- Legion d'honneur
- An Aesthete's Den
- A Pampered Childhood
- The Mercenary
- Chanel
- After Chanel
Legion d'honneur
One evening last June, the low-ceilinged first floor of Maxim’s restaurant in Paris was so packed that Carlyne Cerf De Dudzeele, the over-the-top former Vogue stylist, tried to escape the heat by joining a group of champagne sippers on the tiny balcony overlooking the Rue de Rivoli. Then she suddenly came back to the bar, planted herself in front of me, brandished a Chanel bag entirely daubed with colourful paint strokes and quipped, “Look at what he did to my bag on a visit I paid to the Chanel studio more than ten years ago!” At that very moment, the author of this wondrous fashion crime passed by. “When did we do this, Gilles?” she asked. “Oh, I don’t remember, maybe 15 years ago,” the designer Gilles Dufour answered with a puckish smile, obviously still proud of having spiced up (well, make that splashed-up) the famous status symbol.
On that sweltering summer day, Dufour’s irreverent and light-hearted sense of style was being celebrated with a Legion d’Honneur, the highest decoration in France. Suzy Menkes, the fashion critic of the International Herald Tribune, pinned the medal on his chest. Thierry Coudert, a high-ranking civil servant who was instrumental in getting Dufour his decoration, made a witty speech that recounted the designer’s career in fashion, from his debut with Andre Oliver, through his collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, to the launch of his eponymous brand. Sofia Coppola hobnobbed with French aristocracy and Dufour’s famous nieces: Victoire de Castellane, the jewellery designer at Dior, and Mathilde Agostinelli, a PR at Prada, who recently rose to instant fame for being an intimate friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy. The legendary Pierre Cardin, who also owns Maxim’s, watched the whole scene from a stool at the bar.
Dufour was attentive and charming to all his guests, just the way I saw him over the last two months, in what is surely the longest interview I have conducted so far. My desire to write a profile on Gilles Dufour sprang from my curiosity to discover a man who has a lot to say about fashion and, for a simple reason: he was a privileged witness of his time. He was there when ready-to-wear designers started seriously challenging couturiers in the late sixties. He was there when Studio 54-mania shaped fashion and society in the seventies. He was there, of course, by Lagerfeld‘s side, when Chanel became a phenomenon in the eighties. He nurtured and befriended all the supermodels of the nineties. Plus, he faced, with his eponymous label, the difficulties plaguing most designers today.
In reality, to be honest, I was supposed to do a two hour interview with Dufour at first, but he was so generous with his anecdotes, and so funny to talk to, that I decided to spread it over two months.
