Via W Magazine, we present Diane Solway‘s in-depth look at Riccardo Tisci’s wickedly dark world at the helm of Givenchy – the off-kilter tribe of muses who support the creator, and his passionate oeuvre that breaks the boundaries of fashion and crosses many borders (albeit controversial ones).

Originally published on WMagazine.com for the September 2010 issue.

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Tisci’s Tribe
by Diane Solway

Last May, on the final day of the art event of the season, Riccardo Tisci, Givenchy’s 36-year-old artistic director, was pacing unrecognized among the throng that had gathered at the Museum of Modern Art to watch Marina Abramović conclude her marathon performance, “The Artist Is Present.” Without moving or speaking, Abramović had been sitting in the same straight-backed wooden chair almost daily for three months, clocking more than 700 hours and locking eyes with some 1,545 members of the public, who came to sit opposite her, one at a time, after enduring a long line. Tisci and Abramović, 63, are close friends, and while he wanted to summon the nerve to sit with her, he has always considered himself exceedingly shy. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he’d confided to me the day before, adding that it was the worst time of year for him to make the trip to New York. Tisci, the youngest major couturier in Paris, had men’s and haute couture shows to prepare and a resort collection to unveil. “But I want to give her the last kick of this really long performance. It’s a big goal for me.” The previous summer the two had gone to Santorini together on holiday, but since each had just broken up with someone, they had spent most of their time “crying and crying—we were like an island,” said Tisci, who is appealingly forthcoming, if given to drama. “I told her in Greece, ‘Forget it. I prefer to cut off my hands than sit in front of people.’”

Now, in the atrium, as Abramović’s performance approached its denouement, there were at least 2,500 people jostling for a view. Over the course of the three-month show, she had drawn as much press attention as the rock royalty Tisci dresses, a roster of muses that includes Björk, Courtney Love, and Madonna. Beads of sweat began to form on Tisci’s brow. Tall and solidly built, the result of daily kickboxing sessions, he wore a scruffy two-day beard, and was dressed in his by now familiar uniform of jeans, baggy black Givenchy Homme T-shirt, and superwhite Pumas, a rosary around his neck. His smile revealed a mouthful of metal braces.

With 20 minutes to go before the artist made her exit, Tisci sat down across from her. Surprised to see him, and looking into what she calls “those huge eyes like coffeepots,” she began to cry.
Like Abramović, Tisci goes in for extremes. “Everything he does is intense, and that’s why we connect,” Abramović told me afterward. When I asked Tisci about their bond, he acknowledged, “It’s like a mother and son, a very strong friendship. We can spend hours and hours really vomiting ideas and energy. If you wrote down all the things Marina and I want to do together, one life is not enough.” So far he has asked her to direct a fashion show for him, and they’re planning to sit together for a portrait. “I thought it would be funny if we did Riccardo drinking milk from my breasts,” she said, “because that’s really what it is—we feed each other. We’re family.” Seeing the trial she had put herself through convinced Tisci to push himself beyond his own comfort zone, something he has always strived to do in his work. “In the last three years,” he said, “I’ve gone through a real metamorphosis.”

Tisci and muses Pablo Otero, Jared Buckhiester, Malgosia Bela, Lea T, and Daphne Groeneveld.
If Tisci has changed, so has the maison he’s headed since 2005. At the time he assumed the reins, 10 years after Hubert de Givenchy’s retirement, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, and Julien Macdonald had already come and gone. And yet Givenchy, founded in 1952 and best known for its storied association with Audrey Hepburn and her little black dress, remained a prisoner of its fusty, ladylike aura. When Tisci nabbed the job, seemingly out of nowhere, he was working in Milan on a shoestring budget, a Central Saint Martins graduate with just two collections to his name. Like Galliano at Dior, Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent, and a host of other young designers, Tisci had to find a way to riff on the codes of a legendary house without limiting his own self-expression. “For the first year and a half at Givenchy, I was always questioning myself, which had never happened to me before,” he said. “I’d ask, ‘Is it very Givenchy? Is it very Riccardo Tisci?’ Because I wanted to keep the elegance, the chicness, the DNA of the house but bring the darkness, the romanticism, and the sensuality—things that were missing.” His talent for making women feel not just powerful and sexy but practically totemic—plus his willingness to suspend his own independent label, something his predecessors had refused to do—revitalized the moribund house. By 2007 it was profitable, and a magnet for modern waifs and über fashionistas, like French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, an influential early champion, who were drawn to his darkly romantic and feminine yet tough brand of chic.

While his visual bravado was at once apparent, critics initially considered his goth-gamine aesthetic and high-concept shows overwrought. But in the past year Tisci has become part of the firmament of designers who set the fashion agenda. Even Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent’s partner in life and business, remarked of Tisci in March, on leaving Givenchy’s fall 2010 ready-to-wear show, “Of all the designers in the world today, he is the most talented.”
“At first people wondered, Is he the right fit?” recalls Marco Gobbetti, former CEO of Givenchy Couture and the man who hired Tisci. “But already he had a 360-degree vision. It wasn’t just the clothes, or the woman. He could put her in a universe.” Now, he adds, “there is no longer a distinction between Givenchy and Riccardo Tisci.”

That singular vision was clearly at work at the closing dinner Tisci hosted at MoMA to celebrate Abramović’s feat, just 26 hours after she’d completed it. The dress code of black, white, and gold had been dictated by Abramović, but the fabulous parade of personalities, clothes, and statement footwear all bore Tisci’s distinctive stamp and monomaniacal eye for detail. Many of the guests he’d outfitted personally. There was plenty of sheer chiffon, lace, gold-spiked hardware, and goddess gowns with frayed edges or ostrich-feather fringe. Björk wore a gold lamé gladiator minidress, while singer Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons arrived in a custom-made floor-length zigzag-print chiffon cape, with the words oh no drawn in black on his forehead.

Tisci and Abramović had gotten ready together in her downtown loft and she was now glammed up in a belted black dress with a train and a jacket Tisci had patched together from assorted snakeskins. Also in Givenchy haute couture were Liv Tyler, Courtney Love, and R&B star Ciara. Love had missed out on “Marina’s staring thing,” she told me, but was there for her good friend Riccardo, who, in 2007, had invited her to perform in-house at the Givenchy salon. “You have not lived until you’ve seen Suzy Menkes and Karl Lagerfeld moshing in front of you while you’re playing rock in a couture dress,” Love said, noting that onstage these days she wears only “Riccardo, Marc [Jacobs], and Rick [Owens].” Tisci’s clothes, she added, “have a rock ’n’ roll inherent value to them. He understands women and masculine energy in women. He can take some of the strangest elements, put them together, and they work.”

The same might be said of Tisci’s tribe, who orbit him with near- cultish devotion and were also on hand at MoMA that night contributing to the cozy mood, which felt more like that of a family wedding than a red-carpet photo op. In addition to Abramović, Love, and Antony, they include Italian model Mariacarla Boscono, transgendered Brazilian stylist Lea T, London-based Greek stylist Panos Yiapanis, and Argentine-born, Milan-based DJ, event planner, and stylist Marcelo Burlon, who has one of Tisci’s initials tattooed on each elbow.

Tisci’s world, says Abramović, is very much of his own making. “There’s a big difference between Courtney Love and Antony and Lea T,” she said the following week. “He’s able to bring together people from underground and pop culture, music, art, and fashion in the most unusual way, and that’s why the scene looks so interesting. Normally these people would never get together, but Riccardo unites them.”

It was Abramović who introduced Tisci to Antony at a dinner party two years ago. Music inspires Tisci; it’s always playing when he designs, and Antony’s work, he says, “gives me emotion.” For the singer’s 2009 summer tour, Tisci created an ensemble for him that was “men’s, women’s, and couture all together,” he said at the time. “I told him my cat had died, and he made me this beautiful coat,” recalls Antony. “It had hundreds of layers of felt separated by pearls, and it was layered to form the impression of a cat’s head curling around my shoulder. And on the back were all these skeletal plumes. It felt so personal.”

Long before he gathered round him this fantastic constellation of muses, Tisci imagined what it might be like to live in such a world. Growing up in Como, in a poor family from Taranto, in the south of Italy, he was the youngest child and only boy in a household with eight sisters. He was four when his father, a fruit seller, died, and at 12 he started working after school for his uncle, a plasterer, because his family needed the money. “My mom treated me as a man, not a boy,” he told me on a return trip to New York to present his 2011 resort collection. It was the end of a long day, and he was sitting in his suite at the Mercer hotel, his bare feet tucked under him, chain-smoking his way through a pack of American Spirits. “She saw me as the person who replaced the love of her life. She said, ‘You have to learn how to work.’ I am what I am today thanks to my mom, because she gave me this education.”
A “supershy” kid who was less well-off than his classmates, he relied on his sisters as playmates. Watching them get ready to go out on the weekends, he saw up close, times eight, the transformative power of clothing. “I would sit on the little bidet watching them put on makeup and dress up for the club, and I was so attracted by the metamorphosis they were making,” he said in Italian-accented English. “It was the Eighties, so there was lots of red lipstick, big shoulders, and gleeter.”

Locking himself in his room to be alone and draw, he’d blast Alice Cooper and the Cure, and make what he calls “these strange collages” of male and female faces and body parts that he’d ripped out of magazines. Sometimes he would create figures that were half human and half animal. “It was always my dream to have a brother,” he recalled. Only in Tisci’s dream his brother was “a faun—half man, half goat,” he said. “My second collection was inspired by that. Lea T came out with these big fur boots and looked like a faun.”

His inspiration for this year’s men’s, resort, and haute couture collections was Frida Kahlo. “I’m a big freak of Frida—her obsessions are similar to mine,” Tisci said, ticking off animals, religion, sexuality. “She loved exotic animals, and saw their bones and skeletons as positive things.” He collects animal skulls and bones; mounted on the wall in his bedroom in Paris is a unicorn head. It’s actually a horse head with a narwhal tusk jutting from its forehead, and it was his first splurge on assuming the reins at Givenchy. Kahlo’s strength and ambiguity are no less of a draw. “She’s also a masculine woman, which I love,” he continued. “The fact of the eyebrow—this masculinity left raw, and at the same time this elegance. When I found out she was a Leo like me, I got more fascinated.”
From his earliest days Tisci embraced an inclusive, nonconventional idea of beauty. As a student at London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the mid-Nineties, he persuaded Mariacarla Boscono to pose for his graduation-show invitation after asking a mutual friend to introduce them. She was then new to modeling and just 16, but he loved the way she looked like a “supersexual tomboy, like an alien,” with her short hair and gamine physique. They’ve been friends ever since, and she has inspired many of his designs.

When he met Lea T in Milan a few years later, she was a boy named Leo, the son of a former Brazilian soccer star, and as Tisci remembered, “a beautiful, superskinny boy wearing jeans and a T-shirt with curly afro hair. We grew up together. We’d walk around Milano and people would call her lei [she], and she would look at me and say, ‘But I’m a boy.’ I could see she was suffering in her own body.”
Tisci saw other possibilities. “He was the one who had the courage to tell me I should think about a sex change,” confided Lea—who has been undergoing hormone treatments since last year—when we met in Paris in June. Tall and striking, with impossibly narrow hips, pronounced cheekbones, and long black hair, she has about her an air of fragility, even in open-toe bondage sandals with thick wedge heels. “We had a party to go to, and he was like, ‘Why don’t you try these shoes?’ They were high heels.” Soon Tisci helped Lea step into her new identity by making her his fit model while a fledgling designer in Milan. “I’ve got a lot of transsexual friends,” Tisci said in New York. “I like the fact that they have the strength of a man and the femininity of a woman. But Lea T, she’s got something very special—like a Greek goddess.” As Abramović sees it, transsexuals “are a kind of abandoned race who he can include in his work. They have this advantage or disadvantage not to be one sex or the other but to be in between.”

That fascination with opposing forces plays out in Tisci’s designs, whether in his predominantly black and white palette or in his juxtaposition of unlikely elements—scuba and skiwear, as in his fall 2010 ready-to-wear collection, or frothy chiffon dresses with utilitarian zippers. But testing ideas of gender has been a constant. From the first he opted for men’s tailoring in women’s jackets, and in his spring 2011 men’s wear show in June, he sent athletic male models out on the runway in white lace shirts and skorts. “My men and women are confident in their sexuality, so they can play with both worlds,” Tisci said. “His world is strong women and sisters, and transgendered and gay people,” says Antony, who is himself a study in contrasts: a tall, broad-shouldered man with a delicate, quavering, melancholic voice. “Transgender and gay sit at the divide between male and female, and that’s a very alchemical place.”

This past spring Tisci decided to feature Lea T prominently in his fall 2010 advertising campaign, sparking buzz in the fashion press over his use of a transsexual. In June, at the Givenchy men’s show in Paris, she was on hand to make her runway debut. “She’s going to have an operation, but that’s secondary,” Tisci told me when I arrived. “She’s a woman, and I believe in her beauty.” For the first time he was planning to include women in his men’s show, and Lea would be joining Boscono and Malgosia Bela in the ornate salon of the Intercontinental hotel, along with perhaps the most ethnically diverse cast of male models yet seen on a Paris runway. He wanted to make Lea a part of his cast, he said, to drive home the point that the ad wasn’t some kind of a stunt.

This was Tisci’s fifth collection since taking over Givenchy men’s wear in 2008. Backstage he was huddled in his private room—a black box in a corner of the dressing area—with Yiapanis, his men’s stylist, sorting out the show’s final 36 looks, pared down from an initial 500. Just outside, male models in geometric haircuts with killer physiques were milling about, gauze strips affixed to their heads to keep their hairstyles in place. Some wore leopard-print suits and matching pointed shoes, others vertebrae necklaces and trompe l’oeil jackets—one piece that looks like two.
Tisci likes to mine what he calls “the darkness inside of me.” His designs are rife with references to his Catholic roots and to memories of Baroque churches and funeral processions. He prays before each presentation, and already that day he’d put a bag of salt in each corner of the venue, another preshow ritual.

The theme of this collection was Victorian Circus. As his models began to line up, Tisci described how he’d drawn on Mexican wrestling masks, religion, and the 1932 Tod Browning film Freaks, which was novel in its day for having been cast with actual carnival folk. “I think it’s romantic and quite melancholy,” he said of the movie, which he’s watched “about 200 times. The fact of all these strange people, all outside of society, getting together to make something that is quite beautiful.” I asked if there weren’t obvious parallels to his own circle. “Today is a celebration of what is my circus,” he said. “This is my family—like it or not.”

Tisci’s mother, Elmerinda, always comes to Paris for his shows, and this time she was there 30 minutes early, sitting with her two eldest daughters in the front row. You couldn’t miss her for her flaming orange coif, her Givenchy Melancholia shoulder bag firmly in her lap. For her birthday every year, Tisci gives her something from Givenchy. But at Christmas he likes to work a little harder, and last year bought her a Chanel bag. Brand loyalty, it seems, goes only so far, even when you’re the brand’s designer.

As models in leopard-print suits and buglike masks passed by, I couldn’t help but wonder what she made of them. Then I remembered something Tisci had told me soon after we first met: that even during his silent teenage goth years—when he wore his black hair long, his face smeared with white makeup—his mother would staunchly defend him when the neighbors in their small town would ask if everything was all right with her son.

After the show, though he had worked around the clock doing fittings and hadn’t slept in 48 hours, Tisci insisted on continuing the celebration later that night at the Chacha Club, the hot spot du jour near Les Halles. He arrived past midnight, joined by a group that included Abramović, Lea T, Boscono, Burlon, Yiapanis, erotic-jewelry designer Betony Vernon, and a clutch of male models. When the private room Givenchy had reserved grew unbearably hot, the group moved outdoors, smoking and laughing. “For all the innate darkness in his work, he has a lighthearted, childlike quality,” Yiapanis told me the next day. “His sense of humor is very naughty. There’s lots of teasing, and you regress very quickly around him.” At 2:30 a.m. Tisci was still going strong, his arm around Lea T as he chattered away, but by then even Abramović, she of the legendary stamina, had gone home to bed.

Four days later, on a humid Tuesday morning, Tisci was sitting in Givenchy’s couture salon on the posh Avenue George V, pressing an ice pack to his swollen right cheek with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other. The day before, he explained, he had undergone four hours of oral surgery to repair the results of years of poor dental care. Still, he was surprisingly cheerful and in the mood to talk. He was dressed in baggy black shorts he had designed himself and a black T-shirt, and his streetwise vibe made for a striking contrast with the room’s Parisian elegance, with its delicate white moldings and windows fronted by black Art Nouveau balconies. It was just the sort of aesthetic mash-up he relishes.
As he snapped open a can of Coke, Tisci recalled that he was 17 when he left home for London. He arrived with no expectation that he could afford any sort of training, hoping only to learn English and “escape Italy.” (“I really wanted to go to New York,” he told me, “but I didn’t want to be so far from my mom.”) In London he worked as a shop assistant and in the studio of designer Antonio Berardi before winning a government grant that enabled him to attend Saint Martins, the alma mater of Galliano and McQueen. His life in London, he said, revolved largely around the club scene. “It was the best moment—supercrazy,” he recalled of the brew of personalities he saw nightly at Bambina, Trade, Torch, and Chocolate, among them Galliano, Leigh Bowery, Boy George, and Naomi Campbell. He didn’t know any of them, he frankly admitted, but he loved being steeped in “the big fermentation of creativity.”

He and Boscono were inseparable at the time, and often slept at each other’s apartment. Before hitting the clubs, he would handcraft a look for her. One in particular stands out in his memory—a skirt made of fur he’d found at a vintage market that he paired with a fishnet top studded with military hardware and tulle. He even did her makeup: black smoky eyes, a Tisci signature ever since. Then, as now, he felt as at home in the clubs as he did in church, relishing the mystery and the sense of occasion he found in them. “You’re in the dark, so you see things in a different way,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which music, which sex; any club is a celebration of beauty, because from the most simple to the most extravagant person, when they go out, they get ready. It’s a kind of transformation.” When asked if he has ever been in love, he launched into a story of heartbreak, careful to avoid the use of pronouns. “I don’t want to specify sexuality,” Tisci said. “The big love of my life happened two or three years ago. For the first time I opened myself 100 percent, and I got, literally, a knife in my heart. This person had me in their power, and for a while it destroyed me.”

Called back from London in 1999 to help out at home, he felt “enclosed in a box,” he said. But, remembers Boscono, “he could not stop doing clothes, even if he was just doing them for himself.” Soon he moved in with Burlon in Milan, and while working for designer Stefano Guerriero, began filling orders he’d received for his own designs from the owner of the cult London boutique Kokon To Zai, who had loved his graduation show. His first client there was Björk; other intrepid fashion types followed. But with no funds to produce garments, he enlisted his mother and sisters to assist him. “You’d go to his mom’s house in Como,” says Burlon, “and he’d be sitting around the TV with his sisters and they’d be laughing, very loud, and embroidering. His mom would be knitting. It was like something from the old days.”

By the time he was 28, Tisci was a designer at Puma but left after one year to work at Ruffo, whose experimental Ruffo Research line he was invited to relaunch. In July 2004, just as he was completing his first collection, the line was shuttered, sending Tisci into despair and back to his mother’s house. An older colleague saved him, he recalled, by pushing him to go out on his own and offering to put at his disposal her embroidery workshop in New Delhi. He left for India that August, and there, as he put it, “Riccardo Tisci was born.” Clothes, shoes, jewelry—“everything was made by me.” As his collection came together, he sent pictures via e-mail to Boscono. Wowed by what she saw, she convinced Tisci to hold his first show that September and model friends such as Karen Elson to participate for no fee. Boscono also implored every fashion editor she knew—from International Herald Tribune critic Suzy Menkes to Roitfeld—to come witness the birth of an important new designer.

Tisci borrowed a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of Milan and filled it with burning candles, a BMX bike, and two smashed-up cars he’d bought at a demolition shop. His mother finished embroidering the clothes, Lea served as a fit model, and Burlon and others drummed up publicity. Many of the models came to his presentation directly from the Gucci show, so to save money he kept them in the same Pat McGrath makeup and had his sisters help out with their hair. Instead of a catwalk, he opted for a series of tableaux vivants, with the models walking around in long goth skirts and dresses as if unaware of the viewers surrounding them behind metal barriers. Such a show was an anomaly in commercial Milan at the time, and its DIY spirit makes Tisci nostalgic. “I believe in emotion and love and celebration,” he told me as he reapplied the ice pack and popped a chocolate macaron into his mouth. “Because they all came, my family and friends, and said, ‘We’ll help you make it.’”

For his second collection five months later, Tisci pushed the theatrics further: in an incense-choked factory, complete with a Crucifixion-size wooden cross, the models moved solemnly in a procession wearing sinuous black dresses and beaded shearling coats. Tisci recalled being “shocked” at seeing the fashion establishment arrive en masse after word had leaked out that he was to be tapped for Givenchy. He himself suspected no such thing; though he had been asked to submit a proposal to Marco Gobbetti a few months earlier, he considered himself a long shot. “People were taken aback by the mood of that show,” remembers Gobbetti, who had “snuck in and out,” so as not to fuel the rumors. “Some didn’t understand it, but there was something there that clearly stood out. I thought, Here’s someone who can do something.” Tisci, he adds, “is like an incredible DJ. He has this capacity to analyze a huge amount of information from different sources—from art, the street, music—and synthesize all of it into a vision.” Says Madonna, who asked Tisci to design costumes for her 2008 Sticky & Sweet Tour, “He has a classical point of view with a punk-rock sensibility.”

Four days after his June men’s show, Tisci was immersed in preparations for his 2010 haute couture collection. It was eight days away, and he was back in the salon, sans ice pack, to oversee a fitting with Lea T. As he waited for her to change out of a gray mini T-shirt dress and black patent-leather ballerina flats, he showed me photos of models in his 10 new looks, all inspired by Kahlo and Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Forgoing black in favor of bone, blush, and gold, he pointed out the skeletal patterns and skulls intricately worked in lace, the silk tulle gown ending in a flurry of degradé ostrich feathers—and a beaded gold dress, which took a team of 29 people a total of 2,320 hours just to embroider. Unlike seasons past, the clothes would not be shown on models on a runway but by private appointment on hanging forms in a gilded hôtel particulier on the Place Vendôme, to provide his clients with both privacy and the opportunity to see his clothes up close. When he started at the house, he told me, he had just five clients, among them “Queen Rania of Jordania” (as he called her); now he guessed that number was closer to 50.
As he spoke Lea T emerged from behind a screen in a flesh-tone bodysuit and a fluffy fur jacket. “I wanted to use monkey,” Tisci said, examining the goat-hair plaiting with laserlike focus. “But it’s illegal, so we got the best goat’s fur and hand-dyed it. We’re calling the color ‘skin.’”
For a few minutes Tisci went back and forth between Italian, French, and English, as Andrew Heather, his “right arm” in couture, held up patches of goat fur, and Tisci discussed whether to replace the braided collar on Lea’s jacket with leather. “Walk,” he said suddenly, wanting to see the way the jacket moved on her body. Lea walked the length of the salon. After she turned around I noticed that in the back, the fur was formed in the shape of a heart, making her look as if she’d suddenly sprouted wings. “Yes,” he said smiling, when I mentioned it. “Fauns, angels, devils. It’s always coming through.”

In his first days at Givenchy, Tisci would have Lea T try on the clothes he was making after his official fit models had gone home. I asked him about it. “She’s got an energy that’s really my world because she’s romantic and dark,” he explained. “So my clothes look really good on her. I never made a dress that’s super, 100 percent feminine. You always have, like, a twist, something that’s masculine.”
As with each of his presentations beforehand, he was worried he’d be misunderstood. “He always says ‘They’ll kill me,’” said aide-de-camp Lucia Medeghini, who’s been ringside for all of them. But as it turned out, the critics didn’t. The reviews for this collection would be the best of his career.

Earlier that day, as he was nursing his gums, Tisci described how much he and Monsieur de Givenchy had in common, beyond their taste for black, severity, and white shirts. “We’re both related to the art world, to celebrity, without being a celebrity,” he said. “And it’s a real relationship. I have what Hubert used to have with Audrey. Mariacarla, Lea, Marina, Courtney, Antony—they’re my Audrey.”

Tisci and Givenchy met just once, five months after the younger designer arrived in Paris. Tisci fondly recalled their tête-à-tête in Givenchy’s rue de Grenelle manse (one of the few times he’s worn a suit), noting how they conversed about gardening, art, Venice, and Italian actresses before Givenchy advised him, “Remember one thing only: Don’t try to be somebody else. Be yourself.” Givenchy’s take on their chat, however, was not quite as generous. “When I see in the press what he does, there’s no feeling of the house,” he told Women’s Wear Daily in 2007. “I ask myself, ‘What end does a conversation like that serve?’”
But, in fact, Tisci did follow his advice. Five years in, he’s still very much his own man. “It was pretty tough in the beginning,” Tisci allowed, “because people didn’t want to accept me. So I thought: You know what? I clean it up. And when the house is in nice condition, I invite you for dinner. And that’s what I did. I thought: You don’t want to give me a chance? I take my chance. And now everybody wants to come for dinner.”

Above: Tisci and muses Pablo Otero, Jared Buckhiester, Malgosia Bela, Lea T, and Daphne Groeneveld.

In the heat of the Parisian summer, Riccardo Tisci presented his Fall Winter 2010-11 couture collection for Givenchy on tuesday, in the sun-drenched salons of the Hotel d’Evreux on the Place Vendôme. Foregoing the tension and ceremony of the runway, the presentation of ten silhouettes lost nothing in the break from convention – rather allowing close inspection and appreciation of some of the most delicate craftsmanship in fashion today.

The static display channeled Riccardo’s stream of consciousness into three chambers – one gold, one white and one nude – with an additional room showcasing a commissioned collection image by Willy Vanderperre. Two models walked with reverence through the salons, as guests were free to mingle between the silhouettes that hung from gilt frames in the ornate rooms, with shoes sitting on lacquered black plinths in organic forms. Each room explored different facets of the Givenchy codes, from heavy metallic hardware to delicate silk fringing, exquisite beading and crystal appliques, and sheer lace and panelled leather.

All Riccardo’s gothic references were there, however less evident than his recent menswear outings. Looking closely, the core detail of a white ruched coat was a petite skull bead and the corset belt around a lace evening dress cinched with layers of ceramic vertebrae. The gold encrusted tailcoat was crafted with a crucifix pattern extending from the shoulders, and a skin-coloured marabou feathered evening dress with full gloved hands held a sparkling ribcage of Swarovski crystals.

The fourth room was dominated by an immense floating canvas, with ten manes of hair floating down the ten silhouettes – a group portrait shot from behind by Willy Vanderperre. On the opposite side, the faces of Riccardo’s muses were revealed, with favourites such as Maria Carla Boscono, Lea T, and Malgosia Bela standing apostolic alongside new faces such as Daphne and Ming.

The display echoed the glory days of couture, truly encompassing a craft that is barely evident in the racked garments of department stores and even pret-a-porter today. Pure and painstaking, each piece spoke on its own as an artwork of passion and romantic addiction.

Returning to the lavish salon of Le Grand Hôtel Intercontinental in Paris, Riccardo Tisci yesterday ravaged guests with his latest assault of menswear for Givenchy Spring Summer 2011. Before the show we waited beneath the gilded arches as generations of supporters flooded in to fête their man, with Marina Abramovic seated front row alongside Carine Roitfeld, Lou Doillon, and Riccardo’s own mother and sisters.

To the Lost Boys’ soundtrack “Cry Little Sister”, models marched an uptempo walk around the circular ballroom – fuelled with the aggressive attitude of their Givenchy armour. Opening with white lace shirting over last season’s skirted shorts, the silhouettes evolved through a rally of spotted lace through to pale cream and a full-throttle black and yellow cheetah print, punctuated with shocking moulded bondage helmets. Laser-cut leather vertebrae was applied to the snub-pointed dress shoes, and worn as skeletal collars over shirts. Formal pieces were based on the geometry of his past seasons – with boxy shirting, slim trousers and a new split tail that jutted down trim suit jackets, continuing his bold vision of the modern male silhouette.

Adding to the drama, three women’s silhouettes entered the melée – with Malgosia Bela, Maria Carla Boscono and transgender muse Lea T appearing as vamps swathed in cheetah print suiting, their hair teased to 70′s heights, their eyes and lips blackened for a gothic glamour.

Hitting another hard note for spring, Riccardo instilled his collection with a new absurdity, reaching to some of the darkest places in his repertoire. Revelling in a solid foundation of form, his exploration of sensuality through print, texture and symbology remains relevant and challenging.

Prêt-a-Porter Homme Givenchy par Riccardo Tisci
Collection Printemps – Été 2011

Décor & Production
Shortcut Events

Musique
Frédéric Sanchez

Coiffure
Luigi Murenu

Maquillage Givenchy
Pat McGrath

Last Tuesday, Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic’s three-month retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York came to an end, as did her performance piece “The Artist is Present”, for which she had sat silently at a table in the museum’s atrium, all day every day for the duration of the show. Visitors were encouraged to take up the empty chair next to her. At the close of the exhibition, Riccardo Tisci, the creative director of Givenchy and a friend of Abramovic, threw her a celebratory party. Beforehand, the two got together to discuss their symbiotic personal and professional relationship; Vanessa Friedman, FT.com’s fashion editor, listened in.

Riccardo Tisci: I met Marina about three and a half years ago through her ex-husband; I had been commissioned by AnOther magazine to do a project with an artist, and I wanted one who wasn’t so well known, so I found [Italian artist] Paolo Canevari. We were working mostly by e-mail, but one day he invited me to Sunday lunch. I didn’t actually know he was Marina’s husband, because I’m not one of those people who Google their hosts before they meet, so I went over, and there was this woman in a black Yohji Yamamoto dress, long black hair, black shoes. She’s walking around doing stuff, and Paolo’s saying ‘Marina this’ and ‘Marina that,’ and about halfway through it dawned on me: this was Marina Abramovic. I started sweating.

Marina Abramovic: I knew who Riccardo was, because growing up in the ex-Yugoslavia, my mother was obsessed by French culture; everything French was good, and everything else was bad. She took me to the Alliance Française at 11 to learn French. So I knew about Givenchy, and Audrey Hepburn and all that. But, at the same time, in the 1970s artists saw fashion as this huge enemy: the only reason you would dress up and have red lips would be to seduce a curator so they would show your work. It wasn’t until I moved to Paris in the late 1980s that I felt allowed to be interested in fashion.

RT: I had been at Givenchy about one and a half years when we met, and I invited Paolo and Marina to a show.
MA: I was absolutely blown away. There are a lot of designers who make women look cheap and vulgar – you see those dresses, and you think: how am I supposed to be in that? – but Riccardo’s work puts a woman in charge of their space and time and self. I think it’s because he has eight sisters, so he knows women in his veins. I found out we also have a similar sense of humour, and he loves art, and understands it, and loves things that are very strange. Performance art is very strange.

RT: It’s about emotions, which is what I feel everything I do needs to be about; giving and getting emotions, and when I can’t sense that any more in this job, I think I will stop. The funny thing is, when I started my career I always did installations or performance pieces, and only when I got to Givenchy and all the critics kept saying they had to see the clothes move did I do the full runway, which I had always thought made girls look like robots.

MA: There was a critic who once said to me, ‘I hate your work because it always makes me cry,’ but that’s why Riccardo actually loves it. So we’ve become better and better friends, and after I got divorced we became even better friends.

RT: The first time we worked together, I was curating an issue of A Magazine in Paris, and I asked Marina to do a piece where she interpreted me, and I sent her an haute couture dress.

MA: I had it shipped to Laos, because I was working there at the time, filming a piece, and it arrived in this big cardboard box, this extraordinary ball gown. I took it to a place where there was a pool and a waterfall and I put it on and got into the water and started washing it, just destroying it.

RT: And then I was sent a box full of these pictures, and I couldn’t believe it. Because it was so clean – water, daylight, a woman with her face scrubbed clear of makeup – but also so dark. She ruined this thing, and the combination made something else altogether, which is what I think the relationship of fashion and art should be. That’s when I thought: I’ve found my soul mate. Because it also goes all the way back to our childhoods – I grew up poor, we didn’t even have a washing machine until I was 14. This washing by hand was part of my life.

MA: And I remember when my grandmother got our first washing machine. My God, it was so special; she used to take the clothes out of it and wash them by hand because she didn’t want to hurt the machine. It’s amazing that I’m 63 and he’s 35: there’s this huge difference in age, but we don’t feel it at all. We get together and all these ideas come pouring out … We had this idea – someone wanted to take our portrait – and I thought it would be funny if we did Riccardo drinking milk from my breasts. Because that’s really what it is, we feed each other. We’re family.

RT: I sat with Marina twice during this last piece [at MoMA], once when it was just starting, and it was rainy and cold out, and there weren’t so many people in the museum. I left and felt filled with this melancholy, almost the way you do after a funeral. And then I was there on the last day, and it was amazing – it was this feeling of lightness and festivity. I had this memory of sitting facing Marina in Greece at a time when we were both full of darkness after bad loves, tears pouring down our faces. This was like the opposite, like when I was a child and I went to a church in the south of Italy and it was full of candles and white flowers. It’s what we recognise in each other, this capacity for darkness and also light.

MA: It’s why I chose the dress code for the dinner that Riccardo had to celebrate the end of the piece: black and white and gold. It’s how I live my life, all extremes, plus gold to let the light in …

RT: But they are also the main colours in my collections; it took me a long time to use any other colours at all. So we made this incredible dress for her for the party –

MA: – inspired by a piece I did called “Dragonhead”, which was about snakes.

RT: It’s a jacket of 101 snakes, all patched together from tiny pieces of snakeskin, with a big gold belt, and this incredible dress underneath that makes Marina look like a 1950s screen goddess.

MA: I loved it! I’ve never worn a dress like that, and I can only wear it because I lost so much weight, not really being able to eat for the last three months. It’s a great contrast to what I wore when I was sitting, which was a robe like a blanket.

RT: This is what we want to show: that you can be an artist but also be a woman, and look extraordinary and super-sexy.

MA: That you don’t have to be just one way, just a serious and tortured artist.

RT: I think Marina could open the door to that for a whole generation. And then, next, I want her to art-direct a fashion show for me.

MA: I want to train models to walk a different way. I –

RT: Don’t tell!

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Above: Photography by Pascal Perich and Charles Eshelman. This article was originally published at FT.com on June 5th, 2010.

Riccardo Tisci’s prét-a-porter debut at the house of Givenchy was one of the most significant fashion moments of 2005. His inception was certainly on a grand scale – beginning with the venue of the Tennis Club de Paris transformed for the event, with a clinical white set featuring a giant sphere as an impending centerpiece surrounded by white chaises and mirrored floor tiles.

The show unfolded with Riccardo’s muse Mariacarla Boscono in a white sheer blouse and pencil skirt. Reclining daintily on a chaise as the other girls walked past, Mariacarla watched as the other models positioned themselves around the room –  graceful Givenchy goddesses in a languid procession snaking their way around the pavilion.

Upon reflection, the garments themselves truly set the tone for the story that Riccardo has continued to tell for the past ten seasons. His signatures abound from the very first look down to the eveningwear, with softly feminine sheer blouses, pencil skirts and goddess dresses balanced by bold footwear, lashings of heavy satin and lace, and tuxedo details. The colour palette has also seen some revisiting over the years, with the classic black and white a solid foundation – shot through with silver and gold metallics, punchy pastels of mint and violet, and Riccardo’s demure way with blush pink and nudes.

After the show, Vogue Paris’s Carine Roitfeld fêted Riccardo’s new appointment with an exclusive soirée, as the first testament to her ongoing support of his work and the house. Riccardo began with an audacious offering – mixing the romantic house codes with a new vibrancy of tactile, fluid garments that mixed equal parts of old world elegance and new glamour.

British-born Canadian illustrator Ray Caesar weaves a far-fetched tale of his own birth, claiming in his biography that “much to my parent’s surprise, I was born a dog.” As though some sort of explanation for his surreal cartoons, this claim barely touches the surface of the world he has created – a gothic, rockabilly wonderland of fresh faced nymphs in historical and mythological circumstances. In bubblegum bright colours and with a creepy ethereal polish, the characters he creates are as naughty as they are nice – with fetish details and flouncy boudoir costumes that hint to a much darker intention.

For Riccardo Tisci’s A#8, Ray Caesar’s pieces ‘Sleeping study’ and ‘Eternity’ are published alongside a personal quote – an insight into his childhood and the experiences that helped shape his subject matter and fascination with a doll-like femininity.

“Whenever I look at Riccardo’s wonderful dresses it takes me back to a time as a 11 year old boy. I was pretty tall and thin for my age back then and two [of] my older sisters used to dress me up in their clothes and put lipstick on my lips and eyeshadow and my mothers platinum blonde beehive wig. My own hair was jet black and very long in the late 60s and early 70s and they loved putting hot curlers in it… (They had to hold me down for the eyebrow plucking though as I didn’t like that… I think I bit one sister to the bone on her finger but they were a determined pair). I actually didn’t mind and was just glad they could get a laugh and have some fun and I loved playing with dolls too so it was fun to be one for once. I looked quite a bit older with all that makeup and can remember them laughing and then stopping as they realized… I looked pretty damn good!!!!! Sort of like a PanAm airline stewardess and could easily get away with looking like a twenty two year old young lady even though I was only an eleven year old boy that happened to have a good pair of legs. I remember the power I felt, looking like that and I could have gotten any middle-aged man to take me out and wine and dine me and possibly buy me a new baseball mitt…HA! It sure did make my dad worried but since I used to set fire to things around the house and play with knives he learned not to give me grief over such minor things as dressing up and went back to reading his newspaper… I was certainly a pretty little monster. My mum thought it was usual stuff for me but was more amazed by the fact I could walk in high heels… And I can remember looking in the mirror and saying to myself…”One day I will make a picture of this”.

Images courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York.

God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar.
It is not right that everyone read the pages that follow: a sole few will savour this bitter fruit without danger. As a result, wavering soul, before penetrating further into such uncharted barrens, draw back, step no deeper. Mark my words: draw back, step no deeper, like the eyes of a son respectfully flinching away from his mother’s august contemplation, or rather, like an acute angle formation of cold-sensitive cranes stretching beyond the eye can reach, soaring through the winter silence in deep meditation, under tight sail towards a focal point on the horizon, from where there suddenly rises a peculiar gust of wind, omen of a storm.

Featured in Riccardo’s magazine, this poignant reference is echoed with a reflected warning within the subtitle. The poison of fashion kills. Released only months after Yves Saint Laurent’s death, this dedication seems a dark tribute to the passed designer and a recognition of his dedication to the arts and a wider cultural sphere. With it, Riccardo paints a grim picture of his calling – attributing a dangerous yet undefined psychological quality to fashion.

Above image: “Les Chants de Maldoror”, 1962 by Yves Saint Laurent. Courtesy of the Fondation Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent.

Above: further sketches by Yves Saint Laurent for Roland Petit’s 1962 ballet “Les Chants de Maldoror”.

Above: “Les Chants de Maldoror” illustration by François Auberon.

Italian installation artist Paolo Canevari’s cataclysmic ‘burning’ series takes on a new significance in Riccardo Tisci’s A#8. The ‘Burning Dress’ is artfully constructed around a crucifix, its heavy tulle layers bound around the wooden structure with raw edges and a constricting tightness. Photographed in the stark light of morning and printed askew on its side, the impact of the looming cross is heightened by the perspective. A timely image for Easter Sunday, and a reminder of the power of religious imagery in art and its increasing presence in fashion, due to designers like Riccardo Tisci, who wear their hearts and their beliefs on their sleeves. Literally.

Riccardo Tisci wove a complex dichotomy of sportswear and luxury together for his Fall Winter 2010 collection for the house of Givenchy, exploring the realms of water and snow sports alongside minimalist tailoring and crystal embellishment. Underlying the collection was an intangibly precious and reverent feeling, with the North African influences of the season before surely surpassed by a return to Riccardo’s European roots.

Despite the splashes of colour and glint of diamonds, M/M Paris’s graphic sticker invitation for the show (below) gave little away of what we would witness from A#8′s curator this season.

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Held in the Lycée Carnot in the 17th arrondisement, the show was lit by circles of red heat lamps, with dark benches zig-zagging across the floor of the draughty stadium. Guests included many of Riccardo’s muses and friends – including Amanda Lear, Beth Ditto, Anna Piaggi and the odd addition of Little Britain’s David Walliams, engaged to model Lara Stone (who walked in the show).

Following some of the key elements that were interspersed through the SS10 haute couture collection, Riccardo worked his signature aggression coupled with a bold romance – sculpting a modern wardrobe that explored the house codes of Givenchy. A grosgrain ribbon tied at the neck of many outfits was a delicate reminder of the ultra-feminine. Givenchy makeup artist Pat McGrath created a ruby red glittering lip as a stunning and harmonious accompaniment to Riccardo’s garments, and a pale pink stain around the eyes gave the girls a vampiric intensity.

Each look walked a fine line between tethered restraint and a fluid freedom, however disparate the fabrics and colours may have been in the distinct sections of the show. This included the transformation of high-necklines with mesh and lace panelling, and the bound miniskirts and cropped trousers in neoprene unzipped at the waist like a deconstructed cummerbund. Tailoring was offered double breasted with a long, lean silhouette, a subtle A-line and tuxedo detailing.

Intricate ruffles, lace and pleating were reworked in vermillion red, sheer black and nude – contrasted with shiny leather outerwear that lent a new hardness directly from the menswear collection (with five mens looks shown for the first times with the womenswear).

Sleek body-hugging knitwear was rendered in navy, grass green and red jacquards, focused on circular motifs reminiscent of baroque architecture, layered with straps and gilets – updating the use of similar prints for SS10.

Eveningwear showed a redux of themes seen in the haute couture collections, albeit simplified for ready-to-wear. Breastplates were the focus for intricate detailing of lace and ruching, with a bolero shape encircling the bust. Dresses and drainpipe trousers were encrusted with crystal, as were exquisitely bejeweled gloves and clutches – pieces that seemed morphed into a single sparkling object, contrasting the sober tailoring and simplicity of little black dresses. Those same dresses continued the folded detailing of the skirts and trousers, with leather, velvet or satin triangular panels falling from the bust. The final looks revisited marabou and ostrich feathers, in sheer voile tops exploding with feathered fronts and trailing gossamer wings behind.

Leaving much to sink in, Fall Winter 2010 proposed many new ideas which will continue to inform Riccardo’s aesthetic – furthering his baroque and gothic leanings with a dose of well-timed Givenchy minimalism.

Show Details:

DECOR & PRODUCTION: La Mode en Images

MUSIC: Frédéric Sanchez

HAIR: Luigi Murenu

GIVENCHY MAKEUP: Pat McGrath

Above: Vogue Italy’s Anna Piaggi backstage after the show.

Above: The Gossip’s Beth Ditto congratulates Riccardo Tisci backstage after the show.

Sang Bleu magazine’s Maxime Büchi sat down with Riccardo Tisci directly after his Givenchy menswear show for Fall Winter 2010 in Paris, to discuss his inspirations, passions and his perspective on the media (and in particularly his work for A#8). The result is a candid and personal conversation offering genuine insight into Riccardo’s motives and opinions. Many thanks to Maxime, Riccardo, and the team at Givenchy for their support.
Read Maxime’s account below.

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Riccardo Tisci’s work is laced with an impalpable force. His creations induce within me visions of Santerian altars and ritual trances. I won’t be mad at someone objecting that his shirts are nice to wear at a business meeting, and that there doesn’t seem to be much else to it. It may be that my perspective is biased: I really got to know Tisci’s world through his issue of A Magazine, and one will admit, it generally sailed fairly remotely from the safe shores of corporate offices and the rosewood helm of Hollywood entertainers.

It was one day this winter that the postman brought me another tangible sign that there may actually be more to Tisci’s work than starched collars and magnificent marabou feather dresses. What the postman delivered was a Christmas gift from the Givenchy office – an oversized, t-shirt screen-printed with the silhouette of a dismembered boy and three stars. As I unfolded the pleasant surprise from its white patent cardboard box and held it in front of me, the vision of the Paul Barnes-designed Givenchy logo hovering above the truncated body suddenly summarized that underlying awkwardness I always felt in Tisci’s work. The spell was cast like chicken foot.

So when Jean l’Olivier of A Magazine asked me to interview Riccardo Tisci after the men’s Fall Winter 2010 show, beyond the thrill and honour such an encounter might be for me, it somehow it felt natural – like it was the natural course of things.

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When I enter the room, I am accompanied by Dan Thawley, enthusiastic ambassador of the ‘A’ empire, and faithful disciple of Jean, its benevolent first minister.

(Greetings & introductions)

Maxime Büchi:
I would like to start with what touches me the most in your creation, and especially that one particular experience I had. This t-shirt I received. I wonder how can you do this. Can you tell us about that twist, that “dark side”—or let’s just call it “flip side” that your creation seems to have. Where does it come from, how does it relate to you and what creative process leads to such a product?

Riccardo Tisci:
My work process at Givenchy is very intense. Day after day, we research a lot, but at the same time my approach is emotional. I do not base myself on what has been done. I am a very careful person, but in the end, my work in based on emotion and not reinterpretation. Especially in these days, it is hard to find emotion and inspiration. Not only in fashion. In music, arts, society in general. When I find something I like, I explore it throughout, I dig deep, without considering what the reactions might be. I am not scared. That is the way I work: drawing inspiration and emotion from my travels, my friends, my family. My work then expresses my vision and my vision, like it or not, is pretty dark. I am a happy but dark person. It comes from my origins, the way I was brought up in the south of Italy where religion is omnipresent. Football, sex and religion, that’s the Italian way, you know. Religion has always been near me, like my family. We never had much money, so I saw I grew up tough. So those are the ingredients of my creation: a certain latin romanticism and a necessary toughness of who I am. But without being ugly. So that’s where the darkness lies. But it is a soft one, especially for menswear.
Now regarding this collection, it is the one I prefer so far, because it is not about shocking. It brings together a sense of tailoring that I have been developing for a long time, but still with that identity we were talking about. Also because of its theme — Jesus Christ — I left aside the embroideries and the in-your-face-ness of my past collections for a much purer street meets couture spirit.

MB:
Speaking of streetwear, can you tell us more about how what is your relation to it and in extension to that, who is the ‘Givenchy man’?

RT:
For a while, I couldn’t answer that because I was concentrated on developing the woman, but here it is: the ‘Givenchy man’ is a Latin man. It is who I am as well. It might sound strange for a French house, but there is something about the heart of the Latino that I love. And then there is the strong body language. The latin man is proud and masculin, but is not afraid to have feminine facets in the way he dresses. You can see it illustrated in the casting of the shows. I explore the menswear world farther show season after season. Every item is the encounter of so-called streetwear—the trainers, the clothes I wear—and elegance. It is the twist. There are many beautiful shirts, coats, suits on the market. How do you come up with something that will be new, that will stand out, but still be wearable? Is is a particularly challenging in menswear.

MB:
I just saw Chris Brown at the show. Would you be interested to work with RnB singers or such? (NB: Obviously, we are talking about menswear. We already know Tisci has worked with RnB singer Ciara in the past.)

RT:
When I arrived a few years ago, there was the legacy of Givenchy himself — a genius — I had to close the doors in order to appropriate the company, get comfortable with my position, but I don’t “close the box” anymore. RnB and Rap are maybe less “me”, music-wise, but the world is very much like mine. The self-confidence, not being scared of anything. I love dodgy people, dodgy situations! The obsession of beauty. Menswear is being developed now, but if you consider womenswear, I have been consistently working with a group of women. Not many, I like it like that. We remain close and faithful. I am now extending this to menswear. You know, I dress women from Courtney Love to Madonna. Different identities, different worlds, but the same strength. It applies to men too. The people I surround myself with, the people who attend to my show, him (Chris Brown), whoever, they have that strength too. They can be Punks, Hip Hop, whatever, I don’t judge them by the way they look, but by the emotion they carry and provoke in me. And I like them because they’re strong, even if some of them are a bit dangerous — which attracts me very much!

MB:
And, like you have these strong women around you, do you have a male muse?

RT:
I am building it. It is difficult because everybody is trying to be skinny, delicate, whereas my man is rough and tough. Reason why my casting is so exclusive. I cast in Puerto Rico, etc. Latinos have now become trendy in fashion, but not when I started. Already then, most of the boys came from other countries. So as for now, I am still construction the picture of my real muse.

MB:
I was also interested in approaching the question of media in fashion. I was very impressed by the work you did for A Magazine. It could have been the common “arty-fashion”, but instead it was a real dense and serious editorial work, way beyond fashion. How did come up with all these things and generally, what do you expect from a fashion-orientated medium?

RT:
The experience was fantastic, but tough, also for the people around me at Givenchy! (laughs) One of my best experiences actually. I have a tight schedule, but when I give, I give 100%! I wanted to approach it in a different way. It is easy to do yourself, you do it everyday, but to see someone else doing you… Brief them… Is much more challenging. I selected people among my close, talented friends and family and asked to illustrate our friendship. I wanted people from all kind of worlds, photographers, artists, transsexuals, It was a big success because of the intense injection of real creative emotion. Which is something I miss in the media. Today it’s all about business. And I understand that, because what makes allows us to do what we do, but the work I did with A was the real me.
Nowadays, what misses in the media is the possibility to really express yourself. And also the need to stop looking at each other. They end up all looking the same. I used to read lots of magazines, but not anymore. Today,they all look in the same direction. I am a leo and I like to go counter-current. Like bringing the gymnast of Rio de Janerio in a world of skinny boys, you know! Media should stop copying each other and develop their own identities.

Dan Thawley:
I feel it is what you did for your A Magazine. It is so different to all the others, you have such an amazing list of contributors…

RT:
Absolutely. Another thing that annoys me in mass medias is the run for novelty and the quickly out-dating content. Like it or not, what I did with A is not about a trend, or who’s inside. You can read it again in 10 years, it is all about expression emotions, page after page, and that’s permanent. People went crazy from Courtney love to my transsexual friend or that rockabilly guy. Like Maria Carla making photography while she’s a model! Turn things upside down, that’s what I like. Express emotions. That was the keyword.

MB & DT:
Thank you very much Riccardo!

(Greetings)

Image credit: www.oscaryastiz.com