The Last Poet of Fashion - OLIVIER THEYSKENS

To call Olivier Theyskens the Baudelaire of the fashion world wouldn’t be too far off the mark. As someone whose career has spanned 25 years and multiple houses, including his namesake brand, Rochas, Nina Ricci, and Theory, his hauntingly poetic yet provocative creations carry a ubiquitous Theyskensian identity. But to remain at the top of an industry known for its fickle nature has by no means come without its challenges, especially when running an independent brand in a space dominated by global conglomerates. In this interview with Author’s founder Oona, Theyskens reflects on his formative years, his own identity as a designer, and how the industry has changed since the late 90s while articulating future plans with an emphasis on the quality-over-quantity approach for his eponymous house relaunched in 2016.

“One of my inner missions is to do something beautiful.”

- Olivier Theyskens

OONA: You've had such an interesting and long career — who is Olivier Theyskens? What do you identify with?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – Well, I have never really had the necessity to wonder so much [about that] because what I'm doing today, and what I am, is definitely a straight continuation of who I was as a child. I was literally always playing with the clothes, dressing up, and being contemplative of beauty. I would say the only disruption was when I was a teenager and I suddenly felt like I probably shouldn’t even do fashion. But since then, I never really had to question myself.

OONA: Who is an Olivier Theyskens woman, or a man? I like to be gender fluid and I like the way that you design. And if you can fit in it, anyone can wear it.

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – Whoever wants to wear this is welcome [to do so]. In terms of a muse, I love so many women, singers, and actors. So many of them are women in my family. I will never narrow it down to one person. But I did it once, two years ago. As a young teenager, I was obsessed with a French singer named Mylène Farmer and I decided to do a homage collection to that person. And obviously seeing people [and] women wear my clothes — the thing that makes me happiest is when they feel that they are trusted; that they have this sort of added thing they can express, like confidence.

OONA: What would be the emotions that would describe you as a designer and what would be the emotions that would describe the latest collection?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – First of all, and this is something a little bit awkward, but I think that nowadays the emotional aspect is more difficult to instigate. It's because I would really be focused on this emotional build-up that you have while you're seeing a show unfold. When you are in that moment, you pay attention to it and follow it like a short film; the music, the attitude of the model, and the beauty and evolution of it all help. And that's sort of the experience of these kinds of shows where some people might cry at the end or be really touched by it all. Nowadays it's a little bit trickier. Maybe because the attention span is focused on a different thing. And we know — the iPhone is one of the reasons! [laughs].

OONA: 30 seconds, that’s the attention span [laughs].

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – If I look at old photographs of shows from the early 2000s, there is not one person with a phone. There was a real photographer standing up in the crowd and taking pictures, Bill Cunningham, but you would have everybody in the picture really look at the model. So it does change the intensity, due to the involvement of people looking at it. In terms of my emotions, I tend to be a little bit melancholic. This is really a big part of my character. I'm a little bit more introverted socially.

OONA: In terms of introversion, would you say there's a lot that you can experience but not always express; the expression comes in different forms.

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – Yeah, but it's important to be on the lookout for incredible moments to experience in your life. It’s not necessary to feel like that every day. That's another thing that I have very intensely in me: I always think of myself as an animal. So I feel very balanced in nature on my own, I feel totally in tune with nature which I love. And, that's why I sometimes disconnect from being a human [laughs]. It creates a sort of contemplative feeling. It's contributing to my innovativeness.

OONA: That's really, it's really funny how we tied that in because my next question was how do you think your surroundings matter in your creative journey?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – I was in Marrakech in Morocco during the holidays when I was just arriving at Nina Ricci. And I sketched the pre-collection and the collection in Marrakech, which is obviously in North Africa. And I did an all-gray, wintery colours — [it was a] very urban collection.

OONA: It’s the one with the feathers in the hair?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – It was very street wear-oriented: Jeans and sweaters, and twisted small dresses. It was so disconnected from my environment. I could be put in jail and do a ballet collection. The environment doesn’t have a strong effect on me, it’s a projection. A collection for me probably is also a desire. You desire something that is different from what you experience.

OONA: How do you see your personal evolution within your brand and your brand's evolution?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – Today is so different from what I experienced when I launched my brand. Back then we would say that even for a new brand, you would sort of evolve fast and feel leveled to compete with whoever. But it's very different nowadays. When I relaunched in 2016, I kind of almost felt frustrated because as a small startup, trying to put together the effort to level it up again — you don't even dare to compete with the machine out there. After COVID, I thought to rescale it all up and focus more on my activity here in Paris, in my atelier, and my studio, starting to do things ourselves again. Nowadays, 100% of what we produce is done by ourselves.

OONA: What are the things that you find challenging in the industry right now? Or things you would like to give advice on? Sometimes it's hard and we don't always talk about the difficult part — not to glorify it, but more to normalize it.

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – My experience as an independent — because this is what I've been doing for five years now — is that there are obviously many challenges. And something that I can share with fashion students is: Be aware of the vulnerability of your project, not due to the lack of creativity, but because you need to be very cautious of how you manage yourself, your strength, your health, your small business, and all these things. We are conscious of the importance of lasting somehow, but it’s important we take risks and it's okay to change your vision. One of the aspects that is interesting in this industry [is] you can have a terrible season and the following season you do something incredible, and it matters that one or two people see it.

OONA: What does success mean to you and how would you define it? Because I feel it's very personal; success can be anything to anyone.

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – One of my inner missions is to do something beautiful. It can sound cheesy but my approach to beauty is showing things that can sometimes be dark and provocative, but [still] ultra-romantic, passé, or futuristic. Obviously, I'm not doing the best of what I could do for this world but if my role is to bring some beauty and revival with this little flame, it's already positive. So the success would be more there.

OONA: What's the vision for your brand?

OLIVIER THEYSKENS – When I relaunched, I really wanted to do my [own] house, my Maison. And previously, I didn't have the time to develop the atelier as much, which is something that I'm really focusing on now. My next ambition is to be able to reimplement a form of logistics to produce and commercialize, and eventually [do] wholesale. Although I don't want to put aside the importance of the Maison to have this actually work. And I'm going to take the time because these days I'm very happy with what I do. The way I envision the future, the size of it is not what matters anymore, what's important is the quality.