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all lowercase. That's That's

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shopify.com/ special offer. Hi

1:49

everyone and welcome to another illuminating episode

1:51

of bonus content for beef with me

1:53

Bridget Todd. Today I am thrilled to

1:56

travel back in time to the peak

1:58

of chic, the Paris fashion season. of

2:00

the 1970s as we

2:02

uncover the smoldering squabble between

2:04

two legendary fashion icons, Karl

2:06

Lagerfeld and Yves Saint-Laurent, two

2:09

figures whose influence on how we address can

2:11

still be seen today. Navigating

2:13

me through this precarious world of haute

2:15

couture is Dr. Valerie Steele, director

2:18

and chief curator of the museum at

2:20

the Fashion Institute of Technology. Dr.

2:22

Steele has personally organized more than 25 exhibitions

2:25

at the museum, including The Corset,

2:27

Fashioning the Body, Gothic, Dark

2:29

Glamour, A Queer History of Fashion,

2:32

and Paris, Capital of Fashion. She

2:35

is also the founder and editor-in-chief of

2:37

Fashion Theory, the Journal of Dress, Body,

2:39

and Culture, the first peer-reviewed scholarly

2:41

journal in fashion studies. She

2:43

is the author or co-author of more

2:45

than two dozen books, including Paris Fashion,

2:47

A Cultural History, Women of Fashion,

2:50

Fetish, Fashion, Sex, and Power, and Fashion

2:52

Designers, A to Z, the collection

2:54

of the museum at FIT. She gives

2:56

lectures frequently and has appeared on many television

2:58

programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and

3:00

the PBS special The Way We Wear,

3:02

and the Washington Post described her as

3:04

one of fashion's brainiest women. Dr.

3:07

Steele, welcome to beef. Thank

3:09

you. So first I have

3:11

to ask, how does one become a

3:13

fashion historian, let alone one with such

3:16

an incredible academic credentials? Well,

3:19

to become a historian, a

3:21

professional historian, you study history

3:23

within some kind of a

3:25

university setting. So I got

3:27

a PhD in modern European

3:29

cultural and intellectual history at

3:31

Yale, but the first term

3:33

I was there, I

3:35

had an epiphany and I realized fashion's

3:37

part of culture. I can do fashion

3:39

history. So that's what I

3:41

did, although for many years it meant

3:44

that I was not able to get

3:46

any kind of full-time position because no

3:48

regular history department would hire someone

3:50

working on such a fluffy topic as

3:52

fashion. I want to start there

3:55

because why do you think that fashion is

3:57

kind of marginalized? You know, you use the

3:59

word fluffy. I'm thinking of that

4:01

monologue from the Devil Wears Prada in

4:03

my head where Miranda has to explain

4:05

why fashion matters to history and culture.

4:08

But why do you think it's so

4:10

easy for people to discount what fashion

4:12

says about culture and history? I

4:14

think it's because fashion is something that we

4:16

wear on our bodies. And

4:18

so, particularly for intellectuals in academia,

4:21

you're supposed to be focusing on

4:23

the life of the mind, not

4:25

on the sort of material around

4:27

your body. So I

4:29

think partly for that reason, academics

4:31

tend to be the worst dressed

4:33

middle class occupational in

4:36

most countries. With a few exceptions, you know,

4:38

if you're teaching Italian art, you might be

4:40

well dressed. But you know, if you're teaching

4:42

history, you look pretty schlubby. And let's not

4:44

even go into anthropology. So

4:48

I think that that's one reason.

4:51

And then the other reason is

4:53

because fashion is associated primarily with

4:55

women. So I

4:58

think there is a very sexist

5:00

feeling that this is an unimportant,

5:03

frivolous thing that unaccountably

5:05

women are interested in. And

5:08

so in male-dominated professions, like

5:10

traditionally academia, that's looked down

5:12

on. And I think that

5:14

feminists also tended to look

5:16

down on fashion as being

5:18

something that was oppressive. You

5:20

know, leftists think it's, you

5:22

know, bourgeois, it's conformist. Academics

5:25

don't like it. It's oppressive to women. Academics

5:28

don't like it. It's frivolous. I

5:30

think that for all of those

5:32

reasons, it really took a very

5:35

long time to enter into the

5:37

scope of what intellectuals would study.

5:39

And I think it was really

5:41

partly because of gay history and

5:44

queer studies that people on

5:46

the left began to understand that it

5:49

wasn't just something that was bourgeois or

5:51

oppressive, but in fact, it could be

5:53

something that was self-expressive and that was

5:56

even socially transgressive and rebellious. And so

5:58

that was a different way. of

6:00

looking at it. It wasn't just this

6:02

monolithic fashion industry forcing you to do

6:04

things, but rather you were fashioning yourself

6:06

to present yourself to the world. So

6:08

to that end, what do you think

6:10

fashion says about us and our culture

6:13

at any given time? Like, why is

6:15

it such a unique and important art

6:17

form? Well, I think that we

6:19

know that the fashion industry is a

6:21

multi-billion dollar industry. And then if you

6:23

add the beauty industry, which is also

6:25

part of how you fashion your appearance,

6:28

it's also immensely lucrative. But I

6:30

think the reason they are lucrative

6:33

is because they're so important for

6:35

us individually. So it's not just

6:37

that for a society we're

6:40

interested in this for reasons of

6:42

status, et cetera, but also individually

6:44

we want to express aspects of

6:46

ourselves. So let's get into

6:48

something I find endlessly fascinating, which is Paris

6:50

in the 1970s and that

6:52

whole era. So what was

6:54

it about 1970s Paris that

6:56

made it such a perfect ecosystem

6:59

for creatives, especially creatives in fashion,

7:01

to flourish? Well, Paris in

7:03

the 70s was really an extraordinary

7:05

place, in part because the U.S.

7:08

was also extraordinary then, because a

7:10

lot of what you're seeing with

7:12

the flourishing of avant-garde designers like

7:15

Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld

7:17

is that they were drawing a

7:19

lot from American youth culture. France

7:22

didn't really have much of a youth

7:24

culture in the 70s. That was

7:26

partly because after the war it

7:28

took a long time before any

7:30

kind of baby boom occurred. England

7:32

and the U.S. had booming youth

7:34

cultures, rock and roll. You know,

7:36

France had had, well, Francois R.D.

7:38

is charming, Billie Holiday is an

7:41

acquired taste, but it wasn't exactly

7:43

the Beatles or the Rolling Stones

7:45

or Elvis. So you had

7:47

a situation where the couture system

7:49

was beginning to get creaky, and

7:51

so it was beginning to evolve

7:54

at the edges. You had the

7:56

beginnings of an independent, ready-to-wear industry

7:59

coming up. with Chloe appearing,

8:01

Sonia Ricquiel. And then you had

8:03

people coming into the couture, like

8:06

Yves Saint Laurent, who were shaking

8:08

it up, who were doing younger

8:11

things, which eventually contributed to him

8:13

getting fired from Saint Laurent, then

8:15

ultimately starting his own company, and

8:17

then starting Yves Saint Laurent, Reeve

8:19

Goche, which was a spinoff from

8:22

his couture house, a ready-to-wear house.

8:24

So you had the gradual

8:27

disintegration of the all-powerful French

8:29

couture system under the impact

8:31

of youth culture coming in

8:33

from England and the U.S.

8:36

So given that fashion,

8:38

like other forms of commercialized art,

8:40

really is about, like, youth and

8:42

innovation. That's what drives that innovation. And

8:44

sort of constantly thinking about what's next,

8:47

do you think there is such a

8:49

thing as timeless fashion? No, I think

8:51

that that is a term that's used

8:53

as a term of praise, like, oh,

8:55

but it usually means something more like

8:58

classical fashion, the fashion which is not

9:00

too extreme, that clients will understand right

9:02

away because it looks like things they've

9:04

seen before. Right now, with this kind

9:06

of dressing-rich fad that's been going on

9:09

for the last couple of years, that's

9:11

just meaning it's classical fashion. Clients understand

9:13

it. You're not going to freak them

9:16

out. It won't be like Jean-Paul Gautier

9:18

in the 80s. It will be something

9:20

more calm. But it's always identifiable after

9:22

the fact. Even if it looks like

9:25

it's out of time, it can be

9:27

pretty easily, in retrospect, slotted into a

9:29

particular decade. I'm so glad that

9:32

you said that because of the, you know,

9:34

the trend on TikTok, like, quiet luxury. I

9:36

feel like... It's like

9:38

you're trying to look like rich people who

9:40

tend to be rather conservative in how they

9:43

dress and it's sort of an older generation.

9:45

The poor fashion companies are struggling to survive,

9:47

for the most part, although a few, like,

9:49

LVMH are flourishing. But they're trying to survive,

9:51

and so you want to sell something that

9:54

people understand right away. So, speaking of class,

9:56

what role do you think that social class

9:58

played in Eves and Carl... Charles's origin

10:00

stories. Did they become famous for their

10:02

fashion or did they be pursue fashion

10:05

to become famous? Well, fashion

10:07

was always seen, well, has for

10:09

a long time been seen as

10:11

being a glamorous industry, particularly in

10:14

France, where quite early on, couturier

10:16

started to promote themselves as artists.

10:18

I mean, Charles Frederick Wirth back

10:21

in the 1860s was

10:23

claiming he was an artist, you know,

10:25

he was color like an artist. People

10:28

mocked him then because they thought, oh,

10:30

please, couturier is just like a dressmaker,

10:32

jumped up as a big dressmaker, it's

10:34

grand sewing instead of regular couture. But

10:37

they said, no, no, it's haute couture, it's

10:39

high sewing. We're doing things which are not

10:41

just industrial sewing like in America or

10:43

in Germany. So this claim

10:45

to be an artist meant that

10:47

there was an aura around high

10:49

fashion in France, which you did

10:52

not find in other countries. You

10:54

had this sort of worship of

10:56

French fashion as being something special

10:58

and elite that would look back

11:00

to be aristocratic. So naturally that

11:02

appealed to, well, to Saint Laurent

11:04

being, you know, a gay

11:06

kid who was beaten up at school and

11:08

he was from a family that were a

11:10

bunch of colonial settlers in North Africa. So

11:12

they would be looked down on by the

11:14

French and hated by the locals. And

11:17

so I think it was a kind

11:19

of escape for him, this idea of

11:21

fantasizing about fashion and theater in Paris

11:23

that he wanted to escape to that.

11:25

And Lagerfeld, although he came from

11:27

a wealthier family, he was in

11:29

Germany after they'd been defeated. And,

11:33

you know, Germany was sort of a complete

11:35

mess after World War II. And so

11:37

he also had this fantasy of escaping

11:40

to a glamorous Parisian sort of high

11:42

society world. And then both of them

11:44

were lucky enough that by that

11:46

point society regarded couturiers as being

11:48

members of the elite. And so

11:50

they were accepted, whereas someone like

11:52

Chanel had not been accepted that

11:54

way back in the 20s and

11:57

30s. And even in the

11:59

50s, you know, people. were like, why do

12:01

I have this dressmaker sitting next to me

12:03

at a society dinner party? And only after

12:05

she made all this money that they sort

12:08

of grudgingly let her in. But for Saint

12:10

Laurent, once he became a superstar, and Karl,

12:12

then they were accepted and welcomed into

12:15

the high society. And of course in cultures

12:17

like the US, where there wasn't any aristocracy,

12:19

it was pretty much measured by how rich

12:22

and famous you were, then they were accepted

12:24

very readily. You see all the pictures

12:26

of, you know, Karl being greeted in

12:28

Dallas when he gets the Neiman Marcus prize

12:31

and he's wearing a cowboy hat and everybody's

12:33

just like, oh my God, it's Karl,

12:35

it's a superstar. What a

12:37

cool time in history. You know,

12:39

one of the questions I have are,

12:41

we know that Yves and Karl, they

12:43

came to prominence around the same time.

12:45

I wonder, were their fashions, were they

12:48

distinct because like, was one kind of

12:50

representing the future or the present? Like,

12:52

what made their fashions distinct from each other's?

12:55

Well, in the beginning, you know, when they

12:57

both competed at that wool contest, they were

12:59

both doing very conventional couture-like fashions, you know,

13:01

and one of them won in the dress

13:03

category and the other in the coat category.

13:06

And the other people who won other prizes that

13:08

year, we've never heard of again. At

13:11

that time in the 50s, couture still

13:13

dominated in France. And by starting

13:15

to work at Dior, Yves Saint

13:17

Laurent went straight to the top

13:19

of the couture hierarchy because the

13:22

House of Christian Dior was far

13:24

and away the biggest, the most

13:26

prestigious, the richest couture house responsible

13:28

through much of that period for

13:30

50% of the French revenue coming

13:33

from foreign buys of fashion. Karl,

13:35

on the other hand, although he got a series

13:37

of jobs in the couture,

13:40

I guess with Patu first, he

13:42

quickly made a sort of

13:44

side movement to working as a

13:46

stylist for various other

13:48

kinds of big fashion companies. And

13:51

little did he realize, I

13:53

think, that that was in fact the way

13:55

of the future, that ready to

13:58

wear, sort of luxurious ready to wear. was

14:00

going ultimately to be making a much

14:03

bigger impact on the fashion

14:05

that people wore than Couture did. So

14:08

he went that path, and I think he

14:10

was regarded as, you know, being a hired

14:12

gun, he was making plenty of money, but

14:14

he wasn't on the prestige pathway that Yves

14:17

Saint Laurent was on. Did some

14:19

of these other fashion luminaries like Dior

14:21

and Patu, did they have a role

14:23

in Yves and Karls' careers? Well,

14:26

certainly Dior had a huge role

14:28

in Yves' career. Because when

14:30

Dior died suddenly at quite an early age,

14:32

I think of a heart attack, when

14:35

Yves Saint Laurent was promoted then

14:37

as designer despite his youth, there

14:39

was jubilation all over France. Thank

14:42

God, you know, the prince had been, had

14:44

ascended to the throne, the house of Dior

14:46

was saved. Everybody was thrilled

14:48

about this. Dior was so famous,

14:51

I mean, every taxi driver knew Dior. Dior

14:53

was so famous that my parents, and there

14:56

could be no less fashionable people than my

14:58

darling parents, because they were on their honeymoon

15:00

in Paris, their hotel sent them off to

15:02

a Dior fashion show. You know, I

15:04

mean, everybody did that. Americans were just sent off

15:06

to do that, to see them. I

15:08

have to ask, how did your parents feel about

15:10

the Dior show when they were in Paris? They

15:13

couldn't even really remember. They couldn't tell

15:15

me a thing about it. So Dior

15:17

was world famous, and

15:20

then Saint Laurent became world famous. And

15:23

so that set him up. But then,

15:25

particularly after he did this sort of

15:27

somewhat bohemian collection

15:29

that received rather harshly,

15:32

it seemed too avant-garde, too young, and

15:34

then of course, French men have to

15:36

serve in the military. And

15:39

he'd been sort of exempted, because you could get exempted

15:41

if you were a famous person who was essential for

15:43

the economy. But then Dior

15:45

withdrew that special thing and said,

15:48

no, no, you can draft him. And

15:50

Pothora immediately had a complete nervous

15:52

breakdown. It was like going back to

15:54

the nightmare of being in school in North

15:57

Africa, and he had a nervous breakdown, and

15:59

he was fine. And then his friend Pierre

16:01

Berge came in and got him out

16:03

of the hospital and got

16:05

the money together to set up

16:08

the House of Yves Saint Laurent.

16:10

So they got him back on

16:12

track to be a superstar and

16:14

now more avant-garde couturier. Patu, I

16:16

think, had relatively little to do

16:18

with Karl's success. What was important

16:20

for Karl was Gabby Aguiom, a

16:23

Chloe, because she was an

16:25

interesting character. She was a Jew from Egypt.

16:29

And when Nasser took over and King

16:31

Farouk was overthrown, she and her husband

16:33

fled from Egypt and came to Paris.

16:35

And he was an intellectual. She was

16:37

not, but she wanted to do creative

16:39

things. She was kind of amazed that

16:42

French women were so relatively

16:44

oppressed. When she first came to Paris,

16:46

they couldn't even set up their own

16:48

bank account. And she'd been used to

16:50

having great freedom being a sort of

16:52

an elite woman in Royal Egypt.

16:55

So she set up

16:57

this house, Chloe, named

16:59

after a friend of hers. She said

17:01

her husband's family were very snobby. She

17:03

couldn't have put her married name on

17:06

the house. So she set

17:08

this up. And then when she

17:10

hired Karl, he was young and

17:12

unknown, and she gave him tremendous

17:14

freedom, but also kind of guardrails

17:16

to help him negotiate as a

17:19

young designer. And together, they really

17:21

made Chloe one of the hottest

17:23

fashion houses, ready to wear houses

17:26

in Paris, and did clothes that

17:28

the French still thought, no, no,

17:30

it's not couture, but women's wear

17:32

daily in the United States would

17:34

talk about Dior's collection and Chloe's

17:36

collection in the same paragraph. The

17:39

Americans didn't care. And so it

17:41

was younger, of course, at one

17:43

point somebody was quoted as saying

17:45

that Chloe was for super rich

17:47

teenagers, but it's a younger, it

17:49

was expensive as ready to wear

17:51

when, but it was very attractive.

17:54

And I think Karl did his best

17:56

work during the years he was at

17:58

Chloe. And that's what I mean when

18:00

I say the... American thing because he

18:02

brought over young models and

18:04

young fashion illustrators like Antonio

18:06

Lopez and oh gosh what's

18:08

the name of the American

18:10

model. She came

18:12

over and Antonio Lopez came over and

18:14

they were sort of they were very cool

18:17

and they were New York and they

18:19

were bringing this kind of black Latino Andy

18:21

Warhol esque wonderful sort of Halston

18:23

esque fashion, Stephen Burroughs esque fashion sort

18:26

of with disco feeling to Carl and

18:28

he was paying for their apartments and

18:30

paying for them to visit and you

18:32

know giving them clothes and jewelry and

18:34

stuff but in turn he was sort

18:37

of sucking out of them all this

18:39

information about what was cool in New

18:41

York which really influenced the clothes he

18:43

was creating for Chloe so he was

18:45

just like a sponge he would soak

18:48

up all of this so there was

18:50

a very strong black and

18:52

Latino African-American and Latino feeling to

18:54

what he was being exposed to

18:56

that made him very very hip

18:58

I mean because Yves Saint Laurent I'm

19:00

like just kind of very

19:03

white pop rock and roll and so

19:06

Carl had this insight into something that was

19:08

a newer and cooler way of looking and

19:10

he'd bring them all around with him and

19:13

eventually I think they took him for granted

19:15

and were started to be rude to him

19:17

and he sort of brushed them all off

19:20

as he would have had the want to

19:22

do with people that he got tired of

19:24

but at that point they helped

19:26

him find a really cutting-edge

19:29

approach to fashion music pop

19:32

culture it seems like that the

19:34

two men had very distinct attitudes and

19:36

tastes when it came to models was there

19:39

much competition for sought-after models between the two

19:41

in Paris like did they ever find themselves

19:43

kind of playing people chess with members of

19:45

their entourages well I think they

19:47

did compete with each other I don't

19:50

know about models although sound there are

19:52

also was very fond of black and

19:54

other people of color as models there's

19:56

a longer history of that in France

19:58

the US was so racist that Black

20:00

models were completely kept separate except for

20:02

like Ebony's fashions there hardly any were

20:05

used in the US Whereas Paris had

20:07

always been interested in black and Asian

20:09

models and also Latin American models So

20:12

I think there was definitely competition because

20:14

they had certain friends in common like

20:16

Paloma Picasso was able to be friends

20:19

with both of them But most people

20:21

were sort of forced to choose partly

20:23

because of Carl and Eve were

20:25

were both having affairs or both were

20:29

infatuated with the boss a this young man to

20:31

bash a who was sort of as

20:33

decadent young very minor

20:35

aristocrat and Carl

20:38

claimed that they weren't having an affair But

20:40

he bought him an apartment and all these

20:42

other things and then Eve became really obsessed

20:44

with him And you know would drive his

20:47

car up and honk the horns at night

20:49

and insist on being you know carrying him

20:51

off Until Pierre Berche basically said, you know,

20:53

you don't if you don't stay away from

20:56

evil have you killed? so it

20:58

was a huge hoo-ha around this and

21:01

Then debauche was fizz was sort of

21:03

separated from Eve at that point It's

21:06

hard to imagine not having an

21:08

affair for some with someone that

21:10

this is the climate around, you know It's

21:12

like I bought him an apartment where there's

21:14

death threats being made, but no no, we're

21:16

not having a sexual relationship

21:19

Well, it's very strange thing But

21:21

Carl is always like to look and a

21:23

sort of a voyeur, but it's not clear

21:26

He's always been very reluctant to talk about

21:28

actually having an affair with anyone although late

21:30

in his life He did talk to journalists

21:32

and said that debauche was the love of

21:34

his life Whatever that meant for

21:36

him. Well, I'm curious How

21:38

did things like bisexuality or androgyny

21:41

or other fluid understandings of

21:43

sexual orientation or gender? What role

21:45

did those play in the way that

21:47

fashion trends materialized? The 70s

21:49

was a period that Bisexuality

21:52

was much more common.

21:55

It was also the period then gay

21:57

liberation became big and the sexual liberation

22:00

movement in the 60s had just been a

22:02

tiny number of people and it sort of

22:04

went mass in the 70s and the

22:06

period of women's liberation, gay liberation, even

22:09

other things like S&M became much more

22:11

acceptable in the 1970s. So that had

22:13

an enormous

22:16

impact on fashion. You had lots of

22:19

experimentation with people like Mick Jagger and

22:21

then David Bowie wearing dresses and wearing

22:23

very fluid women's kind of blouses and

22:26

things and then women also wearing much

22:28

more masculine things. I mean Yves Saint

22:30

Laurent did lots of tailored suits for

22:32

women, although he wasn't the first to

22:35

do that, he was the most prestigious,

22:37

important designer to do a lot of

22:39

that. So there was a lot of

22:42

sort of gender fluidity in fashion

22:44

at that time as well as

22:47

in culture in general. Do

22:49

you think that Yves's designs, like

22:52

what did his designs do to further female

22:54

empowerment and like women's liberation? Well

22:57

he talked about how he wanted to

22:59

help women achieve greater equality

23:02

and many of his clients claim that

23:04

he really did that for them. Oh

23:07

I can't remember if it was Catherine Deneuve

23:09

who said you know that he

23:11

gave you a feeling of authority and

23:13

power with his pants suits and

23:15

with clothes that looked very professional

23:17

and sort of authoritative and then

23:19

in evening he gave you the

23:21

chance to be very you know

23:23

seductive. Of course even his less

23:26

smoking, the tuxedo for women with

23:28

trousers, was very seductive because of

23:30

the whole allure of cross-dressing which

23:32

had been a big aspect

23:34

of fashion particularly in

23:36

France and an acknowledged aspect of

23:38

erotic fashion since the 19th century.

23:41

What do you ultimately see as the crux

23:43

of the competition between these two luminaries?

23:45

Like was it that they recognized the

23:47

genius in each other's designs or was

23:49

it like having two fast gun fighters

23:51

in the same town? Like what was

23:53

it that drove this competition? Well

23:56

I suspect that it was something different for

23:58

each of them because I mean Saint Laurent

24:00

was so deeply neurotic and

24:02

also Pierre Berge was extremely

24:05

aggressive. And I think Berge

24:07

felt that Debaucher would,

24:09

it wasn't just that he would be

24:11

sleeping with Yves, but that he would

24:13

take Yves away from concentrating on work

24:15

because Yves had enough problems with drugs

24:17

and drinking and sex with everything that,

24:20

you know, he would get killed. And

24:22

so he wanted him to just sort of

24:25

go back and work. Now Yves had all

24:27

these neuroses. Karl, of course, was neurotic in

24:29

another way, but he did it in a

24:31

way which focused more on work. Like he's

24:33

always said he never smoked, he never drank,

24:35

he didn't like follow men around like crazy.

24:37

Instead, he just worked, worked, worked and

24:40

was able to work for tons of companies. And he

24:42

said, well, I miss Chloe, I miss Fendi, I miss

24:44

Chanel. He compartmentalized

24:46

his life in

24:48

a way that was very functional for his working.

24:51

And so I think that they

24:53

had very different reasons for competing

24:55

with each other. And it's impossible

24:58

for me to know as an

25:00

outsider whether Karl envy the prestige

25:02

and acclaim that Saint Laurent

25:04

got, because later on in life when

25:06

he was, you know, the great genius

25:09

at Chanel, he was certainly getting all

25:11

of that praise and acclaim. So

25:13

it is interesting. It was after Chanel

25:15

picked him up and brought him into

25:18

the couture, he could have the prestige

25:20

and the success of Chanel ready to

25:22

wear. Interestingly, he was never able to

25:25

make a success of his own company,

25:27

Karl Lagerfeld, but he was hugely successful

25:29

for Chloe and Fendi and Chanel. I

25:32

think the rivalry, if it existed as

25:34

such between the two is really significant

25:37

more for what it says about the

25:39

fashion system than what it says about

25:41

either of them. Because for better

25:43

or worse, it seems to be human

25:45

nature to like to imagine people, you

25:47

know, fighting with each other, sort of

25:50

whether it's the idea of cat fights

25:52

or, you know, quarreling designers, the idea

25:54

that they're so competitive that they are

25:56

raging and hating each other. They had

25:58

such different paths. both of

26:01

them, and yet such great success

26:03

both of them, that I think

26:05

has really intrigued people that they

26:08

had conflicts, whether those conflicts

26:10

were partly drummed up by

26:12

Berget or whatever. That's

26:15

the thing which I think is really interesting. Are

26:17

there advantages to working exclusively in either

26:19

high fashion or off the rack? Like

26:21

why would a director of a fashion

26:23

line choose to do one over the other? Well,

26:26

you can't really make a very good business

26:28

just doing couture. I

26:31

mean, all of the successful big couture

26:33

houses like Chanel and Dior have ready

26:36

to wear lines also, as well as

26:38

perfume and makeup, which are the real

26:40

money makers of the company, and accessories,

26:42

leather accessories, handbags and shoes and things.

26:45

So couture per se

26:48

would just be a money loser.

26:50

So couture is prestigious, and it's

26:52

sometimes thought of as being a

26:54

laboratory for fashion innovation. It's more

26:57

of a laboratory for craftsmanship, really,

26:59

I think, because you certainly have,

27:01

the most innovative designers have seldom

27:03

been couturiers. They've been people like

27:06

Ray Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons,

27:08

for example, that wasn't couture. And

27:10

when you had someone like Alexander

27:13

McQueen, although people talk about his

27:16

things as being couture, and when he worked

27:18

for Givenchy, he did do a couture

27:20

line, but he was always a luxury

27:22

ready-to-wear designer. Although some of the pieces

27:24

on the runway were one-off sort of

27:26

showstoppers that sort of existed

27:28

just as a piece on the runway.

27:32

I did have one other question. Having

27:34

read the Chiffon Trenches, which is one of

27:36

my favorite books, Lagerfeld just did not seem

27:38

like someone that was easy to get to

27:40

know. It didn't seem like he was someone

27:43

who let people in. And as you said,

27:45

he seemed like someone who would turn on

27:47

people and flip on them and decide that

27:49

this person isn't in my circle anymore. How

27:52

do you think that impacted his career?

27:55

Well, I think that because he

27:57

worked so hard, people who hired

27:59

him... liked him as a

28:01

hire. And when he broke

28:03

with Chloe, if you look at the

28:06

new film, Gabby Aguiand's son says, look,

28:08

it was not Blagerfeld's fault. He should

28:10

have been allowed in to be a

28:12

partner in that company. So that, he

28:14

felt that was understandable that he had

28:16

broken with Chloe then. But you know,

28:18

Chanel kept him until the end

28:20

because he was so reliable. He never

28:23

broke with someone who was actually making

28:25

money for him. He broke with other

28:27

associates, colleagues. Once he sort

28:29

of used them up, so

28:32

to speak. And I think there's no

28:34

question that he had problems with relating

28:36

to people, which probably were related

28:38

to his own childhood. You know, he'd

28:41

always say how his mother would say, you're so

28:43

stupid, talk quickly, I'm bored with you. And he

28:45

said, that's why I speak so fast because I

28:47

have to get it out before she turned and

28:49

walked away. You mentioned earlier that people like

28:52

to imagine this fiery competition between

28:54

these two designers. Dr. Steele, what

28:56

impact do you think that rivalries

28:59

have on the fashion industry in

29:01

general? We've had many rivalries in

29:03

the fashion industry that have attracted

29:05

attention. Chanel, for example, was very

29:07

jealous of Scaparelli, who she called

29:10

that Italian artist who makes clothes,

29:12

which she meant as an insult

29:14

because she said fashion was not

29:16

an art, it was a, you know, part of

29:19

life. And Scaparelli retaliated and said

29:21

that Chanel was a dreary little

29:23

bourgeois. So they didn't like

29:26

each other and they were competing.

29:28

Chanel had been number one for

29:30

years. And then by the mid

29:32

30s, suddenly Scaparelli was the most

29:34

famous designer in Paris. So that,

29:36

I think that was a period

29:39

when women designers were really dominating

29:41

fashion. It was, as one editor

29:43

said, a regiment of women, not

29:45

just Chanel and Scap, but Madeleine

29:47

Vianay, Louise Boulanger, Madame Grey, Auguste

29:50

Bernard, Jean Lavain, many of them.

29:52

But Chanel and Scap, because they

29:54

really did dislike each other, and

29:56

Chanel had such hatred for so

29:59

many women. But Chanel is

30:01

a frothing hatred in general. People I think

30:03

like to imagine this as a cat fight,

30:05

but later, even though Chanel had hated all

30:08

these women she competed with in the 20s

30:10

and 30s, after World

30:12

War II when it was all male designers

30:15

like Dior and Balenciaga and Pfaff, she

30:17

hated them even more. And she said,

30:19

you know, they want to be women.

30:21

You know, she was very, they're pitterists,

30:24

they're queers. They just want to be

30:26

women. They've never had a woman. They

30:28

don't know how to make women's fashion.

30:30

So she attacked them in a very

30:33

homophobic way. She was just full

30:35

of rage in general towards the world because

30:37

of a very, very harsh upbringing.

30:40

And then of course, later there was

30:42

Galliano versus McQueen. And there

30:44

I think part of what's going

30:46

on is people were trying to

30:48

decide of these two immensely talented

30:50

designers, both of whom were very

30:52

theatrical and both of whom clearly

30:54

had derived some of their ideas

30:56

from Vivian Westwood, who was

30:58

better? So I think

31:00

part of what was going on there is like,

31:02

who did a better show this season? Was it

31:04

McQueen or was it Galliano? And for a while,

31:06

you know, McQueen was at Givenchy and Galliano was

31:08

at Dior. And so that was pitting them against

31:10

each other within the same sort of world.

31:14

So I think people like to see

31:16

this sort of competition and competition can be

31:18

good, can make you do better because you

31:21

see yourself competing with someone else and you

31:23

try to up your game. I think with

31:25

a women versus women designers, there's something very

31:27

sexist that people want an idea of a

31:30

cat fight. They like the idea that women

31:32

are jealous and catty anyway. And there's some

31:34

homophobia in the idea you're pitting gay men

31:36

against each other in the same kind of

31:39

cat fight idea. Do you think

31:41

that that same spirit of competition is

31:43

perhaps driving innovation in fashion today? Is

31:45

there any innovation in fashion today? No,

31:47

no, I'm kidding. Ooh,

31:52

shots fired. It's

31:54

less evident. There's certainly there are creative designers

31:56

today and there are people like Rick Owens

31:58

who are moving fashion ahead. But we

32:00

do as we started out talking at

32:03

the beginning in this very kind of,

32:05

you know, looking like the rich period

32:07

in fashion. It's not the world's most

32:09

exciting period in fashion right now. I

32:12

agree of all the different

32:14

things that someone could choose to

32:16

wear and do and express themselves using

32:18

their clothes. Looking like super

32:21

conservative, rich lady from 40

32:24

years ago, I was like, why is this the

32:26

thing? I don't get it. It's really hard

32:28

to believe, especially when there's so

32:30

many exciting young designers coming out of Asia

32:32

and Africa and you think like, why

32:35

don't they want to look like them? Dr. Steele,

32:37

they do not call you fashion's brainiest

32:39

woman for no reason. Thank you so much for being

32:41

here. It has been a delight. Thank you so

32:43

much. It's really lovely to meet you and do

32:45

the program. Ever

32:53

heard of stoicism? Chances are,

32:55

if you have, you've heard

32:57

of stoicism with a lowercase

33:00

s and not stoicism with

33:02

an uppercase s. Lone wolves,

33:04

no emotions, antisocial behavior, cold,

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indifference. All that is stoicism

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with a lowercase s. Stoicism

33:10

with an uppercase s is

33:13

the ancient Greek philosophy and

33:15

virtue ethics framework that centers

33:17

on service to the cosmopolis

33:19

to include your family, friends,

33:21

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33:23

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33:25

moral character. My name is

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