I have a confession to make: meeting Diane Pernet made me nervous. I could not help but think of the first time I saw her, a surreal vision, walking up the steps of the Villa Noailles in Hyères, completely dressed in black and holding a parasol, even though it was boiling hot outside. With her pale skin, black mantilla, jet-black hair, dark sunglasses and bright, red lips, Diane seemed like a cross between a moody Sicilian widow and a Gruau sketch, or perhaps a Victorian queen on the loose.
Was she even real? We had exchanged courteous letters in Cyberspace, but I was not sure what planet she had come from, except that she was incredibly polite and wanted to meet up. Diane’s film festival, You Wear it Well, and her blog, A Shaded View on Fashion, have become compulsory stops for anyone who claims to follow designers, filmmakers and artists. The blog offers daily updates and a genuinely global take on fashion and culture. Mixing her own travel experiences and images with an insatiable sense of curiosity, Pernet has made the blog exciting, addictive and utterly democratic. As our conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that Diane has helped many designers and given exposure to countless newcomers. She is a great talent spotter and understands the craft: the fact that she had her own fashion line in 1980s New Cork gives her a unique insight into what it actually means to be a designer. It is hard not to warm up to Diane: her image is only a small part of who she is and one she is not afraid to discuss. She has a great sense of humour, laughs a lot and talks about life with sharp wit. We begin our conversation going back to her days in New York and memories of designing collections for more than a decade.
What were your main inspirations when you were a designer? From what I have seen, it seems your clothes were fairly constructed and tailored with some Couture elements in them. Yes, that is true. In fact, the collections were more Couture than Ready-to-Wear. The first collection was inspired by the Bauhaus, it was all about sculpted shapes and everything being there for a reason. I was never super decorative as a designer, but much more minimal and clean.
And did you only sell in New York or did you come to Europe, too? I was invited by Donna Magazine once who gave me a booth at Neo Moda in Milan and there was a great reaction, but the prices were high, as I imported all my fabrics from Europe. Then you had to add duty taxes, making it even more expensive and hard to sell. The big breakthrough came with Japan afterwards. Big in Japan! Yes, I was big in Japan (mutual laughter). I would get press there, even though I did not have a PR person, and I kept getting these calls from Seibu, which at that time was, like, the top department store and first to license Viviente Westwood and Gaultier. It was them and Isetan that were the top stores, now they are not that hot, or so I heard. They wanted to preview the collection, but I asked them to come to the show instead. They came and I had spent all my Money on the collection and did not even have the taxi money. After the show, five guys from Seibu were there, telling me they had loved the collection and wanted to make an appointment. I offered them to come the next day. I lived in this tiny, little place, not that I am living in a much bigger place now! (more laughter) There was this huge cutting table taking all the space and these five Japanese men around it in business suits. They made the best order I ever had in my life. After they left, I just kept thinking: “What am I gonna do? I need to have the money to actually fill that order.”
Did you not have any backing at that stage? No, I did not. I thought I could not lie about this and had to be honest, knowing that if I was honest, they might just get scared and cancel the order. It was a nightmare, so I called them and asked to meet for brunch. I did not really know how to bring up the subject and at a certain point I asked for an advance. They were kind of laughing and asked if I needed it all upfront and I said no. First of all, it was a third, then I asked for half and eventually it became all of it, but they were totally cool with that and told me they had done the same with Issey Miyake when he started.
Why did you stop designing Well, I stopped because I could not stand living in New York anymore. The crime was unbelievable, the last tour years I lived there I just wanted to leave. I World always design a collection, plan where I World go afterwards and clear my head to get inspired again.
So what happened after you left New York? My first job was actually doing costumes for films, which I did not find that exciting. I never got tired of designing, but I got tired of living in New York. I say 90% of my neighbourghood died of Aids, but people had a feeling I was just this rich woman who did not do anything and was just, you know, like an image of someone, but they did not really know what I did, even thoughI had always been working on something. In the first year of the blog, it was really great for the people I covered, they got jobs, stores and nothing really came to me, but I was fine, like the Mother Theresa...
Of young designers! Yes, I still probable am, because it is not like I ever made any money out of it, but I like to support people I believe in. They do not have to be designers, they can be in music, art or photography, but I like to put them out there, that is the beauty of the Internet, you do not have to live in Paris or New York, you could be in Reykjavik, wherever and I also like the idea of democratising the whole thing. You know how they keep making the shows in Paris smaller and smaller so that less and less people can come.
Which is strange since the images are available everywhere, almost in real time. Exactly. I was thinking of what Helmut Lang did on the Internet, it seemed outrageous in the 90s, but he was a complete visionary. Yes, he was. Amazing.
Do you think the exposure helps designers with their business? Yes, I think it helps a lot. If you take away the elitism from fashion, then it opens the doors and shows you a panoply of possibilities, also because you can contact the designers directly and order from them, it no longer matters where you live. If you look at Arctic Monkeys for instance, what would they have been without.
YouTube or MySpace? That brings us to the question of your image and your own look, which is strong and quite distinctive.
How did you put these elements together? Is there something specific that you want to project? It is nothing really conscious, you know, because my look started and evolved while I was designing. In the beginning, I would always wear my own clothes and changed with my collections, but then at one point I decided to wear black, in maybe it was 80%. It was traumatic, that is all I can tell you. It was really dramatic, everybody was either sick or dying, it was so depressing and the crime was really high and crack was really big. They also released people from the mental hospitals. All in one go! Yes, it was everything. It was like the worst of Blade Runner, like you could hear people screaming out the windows. It was bringing me down and I thought: “I am not inspired” (laughing again) I just thought I should live, you know, life. And why did you move to Paris? Not because I am a Francophile, because I am absolutely not, but because I thought that if I wanted to continue in fashion, it was either going to be Paris, London or Milan. I love Italy, but could not see myself making a living there. London is fun, but Paris is the centre of it. Whether they produce the best designers or not, they are all here, from everywhere. I know one person here, too.
How did you get into helping out other designers and promoting new talents? Would you say that your own experience made a difference? Absolutely. I know exactly what it is like and know also what or who could make your life easier as a designer.
So would you say that your role is putting people together in a way? Is that the main thing? No, my main thing is my film festival and I am also a talent scout for Hyères and for White in Milan and I have the blog where I support people. How did you come up with the idea of a blog? It is interesting to see how specific it is, but also how it makes fashion available to a lot of people. Well, I used to work on different websites, I had a column on elle.com, being the most unlikely person to have ever worked for Elle. And then the woman who had hired me started Vogue Paris.com and asked me to work with them, too. In February 2005, I decided I wanted to do something on a more daily basis, just my own thing, I was used to running my own business before.
So did the technology free you in a way to create your own space? Yes, that is how I started this.
And how do you think it changed people’s perception of you, getting all these images and designers across to a large audience? Well, I think it must have changed their perception of me. Before order not to compete with what I was creating.
A lot of people thought that I was a young widow, which is true. Is it? Yes, it is. My husband died when he was 31 and he was the love of my life, but he was not the last man in my life either. I mean, people just like to pigeon-hole things, but as a teenager I had a fascination with death, like a lot of teenagers do, and then I love religious symbols and imagery (laughing) I love that, I still do.
There is something about the whole atmosphere that I like. What is it that attracts you there? Is it the eroticism? Or the formality? It is the ritualistic aspect, I think. I just love rituals and the smell of the incense, the sound of the bells, I like the body of Christ stuck in my mouth, you know (more laughter) I just love the candles, the mantilla.