold. Like I'm into it. I thought the video was almost confrontational. It felt dark. I mean, it wasn't like a happy... It was horror, horror movies in there. It felt a bit like Dario Gento, Let Loose on the Dior Archive.

11:26That was kind of the vibe. I was trying to figure out, what was he telling us? He is gonna... Do you dare enter? Yes, he dares enter, and he's in charge now. So we have to run, because where are we on our way to? Balmain. We're walking into Balmain. I'm with Mark and Nicole. Huge crowd of people out here. Luke, it's before the Ballman show. It is a madhouse in here. There are a lot of people eager to see Olivier's latest. You've been backstage already. Tell us. Backstage isn't quite as insane as front stages at the moment, but it is very, very busy. And we're in this beautiful historic fashion room in the Intercontinental for a specific reason, which is that it was where Olivier had his very first show.

12:16I remember. Me too. That was a great show. It was a great show and it was a big surprise because he was the hot young thing. He was young, he wasn't even 30. He wasn't even 25. Not even 25. He was like 23 or 24. And he was an unknown quantity, remember? Christophe de Carnot, who was the darling, the strong-shoulder darling of fashion at that point, had disappeared and there was a lot of cynicism. And he came and that first collection, to be fair, I was very Dick Arnanian, but then began Olivier's journey. And I think now if you look at the list of fashion designers who've been in situ, he's maybe third.

12:52And he's not yet 40. He's about to turn 40. So I think Olivier's hitting 15 years. And I think he wanted to come back. For me, I'm not sure if it's an exact anniversary, but I think it's a very conscious move in what we've been talking about this season of debuts to say, I might not be the newest name on the street, but maybe you don't disregard me necessarily because I'm not the hottest, latest toy. I think that's probably a subtext of being here. That makes sense. And looking at the collection, does it call back to that first one at all? Because I still want those velvet pants embroidered with pearls.

13:32I'm afraid it's not as full-on Baroque as it was, but there is a lot of embroidered embellishment in a much more organic way, but that does also actually have a marine connection. Olivier said it's very much a summery collection, and what you'll see is there's a lot of handcraft, a lot of beads, a lot of shells, a lot of drape, which is relatively new for him because it's always been about structure. Things that aren't new are the kind of tonal colours, quite nomadic vibe, quite a lot of very soft and military references, a lot of soft boots with quite strong floating heels. He used this funny expression, he was like, yes I want to feel that she's on the sand but it's couture sand, which is Olivier all over.

14:20I've been reviewing him for years, I feel great affection towards him and I can I can see what I detected was his point of view which is that we're all obsessing over these new names. He's actually younger than a lot of designers who are making their debut this season. And I think familiarity doesn't breed exactly contempt, but it breeds a form of disregard. And I think that what he's done here is he's built a very small house that had sales in the tens of millions into a house that has sales, I'm not sure exactly, but I'm sure there are at least 10 times more than when he started. So I think that's why we're here tonight.

14:57That's it for the fashion shows from Paris today. Here is Choma's catch-up with our former boss, the one and only Sally Singer.

15:12You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

15:39Let me just say, for the record, Sally is the queen of amazing white shirts and blouses. So I feel like I've bought many, many a shirt off her back almost. Yes, I can take you there. So Sally, so I mean, one thing I have to say before we get too deep in this conversation is that the conversations I have with Sally are some of my best conversations of the year. So it's always like, I think we all want to know what Sally thinks. So I'm so lucky to have known you for so long. You've been a fantastic friend, the best boss ever that I've ever had, a mentor. So I'm really honored to have you on the show.

16:16And I think every time I go to work to do anything, I think, what would Sally do? Jeez, thank you. And really, really excited to have you on to just to pick your brain about how you're feeling about this really pivotal moment in fashion. We were looking back at some of the amazing fashion features that you've written over the years. And there was that one piece that had like Hiddy, Nicola and kind of this amazing changing of the guard that was, I can't believe it was 25 years ago. It feels crazy to think that. Yeah, that was a big, that was a, that was a funny story. That was my first year at American Vogue.

16:51I think I'd started August or September 1999, and that story came out in the spring of 2000 or so, right? So I think it was really—my first big fashion story for American Vogue was a profile of Marc Jacobs at Vuitton. That I remember because I went to Paris and spent a lot of time with him there. And remember that he edited the colors of the Haribo gummies. Oh, my God. He didn't have, he didn't like candy that had the flavors of bar fruit. It was the most chic thing I'd ever heard. But then that story of the new guard of designers was for me such a moment because I had been so moved by the new generation, mostly from Belgium.

17:43And that feeling with the first collections of Olivier Teskin's. Nicolas' first shows, which I would put in that category, though he's French, not Belgian, Anne and Philippe van der Verst, Eddie, Veronique Bronchino. There was this very precise, slightly downbeat in the best way, like not logo, not excessive, and not also so stripped back as to just be minimalism vibe coming out of Belgium at that time. like romantic stormtrooper or something that I was just fascinated by. And that story, that plus Junior, who's an insane genius, who's just really peaking at that moment, and all of Hussein's experimentation in London that was just getting deeper and more interesting, it just felt like such a moment.

18:34And it felt like such a palate-cleansing moment from the two strands before, which is the kind of minimalism of a Calvin and the bejangled, bejangled of a lot of the French luxury brands at that moment. You know, Dior bags with charms hanging off them and all of that, which is fun. But it felt new and fresh and young, learned, culturally astute, and uncompromising in really interesting ways. Really uncompromising, not looking for scale, looking for a kind of depth of design. And I think that has, for the designers who have persisted, that has persisted with them. I think we still think that about Eddie Slimane.

19:16He doesn't have to dress everyone. He has to dress the people he wants to dress in the way he wants to dress them. I feel that even with Nikolai, even at Vuitton, even in such a big job, it's almost clear who his woman is, you know, what he wants for her, how he thinks forward for her. So, yeah, that was an exciting piece. And also that we could fly everyone into New York. Imagine those budgets. Imagine magazines at that time. Hello. and Stephen Mizell. I mean, so proud. I mean, like Stephen shooting it. How fab. On location, I'm not in a studio. But again, you know, at that time when you did a story like that and you flew everyone in and you spent time with people and you invested in a story, because it was pre-social media, pre the moment when a magazine is a whole entertainment force that has to exist, you know, 24-7, 360, You didn't have to invite everyone here and then have a big party for them.

20:14That's sponsored that has pictures the next day. You didn't have to make a ton of—you didn't have to make any content from it. You just had to make the thing. You had to make the best pictures of the best clothes with the best models at that moment. And then release it to the world as a surprise. It had that kind of crystallized authority where every cent spent was in the service of an important, important piece of journalism. And that's just not the way things are anymore, for better or worse. Better in some ways, worse than others, you know. Different, just different. I do want to ask you, of the designers who you spoke to then, who was the one that surprised you the most as you've watched their career over the 25 years?

21:00that's interesting I think I always knew from the first moment I saw his first collection I think for Balenciaga that Nikola was a rock star he seemed to have the phone number of the zeitgeist and he could just call it up I think I found Eddie's work at that time which was menswear but I think we shot it on Shalom I think we shot it on a woman I thought Eddie's work in menswear was exactly the woman I wanted to be. Like, I always thought he just, his restraint was so desirable. It just, that persists to whatever his next job is, but it persisted through Celine. I completely adored Anne and Philippe van der Voest of AF van der Voest.

21:45They got, you know, on the day they got married, they went swimming. They had this very funny relationship to Antwerp and their being a couple. And I think she had worked for Drees maybe originally. And they were just so delightful and likable. And he had a David Beckham-like way of shifting his hair and his look where she stayed the same. And I just thought they were intoxicating. He was, you know, yeah, he was like the peacock. And she was, you know, the sort of cool girl, solid emo chick. And actually, they've just reissued a boot they probably did 25 years ago. a very strict shaft, little bit stormtrooper-y, but with a kind of round toe.

22:30It's just like it was the great boot. And I think I had it then in a chocolate brown, and I bought it in black. And it's like exactly what I want to wear now, too. They had just a system of dressing, like with a trench coat and a shirt and like a straight skirt and a boot that was, again, And it provided a uniform for a world I had never quite seen dressed that way. And I aspired to dress that way. And then they were so delightful. Absolutely delightful. I think about now as we're approaching this shift in this whole new God that compares in a way to that moment. Or would you agree? Would you say that has there been another group that compares?

23:15Has there been a moment where we've seen so much change? We've never seen so much change at the top of houses. I mean, this is established brands. These aren't even new brands coming up. That was new brands. I mean, I think Roberto Manichetti had taken over Burberry and that the late Josephus Timister, rest in peace, had taken over Balenciaga. We had a few people who were at brands. But this is like massive commercial enterprises being helmed by new people. So, so much is at stake. I don't think, no, I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Again, there was a moment, an LVMH moment in the 90s to early 2000s when you had Narciso at Louave and Michael Kors at Saline and Marc Jacobs at Vuitton.

23:58You had the American invasion of Paris. And that was a moment. That was a moment. And that was coupled as well by the British invasion of Paris with John Galliano and Lee McQueen. But that was an LVMH moment. This is an across-the-board moment. In Milan, in Paris, in New York to a certain extent, you have a whole bunch of new people helming houses. And it's exciting. I think it's super exciting. It's super exciting. It is, isn't it? I literally have no idea what Matt Joublez is going to show at Chanel. I'm so excited to not know. So excited. I don't need to preview things. I want to go and be amazed on the day.

24:34I'm excited for Louise Trotter at Bottega. She did a brilliant job at Carvin. Can't wait to see what she's going to do with more resources, more support, more at her fingertips. So it's an exciting time. I do think those lucky designers who have all those new positions—oh, Jonathan Anderson. I mean, hello. Oh, my goodness, yeah. Like dying, dying to see the women's work, right? I thought the men's show was incredibly smart, so shrewd, and actually looks fantastic on the red carpet too now. But the job that the people take in these houses now is a very fundamentally different job than what we were looking at 25 years ago.

25:12They have to oversee a vast number of collections. They have to manage global audiences who are watching their every move, even if they're not particularly public people. They have to maintain an army of ambassadors and actresses, red carpet celebrities, models they like, figureheads to sort of represent their work around the world 24-7. So it's always on. They're maintaining an entertainment channel. And they still have to design jackets with two sleeves and, you know, a waist and maybe a chain in them. You know, that's hard. That's really hard. We don't demand that of film directors. Christopher Nolan can drop a film every few years and everyone's very excited.

25:56Do you know what I mean? Like, these people are marshalling an army all day, every day. That's a very hard thing to do. I mean, it's the sort of thing that Karl Lagerfeld seemed to be able to do effortlessly. But very few people are Karl Lagerfeld. It's hard.

26:16do you think that this pressure do you think this takes away from the creativity do you think or do you feel like there are those people who can i mean when you think about simon you know port jacquemus i feel like the world that we move in now the kind of channels that we have kind of energize him to this idea that you can command a world outside of the runway and your your influence on the red carpet and on social media has as much impact as that one day that you have to present to the fashion world well i think the people who do it best with the most joy in their own lives let's just put it that way the people who do it well and feel the happiest in their are the people who everything that that comes from them at any iteration be it a sneaker through a red carpet gown is completely and truly part of their vision, and they don't compromise at all.

27:17And I think Simone has that in her bones. It probably comes from her father having been the daughter of a designer who really stuck by his guns through John Rocha through his whole career and even into his interiors. And then I think the model for how to think is Dries through his whole career. A Dries show was always a Dries show. Even if fashion was moving in another direction. Drees was moving in Drees' direction, and Drees' customers were moving with Drees. That's a beautiful legacy that now translates fabulously into beauty and fragrance. And then, obviously, Rick Owens. I think Rick Owens is the designer who, whether his clothes were going to be in vogue in a certain season or not, did his clothes for his customers, was in the factory making those bias-cut T-shirts.