Artistic director of French shoemaker JM Weston for a year, Olivier Saillard will present his inspirations for the coming season in September. This does not prevent the former director of the Palais Galliera from maintaining a keen eye for fashion. BonneGueule met the curator/performer/artistic director to look back on his career, his inspirations, his vision of fashion, his mission at JM Weston, his everyday look... An interview without pretense or tongue-in-cheek.
His journey
“Where I was born, it’s a mystery to be interested in fashion”
"My mother was a taxi driver, my father too. It's kind of the only moment where they had a social evolution. In the east of France, in a small town which is the coldest in France, it's is a mystery to be interested in fashion. The most serious track was having four sisters, who were also interested in it.
My parents didn't know that you could study fashion . That's probably what I would have wanted to do but at the same time, that's just as well. My mother still told me that I needed to find a job quickly and that studying art would offer me more opportunities. So, that's what I did.
Fashion is a true passion. It was a real subject of research, my master's degree in art dealt with the links between art and fashion. But I am always in a situation of illegitimacy, whether in fashion because I did not go to fashion school or in museums because I did not study museums.
I went to the Louvre school for three days and when I saw the teaching provided there, I ran away.
I rediscovered my taste for fashion through museums. I made a conscientious objection - it was fashionable at the time - to the Musée de la mode aux Arts Décoratifs. Very quickly at 27, I became the director of the Fashion Museum in Marseille and when I returned to Paris, it all began."
His consecration
“Many creators were suspicious of museums”
“For some designers, the idea was for fashion to be current. They did not imagine that it could be preserved and exhibited in a place like the Palais Galliera. Fashion was seen as something extinct, dusty, old.
25 years ago, I remember, the designers themselves didn't like seeing their clothes displayed on wooden mannequins. For example, in the 80s/90s Jean-Paul Gaultier , Yohji Yamamoto thought that fashion should be seen on living bodies in fashion shows, and they were right. Since then, they have both had exhibitions.
At the time, many creators were suspicious of museums. Because they thought that if their works were kept in a museum, they would disappear, as if that meant the end of something. Yves Saint-Laurent is the only couturier to have had a retrospective during his lifetime. But it had somehow embalmed him a little.
We cannot say that the 90s/2000s were Saint Laurent's finest creative decades. I still remember that at the time of the “Lanvin” exhibition with Albert Elbaz, he had the feeling that it could “stop his trajectory”. And that's not entirely false, we understand it afterwards.
In 2015, the Palais Galliera dedicated an exhibition to Jeanne Lanvin
It's completely reversed today. Everyone wants their exhibition : the last time I was at the Palais Galliera , I had to refuse proposals for couturier exhibitions."
Its performance
“It was frowned upon to be a museum director and do performances”
“In my career, I have had 140 fashion exhibitions. I remember in 2005, I had: an exhibition on Yohji Yamamoto, an exhibition on Chanel in New York, I won the Villa Kujoyama in Japan [l 'equivalent to the Villa Medici in Rome Editor's note]. After having taken a sort of tour of the earth by plane, upon arriving in Japan, I said to myself "you're stupid, that's not what I wanted." do that". And then I don't like traveling (he laughs).
I spent six months in Kyoto at Villa Kujoyama. This allowed me to refocus and do more of the creative and performance work that I started in 2005. in parallel with the Palais Galliera.
It was frowned upon by some museum counterparts that I could be a museum director and the originator of performances with Tilda Swinton or Charlotte Rampling… whereas for me, it was a logical next step.
For my performances, I no longer had wooden mannequins but flesh mannequins , living exhibitions. I have always been afraid of losing myself in my work.
In 2013, Olivier Saillard produced a performance with actress Tilda Swinton, entitled Eternity Dress, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
His arrival at Weston
“I must bring poetry to the classics”
"I'm supposed to bring poetry and a kind of awakening to Weston. It's a brand that lives on shoe bases. Some date from the 1930s, the moccasin from the 1960s.
There are truly iconic models at Weston . I must bring poetry to these classics, to the introduction of new models and to the line of leather goods that we are currently developing.
We also planned performance, not around the shoe but around the act of walking. As I don't know how to do my job, it gives me the opportunity to completely invent it. I was really reaching the end of the exhibitions and I had to get back on my feet literally and figuratively."
The iconic JW Weston Hunting model, assembled by hand.
His inspirations
“From his third collection, Jean-Paul Gaultier made everything else out of fashion”
“When I see Alaïa, Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, I become an old fool: I can’t believe the new creator! (Laughs) And also Jean-Paul Gaultier, 25 years ago, it was an upheaval. I don't see who has this thickness in the current generation.
Jean-Paul Gaultier was already on point at the end of the third collection, he made everything else out of fashion. I can't say that Jacquemus upsets me as much as Jean-Paul Gaultier amazes me.
For men, I like Dries Von Noten 's gentle and poetic reading of men's fashion. I also love Margiela , Junya Watanabe and Véronique Nichanian's work at Hermès . Workwear brands also inspire me.
The last time I was in Japan, I observed that young Japanese people were dressed in work smocks, almost 19th century work clothes. It creates a sort of uniform and on the street it was very different. Someone in Prada or Saint Laurent almost saw themselves as a loud logo. Afterwards, that doesn't mean that they don't have their place, but I'm not a customer.
Dries Van Noten spring-summer 2018 fashion show, appreciated by Olivier Saillard
His taste for workwear
“Pants from Gap, a denim shirt and a black leather jacket”
"On a daily basis, my pants come from Gap . They cost 39 euros, I buy five at once all in blue, not the slim ones because they don't suit me - and I'm no longer old enough - and only denim shirts I like the denim shirt, I must be hung up on my teenage years...
As soon as I see a new denim shirt, I buy it, I mend them too. The black leather jacket I'm wearing is by Yohji Yamamoto, he's 15 years old. The jacket may change depending on the temperatures. The shoes, obviously they are Westons, the hunting model from the 1930s which has a good patina, it is almost tailor-made.
I move very little from these basics, especially in the last ten years. Afterwards I always liked blue. I had very costume-wearing periods: it's good when you're young but when you start to get older, it really gets old so I hold on to my leather jacket (laughing).
I don't move much when it comes to clothing, it's quite convenient. It is above all a comfort of the mind, a comfort of not thinking about it. I really liked Azzedine Alaïa who was often in Chinese uniform. That way we don't think about it anymore, it's settled.
I don't spend anything except for glasses and shoes. I really love the vintage ties that I buy everywhere and the denim shirt: when I see a really nice one, I don't count it."
Recently, Olivier Saillard exhibited his wardrobe at the Joyce gallery in Paris, “Personal Dressing”.
His opinion on trends
“We are in a weak time in fashion”
"We are undoubtedly in a weak time in fashion, as in dance. Strangely, people are more inventive on a personal level than when they are advised by fashion designers. On the catwalks, we either have something very extroverted and therefore impossible, or very common, very ordinary and in this case you might as well go to GAP.
Men and women have a real fashion education now , much more than in the 80s when we suddenly went from ordinary to disguise. Today: mixing vintage with new, with military and with sneakers, it's no longer even a subject.
I find that fashion is not inspired enough by the street. I remember a sentence from Azzedine Alaïa, returning from a car ride: "Ah girls don't wear mini-skirts anymore, they wear shorts. It must be easier to wear, we have to make shorts”. I liked that he himself, who had mastered all his art, said to himself that we had to make shorts. I don't think I've heard a designer say the same thing.
I prefer modest people if I may say so. The other day, I saw an old man in the metro with a shirt buttoned all the way to the top, I found it touching. There is a form of dressing, among modest people if I may say so, that is more inspiring, less flashy. It’s a relationship with the durable, the intimate that fashion has not worked on.”
Olivier Saillard met Azzedine Alaïa when he directed the Marseille Fashion Museum. They will remain close and the designer's creations will be exhibited at the Palais Galliera in 2013.
His vision of business
“There is a certain race for profitability today”
“As soon as they are appointed, artistic directors must have an oiled machine. A communication machine.
The garment does not only live by itself : it lives by the store, by the cartography of the image that accompanies it. Clothing is almost the image of clothing in itself: you have to recognize it immediately, it doesn't give you time to take much interest in it.
We must not deceive ourselves, all these designers, all these luxury brands only sell when it is on sale and again... we are beginning to see that there is a circuit of clothing pollution. There is so much overproduction that we must learn to manage.
The average consumer's interest is no longer in what to buy but in their body. We're all going to do sports, more or less bodybuilders. And it's true that when you feel good about yourself, clothes are easy, you can wear anything.
When I ask my assistants where their clothes come from, they tell me COS. It's never a creator. When I see certain people in fashion, I find them much more ridiculous than people in the street because they are too much the men or women sandwiches of a logo. That’s out of fashion.”
