Jeremy Scott: il ne regette rien
| Jeremy Scott: il ne regette rien By: Craig McLean Photographer: Mark Hom Size: 400 x 361, 38K Source: The Face, September 2000 (Not actually an article on Devon, it's on Jeremy Scott, but Devon features quite strongly)
'Disabled' models , extra sleeves, gold'n'fur: some of Jeremy Scott's collections have been controversial. But now he wants people to be able to wear his clothes. After all, his public demands it. Jeremy Scott and Devon Aoki are chat-chat-chatting in Scott's flat-cum-studio near Gare du Nord in Paris. They’re giggling about how, the other week, she was ‘chased down the street’ in London, ‘it was so funny’, by this guy, ‘he was like this really huge fan of Jer’my’s. I was just bombarded with questions about him. Where does he live, and this and that! I don’t wanna be responsible for like some crazy stalker. Just keep walking!’ ‘Hur hur hur,’ gurgles Scott, in a peculiarly Beavis-like way. She’s rifling through a rail of chocolate-brown garments from his last collection, oohing over this snug jacket and lusting after that lush shirt. She’s in town for a couture shoot with Juergen Teller, and so Designer and Muse are taking advantage of a rare gap in her schedule for an obviously much-needed expat’s gossipy catch-up. ‘Jer’my is very different from most designers,’ Aoki, 17, will say in a posh American accent that somehow manages to convey her braininess (she’s been accepted by all the colleges she applied to; she’ll probably go to NYU, but possibly not this year, to study literature). (Like most Americans, particularly fashion Americans, she also talks in lots of exclamation marks.) ‘His clothes are not just influenced by the past, they’re also taking from the future. Most designers, you’ve seen that stuff already, in one way or another. His stuff, I’ve never seen before! I can relate to it because it’s aesthetically pleasing, but it could also be the future in clothes. That’s really significant. Also, his clothes speak to a whole generation of people. On the streets of Paris, it’s crazy – you see these Jer’my Scott look-alikes dressed from head to toe in his stuff. His clothes,’ she says, finally drawing breath to sum up, ‘are comfortable, easy and glamorous.’ Of course, she would say that. But it’s true, nonetheless. Scott’s workroom has a huge cutting table, an American flag on one wall, a poster of Aoki on the wall opposite, a collection of eighties vinyl (The Communards, Kim Wilde, Huey Lewis and the News), design sketches and boxes and racks and rails of clothes. The kitchen is pokey, windowless and largely foodless, and pretty depressing. The toilet is a bit rancid. The hall is empty, save for Scott’s little bicycle. Scott’s room has a humungous telly in it. So far, so cheap-ordinary. It is not the ker-razy luxe gaff we might expect of the flamboyant hich who has made a (short) career of being, again and again, the future of fashion. Nor is the Dr Funkenstien laboratory of the dangerously daring innovator, whose collections have been inspired by car crashes, nuclear accidents, Marilyn Monroe’s wonk-heeled walk, crap found on the street, and gold, gold, fur, more gold, and a bit more fur. It’s just a bit . . . studenty. It’s hard to imagine Jeremy Scott’s new-ish friend, Karl Lagerfeld, popping round for a night in with a pizza. But after spending nearly all of his five years in Paris in this unremarkable bolt-hole, Scott, 27, is preparing to move. He wants a work space separate from his living space. He wants more room. Through a mixture of occasionally tiresome controversy, truly radical chic and – fashion shocker! – a sense of humour, he’s established the House of Jeremy Scott. Now he needs a bigger one. Jeremy Scott, erstwhile enfant unreliable, is all growed up. ‘I’m more interested in selling clothes to people, which I wasn’t interested in a year ago,’ he says in a voice which manages to combine a Missouri drawl with a punctuation-defying campy speediness. ‘Before, I wanted to show people what was in my head, what I had to say. Now my desires have changed. I’d like people to be able to wear my clothes. But I’m also interested in ah-show.’ He pants to a halt with one of his stagey flourishes. Then he’s off again. ‘I do now have this reason, because there are people who run down the street to find out where I live and not only buy my clothes and copy my hair but also buy the clothes they see me wearing in magazines by other people. Woah - this is a big deal! This is important! I can’t ignore that! And I like that responsibility, because I like the fact that I am touching people’s lives. That’s important to me. That I make a difference in someone’s life.’ In case you hadn't noticed, Jeremy Scott quite likes himself. But don't hate him because he's a bit funny looking. You'd be surprised: you would like him too. Scott and Aoki are perched on stools in his studio, recalling the past. Dev-awn and Jer'my first met three years ago. She was just another transatlantic, Japanese-American, 14-year-old international model. He was your common or garden 24-year-old hick from the Midwest American sticks with statement teeth braces, rat-tail hair and panto dress 'sense'. Soon, with a vainglorious cry of 'Vive I'avante garde! and Dev-awn at his side, he would have the fashion world at his feet. For this was Paris. And it was showtime. Like, rilly. Jeremy Scott: 'I'd seen a picture of Dev-awn in THE FACE - it was before those ones with Inez with the tie - and there was this one. you were quite a baby doll. Like, really curly hair!' Devon Aoki: 'Oh yeah, oh God! I can't remember which photographer it was.' Scott: 'They were like religious portraits. I thought: I have-to-have-to-have-to-have-to-have her! I needed this baby-woman. There were plenty of young girls in Paris who were babies, but they wouldn't be baby-woman. So we fought-andfought-and-fought-and-fought to get her.' Aoki. 'There was some kind of law that 14-year-olds weren't allowed to do shows on Wednesdays.' Scott. 'We put up such a fight, four or five times a day we'd call, I'd be crying and screaming. Finally, one day, they told us she was coming! By that time, the whole casting revolved around Dev-awn. She was The Muse. She was the show.' Aoki came with her mum, and was first out on the runway. By show's end, 'Rich White Women' had sealed Scott's reputation. (Until, that is, his next collection, the widely derided 'Canopied' for autumnlwinter 1998- his now-Iegendary 'gold' collection where the models' mismatched heels, instead of echoing Monroe's sexy wiggle, gave them a crippled hobble. But anyway.) At that point, an extra sleeve here, a sculpted leather mini there and blinding white pikey disco futurism everywhere made Jeremy Scott the man, the moment, the junk soul brother. He had come to Paris from nowhere (in every sense) with the express purpose of causing a fashion fuss. As he'd prepared to leave school in Missouri in 1990, on being asked by his mum what he wanted to want to be, he'd said. 'Famous!' And in October 1997, 'Rich White Women', his third collection - after the student one (inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear accident), the first 'proper' one (modelled on cosmetic surgery) and the second one (made out of a roll of heavy-duty plastic found in the street) - did it. Jeremy Scott could walk it like he talked it. And, in Devon Aoki, he had found his Muse (every designer needs one). 'I can imagine my clothes coming alive on her,' enthuses Scott. 'Furthermore, once we'd become friends, her lifestyle became part of it - "I don't wanna wear this or that" - it became another voice. Dev-awn's life is a real life; she wants to be glamorous, kind of, but she also goes to castings sometimes.' 'I can be demanding!' trills Aoki. 'But I don't have a model/fashion designer relationship with Jer'my. It goes way deeper than that.' Deeper than fashion! ‘It's deeper than fashion! she hoots. Designer and Muse swap tender glances. But really, you shouldn't have much time for Jeremy Scott. All that 'I'm crazy, me' personal 'style' (today, a cutesy little panda stares mournfully from his cheap-looking sweatshirt). The love of Eighties trash pop (Kylie is a big fave, musically and personally). The love of the camera. That rinky-dink BMX-Files bike he scoots around on. The incongruous friendship with Lagerfeld. The Warholian pretension and motormouthing desire to change not just fashion but 'col-ture'. The try-hard showboating. The daringly unironic self-promotion that has become his recent signature - witness the backwards 'Paris' he's been splashing over his designs, or the gold monogrammed 'Soap On A Rope' project he styled and Lagerfeld shot for an exhibition on the culture of bathing for Parisian store Colette. Even Lagerfeld has remarked on how 'he's really good at PR with himself, no?' And how 'I've never seen somebody who integrates so easily'. And how 'he has the right personality for the future of fashion.' He's a poser, right? Indeed he is. But he's a pure poser. Fashion, to him, is everything. Not a means to an end, not a passport to the penthouse. It's adventure, passion, life. Or the closest you get to life if you grew up in Missouri. Five years ago this month, Jeremy Scott stepped off a plane from New York. A TV crew followed him as he walked through the Bastille, badgering him for an interview about his look. Then, mooching around an art gallery, a photographer asked if he could take his portrait. Later, on the Metro, a club promotions guy invited him to parties. This, he says he remembers, was all in the first day! Scott was, like, 'O-kay, I'm in the right place! Everyone's responding!' His hair was much like it is now, as it has been for years - variations on a mohawk/mullet theme - and his clothes were part junk, part more junk. Soon he'd be a fixture on the club scene, paid to attend parties, taking to playing the part of interesting foreigner like a duckie to mineral water. He'd wear clothes inspired by the 1880s and" 980s, '100 years different. Eighties top unzipped over the nipple, weird Victorian puff-sleeved jacket, army pants - just trash! I'd find stuff in the refuse.' It had been like that in New York, too, where he'd graduated with a degree in fashion design from the Pratt Institute three months earlier. He'd wear a skirt in the street and have his hair in braids, and strangers would stop him to praise his look. Whereas back home in Missouri... well, you can imagine. Now he's preparing his ninth Paris show. He won't, obviously, give anything away, but his latest obsession - after 'Duty Free Glamour' (spring/summer 2000), Russian department stores and trashy extravagance is Los Angeles. He went there for the first time last October, to be shot by Mario Testino. But he loves-it-loves-it-loves it! 'I love champagne, and I love fruity drinks - but my vice, if anything, is LA. I'm dying to move to Los Angeles, commute from LA to Paris! A house in the hills It's cheap glamour! I love the history of it. It's all about LA's rebirth right now..' Of course, he won't - can't - move. He's having too much fun where he is, being flown around by Mr Lagerfeld, being tipped to go to Versace, YSL, Nina Ricci, being Mr Fashion Fun. What happens if, say, spring/summer 2001 gets the the 'Canopied' response? 'At this point I'd be happy,' he says breezily. 'That was the biggest press I got in my whole life. Now I wouldn't be like, "Oh, they're kicking me out of the industry." Now I know no one can kick me out. They can ignore me, hate me, whatever, but I have created my own niche. I have my own following, my own people, my own life. It's about me continuing to strengthen that. It's about me having my own store in the next six months to a year, so that there is my own space and vision to express myself in that domain. All these other things that I want to do. . .' They can't get rid of you now. 'No! The harder they try, the more I'll fight. But the other thing they could do is try a sneakattack! Like, WE-LOVE-IT-WE-LOVE-IT-WE-LOVE-IT!' he shreaks, then mimes brutally kicking someone in the shins. I ask him if it's hard to remember who Jeremy Scott is sometimes; he answers immediately without pausing - at all - for breath. 'I don't think so. I was in Monaco talking to my mom on the phone at Helmut Newton's birthday party, poolside, John [Galliano] and Alexander [McOueen] are jumping in the pool, and I'm like, " OhmyGod mom, Alexander just jumped in the pool!", and she's like, "Well, you don't get wet, honey", and I'm like, "Don't worry, I'm fine, I'm sitting here with Sophie, mom, do you want to say hello to her?" and Sophie Dahl's like, (Dick Van Dyke parrot squawk) "Hello mummy, how are you?"' A tiny pause. 'As far as I'm concerned, you can't get any more real than that.' To Jeremy Scott, that really is real. |
