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- [00:00]
Lauren Sherman
Calling all sourdough tamers, souffle whisperers and jammy egg savants. Whether you're a professional chef or just cooking something up delicious on a weeknight, there's one brand that can uplevel your kitchen style and functionality. Hedley and Bennett. Hedley and Bennett makes premium kitchen gear that combines style, durability and function. Everything from aprons to super sharp Japanese steel knives. They've sold over a million aprons. You've probably seen them on some of the best chefs in the world in your favorite restaura, well as on TV in your favorite cooking show competitions. Every product is designed by chefs for chefs using the highest quality materials. Plus they come with a lifetime guarantee so you know you're investing in quality that lasts. And if you're looking for a gift, their new collaborations with the NFL, Star Wars, Disney and dozens of other iconic brands are perfect for every cook. Ready to upgrade your kitchen? Head over to hedleyinbended.com and use podcast 15 at checkout for 15% off your order. That's podcast 15 for 15% off. Elevate your cooking experience with Hedley and Bennett today.
- [01:09]
Unknown
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- [01:43]
Lauren Sherman
Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty memo Line Sheet and today with me on the show is Matthias Augustiniak and Michael Omzalag, co founders of the art and design practice MM Paris. We discuss everything from working with Bjork to their new gig as creative directors of Harper's Bazaar Italia. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries line. She is scoopy, analytical and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world and much more. If you're interested listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to Puck News Fashion People to join Puck or start a Free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. I hope you had a great week. It was a busy one. In the Line Sheet Virtual offices. Rachel Strugatz had scoop on what's happening behind the scenes at Estee Lauder as their new CEO settles into the gig. I gave you the readout on what's happening at Sachs as worry over these junk bonds grow. And my colleague Bill Cohan has a bunch of stuff on that too. So definitely check out dry powder as well.
- [03:23]
Matthias Augustiniak
All available on Puck.
- [03:24]
Lauren Sherman
By the way, if you didn't know, there was tons of Met Gala chatter. Kim Kardashian has a new stylist.
- [03:30]
Matthias Augustiniak
I have the scoop on that.
- [03:31]
Lauren Sherman
There are about 800 parties. Everything is crazy. I'll be around this weekend. I'm going to a decent amount of things. Last night was the cult 100 celebration at the Guggenheim, which included a bunch of performances. Sarah Harrelson, the editor in chief, included me on that list of culture shapers. And I'm grateful to her. It was very sweet and, and made me feel good. And before the cult 100, Eva Chen and I hosted a little from Meta, of course, hosted a little dinner at Fedora, which just reopened downtown, which was super fun. And while it was off the record, like all of our Puck dinners, I can say that the Meta Ray Bans were discussed. Anyway, maybe I'll see you around this weekend. Thank you to Eva for making that dinner happen.
- [04:17]
Matthias Augustiniak
She is a queen.
- [04:20]
Lauren Sherman
Let's get going though. With Matthias and Michael. I have a fabulous time chatting about.
- [04:25]
Matthias Augustiniak
Their incredible body of work. Especially, you know, they've shaped so much.
- [04:30]
Lauren Sherman
Visual culture over the past few decades and have been very influential on all.
- [04:35]
Matthias Augustiniak
Of us, more than you even know.
- [04:36]
Lauren Sherman
And I, I don't know. I love talking to them. I hope you guys enjoy the conversation.
- [04:44]
Matthias Augustiniak
Michael and Matthias, welcome to Fashion People.
- [04:47]
Michael Omzalag
Hello.
- [04:47]
Unknown
Thank you for having us.
- [04:49]
Matthias Augustiniak
Thank you for being here. So on on Friday mornings, the first question we have ask is, what did you have for breakfast?
- [04:57]
Unknown
I think I skipped breakfast.
- [04:58]
Michael Omzalag
I just had black coffee on breakfast. I had like a muffin resin muffin that I bought on the Marchebiot Bayou Market on Boulevard Spa. And I went straight after I landed on Sunday morning, I went to the market and I bought those muffins because I knew that in the week I needed to feed the whole family with those muffins on the Wednesday morning. Which is now a Friday.
- [05:31]
Matthias Augustiniak
Which is now a Friday. I think this might be the first muffin we've had for, for breakfast on this show.
- [05:38]
Michael Omzalag
Okay.
- [05:39]
Matthias Augustiniak
It's very, very exciting. So we're gonna talk about one of your newer projects. Today you're working with Harper's Bazaar Italia, which I think is really interesting, and we can kind of get into that. But I'm very excited to chat with you both about your business and how it formed. And you've had such a big impact on sort of the aesthetics of culture, but also, obviously, working a lot with the fashion industry. And you really saw fashion transform from this sort of ancillary thing globally to now a major influence on pop culture. And you were a big part of that. So I'm. I'm excited to chat with you about what you have all observed working together for the past 30 years. But maybe we can start. Can you kind of explain what you do? And do you consider yourselves graphic designers, creative directors, art directors? Like what. What word would you use and how would you describe it?
- [06:55]
Unknown
It's always a very complicated and very simple question. At the same time, we describe ourselves as mm, which is why we created an entity that can encompass whatever things we want to do and whatever thing we want to try and where we can act as graphic designer, which is like the base and the platform from which we built our toolbox, but also as art directors or creative directors or photographers or typographers or sign makers or writers sometimes. So it's like it just needs. It's just like a box of possibility, I would say.
- [07:38]
Michael Omzalag
I think it's the idea of building a platform that allows us to craft, think, or improvise many different projects was the aim of our partnership. I think we were trained as artists or people that were. That could possibly do whatever they want and especially invent the formats of what you call some like a working. Like, we were able to invent, like, our working ways. So the idea was to build this platform called MMParis. And as Michael was saying, it's just to inside that box, be able to tackle many things that were triggering us. But mainly the focus was like, how do you shape culture and how do you create or put culture in motion so it goes through time and is not destroyed by economy? So this was very important, that culture can go beyond the idea of transaction and then can survive. So that's why it's a company that we built so that we need to economically deal with the world so we can subsist, and then we still be able to carry on thinking and producing utopias. So that's very important.
- [09:13]
Matthias Augustiniak
It reminds me. Were you all. I know you worked with Loewe and Jonathan Anderson for a long time. Were you all a Part of the conceiving the show in the box.
- [09:24]
Michael Omzalag
Yes.
- [09:26]
Unknown
From scratch.
- [09:27]
Michael Omzalag
Yeah.
- [09:27]
Matthias Augustiniak
That feels like a microcosm of what you all do. Because we were just discussing. Matthias and I were both in Tokyo the last couple of weeks and I went to the Loewe kind of, I don't know even what you would call it, event that they're doing their exhibition and they had one of the show in the box from the menswear show. I think the first one he did, or maybe the only one. And essentially what it was. Maybe you all can describe it, but it feels like a very good example of. Of how you are in the culture.
- [10:07]
Unknown
The show in the box happened because we were all locked down, as you know, and we were having like zoom conversation with Jonathan that was trying to find a way to represent the collection without falling into the trap of going all digital and doing something like. Just like a film or a piece of content that would be like a capture of the collection. And his intuition was to go analog and to go analog as much as possible. We had done a few months before a special box set for Bjork with who we've been working for like over 25 years. And that special box set is like, I can show it to you later. It's like a Plexiglas case that has like Bell's whistles, records, leaflet poster records. And it's a kind of like a container that condense a lot of things from. From different origins just to speak about the album in a way that is not literal. And Jonathan was really inspired by this and said, could you imagine doing something alongside that idea? Also as a reference with that we shared, which is the Marcel Duchamp Portable Museum. And of course for us it was very natural. And we immediately started thinking about how to develop this idea and how to break down the collection into different items and different piece of artifacts and objects that could portray the collection. So there was this idea of creating the set of the show that was like a pop up made of paper. There was this idea of the soundtrack where we created this paper turntable where there was a 7 inch that you could play by hand without using electricity. That's just amplified by a piece of cardboard and a needle. I think we added like a little silhouette that you could build in 3D. There was also embossed paper to recreate the texture of the clothes. Sample of the texture of the. Sorry, texture of the textiles. Samples of the textiles. I don't know. There was many, many things in this. There was like a pattern to Be able to rebuild one of the piece. And all this was condensed into this kind of archival box that placed it in time, but also like in the future.
- [12:35]
Michael Omzalag
I mean, as you said, Lauren, I think that's kind of is a good image or metaphor for work where we keep within the world, building smaller world that are connected to the bigger world. And this is, for us, it sounds like crazy or very monomaniac things to do, but this, we think, is very efficient where instead of trying to change everything at once, it's better to kind of simplify, rarefy, and then create little worlds that we can completely reorganize as example for others. You know, like people living in the same world as us, they could look at it and maybe start to rethink the way they see culture or they see the world itself. So when we created that, that. That show in the box, I mean, it was a kind of a revolution because it never existed before. Of course, there are artists that dealt about this kind of things. Well, like the Fluxus artist, or as Michael was saying, Marcel Duchamp, where he, in order to make his work travel, he puts everything shrink down everything to and put it in a box so his work could travel the world. It never happened before. That fashion show was put in a box so he could travel the world, but travel the world into space, but also into time. The idea is that maybe in 50 years or hundred years time, people could still look at it and then have a record of that show in a much vivid way than a show that happened in real life. Why is that? Because it takes a long time for paper to rot or to disappear. And I think this idea of longevity both into future and past is very important. That's why in our work there is a kind of a classic approach.
- [14:45]
Unknown
One of the previous project that we did and was also instrumental in the thinking of this is that I can't remember when I think during the mid 2000, we have been commissioned to create a book or a volume about the archives of Stanley Kubrick, about Napoleon, which is the movie that he never finished and that was into production for over 25 years. And Kubrick, being so obsessive, he had assembled the most important database and private collection of artifacts, facts, news, images, iconography about the life of Napoleon. I mean, it was mind blowing. And we approached this by doing a huge book that was carved out and inside which was. Were hidden several volumes as decomposition as a classification of all the elements that could be used to make the fin. So there was, of course, the script, the treatment, but There was also, like, an image database that was accessible online with like, over 40,000 pictures, if I remember. Well, there was, like, the costumes. There was picture of the costume and tests that he did with his daughter and his driver and his garden, trying different lenses to see what distance you needed to record paper costumes to cost less in production. And this crazy amount of work and information was condensed into this very, very big volume that was kind of a treasure box. And it's great because this was meant to be like, of course, an archive, but also an active piece. The book was called the Greatest Movie Never Made. And of course, what we said is that it would be fantastic if someone one day was able to tackle into this and create the movie. And then what happened, I think, is last year is that Steven Spielberg eventually decided to adapt all the Kubrick research based on the book into a TV series, which must be in production now.
- [17:02]
Matthias Augustiniak
Oh, interesting.
- [17:03]
Michael Omzalag
So there was a kind of advertising on social media. I mean, announcements. And it was the portrait of Steven Spielberg next to the COVID of that ingredient book, you know, how to make, how to be Stanley Kubrick. So that, that. I mean, again, this is very strong metaphor of the way we work, where it's heavily crafted. It's. We put a lot of our hands and thinking in it, but then eventually it's very open as it's a gift for the others to play back with these elements. Again, there's.
- [17:45]
Matthias Augustiniak
There's a feeling that all of this work is bringing up in me that I got when I saw the show in the box in Tokyo. That feels very similar. It goes back to childhood and like a fancy dress box, when you open it and you don't know what's going to be in it and you're going through and playing dress up or whatever, it's that same. I don't know the word, but it's something that is very hard to capture in this current world we live in because everything's so instantaneous. And maybe it's like the sort of basic way to say it is surprise and delight, but there is this very internal thing that you all are able to get at that makes your work feel like it has more depth and also makes the brain work in a different way. I would love to hear a little bit about how you all met and started collaborating. And do you think that it has to do with the two of you working together for so long and being able to get to something deeper than a lot of people are able to do?
- [18:55]
Michael Omzalag
But I think, I mean, there is the beginning of a Solution in what you are saying, in the sense. Yes. The fact that we are too people together helps to already create something that's more polyphonic, you know, because instead of having one creator, you have two. Like you have two brains. So you have four eyes, like four hands. And it's already. It brings the idea of the alterity where each time we do something, it's like you already have someone that could look at it, you know, so it's not that you're creating only for yourself. There is right away the notion of dialogue. So if you take the metaphor of Gepetto creating Pinocchio, it's like there are already two people creating this kind of almost human thing. It's not a human, but it's almost alive. So this is what we are trying to do each time we work. We try to create something that's almost alive or feels like a live entity and that could be self sufficient. So of course it's never completely alive. We're not saying we creators in the sense where we create alive things, but we like the things that we create to have this kind of complexity that you are describing. So that when you opening, you open it or when you start to play with it, there is this notion of enchantments where as you are enchanted, as when you meet someone for the first time and then you strongly connect, you know, you say, oh, that's, you know. And then a dialogue is starting.
- [20:41]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. I think it's the idea of the object being autonomous and not just being like a surface.
- [20:47]
Matthias Augustiniak
Yeah.
- [20:48]
Unknown
Because if you only start from graphic design and if you look at things like, as a flat representation, you miss the point of like the context. And this is where in whatever we produce this idea of the thing or the object as something that's self standing and that contains its own intelligence and that can be decoded by different people and in different time and different contexts is very important. Once we did like a long time ago, one of the first book we did was a compilation of prints and posters that we had designed as well as objects and stuff. And as a promotional sticker on the COVID there was like a catchphrase that was saying material for future archaeologists.
- [21:34]
Michael Omzalag
I mean, just to finish this, like, we have a recurrent figure in our work. It's called the Agent. It's like a very simplified human shape that looks a bit like it's between a cross or a little person with open arm. And he has no. It doesn't seem that he's laughing or is sad. He's neither sad. Or happy, but it's kind of a living figure that's being throughout of many of a piece. And he even run the marathon as he was on the medal. Like the marathon medal of Paris where it was like when we were asked to design the medal for the marathon in Paris, it was one of the symbols that we engraved on the medal. So again, it's a sign, it's an image, but it has a longer lifespan and it's self standing. Somehow.
- [22:35]
Unknown
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- [23:35]
Matthias Augustiniak
It's interesting you're both working from your studio today. Michael, you seem to be in the main studio where I see a lot of your work. Matthias, you seem to be in the room where all the paper is the paper. But do you work together every single day when you're in Paris?
- [23:57]
Michael Omzalag
Yes. In the big room where Michael is right now? Yes. This is like the main room where we work. Like this kind of more historical ale of our office or studio or I don't know how you call it. And then now there is a new Alex where there is like the rest of the collaborators, which is like all together five persons. I mean, it's not a big studio. We produce a lot of things, but we don't have. It's not like a elongated list of people or collaborators. It's a small team. It's a bit like a basketball team instead of a rugby team or American football team.
- [24:45]
Matthias Augustiniak
Five. Five. Who's. Who's the. The center? Who's the power forward? Do you feel like one of the reasons you've been able to sustain is because you all are still really doing the. The actual work and not just directing?
- [25:03]
Michael Omzalag
Yeah, I think this is one of the. The Reason why we still are exciting with our work is that, I mean, again, like this metaphor of the basketball is like. Or the way we run that team is that the idea is that everyone should be able to be everywhere on the ground and there is not one specialist in just throwing the ball very far away. One very specialist of the dribble. I think the idea is that we should be able to replace everyone if we failed. Having said that, we all have passion of things that we are extremely fascinated by. So this is that kind of mix and the idea of being able to still be excited after like 35 or 33 years of work. It's because we still try to deal with very small scale things to very big ones. And it's not just to say like, okay, we're not just like coordinators. We're still hands on, basically.
- [26:17]
Matthias Augustiniak
Michael, I think this is the first time anyone smoked on fashion people.
- [26:22]
Unknown
I'm sorry, I'm taking a picture of Matthias being in the next room so I can smoke in the office.
- [26:27]
Matthias Augustiniak
Sorry, sorry to out you, but it's too good of a detail. How did you all meet? You met at school or how did you realize you would be able to do. To work together?
- [26:41]
Unknown
We met in the art school in the Art Decorative in Paris. I think it was like October 89. And we met on the first day of that year, back to school day, where there was this big reunion of all the students that were being asked to come to get some information about the year. And I had been in the school for like, that was my third year in the school. And Matthias joined from a different art school where he had graduated already. And it was like a new character that was entering the scene. And we hit off very, very quickly on that first day because on that day I was really proud of my outfit. I was dressed with like a pair of worker pants, blue. And I had blue shoes, blue mocassins and blue socks and a blue jacket from the post office that I had bought from the flea market. And I was speaking to a friend and telling her how happy I was to be feeling very monochrome. And Matias overheard the conversation. And then like a couple of minutes later, he bumped into me and pushed me quite violently and say, move over. Monochrome. And that was the start of the conversation.
- [28:02]
Matthias Augustiniak
Matthias, is that how you remember it?
- [28:04]
Michael Omzalag
Yeah, of course. And I did a conference in Shanghai for Teach China where we were supposed to talk about fashion and how it outraged cultures. And like at the beginning of the conversation, like the. The conference or the conversation, I did Tell the exact same story. From my point of view, I mean it doesn't really. There was no big difference, but it was the same thing. I just heard that guy like they was saying like very loudly and proudly, okay, I'm all wearing blue. And this is say, okay, this guy needs to some attention and we need to discuss because I like the. The fact that he's very like has a strong minded way of being himself. So I said that would be a good person to discuss with because I think this is important that we have a strong minded conversation. This is also part of the work where. Why did it work with for instance, Jonathan Anderson? It's like because he was a strong minded person. So this is where it creates fire. When we worked with Nicolas Ghesquierre, he's a strong minded person too. So it creates sparkles. And then this is how when I saw Michael at school, I say, oh, that guy must be worth discussing, creating a dialogue. And of course it was even more because we are still working together. And. And then even in the meantime, you know, like I finished my studies in England in the Royal College of Art because I joined that school, the Dakorative Art because I had a plan where I wanted at one point to leave Paris for a while. Just to see Paris from far away or at least over the Channel. Because I had been living in Paris for a bit too long and I needed to see it from afar, to see what could be done again with it.
- [30:21]
Matthias Augustiniak
It's interesting, that's a really interesting thread we could pull about I think the generation of French people who the EU being able to move and I assume that happened what late 90s, 2000s, so this is before that. So you were ahead of it. But I think it's change the culture of Paris.
- [30:48]
Michael Omzalag
Exactly. I mean this idea of European culture is very, very strongly anchored in. At least in myself. I mean I studied in England in 1989 till 1991 and it was truly like the peak of the construction of Europe. There was not yet the train that goes on under the sea. And when we were students we were. And then when we started to have a kind of political conscience and this was like put in our head by the, like the president. Then there was Francois Mitterrand. This kind of last time that there was a true, I would say left wing cultural, political culture at the state of France. And what was interesting then that it was the construction of Europe enabling all this kind of all the people or all the inhabitants from Europe, from Italy to Spain to Germany to Poland, England or Just to, at one point, just to be conscious that they were living on the same continent and they could really build. Like, they could really produce a cultural exchange. Before going to England, it was truly a drag. You needed to take the plane, and it felt very far away. And that's why that was the strength of this European construction, is that it helped at least me or even Michael or the young people just to be able to meet people outside their country and go away from this kind of nationalistic approach where you're just proud of being French because you think France is at the center of the world. And then each country for a long time were thinking like this in Europe. And I think it really created a strength even for. And that's why fashion for us was so important, because before the art world being the art world of today, the fashion world was great with fashion world. It was making people flying all over the world and then traveling and then sharing experiences and sharing culture. And that's why I think this is. I mean, we keep forgetting this. I think it's like fashion weeks in Paris were enabling people like us to see people coming from Japan, for instance, which seems now. Okay, what's so exciting about this? Yes, it was kind of exciting, like to meet people from Japan or England or America in a. In a city of Paris that was at the time extremely French and very close on itself.
- [33:56]
Matthias Augustiniak
As we become more global in the past few years, though, especially there's also this sort of isolationist bent, especially in America. I mean, I live in California, and it feels like not connected to the rest of the world. If you go to dinner, no one talks about what's happening in the rest of the world. Do you feel that in Europe at all, that it's. I know Brexit is one thing, but just generally that people are turning inward again. Or do you think that the connectivity and globalization is making sure that that doesn't happen?
- [34:36]
Michael Omzalag
I mean, this is the tricky part right now. I think it's globalization. I mean, I don't want to. To go too far, but I think also it's now important to readdress the idea of globalization. I mean, when we first travel all around the world, like going to Japan or to America, it was a true magic because not everyone was doing this. So you still had the conscience that you were doing something extraordinary. And it was not yet linked just to the idea of making a global market. We knew this could happen, but it was still just a kind of. We could still ourselves, like travelers that were discovering the world, like travelers that were trying to understand how the other people live or how do they deal with culture. So it is true that in the contemporary world today, in 2025, there is this idea of like a lot of potential people are going back into the. What they would call their roots, which is a bit strange because I mean, this is true that there is a. Because it's becoming like a complicated again where there is this kind of nationalistic idea that's coming back again, but doesn't really. It's a bit. Doesn't really. Doesn't mean. It means a lot. I mean it doesn't mean anything anymore because we went global. So it's a bit just like retracting back and without thinking of what does it mean of retracting back. So it's kind of complicated. I think.
- [36:23]
Unknown
It'S very complicated because there is this idea of closing yourself into your local environment. But at the same time everything is so modernized and everything is so flattened that now wherever you travel, you consume mostly the same things, or what is the postcard or the shareable part of authenticity, or so called authenticity. But now nothing feels authentic anymore.
- [36:52]
Matthias Augustiniak
It's true.
- [36:54]
Michael Omzalag
But the thing is though, there is so much authenticity. This is where it's complex. It's just like. That's why I think we still have things to discover. Because yes, there is a. I would say there is a scheme of homogenized skin, but still there is a lot of complexity to be solved or re. Articulated. Even the way you live, it doesn't. Even if we are very close, I'm sure we have a lot of different way of approaching life.
- [37:34]
Matthias Augustiniak
When you all started working together, were you doing more projects in music and film and less in fashion? And did that develop or. Or how did your sort of entryways into culture change over the decades you've been working together?
- [37:52]
Unknown
It went quite fast and originally like when we. When we started the company in 92, I had done like a stint at a music magazine for two years before, between or overlapping with my years in college. And while I was waiting for Matthias to complete his studies in London, so we had the chance to have a small client base in the music industry in Paris at that time. And because of our interest in music and because of the importance of what culturally it was representing for us, record sleeves and music as a client kind of definition of communities, it was for us very, very exciting and natural to start in music. This coincides also in time with like the fact that the computer and the setup of the Mac allowed us to work domestically and not without having to build like a proper agency or like a proper structure. And that idea of the small unit that was very mobile was made possible because the technology happened at that time. And we were lucky to be able to cross over between analog and digital and to learn the two at the same time. And then from them, from the music experiments and projects we did. We were introduced by a friend to Irene Silvani, that was Creative Director at. @ Yoji Mamamoto. I think it was 94. She was a former editor in chief of French Vogue. She saw lots of random projects we had done for like very, very tiny things for French singers or brochures or posters that we had done in many different kind of small contexts. And she took the leap and commissioned us to do originally what was a very tiny commission that was an invitation for the opening of huge store in Paris on Route Brunel. And once we had created a proposal and delivered her with our ideas, she was so excited that she decided to turn that into a full on campaign. So the graphics for our invitation became a campaign that was in the magazine. And all of a sudden it was crazy how quickly the scale had changed. And it was one of the most important designer of those times. And still now. And I think that was like the first key that unlocked for us the doors of the fashion world very quickly after we started working with Marcus Kohli on Jill Sander and worked with her directly for a long time with him and without him after. And through that we were able to really understand fashion from working with designers before working with brands. I think what's different? One of your earlier question was like, what did you observe in terms of the definition of the fashion landscape over the course of your work? Is that we started working with designers because designer were at the helm of their own brands. Gilles Martin, Silbon, Everyone was kind own house. And it's only much later that around the turn of the 2000, when Kohler was hired at Balenciaga, that this idea of the creative director or the designer for a house changed the whole model for us.
- [41:30]
Michael Omzalag
Fashion was a cultural territory where, like in France, where when we were in art school, that wasn't really taken for granted. It was a kind of a. It was not very well considered though they were extremely enormous designer and still alive. Like if Saint Laurent was still alive when we were students, but somehow it was less kind of people had more respect for Eric Romer or Jean Luc Godard and Yves Saint Laurent, you know, like it was distorted. There was this kind of distortion where it was there. But they were taking it for granted that it was there, but they were not yet considering that it was truly an important art act of creative act. This is later that happened, like when there was the big show retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou of St. Laurent, that suddenly, gradually, that fashion and culture and art were starting to be woven all together. We kind of had that intuition before. And then first people saw in fashion just like an economical resource. It took them longer also to understand that some fashion designer were true artists, like, comparable to any kind of artist from, like painting, sculpture or performance, or even filmmaker, you know, but that for us, everything was kind of leveled in the set, that not everything is everything, but, like, we could say, we could start to put in dialogue things that were not identified from the same field. This is what was important, and this is why we come back on the building of MM Paris, was to put in dialogue things that had nothing to do together at first. And this is what made us kind of special, because at the beginning, we were the only one to say, okay, let's promote art from our generation, like artists such as Philippe Pareno or Pierre Huig, that are now extremely well known and worldwide well known. But how do you put them in dialogue with Nicolas Ghesquierre? At the beginning, this was not possible. Now Philippe Pareno and Nicolas Ghesquier work together because we created the connection like 25 years ago, or not 25, but 20 years ago, or. And this is something that's now again taken for granted. But this is where we operated also as a producer of realities. It was not only by making or producing images or creating space or creating objects, but it was also by connecting people, you know, like, connected, creating new networks of creative production. I would say same thing with Bjork, you know, the way we met Bjork, it's because she saw a piece of a catalog that we did with Hirio Yamamoto, with Ines and Vinod, and she stumbled onto this and said, ooh, who are those guys that. These images, I would love to be in that world. And she kind of contacted Ines and Vinod, and then they contacted us because they say to Bjork, you know, if you want that kind of world, we should all be that world together. And this is what happened. And this is where. This is the reason why since, like, the year 2001, like, from the. From the album 98, but like the album verse 13, we've been working with Bjork, like, on a kind of a daily basis. I mean, not every day, but like, building Again, like utopias that became reality.
- [45:55]
Unknown
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- [46:25]
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- [46:57]
Matthias Augustiniak
How do you think magazines fit into all of this? Because you've kind of gone in and out a lot of people who have, I don't want to say similar practices to yours, but have our, you know, creative directors who have their independent studios will often consult on a magazine and. But have this other practice where they do commercial work and, and other special work. And it feels like to me magazines tend to be most successful when they're set up that way, where there's someone from the outside who can sort of see a bigger picture and work with the editor in chief. But Michael, you mentioned you worked at a music magazine in a university or right after university, but you've kind of dipped in and out of magazines throughout your time together. What role do you think the magazine played in this sort of delivery of culture? And what does it do now that we are so connected and it doesn't have the same purpose that it had 20 years ago, even, or even 10.
- [48:24]
Michael Omzalag
I still think the thing, first of all, I think I see a magazine, it's a platform of a hub, you know, like it's a place where you are able to connect people, just put people in dialogue and then they deliver the vision of the world to a larger audience. And I think what's kind of nice with magazine, that it stopped in time because it's printed on paper. So instead of being a perpetual flow of images that are not very well edited or digitally edited or artificially edited, here it's edited by a bunch of person that suddenly say, okay, we choose for you all this series of malformation and it could be good that we take the time to think about it together. And I think this is what makes a magazine exciting. And the thing is, this was very daring in the 90s or even before because it was really efficient because there was nothing in competition with the magazine, not even television. And then, and then magazine went through rough rides where people said, oh, it's not important anymore. So they just completely forget that they were supposed to trigger culture or try to make people think about the world. So they just became just like a platform to sell things. So they were not even celebrating culture, they were just selling object, but like poorly selling it. So I think it could be nice today because we can control. There are other ways to sell things that were sold in the magazine. So you could go back to today and say, okay, maybe it could be good to find a way to deliver information or to deliver thoughts on another pace than the one that you can find on film, television, radio or even social media. There is still the pace of the magazine that could be a good one to have because it's kind of nice to say, okay, I can touch and read a magazine in a place where I don't have a relationship to electricity, or I can read the magazine right in the middle of a swimming pool. Yes, you could do this with an iPad, but it's less exciting, I would say. So I think there is still this kind of, I don't know, it's almost like a way to consume information or to consume culture in a very special way. So that's why I think it's good to reconsider that format today without being nostalgic and saying, oh, there was the heydays of like the face or ID or the magazine avant garde. You know, like we say, okay, how can we create that moment again where we create the new fetish for people to look at in the fifth, like in 50 years or 30 years time and say, oh, the life of those people was so good. Because I'm looking back in this paper magazine because again, it's quite easy to look at paper archive rather than digital archive. That's quite difficult to look in digital archives, even if you can Google or YouTube things. Very difficult to find the precise feeling of an era by doing so.
- [52:24]
Unknown
I mean, it's the idea of the real time time capsule. And I think this is why it's exciting. Even in the age of the digital and in the age of social Media magazines had a different function before, of course, Obviously, they were, like, important into defining the community and to which community you identify or you belong and to which part of culture you could have access. And of course, now everything is distributed very differently. But what's missing in the digital aspect of today is this idea of permanence and this idea of stopping things in time. And this is where the magazine, as a time capsule, as an ongoing, current time capsule, is very interesting and is very important.
- [53:09]
Matthias Augustiniak
What made you say yes to the project with Harper's Bazaar Italia? Did Stefano talk?
- [53:18]
Michael Omzalag
Yeah, he was very adamant about this.
- [53:21]
Unknown
Stephanie was very persuasive, but he was also very clear into, like, the ambition of what could be achieved. And also because the magazine is acting from a position of success, it's not as if we have to solve a problem or save a situation or try to redefine how it can operate. It operates very well, and it's about bringing it to the next level and bringing it into something that's even more relevant.
- [53:50]
Michael Omzalag
I think it's a good place to perform because often we are called when there is a problem, which is a bit tiring. So it could be nice to say, oh, I mean, actually, no problem here. It's just like, let's make it a pleasurable.
- [54:09]
Matthias Augustiniak
How important is it that the person in Stefano's position be someone that you feel like can be a sparring partner? Like you were saying with Jonathan or Nicola, when it's the editor, do you want them to push back a lot or do you want them to only push back a little?
- [54:33]
Unknown
I think it's pull and push. It goes both ways. I think it's about finding a way that makes it exciting, that makes it exciting for everyone to take part in and to find a way to maybe witness and give back things that otherwise can be overlooked.
- [54:51]
Michael Omzalag
I think. I mean, this was the same thing when we worked for French Rogue. It did work because we were working with very strong woman that has a very strong point of view. And they were. When I say women, it's just like there was Karine, Emmanuel, Anastasia, and then Marie Melisauve. I mean, it was very strong characters that we. It was almost impossible to talk quietly. But that was making the beauty of it because we did. It was not about like, say, okay, who is running, who is not running, who is taking decision and who is following the others. He was more. How do you create a strong voice being heard where you had already six people saying very loud things? How do you channel that energy in one channel? And then Suddenly this kind of vibrant collaborative or discussion or dialogues make it interesting for the audience. I think this is quite. This is the important part. And then I think, like the idea of the editor in chief, or at least someone that has, like when I'm the notion of editor, or like someone that choose. That has the position of being. To say, okay, I'm channeling the information. It's important that it has a strong point of view or strong character. Otherwise it's not very interesting. Because this is also where we never wanted to do our own magazine, to talk about our own self. Because this is a bit sad, you know, like looking at yourself. It's good maybe in the mirror, but like throughout the magazine, it becomes a bit of a very heavy experience. And I think here there is an editorial team and even like Massimo, that's in charge of the magazine itself. And then we met the editorial team and people working in Milan when we spent two days discussing with everyone. That was exciting too, because it feels that it's not about ourselves, it's about how do we create this kind of programmatic platform.
- [57:17]
Unknown
I think what was important in the conversation. Conversation we had with Stefano originally and with the team at large is that rather than just providing a service as a magazine, it's important in this case to reconsider fashion as a cultural commentary. And this idea of the cultural commentary through fashion that can be decoded and that can be retranscribed in the magazine is key to. To the project.
- [57:49]
Matthias Augustiniak
One sort of, I guess, like, bigger question for you. Michael, you mentioned earlier the flattening of culture, which I think about all the time, and especially through the lens of a magazine which was so much of the references people use today are magazine images that. Or advertising images that were created 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago because they're so accessible to people. How do creative people avoid that flattening or break through that flattening today when you are inundated with imagery like the. The idea of not being on Instagram or not being on the indoor Internet, it's just not feasible for most people. How do you. For people who are building careers like yours, or trying to build careers like yours, how do you, or any sort of image maker or creative person, how do you get past that flattening to something deeper? Because it. It seems really hard.
- [58:58]
Michael Omzalag
It's.
- [58:59]
Unknown
I mean, it's. It's a. It's a question. It's a question of methodology. And I think this is where our methodology is probably different than most of the others, is that we resist and we try to stay away from the idea of the mood board. It's not about pulling images from the past and trying to recreate them. It's about understanding where you are and defining some rules and within this set of rules, playing a game that can create something new. It's very funny. Like yesterday there was this post on boring.com referencing the. The COVID of Carci magazine, which is a ripoff of an image we did for Yoji mamoto with Craig McDan, I think in 2001. And of course it's tiring for us to see how these images are being exhausted and reused and reused and no one trying nothing new. And when we did those images, I'm talking about the images of Amber Valletta with the paper mask. That was a cutout. It was something that was very instinctive and that could only happen because the set of rules that we had defined for that character for Yoshimamoto at that time allowed these circumstances to happen.
- [60:10]
Matthias Augustiniak
Yeah, it's a real. I don't think it's that people are lazy, but it's a real lazy. It's creating laziness. It feels like.
- [60:22]
Michael Omzalag
I think it's not about lazy, not lazy or the flattening is just like. I think an antidote to the flattening is just also to. There is this belief in yourself, in the self, where it's still important to realize that creating. It's a very complex and complicated journey. And it's not like you can't have success every time or you can't. The notion of doubt is very important. The notion of intuition is very important. And this is where I think it's. This is where to resist. To flattening things is also to understand that the complexity that you have to deal with can't be solved by just using machine that helps you to kind of makes everything feel easy. Even in, like, even in consuming images. So easy to consume image on social network that it's good to say, okay, it's easy, but I can do it a bit. But then maybe I can stop and then start to challenge myself. And then how do I look at an image or how do I read the text or access to an information. And it's going to actually be complex to enter what I'm going through. And this is where I think this is to kind of fight against that kind of flatten of things. It's important to understand that things are taking time and this is like giving time to things. It's very important in our days. Like even. Like yes, I can travel the world very fast or go to Japan, but even if I don't go there for a certain amount of time, it's good to understand, to start to think, okay, it's taking time to do this. It's not a given. And this is important for myself to allow and to be generous with myself to understand that the complexity of what's happening is the beauty of this. And I think this is the important part.
- [62:47]
Unknown
Yeah, I think the way we are consuming images today with, like, the endless solicitation of the screen and the social media is numbing the idea of curiosity. And because you think you see everything, but you only see what has been felt to you and what has already been predetermined by your own behavior and your own taste. And I think this is why it's very important to. To be aware of that and to be open to things that are not part of your filter bubble.
- [63:24]
Matthias Augustiniak
One more question and then I'll let you all go because we've gone for an hour now, which is 20 minutes longer than my editor would like. How do you keep working together? Is it like a marriage where the key to a marriage is not getting divorced? How have you done it for so long?
- [63:47]
Michael Omzalag
It's a question and answer itself. Your editor would like the interview to end. You made it. It's great. Thank you very much, Lauren. And to the next question. No, I mean, exactly. It's just like it kind of linked to what I was describing. Things are not easy. It's not like we all know this. To be alive is a complex situation. To be in love is a complex situation. To actually articulate a piece, to work with someone is a complex situation. So it's. How do you make things go past the complexity, to enjoy that? Suddenly it becomes like a pleasure. And then suddenly you're realizing that, oh, actually, when you are too. To produce something, it's actually much bigger and it has more impact. And it's because it's not just one person thinking behind, but it's already two. And even if there are contradictory parts at the end, it creates something that's maybe less obvious and more complex and has more chance to excite a third person that could say, oh, would what the two of you are doing is quite interesting. Oh, let's make something. Let's be free to do something, and so on. I think that's the. I don't know. This is how I see it. Does it answer your question? Yes or no?
- [65:30]
Matthias Augustiniak
Yeah. Two is always better than one.
- [65:32]
Unknown
Yeah. The idea of working, of working not on your own makes your work less self centered and less precious. And so there's already a distance to what you're doing because you know that you have like a first viewer next to you that's gonna perceive it differently. So there is some lightness to it.
- [65:56]
Matthias Augustiniak
Thank you both so much. This was such a pleasure.
- [65:59]
Michael Omzalag
Sing here. Thank you.
- [66:00]
Matthias Augustiniak
It was super fun.
- [66:03]
Lauren Sherman
Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. This show was produced and edited by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to our executive producers, Puck co founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy, and director of editorial operations, Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Jenna Weiss Berman and Bob Tabador.