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Peter Dundas and Anna Dello Russo discuss
empowering women, high glamour
and the ‘jet-set’ influence
Norwegian-born Peter Dundas has been the creative and artistic
director at Emilio Pucci since 2008. He began his career as an assistant
costume designer for the Comédie Française in Paris, and has held design
roles at Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Roberto Cavalli, Ungaro
and Revillon. He lives mainly in Florence.
Bari-born, Milan-based Anna Dello Russo is the editor-at-large
and creative consultant for Vogue Japan, and a style celebrity thanks
to a penchant for changing her extravagant outfits several times
a day at the fashion shows. She spent 18 years at Condé Nast
Italia, starting as fashion editor of Vogue Italia and then serving as
editor of L’Uomo Vogue from 2000 to 2006.
Friendship
ADR: I collect all of Peter’s iconic pieces. What I
like about his style is that it’s at once cool and
ultra fierce. Even if a dress is isn’t body
conscious, it always makes a woman look sexy,
cool – the kind of woman I like. He’s great with
prints and colour, which can be tricky for many designers.
PD: It’s my interest to make clothes that make a
woman shine, that make her feel empowered; it’s
the kind of sexy that everyone likes. I remember
when we met – it was during my first Italian job
[in the Roberto Cavalli creative team] nearly 10
years ago. I was totally shy and so impressed by
how focused and precise you were in your
creative director role, considering the
total chaos that surrounded you.
ADR: When I first saw you, I thought,
“who is that handsome guy who looks like an actor?” Although
you came from France you didn’t, and still don’t, have an attitude.
You’re quite Zen, and shy, in my view the typical Norwegian:
candid, naif, pure. But you were so passionate, a volcano of ideas
that it was obvious from the beginning that
you wouldn’t stay in a team for long.
PD: We live in different cities and have intense
work schedules now, but we are still very close:
I’ve become your official walker.
ADR: Yes, you are my official walker.
You like to party and I like to
be accompanied by a handsome gentleman.
This kind of friendship is long-lasting, like the ones
with best friends from primary school.
PD: I like to think of you as my good fairy because you’re honest,
enthusiastic and supportive. Plus, you personalise every
outfit you wear and aren’t afraid to dare.
Personal style
ADR: I like to consider myself the guardian of fashion.
When I moved house 10 years ago, I had 4,000 pairs of shoes.
I had to buy a bigger home to store all the clothes because I need closets,
not kitchens, and many are now in my house in Bari [in the southern Puglia region].
I’m super tidy so every item is catalogued, stored in garment
bags with tissue paper, perfumed and on hangers that are all the same.
But I’m not a vintage fan – I don’t like the smell of old clothes.
I’m also not a fan of bags, because anything that is practical isn’t handsome;
if anything I like clutches. Pyjamas and tracksuits are sloppy so
I only wear Abercrombie & Fitch tracksuits to go to my yoga class.
If you dress comfortably, you don’t get the look.
PD: My father was a widower and he had no idea
of how to dress me and my sister because he was fine just wearing an anorak.
He would haphazardly customise old clothes, so I started making clothes
for my little sister and he brought me a sewing machine.
When I finished my studies, I decided that I wanted
to do something useful that I also enjoyed.
ADR: Even as a teenager I loathed jeans and
hoodies so I would ransack my mother’s closet, and the closets of
my mother’s friends. On Sunday morning, they would open their closets
to find they were missing a blouse or had a mismatched suit,
and they would groan, “Oh, that’s Anna”.
When I could, I would force my mum to buy designer clothes from
Callaghan, Complice, Missoni and Versace so I could wear them on my
Saturday night outings. They were too tight for her and too big for me,
so I nipped them with belts or pinned them.
PD: I spent lots of time in France, but I like the
spontaneity and sense of colour of Italians. They are more daring
and instinctive. In Florence I work 12 to 14 hours a day.
I appreciate the result-oriented attitude of the people and artisans
I work with, the desire to make things happen.
ADR: It’s a kind of more elevated and evolved ready-to-wear,
where creativity stretches out towards haute couture.
In part, I think it’s a reaction to an increasingly high level
but affordable mass market. Today ready-to-wear offers real
one-of-a-kind pieces, infused with top artisanal workmanship,
details and fashion codes that are totally glamorous
and very evening wear. The past 10 years were very hedonistic for fashion,
what with young jet-setters back on the fashion scene.
Jet-set glamour
PD: Young jet-setters are great because they give
the idea of lifestyle a more authentic glamour and aspirational connotation:
the way they live, their attitude, their look. Fashion is also going through a
generational change that is very exciting, because I want Pucci to be part of it.
ADR: I’ll never forget when I saw Bianca Brandolini d’Adda
at Valentino’s 45th anniversary party in Rome wearing a long white column.
It was one of her first outings with Lapo Elkann and she looked amazing,
like a new Marisa Berenson. High glam means less day wear and more unique
pieces on the runways. Phoebe Philo for Céline is perhaps the first designer living
today to have veered towards pure day wear again.
PD: It challenges me to give the consumer something
that has an even higher value in terms of design, quality and excellence.
ADR: Historical and social crises normally bring change
and that’s good. But you’re right, we must work harder. I love opulence, gold,
richness. I will always say that I was born in Versailles and will die at the Hermitage.
When I visited St Petersburg, I really felt at home like a czarina, attracted to the
gold gilded columns that are everywhere. My father often
compares me to Anastasia or to Tutankhamen.
I love to surround myself with beautiful things.
PD: Yes, but don’t forget: it’s normal for us;
we’re visual people after all. We believe in our dream and want to share it.
For me, colour is like great food. I get a thrill when I find the
right shade of pink or orange, it’s like eating dessert.
ADR: Fashion is a muse just like theatre, art, music, literature;
it’s a mirror, a sign of the times. It’s timeless, like music – even during the war,
you couldn’t stop people from singing. You can view it as a discipline,
as frivolous, as costume, but it will never end.
Do you want to shop like ADR?
Do you want to spend a day with
ADR as a personal shopper?
Call ADR, the woman for whom
TOO MUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH.
_Billioners Only_
H&M is proud to announce a special collaboration with
fashion icon and legendary Fashion Director
Anna Dello Russo.
An idol of the blogosphere whose flamboyant outfits are
endlessly documented by style photographers and
broadcasted globally through the web, Anna Dello Russo
proved her unique sense of style creating a special collection
of accessories for H&M. Unabashedly glamorous,
precious and playful, the range is an expression of
Dello Russo’s taste for ornamentation.
Available from October 4, 2012, at the
peak of the global fashion weeks tour, in around 140 stores
worldwide and online. The collection features jewelry,
sunglasses, shoes, bags and a trolley allowing H&M
customers uniqueness at an affordable price.
“I am excited by this collaboration: this is the first time H&M
involves a Fashion Director in a special project. This is the sign
of an important evolution in fashion, and I am both thrilled and
humbled to be the one chosen to lead it. I wanted to create precious
accessories that are impossible to find. As a stylist I know
accessorization is essential: it is the personal touch to any outfit.
With these pieces everybody can have fun, turning an ordinary day
into a fantastic fashion day”, says Anna Dello Russo.
“It’s been extremely exciting to involve Anna Dello Russo in this
project, something completely different from what we have done before.
Anna has a fantastic eye and a strong taste, apart from being a
veritable fashion icon. She produced an extravagant range of
accessories that will get H&M customers and everyone in love with
fashion excited. The collection is a celebration of excess,
fantasy and decoration” says Margareta van den Bosch,
Creative Advisor at H&M
Famously described by photographer Helmut Newton as a “fashion maniac”,
Anna Dello Russo is one of contemporary fashion’s driving forces.
An unparalleled eye, she has shaped the way we see fashion today
through her groundbreaking work at Vogue Italia, where she served
as a Fashion Editor for over twelve years working with photographers
such as Helmut Newton, Michel Comte, Walter Chin, and later as the
Editor in Chief of L’Uomo Vogue. Currently holding the role of Fashion
Director at Large and creative consultant at Vogue Japan, Dello Russo
is a darling of the fashion bloggers, whom she likes to please with
extravagant get-ups, and countless changes of outfits,
during the world’s fashion weeks.
>> Say what you want about the bloggers vs. journalists scrap heap
that doesn’t want to die even though it effectively killed itself
off when journalists became bloggers and vice versa and thus turned
into a giant grey area. Instead of of the versus symbol, I’d like
to think it’s a -> / <- situation instead. Keyboard symbol translation?
That bloggers have much to learn from journalists and vice versa and
I learnt a little how from my short trip to Milan yesterday.
I was lucky enough to be privy to Anna “needs-no-intro” Dello Russo’s
personal scrapbook that she keeps and found a paper-based notation
system that was utterly inspiring. “I can’t get inspired in front
of the computer,” she says and so Dello Russo formulates her ideas
for blog posts by jotting down lists, drafting up posts and collaging
imagery into her Hermes leather bound notebook, ensuring there’s
enough highlighter pink and orange and birooutlined
lettering to hammer in her points.
If you thought that Dello Russo had a team of minions banging out
her posts, you can banish that though with a glimpse at her notebook.
Dello Russo may have embraced everything that the internet and
blogging has to offer but her experience having worked in print
for twenty years or so, shows in her dedication to the physical
written word. Her handwriting is neat, her lines are straight and
her colouring in of her bold lettering doesn’t stray beyond the
outline. That’s quite a plateful for any handwriting analyst.
Likewise with her imagery, she doesn’t simply tear out pages and
tack them into a book but instead carefully cuts things out, as
though she were about to do a bit of precise decoupaging.
I found myself absolutely mesmerised by her book, cowering
in the fact that I’ve never really thought to plan
my posts out by paper.
Even my own personal editorial-tearing and scrapbooking of physical
imagery has diminished when Tumblr and my organised folders of JPGs
came into place. Her desire to start her own blog in the first place
came about because she wanted to ensure the fashion credits of her
outfits were listed out properly, another reason why her print-to-blog
methodology works for her.
I never would have thought that Dello Russo would be a fashion media
benchmark but her simultaenous rooted dedication to print and positive
embracing of the internet as the vehicle of her self-image and her brand
definitely marks her out as someone in the industry, who
really knows how to get the best out of both worlds.
The creative path imagined by graphic designer and artist VAHRAM MURATYAN,
is a virtual road/paved/with Prada 2012 spring/summer mens and womens
accessories, which highlights through rapid and intuitive movements two
parallel universes that meet under the auspices of Prada style.
Prada Parallel Universes is an exercise that grows out of the drive to
experiment with, and to match, new communications media and Prada’s
semiotics; to be consistent with the present without nostalgia.
This dreamlike yet virtual story was entrusted to the Armenian born
illustrator Vahram Muratyan. Through his adopted city of Paris, Vahram
recently came into the limelight for his newly published book Paris vs New
York, a work of art which compares the two great cities with graphic
signs exploring their different similarities.
The same intellectual path is followed by Prada in its
spring/summer collections dedicated to accessories.
The complete path is now online on:
http://www.prada.com/it/parallel-universes/cards/1
Prada Parallel Universes – connection to UNIVERSE 0
http://www.vahrammuratyan.com/index.php?/works/prada/
