Olivier Theyskens has revealed the most dramatic edge to his dark side yet, in a recent series of fashion images shot by Paris- based photographer Monika Bielskyte, for the third volume of SOME/THINGS. Granted access to La Coupole – the secret stage of the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris – the pair choreographed some theatrical magic of their own, working with an eclectic array of vintage and designer pieces to transform the designer with gritty but spectacular results.

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Dan Thawley: What inspired you to shoot Olivier?
Monika Bielskyte: Olivier is a very complex person and a beautiful man, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to propose him to model since that’s really not something he would have normally accepted. However, as we were working on a special feature on Julien Claessens’s work, Julien was showing me his old archive images and I saw this image of Olivier where he really looked like a bird, a very strange, beautiful and slightly alien creature— which is the quality that makes me love almost all of julien’s portraits. So when I saw that image, all of a sudden Olivier seemed like an irreplaceable casting for the editorial we wanted to shoot in Théâtre de la Ville.

DT: What was the significance of the Théâtre de la Ville as a location?
MB: Théâtre de la Ville has long had a program consisting of some of the most groundbreaking and seminal choreographers in the world. La Coupole is a very special place because it’s where most of the creation happens. It’s a rehearsal space where no one but the choreographer and his team are allowed to enter, a quiet rooftop, full of atmosphere and ghosts, with a sublime view of Notre Dame and la Seine, heavy black curtains and worn-out floor— so different from so many spiritless theatres of today.
Personally, Théâtre de la Ville has a very deep meaning for me because it’s really through attending its program, from my first years in Paris, that I was introduced to the magical work of Pina Bausch, Sankai Juku, Hofesh Shechter, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Akram Khan and other choreographers that had an undeniable influence on the way I work with movement when shooting.

DT: From where did you draw your inspiration for styling Olivier?
MB: The theatre, to my knowledge, has never previously accepted the shooting of fashion editorials. So this project, from its very conception, had to be something much more— a portrait, a performance, a moment in time showing a face of Olivier different to the fashion face we know him from. Olivier had accepted to do this shooting on the condition that we do something really different to anything he has done before – he didn’t want anything sweet and ‘nice’, nothing even close, as we joked, to the ‘fantasy boy’. He wanted it to be strong, intense, emotional, a performance project instead of a classic pretty portrait. So we tried to create a bit of a pièce de théâtre and, as conventional styling just wouldn’t have worked, we had to look for something really fresh yet timeless— not a very obvious combination when you think of it.
The main inspiration sprang, of course, from Olivier’s own work— dark, moody, yet very elegant and sophisticated. Olivier brought his personal selection of things— feathers, a gorgeous tiny padded vest which looked like it came straight from the Victorian era, a customised Rick Owens jacket, Carol Christian Poell shoes… and I had dug into the Théâtre de la Ville costume archive to choose some incredibly beautiful and delicate torn dresses from the Sarah Bernhardt era, as well as several personal archive pieces belonging to Michele Lamy, Josephus Thimister and myself… and all that we mixed together with pieces from the Autumn/Winter 2010 collections of Haider Ackermann, Ann Demeulemeester, Nicolas Andreas Taralis, Kris van Assche and, of course, pieces from the Yohji Yamamoto archives. It was all mainly feathers, sheer tops, long pleated skirts— a lot of Japanese influence in the styling, almost feminine pieces, but that create a very masculine ensemble.

DT: What is your favourite piece in the styling?
MB: Definitely the vintage Revillon ostrich vest from Rick Owens’s rack of his personal inspiration pieces. It was all damaged and so old, yet the way it moved and reflected the light was pure magic, the way it was twirling around Olivier’s face, body and hands, it truly looked like it was alive— an art piece, not fashion.

DT: Were any of the pieces particularly rare or hard to acquire?
MB: None of them were really hard to acquire but a couple were really hard to work with! The vintage Josephus Thimister shirt dipped in wax started to crack, peel off and melt (in the images one can see white bits of it looking like snow on the theatre floor!), and it was a terrible hassle to clean Olivier’s skin from it once we were done with the look. Gustavo Lins’s personal 19th century metallic corset was also difficult to deal with since it was so rigid and so fragile at the same time— I was quite afraid we might break it!

DT: How did Olivier react to becoming the subject rather than the creator?
MB: He was definitely very much a creator! I was just interpreting his movements through the images but it was definitely all about him, that’s for sure! Fashion-wise, Olivier’s input to the styling was also undeniable— I may have planned or envisaged many things, some came alive when he put them on and the others didn’t so, once again, it was very much about him— not seasonal trends on him or my own art shooting or anything like that. It was very much his performance, my portrait of him via his performance. You know, Olivier can be really sweet, but he also has a very tough personality and really knows what he wants and what he doesn’t want and so it is impossible to push him in a direction he doesn’t feel like going. I could ask him to move where the light was or look at the camera once in a while, but I had to adapt myself a lot, much more than during any other editorial I had shot. I think, shooting him, I could maybe only compare to shooting Brett Anderson, who is another amazing artist we feature in ISSUE003. They are both very self aware, but they also let a magic moment happen in the image— one only has to know how to go around them, silently, without too many commands, following every movement they make, being attentive to every single detail.

DT: What are your feelings upon finishing the images, were you happy? Were there unexpected results?
MB: Yes, indeed, very happy. I was unsure if Olivier would be happy, but he said he liked them because there was something bird-like about the movements, that it really seemed like it captured instances of a performance rather than still, dead images.

DT: Did you shoot his portrait for the Lift Hand Portrait exhibition at the same time? What did you try to convey with the hand portrait, what symbolism and emotion?
MB: The hand portrait was shot at the same time as part of the editorial/portrait of Olivier. Only later when Masahiro asked me to contribute something for their hand project— which I couldn’t refuse because it is simply one of the most beautiful stores in the world — I couldn’t think of anything better than that image.

SOME/THINGS 003 is released on September 15th, 2010.

Read more about the Lift Hand Portrait exhibition here.

The age of the ‘roaring twenties’ remains in our collective consciousness as a heady period of flapper girls, jazz, gin and wild parties, when the girls rolled their stockings down and danced up a storm. With such idyllic and opulent imagery in mind, German still-life photographer Michael Baumgarten created this boudoir scene with styling by textile designer Veerle Hommelen (who worked for some years with Olivier Theyskens at the house of Rochas).

Their images offer a true admiration for the intimate accessories and historical elements of the feminine wardrobe, with exquisite vintage pieces sourced from the Didier Ludot collection in Paris, the Collectors Gallery in Brussels, and Antwerp’s MoMu fashion museum. In the soft-focus closeups, perfume bottles are strewn across the floor among patterned high-heel shoes, alongside scalloped-edge dresses in soft pastels. A young girl lays amongst her precious possessions dressed only in sheer hosiery, her curvaceous figure reflected infinitely as she gazes through the floor-length mirror.

Note: Complementing the original shoot, Olivier Theyskens chose to include the painting below in the online edition of NºD, for the perfect semblance of colour and pattern. Unable to recall the artists name, Olivier described him as a poor Russian artist who lived and worked in Nice during the 1950s. The artwork carries the theme of reflection from the original story, as it is filled with abstracted mirror images of the male and female form.

Above: A painting from Olivier Theyskens’ private collection.

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Photography: Michael Baumgarten.
Styling: Veerle Hommelen.
Makeup: Mathias van Hooff.
Thanks to: Didier Ludot (Paris), MoMu Fashion Museum (Antwerp), Betty de Stefano @ Collectors Gallery (Brussels). All items are from the 20s/30s/40s and are anonymous.

Olivier Theyskens has worked together with French photographer Julien Claessens throughout his career, with Julien capturing many of the defining moments of Olivier’s work at the houses of Rochas and Nina Ricci in their recent book “The Other Side of the Picture”.

For NºD, the pair created this series of exotically dark still-lifes in the forests surrounding the Château de la Hulpe, just outside of Brussels. The bouquets of freshly-cut flowers were ‘styled’ by Olivier himself, spewing forth with sickly vibrant citrus yellows and oranges or a barrage of stark white punctuated with deep, royal blue. The blooms seem awkwardly displaced within the environment, resting in the fork of a barren tree or sitting among a wild patch of weeds.

(The series was grouped together under the title ‘Flower fantasy’ in the printed issue from 2004, but for our 2010 online release Olivier chose to spread the images through the magazine as inspirational moments in between text and other stories.)

Photography: Julien Claessens
Bouquets: Olivier Theyskens
Thanks to: Le Domaine du Château de la Hulpe, Agnes Magoga, Françoise Theyskens, Claire Moury, Nicole Minguet, Maguy Duby, Christopher Claessens, Robert Kol.

‘Etant Donnés: 1. La Chute D’eau 2. Le Gaz D’eclairage’ / ‘Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas‘.

This is the title of Marcel Duchamp’s final artwork, assembled in his New York apartment in secret over the two decades between 1946 and 1966. The haunting imagery of this bizarre diorama has enthralled art critics and historians for years, but it also captured the dark imagination of Olivier Theyskens for his magazine NºD.

Belgian art historian Paul Van Beek constructed the following fictitious interview* with Duchamp, to explore the possible motives, opinions and musings of this most illusive chess-playing artist.

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MARCEL DUCHAMP
by Paul Van Beek

Paul Van Beek: Marcel Duchamp, why did you request this conversation? As far as I know it is the first time you have asked for an interview in the whole of your long career.

Marcel Duchamp: Yes. I am not someone who pursues things. I don’t like chasing after things, first of all because it’s tiring. You see, I prefer breathing to working. What’s more, it doesn’t usually lead to anything. I don’t expect anything. But chasing after things is the consequence of a need. I don’t have that, because actually I feel pretty good even though I haven’t created anything for a long time. I don’t attribute to the artist that social role in which he thinks that he has to do something and make an effort for the public. I hate that sort of thinking.

PVB: But then why did you ask for an interview now?
MD: For exactly that reason. You see, there is the creator of the work on the one hand and the person who looks at it on the other. According to me, the one who looks at it is just as important as its maker. In my opinion, the spectator is just as much of a creator of the work as the maker himself, and vice versa, the creator is just as much one who looks at his work. For more than 20 years I have been working in secret on a major definitive work, more or less a ‘viewing box’ entitled Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas. The only person who knows of its existence is my wife Teeny. It’s about time a person who will look at it plays his rile of spectator. As you know, chance is very dear to me, coincidence is my most loyal friend, but I don’t want her to run away with my work, when I’m dead for example, at the viewer’s cost.

PVB: Am I right in thinking you are working on a diorama? Is that the right word?
MD: Yes, it is a diorama, if you like. Given is very similar to a display in a natural history museum with a stuffed wild animal in the midst of three-dimensional scenery from its natural environment, and with a painted background. The landscape in the background is like that of my L.H.O.O.Q from 1919. In my new work I am constantly trying to create references to earlier work. The title Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas is a notation from my Green Box and refers to The Large Glass, on which I worked for eight years when I was about 30. I have also tried to give away little bits of my secret in small new works, but few people, if any, have understood my ‘messages in a bottle’. As early as 1947 I called my rubber breast, Please Touch, ‘my secret’, it was a breast from my plaster model of Given. In 1959 I tried to make it clear that I was working with gaslight and water, by means of my ready-made called Water & Gas On Every Floor. In 1965 I shaved the moustache and beard off my 1919 L.H.O.O.Q, in the same way as I shaved off the pubic hair of my mannequin. And this year I published the etching Le Bec Auer, in which I drew her outline. In this way I have sent out into the world a great many ‘messages in a bottle’ and ‘purloined letters’. But no one has picked them up or found them.

PVB: You have made up a whole stage setting, or what would you call it?
MD: It is, if you like, an installation, one in which at first sight all you see is an old, weathered, double wooden door with no handles framed by bricks. It is only when you cautiously come closer to admire the work with you own eyes, supposing that it is one of my ready-mades, that you discover two small holes at eye-level. You peep through the holes and there, straight in front of you, lies a naked woman on her back on a pile of branches and leaves, her legs opened wide. You look straight into the hole between her legs. She has no pubic hair or genitals, just a notch. Her face is out of view. She is holding up a burning gas lamp.

PVB: It strikes me as a revolting sight! Is the woman dead? Has she been attacked and left behind mutilated somewhere in the woods? Or is it a masquerade? Is the woman a woman?
MD: Exactly@ What exactly is going on here? A shaved vulva? A dry vulva? A stretched vulva? An open wound where a penis has been? Perhaps its even an anus as unsullied as the Virgin Mary?

PVB: All this raises a great many questions! I suppose Given is as direct and shocking as The Large Glass is hermetic and remote?
MD: It is not so simple and dualistic. Those who are looked at and those who look are one and the same. même. How often have I had to explain in America that the two parts of The Large Glass, the bachelors at the bottom and the bride at the top, are one and the same. Même! Même! I always repeated, so in the end I added it to the title of The Large Glass: ‘La mariée mise a nu par ses celebataires, même’. But they didn’t understand it, and in the English translation même became ‘even’, which I suppose is possible too. There are even scholarly theoreticians who make it into m’aime and on that basis put forward a curious incest theory, according to which I had a relationship with my sister Suzanne, all very interesting. In my etching Le Bec Auer you see the same recumbent woman as through the holes in Given, but now in the company of a man. THe man’s head and the woman’s crotch are next to each other. Yet the man is not interested in her genitals, and apparently not in his own either, even though it’s standing straight up like ‘a pole in the air’, but remains invisible behind the man’s head. What you do see is the upright Bec Auer gas lamp which the woman holds ostentatiously in her hand.

PVB: How important is eroticism in your work?
MD: Very important. If it is not visible or striking, it is certainly implicit. I have a great belief in eroticism, because it is really something very general, something that everyone everywhere in the world understands. If you like, eroticism replaces what other literary schools have called symbolism or romanticism. You might say it could form yet another school. Eroticism is the means by which one tries to reveal things that are constantly hidden. To be able to permit oneself to expose them and voluntarily bring them within everyone’s reach, that’s what I think is important because that’s the basis of everything and yet it is never talked about.

PVB: You say ‘implicit’ but it seems to me that in Given it is more a question of explicit sex!
MD: I think it’s time to give my work back its subversive character. It is time, if you like to put your hand under Miss Beatrice Wood’s skirt and blindly feel her sex with your fingers. That has always been my method. I envelop an idea as a vagina envelops a penis. Under the Underwood typewriter cover, sex and machine are the same, même. Despite the many articles and even monographs that have been written about me, I am astonished that the machines are discussed but rarely, if ever, the genitals. This is a cleaning up operation that involves the dilution of the sexual fantasies and obscene wordplay that I inject like heroin into my works, to make them more suitable for consumption, or to disregard them completely and concentrate on comments on my interest in esoteric subjects like alchemy and mathematics.

PVB: What do you think about the various interpretations by André Breton, Michel Carrouges and Robert Lebel?
MD: Each of their interpretations applies its own personal emphasis, which is not necessarily right or wrong, but interesting. though only interesting when one takes account of the person who wrote it. Nowhere is the literature on my work so much concerned with itself as when it is about my alter ego Rrose Sélavy. She is described and analysed from every angle: from the point of view of mathematics, androgyny, psychoanalysis, identity, incest and bisexuality. In all these hyper-theoretical analyses, Rrose Sélavy’s scabrous humour and hidden eroticism has been lost. Were you not struck by the fact that Rose is not only a terribly ordinary girl’s name but it is also the colour of her lingerie and that which is beneath it? How often I have alluded to this, in covert terms – because I think it should remain concealed – but I never thought that the secret would be kept so long. Even now I do not intend to reveal everything. That is a job for both the work and for the spectator.

PVB: So he who looks and she who is looked at are the same?
MD: If you like. Gladly.

PVB: It is not necessary as far as I’m concerned.
MD: Yes, yes, it’s what I want. It’s not up to me to decide, but it would be very nice.

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*This conversation only took place in the mind of Paul Van Beek.

The artwork is on permanent display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Above: The view through the peephole door of ‘Etant Donnés: 1. La Chute D’eau 2. Le Gaz D’eclairage’ / ‘Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas‘.
Mixed media assemblage, approximately 242.5cm high, 177cm wide, including: an old wooden door, bricks, velvet, wood, leather stretched over an armature of metal and other material, twigs, aluminium, iron, glass, plexiglass, linoleum, cotton, electric lights, gas lamp (Bec Auer type), motor, etc.

Above: The exterior view of ‘Etant Donnés: 1. La Chute D’eau 2. Le Gaz D’eclairage’ / ‘Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas‘.

Above: ‘L.H.O.O.Q.‘ by Marcel Duchamp, 1919.

Above: ‘The Large Glass: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even‘ by Marcel Duchamp, 1915-1923.

Olivier Theyskens is a dreamer, a man whose wandering mind has found inspirations in the world of botany, in the subtle curves of the human form, and in the myths and fairytales of centuries past. The opening story in his magazine NºD is a dramatic, sensual recognition of this fact – diving deep into the Belgian forest to capture the journey of a young girl as she hurries through the hazy, verdant fields.

“Fancy dress, lost princess” was photographed by Xavier Cariou & Damien Beneteau, the French duo formerly known as Les Cyclopes. Their shots capture a playful mystery, as Belgian model Kirsten Pietersromps through the morning mist, her frame draped in metres of fabric by Olivier Theyskens – who improvised each gown for the shoot himself. A white swan stands guard in one image as the heroine flies through the smoke, and in another two peacocks are camouflaged by the dense foliage. Les Cyclopes’ photographs hold the subtle matt quality of watercolour painting, accentuated by the faded pastel hues of the lush flora and Theyskens’ flyaway silks.

Photography: Xavier Cariou & Damien Beneteau
Styling: Improvised gowns by Olivier Theyskens
Hair: Rudi Cremers
Model: Kirsten Pieters

Watch below as Les Cyclopes capture Olivier Theyskens’ world at the house of Rochas in a short film:

[vimeo width="490" height="368"]http://vimeo.com/10798643[/vimeo]

Olivier Theyskens has harboured an obsession with the world of Parisian couture ever since his youth, when his instinct for fashion became evident at a very young age:

You know, it’s like when you see a child, and before they are 6, you can tell if they would make a good footballer. I loved clothes — I could lose myself in a hem for hours.

In 2002 for NºD, Olivier explored this love through his own photography, shooting his assistant Agnes wearing six gowns from couturiers working in the early 1950s. With pieces loaned from significant European collections, including that of the Musée du Mode et Textile in Paris, Olivier recreated the clean, minimal studio setting of the time.

Agnes stands in subtle ballet poses, accentuating the feminine curve of her neck and delicate shoulders with the mostly strapless gowns. Olivier’s images capture the opulent burgundy, gold and powder blues of the gowns with a faded aesthetic, in perfect harmony with the image-making at the time. Choosing to crop Agnes’ face from the images also shows a trademark of that age – before models became so crucial to the industry – when faces were often obscured in favour of focus on the garments themselves.

The story was accompanied by an essay by Pamela Golbin, who has been the curator of the Musée du Mode et Textile in Paris since 1993. Read Pamela’s words on the couture age below:

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Lights, camera, action!
by Pamela Golbin

In the wake of the Second World War, Christian Dior broke forever with the military style of the previous years and produced an upheaval – based on luxury – thus restoring Parisian haute couture to the rank of First Lady.

His ‘New Look’ established a new fashion aesthetic Sculptured and girdled, the female body became the primary concern and played the key role. The silhouette embodied an elegance that was at once fragile and sophisticated. The bosom was emphasised, the waist was curved, the hips were accentuated, and the legs obvious and shapely. Suits for daywear, afternoon ensembles, short cocktail dresses and long evening gowns: the wardrobe of elegant women followed strict codes based on rigid rules. Each period of the day required the appropriate ‘toilette’. For daywear, severe, structured and strict suits. For the evening, Cinderella dresses rigorously designed to depict unforgettable opulence: dozens of metres of fabric completely covered with embroidered pearls and sparkling studs.

Like authentic jewels and radiant stones, the Cinderella dresses illuminated the women in a choreography worthy of Marius Petipa, perpetuating each demoiselle’s dream in search of her Prince Charming. Magic and spectacular, the ball gowns shone under the camera flashes, in ever more sumptuous and prestigious settings, such as fabulous private mansion and mythical castles.

The models were intrusive: ‘Mexique’, ‘Coup de theatre’ and even ‘Péruvienne’, firmly redefined women within a prodigious volume in a resolutely European structure that was diametrically opposed to the flat, two dimensional patterns of the East. Like a millefeuille patisserie, with its layers upon layers of tulle, satin, gauze and taffeta, the fabric was delicately placed on a crinoline whalebone structure, the incredible circumference of which could measure up to two square metres. The subtle flow of the fabric enchanted the onlooker with its abundance, while the rustling of the frills announced the imminent arrival of the lucky Beloved.

The script is certainly provided by Christian Dior, but also by dozens of other designers with names just as magical: Cristobal Balenciaga, pierre Balmain, Jean Desses, Jacques Griffe and Marcel Rochas…
Each one contributes his own vision and personal style with the aim of inventing, re-defining and perpetuating the chapter of Parisian couture’s Golden Age.
Photographers such as Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Willy Maywald and Henry Clarke immortalised the poses, gestures and attitudes of star models such as Bettina, Lucky and Praline. But why do these nymph-like costumes continue to exert such fascination, such a marvellous attraction? Perhaps because fairy-tales express universal values: faithful to their enchanting model, the haute couture designers follow the rules of the game by reinventing and eternal archetype… that of femininity!

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Above: Ballgown in two parts ‘Coup de theatre’ by Christian Dior, 1951.

Above: Ballgown by Jean Dessès, circa 1952.

Above: Ballgown by Pierre Balmain, circa 1952.

Above: Short evening dress by Marcel Rochas, circa 1950.

Above: Ballgown by Jacques Griffe, 1953.

Above: Cocktail dress by Christian Dior, Autumn Winter 1949-1950.

Above: Cocktail dress by Jacques Fath, circa 1950.

The pages of Olivier Theyskens printed issue of NºD carry an unusual addition in the top corner – a small rectangular frame that extends from the cover through to the very last page. When ‘flipped’ from the back to the front, the frame comes alive as an animated love story by Belgian animator Nicolas Dufranne.

Nicolas’ story begins with the birds and ends with the birds, but in between tells the tragic story of two young lovers and their demise, as one feeds off the other. A girl appears from behind a tree to find her lover dead on the ground, and as the birds pass by, kisses him to revive his energy. As their lips touch he wakes, and she falls white to the ground – having surrendered her last breath to save him.

For our online release, Nicholas has produced an exclusive digital version of his story, recreating the ‘flipbook’ feeling to recapture the original effect of his work. Watch below as the lovers exchange their dying breaths, in this calamitous tale of fateful mortality.

Olivier Theyskens has always harboured an underlying flair for costume and drama, ever since his earliest years designing for the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels in the late 90′s.

In NºD, Olivier took the period-inspired garments of Japanese designer Kanya Miki’s 2002 Antwerp graduate collection for Far East Redemption, a photo shoot with Parisian photographer Ali Mahdavi. Staged in the Flemish Opera House in Gent, Belgium, these ethereal images show model Charlotte Pasternak elevated on a plinth and surrounded by a mechanical structure of wooden arms, ropes and pulleys. As little Ella watches on, Charlotte seemes embroiled in an elaborate ceremony as the structure around her manipulates each voluminous outfit.

Photographed in soft black and white, Ali’s shots portray the foreground subjects with glowing whites, and the ornate background wallpapers and drapes fade into obscurity. Some of the images have been accented in post-production – with skirts, bowties, and coats highlighted in oil paint by artist Natacha Ivanova.

Although shot in 2002, the archaic quality of this portfolio lends it to an older era – taking cues from some of the earliest 20th century examples of film photography – adding an intriguing mystery to this strange theatrical ritual witnessed by an innocent child.

Welcome to the underworld of Olivier Theyskens - a deep, romantic cave of wonders filled with fragile beauty and precious objects, existing in a land where time stood still.

A dark horse in the recent history of European fashion, Olivier has carved and polished his own niche of modern couture. Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1977, he began his fashion studies at the La Cambre school, but left to pursue his own creations and to design costumes for the Theatre de la Monnaie. Theyskens’ first appointment in Paris was at the house of Rochas in 2002, where he employed his demicouture techniques to their ready-to-wear line for revolutionary results. In 2006 he began directing the house of Nina Ricci, again to much acclaim – leaving after a show-stopping Fall Winter 2009 show that left many in raptures over some of his boldest, most sculptural designs to date.

Upon his appointment to Rochas, Olivier Theyskens was invited to create NºD, succeeding Hussein Chalayan in the first lettered series of A Magazine, that went NºA, NºB, NºC etc. Nearly a decade on we approached Olivier to comment on the issue, and in the past months we have spent time with him to re-order the pages, creating the magazine he originally envisaged, yet that became somewhat mismatched in its final rushed edit. He even included a new image in the online issue, which we will present here later in the month.

NºD is an ode to Olivier Theyskens’ obsessions, romance and appreciation of femininity, filled with vibrant imagery celebrating both the twisted and classical European ideals of beauty. The pages are unified with an animated story that unfolds in the corner, a ‘flipbook’ romance by animator Nicolas Dufranne. Olivier takes us into the forest, the theatre, through his encyclopedias and the salons of Parisian fashion from another era. Photographs of forests and flowers mirror the painstaking artisanal work of 1950s couture dresses and contemporary creations from the house of Dior, in this issue that holds a balance of light and dark, history and modernity, captivity and freedom, and the organic and the manufactured.

Also featuring Lewis Carroll, Karl Lagerfeld, Tilda Swinton, the Larousse Encyclopédie, and Jenny Holzer.

To view Olivier’s magazine online – click here.

NºD will be followed by:

NºE featuring Viktor & Rolf – September 2010

and the announcement of A#10, released in November 2010.

Welcome to NºD featuring Olivier Theyskens – the fourth installment of the original A story.

Another day at the studio in NºA featuring Dirk Van Saene continues from the menswear story to feature a reversal in terms – with layered garments removed from a female model, as opposed to added onto a man’s outfit as in the previous pages.

For this sequence, photographers Bert Houbrechts & Kurt De Wit have zoomed out – capturing model Eva Van Straeten in a more atmospheric set than the static midshots of Erik. In the first image, Eva is draped in a fluid black jacket from Olivier Theyskens, with an inky train flowing across the studio floor, seated in a high circular-backed wicker chair (of the type that have become synonymous with Veronique Branquinho).

The following images showcase the androgynous air of the Véronique Leroy and Veronique Branquinho designs, as Eva poses in strong, somewhat masculine shapes. This furthers the contrast of the menswear shoot, incorporating a greater overall metaphor and a comment on modern design – showcasing both a new feminine freedom and the innocence and vulnerability of 21st century masculinity.

Top image: Veronique Branquinho
+ Véronique Leroy
+ Olivier Theyskens

Above: Veronique Branquinho
+ Véronique Leroy

Above: all Veronique Branquinho

Make-up by Paul Hillewaere.