Paul Flynn: Do you think that there is an art to teaching?
Louise Wilson: You probably have to be a bit of a sad fucker. I do think of teaching as a vocation, as sad as that sounds. I don’t even know whether I’m a good teacher. I only know if my students get jobs at the end of the course. Which they tend to…
PF: Did you imagine yourself being a teacher?
LW: Never.
PF: What did you imagine you would be?
LW: I don’t think of myself as a teacher. I think I work at Saint Martins. You come to the realisation only eventually that you are just a teacher on not a very good salary. But when I look at other teachers and what they have to do, I realise that I’m in a privileged position. As annoying as the students might be, they are an interesting group of people that you forge a very close alliance with. The success of the course is about breeding a kind of autonomy in them.
PF: Isn’t teaching people to be autonomous a slight contradiction in terms?
LW: Oh yes. But when I get them they’ve been in education for about 18 to 20 years. That’s longer than the prison term you get for mass murder. And when you’ve been in prison you get a social worker afterwards. They come here expecting to get jobs and they’ve got no social skills. I had a big battle with a student yesterday about this. You learn to lie. Or to have social skills. And I don’t have many. But, for example, you don’t simply not turn up to your pattern cutters; you phone up and pretend you’ve had an accident. You don’t turn up with shitty work; you pretend you’re ill. Social skills are learning to lie to get out of things a little bit. But they have none of those social skills. They think they can offer up whatever it is they have done, all the time.
PF: Isn’t that just the arrogance of youth to a certain extent?
LW: Yes, but I’ve never encountered it as much as I have in the last two years. Talented people are usually extremely insecure and never believe that they are that talented. They never believe what they are doing is good enough. That is not arrogance, it is a kind of humility and it is very enjoyable to be around. To empower them is brilliant: to tell them that they are talented at pattern cutting or that a doodle is so much better than one of their finished drawings. What you tend to get now is people with not much talent who believe they are divinely talented. You have to unpack that and tell them that, actually, they’re not.
PF: You get rid of their sense of entitlement?
LW: Yes.
PF: Have you noticed a change in generations since you’ve been here?
LW: Forget generations, the fundamental thing is that students used to work within their individual skills or with what they could afford. I call that youth. Christopher Kane, when he graduated with those amazing lace dresses, bought the lace from Dalston market. It was what he could afford and he still did something amazing with it. When Margiela did his first deconstruction it was not that expensive. It was an idea that he carried out. What happens now with students is almost as if they are pretending to know how to do it. They’ve read a book somewhere on how you should do it and it’s about ordering hideous, expensive fabrics that have nothing to do with you or your friends or any concept of youth or what’s new. They’re like mini factory managers. We don’t need people like that in the industry; we’ve got them already and they’re called the Chinese. No! We need creative people who are offering something new. Fashion is never that new because the human shape doesn’t change. It’s always two legs, two arms. But it’s that fresh approach. And that is the difficult thing, to break those barriers down, because the students are used to educational solutions. ‘If you do this then you get that mark.’ It’s never about‘Was it any good?’ It’s visually obvious with everything that’s around us. You will always get students who are visually blind. But not by the time they leave. Reacting to your situation is an embryonic thing. It’s a passion for your opinion. All of the great designers like Margiela or Ann Demeulemeester were dressing their contemporaries. Christopher was dressing his sister Tammy. If you divorce yourself from that then fashion becomes a bit like working for McDonald’s. It has nothing to do with their lives.
PF: I take it you subscribe to the idea of fashion as a strand of sociology?
LW: Oh definitely. We can safely say that everything has got quite tragic everywhere now. I don’t think we can look back at the ’00s and say there was seminal music, can we? I’m just saying. We’ve all read all those lists over Christmas and it’s as though life itself has become a bit (makes a snoring sound), hasn’t it? It’s a good thing to always feel bitter and twisted and never feel confident. That’s why I’m fat. I’m a self-harmer. The point is there is a change, but it’s not just down to fashion and it’s not just down to Saint Martins. We all have our impasses and I think fashion became very fashionable. And now it is time to be unfashionable and move in different ways. I think it does it good to be unfashionable. Let art and artists be fashionable for a bit. Let the light shine on the Frieze Art Fair and the artists having their moments.
PF: What still fascinates you about fashion?
LW: Probably nothing. Which is quite good. You’re quite jaded so you’re always looking for something.
PF: Boredom is an impetus?
LW: Yes. So you wait to be smacked in the face by the next thing.
PF: Does the celebrity culture have an effect on the students here?
LW: I don’t think at all.
PF: They don’t want to make frocks for Lily Allen to wear to parties?
LW: They live on their own myopic island. I read‘Grazia’ but I’m sure they don’t. If I called one of my students up in the studio right now I don’t imagine they would have seen the picture of Lindsay Lohan in a bikini in St Barts that I have just seen. Would they have a view on Lindsay Lohan being appointed head designer at Ungaro and whether or not she killed off the celebrity designer? Probably not. It wouldn’t cross their minds. Or they would think it’s terrible. Let’s find out. Let’s ask one. ( Professor Wilson picks up the phone and calls the design studio. She speaks to a student on speakerphone. ) Listen, if I asked you if you had a view on Lindsay Lohan at Ungaro, do you?
Student on other end of the phone: I don’t have a view on it.
LW: Put someone else on. Do you have a view on Lindsay Lohan at Ungaro?
Student 2: It’s traumatic and hideous, isn’t it?
LW: ( hangs up the phone ) That’s beautiful isn’t it?
PF: Does it make you proud?
LW: No. Honestly, no.
PF: You don’t ever allow yourself a moment of pride in them?
LW: Sometimes when they leave. While we’re going through the course it’s just very gruelling, hard work.
PF: Does the appointment of Lindsay Lohan at Ungaro undermine the students’ work in any way?
LW: I think it does. You have to go back to the idea of what education is. For me it was about moving away from the middle of Scotland to London. Unfortunately now, because you don’t have grants, everyone has to study and stay at home. Which is why they’re not very bright when they come on the course. I’m being sarcastic. No, actually I’m not.
PF: When you think of the graduate collections at Saint Martins of Stella McCartney or Matthew Williamson, calling in all these big name models to walk for their degree shows, doesn ’t that just reinforce the pervasive myth of the celebrity culture?
LW: They weren’t my students. I want to make that clear. I know them both well, but anyway, carry on ...
PF: Did bringing these models into the college have an effect on the perception of Saint Martins?
LW: It didn’t have an effect on me. You’re so wrapped up in your own misery, freezing cold in your office, that you don’t notice. I remember Matthew and Stella, but only in the scheme of another 50 people showing on their BA. There were fabulous collections and not so fabulous collections. All I remember about those shows was ...wasn’t Prince Andrew at one of them, photographed looking up a woman’s skirt?
PF: Is the abolition of grants the most fundamental change you’ve seen whilst at the school? LW: I think so. The students are working to pay their way through college and they can’t afford to go out. When I was at college we were out all the time. That was the whole point of it. We made outfits to wear out. Now they’re living in bedsits in Hackney that cost £700 a month. The loss of the grants is one of those mythological things that are never talked about. There’s never a murmur spoken about it.
PF: Do you feel that the very public recent conversion to fashion of the Prime Minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, is sincere or opportunistic?
LW: I’d really rather not comment. I personally hate the Labour Party so deeply that I can’t. Just looking at them is the tragedy of everything that’s gone wrong everywhere, including the pavement that’s outside my house. It’s just mediocrity.
PF: Do you imagine you will be a teacher for the rest of your working life?
LW: I hope not. That would be tragic. It’s important for the students that you can prove that you can do it, too. You can’t sit outside of the industry that you’re servicing. I’m very aligned to the industry as opposed to academia.
PF: How do you spot talent in a student?
LW: If I could spot talent in a student I doubt very much that I’d be sat here. I would have cosied up to them, become their best friend and somehow got paid an awful lot of money to be alongside them. You don’t. You’re here to make their work better. Same shit, different year. In the same year as Hussein Chalayan there was an equally talented student called Finton Walsh. Things went not the right way for him. Things went the righter way for Hussein.
PF: Does a climate of financial difficulties breed an interesting mindset in young creative people?
LW: This is what I’m hoping. I’m hoping that suddenly people will have to think differently, as they do in every industry.
PF: Can you adjudicate good and bad taste?
LW: Oh, I can. I know it’s outrageous. People say you can’t judge a book by its cover but I think, well, do I really want to stand in front of my first-year students who look like they have stepped out of a Diane Arbus book, which is mentally deranged, in a selection of disgusting winter coats with no make-up on, bleary, just staring at you? That’s not what I teach for. I’m not saying that they have to be fashionable, because to be fashionable you can be highly non-fashionable. That’s my prerogative. And you can judge a book by its cover, actually. If you’re wearing a horrible coat with a horrible bag and you’ve got terrible highlighted hair then there ’s obviously something gleefully missing.
PF: Is ‘conscience’ the magical word that sits alongside teaching as opposed to the commercial fashion industries?
LW: Yes. And that’s very difficult.
PF: What was your immediate reaction to being offered your OBE?
LW: I thought it was a tax demand. I left it to one side and when I opened it, I ripped it open, ripping the letter with it and immediately thought,‘Oh God, now I haven’t got the letter to show my mother.’ I had to phone them and explain that I had ripped the letter and could they draw me another one up so that I could show my mum. Which they duly did. I like the Queen and it is an honour. But as my mother said to me, it stands for ‘Other Buggers’ Effort’. It’s the students’ effort really, isn’t it?

P.S.
Louise herself went to Central Saint Martins in 1982 and graduated in the same class as John Galliano. She believes tough criticism is essential to make students aware when something is badly made or when something lacks a point of view. To decompress from the pressures of the school year, she spends six weeks out of the year relaxing on a sunny beach in Bali. Minimize

Ryan Gilbey: What do you do when you’re not acting?
Léa Seydoux: (laughs) I live my life, you know? I always do different things each day. In my job and in my life I never know what I’m going to do. I don’t have any habits. I hope I never will.
RG: What’s your role in ‘Le Roman de Ma Femme’?
LS: I play a woman who is married to a lawyer. Every morning he goes jogging, but one morning he doesn’t come back and she has to ask one of her husband’s colleagues to help find out what happened. It’s an interesting script. Some parts of the movie seem to be one way; then you realise nothing is what you thought it was.
RG: Is it a challenging film to make?
LS: Of course, but for me making films always feels challenging because I am so shy. I’m always scared before shooting – sometimes even during shooting! I’ll read the script and think, ‘How on earth am I going to play this?’ The anticipation makes you anxious. You have to actually do the thing in order not to be scared. And that feeling of being scared, or not being safe, can be helpful for the part, depending on the character.
RG: Didn’t the acting classes help you with your shyness?
LS: They can help some people, but not me. I suppose with more experience, I may feel a little less shy. I only really started to work at age 19 or 20, so even though I am very busy now and my life has changed so much, I am still only at the beginning. What I like in acting is that you can forget yourself. When you are in costume, with the other actors and the director on set, you forget who you are. It becomes a game. A dangerous game, but still a game.
RG: Why do you say it’s dangerous?
LS: Because even though you’re playing a character, it’s still you up there on the screen. People are judging you. It’s your emotions, your body. If you’re naked in a scene, you might still have a complex about that, but you can’t show it. You may be prudish and want to be covered up even if the character is happy to be naked.
RG: You mentioned how much your life has changed. Was there a particular role that was the catalyst for that change?
LS: In France, ‘La Belle Personne’ was a big deal, partly because of the César nomination. And after the Tarantino film, maybe people started noticing me more.
RG: Had you wanted to act for a long time before you took classes?
LS: I think the first thing I wanted to do was to be an actress, but I decided to really make it happen when I was 18. I was an adolescent, I was feeling a little lost in my life, and I said to my friends,‘I really want to act.’ Some of them said I would never make it, because the industry is so tough. But one friend, an actor, advised me to take theatre classes. After that, I got an agent and started going to castings. But I had never been a cinephile.
RG: That’s surprising since your grandfather was chairman of Pathé and your great uncle was CEO of Gaumont. Your family seems to be so involved in cinema.
LS: Not my immediate family, not the people who raised me. My mother was a producer at one point, but she did lots of other things too.
RG: Has your family supported you in your career?
LS: They’ve given me freedom, which is very important. They don’t care as long as I like what I do, as long as I’m not a prostitute, you know? ( laughs ) Well, maybe I am kind of a prostitute! But at least I’m not a porno actress.
RG: How did you know acting was your call?
LS: It’s complicated. It was that little voice that you have inside you, you know? Also what I love about the job, now that I am doing it, is that every time you make a film it’s a new family. But it’s a family you choose. I love to be on set; all those people, all working together. It can be very intense.
RG: With the director as your mother or father …
LS: Yes, absolutely!
RG: In that case, what was it like to have someone as intense as Catherine Breillat as a mother?
LS: (laughs) Oh, she was a good mother. And one of my first mothers! She’s very cerebral. She helped me a lot.‘The Last Mistress’ was only my second film. My first part was in a stupid teen movie, so working with Catherine was much more intellectual. When I worked on the teen movie, I thought,‘Oh my God, if this is what cinema is like, it ’s going to be terrible!’ And then with Catherine it was more like, ‘Ah, yes, I can do some movies I believe in.’
RG: Do you remember how you felt during your audition for Tarantino?
LS: I was so nervous. It was in Paris. Originally I was going for the main female part, Shosanna. He was tired when I arrived. I came in and I was so shy. I was red like a tomato! ( laughs) I was sweating also. He looked at me and I could hear his thoughts: ‘Oh no, this one’s going to be terrible.’ But I played four scenes for him, and I think he was surprised that I was so confident. Afterwards I got the call to say I hadn’t got the part of Shosanna, but that Quentin still wanted me in the movie. The shoot wasn’t like anything I’d done before. ‘Robin Hood’ was the same – these are such enormous productions, and there is not much intimacy. But it is still fun and I’ve made good friends.
RG: Did you get to hang out with Russell Crowe on ‘Robin Hood’?
LS: Yes, we all went drinking with him sometimes. We smoked cigarettes and drank beer in his big trailer. I drank Guinness for the first time!
RG: Did you like it?
LS: Guinness? Not much.

P.S.
Léa believes that some things, like how to be comfortable in front of a camera, can be taught in acting classes. Others, like how to be photogenic, are natural talents. ‘Robin Hood’ is set for worldwide release this summer. Léa was photographed wearing a grey wool blazer by COS. Minimize

Tim Blanks: What’s the story on ‘Tough Trade’?
Boyd Holbrook: It’s about a family of musicians, a dynasty, kind of like Hank Williams’s. Sam Shepard is Linwood Tucker. He came up the right way, playing in honky-tonk bars with beer bottles being thrown at him. His son, played by Cary Elwes, went ‘new country’, made a shitload of money, but lost a lot of dignity, and now he has come home to tell the family they’re millions in debt. I play his son Jackson, and my music career is going to save them. At the end of the pilot, I play a concert for all these people.
TB: I didn’t realise you sang too.
BH: It’s really just been a hobby. I play guitar. But it changed when I got down to Nashville. I had to get voice coaches and guitar coaches. It was frustrating at the beginning, but once you get to know all that stuff, it’s really incredible. I’m turned on to music in a different way now. We were doing 18 hours a day – if not acting on set, then working with a guitar or singing coach – for two and a half weeks. It was probably the best experience I’ve ever had.
TB: How old were you when you wrote your first play?
BH: I was 16, but it wasn’t that good.
TB: You have to start somewhere.
BH: I think that’s really it, man. At this point, I’ve fallen on my ass so many times, I’m cool. I don’t see it as negative. You’re not failing at anything, you’re just trying stuff out. If it doesn’t work out, so what? Try it a different way. That’s one of the coolest things about the creative process.
TB: But if writing was one of your goals from an early age, wasn’t modelling a distraction?
BH: I didn’t start modelling till I was almost 21. I was working at this theatre company in Kentucky, dying to move to New York, and some girl said, ‘You should try modelling,’ so I came up north and tried it out.
TB: From the outside, it always looks like a lot more fun for the male models than for the girls. It’s like a gang of buddies travelling around the world having a good time on someone else’s dime.
BH: Exactly, that’s pretty much what it was. I made some excellent friends.
TB: What would you say was your big break in modelling?
BH: Definitely when I got the job for Dior with Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. When I was in New York before the Dior job, I was totally couch-surfing for at least two years. I was hustling, going to castings. And then I got that job and the work started coming in. That was cream, after that I didn’t have to even try. I saw a big shift.
TB: When you got to Europe and worked with people like Hedi Slimane and Inez and Vinoodh, did you get a sense that a boy from Kentucky was kind of exotic to them?
BH: Yeah, just as I was fascinated by them; by what an artist Hedi was and by the photographs Inez and Vinoodh made. My really honest interest in their work meant I wasn’t closed off. I wasn’t sitting in the corner trying to be cool. Maybe that was an opportunity for things to happen.
TB: If you were open to people like that, I imagine they must have been a huge influence on you.
BH: Yeah, things fit sometimes. I feel really blessed. I guess if I’d wanted to be an accountant, I’d have been sitting in the corner doing something else, but I was fascinated by, say, the contrasts in Inez’s work. I had no idea what it was, I just thought it was beautiful. And I wanted to do that. Our art programme in high school was cut due to a lack of funding so I think I started a little late. When people go to these big high schools, they probably start when they ’re 16 with drama or whatever, but that never existed for me, so I guess I was really hungry for what all that stuff was – seeing all these images and hearing all these stories.
TB: ‘Model-turned-actor’ is one of those modern career arcs that people tend to be scornful about.
BH: Yeah, what is that? It’s bullshit. You have this idea that modelling would give you great training, but it may actually not be. A lot of the time, models who have done well in print assume they can go on and do acting, which may not be the case.
TB: What was the greatest lesson you took away from your time as a model?
BH: Being professional, respecting people. People in the fashion industry are artists and you must respect them.
TB: What impact did working as a model have on your writing?
BH: The greatest thing was it allowed me to have the time it takes to write. It freed up time to sit down and conceptualise projects. I wouldn’t mind making a bit of money from acting and sitting back for a year and concentrating on writing.
TB: I imagine Sam Shepard’s career, mixing acting and writing, is pretty much the kind of thing you’d like to have for yourself.
BH: It’s funny, one of my first acting roles was in a play called ‘Fool for Love’ that Sam wrote. And that got me a manager, which got me an agent, which got me auditions, which got me ‘Tough Trade’, which led me to work with Sam. So it kind of came full circle from his play, and when I told him that he just said, ‘I’m glad it was good for something.’ He’s such a humble guy. He’s a fucking Pulitzer Prize winner; he’s my hero basically. He’s a true dude, a man’s stand-up persona, but such a beautiful, open heart with such empathy for so many people. It’s a rare thing to be so strong and so solid, and yet to be so soft in a certain way.

P.S.
Modelling also helped Boyd learn to see himself through the eye of the camera, a handy skill for any actor. The upcoming television series, ‘Tough Trade’, premieres on the new Epix cable network later in 2010. Boyd was photographed wearing a denim shirt and grey blazer by COS. Minimize

Armand Limnander: How true is the old cliché that the ballet world is incredibly bitchy and everyone is anorexic and backstabs you?
Benjamin Millepied: It’s exaggerated. Somewhat...
AL: How did you get started in the world of ballet?
BM: I lived in Senegal until I was five. My mother taught modern dance and my father, who was a big trackand- field athlete, worked as a coach. He and my brothers were very much into music. So I grew up basically walking and dancing. There was music and dance around all the time, and I also learnt how to do everything athletic on the track. In Bordeaux I danced in a lot of operas and ballets, and when I was 13 I went to school at the Conservatoire de Lyon.
AL: And that led naturally to choreography?
BM: Well, only much later, when I became a soloist in the New York City Ballet, did I take choreography seriously. It’s really a completely different job – as a dancer you’re always performing someone else’s work, so choreography can be very freeing.
AL: Is there a special ‘Millepied’ signature to your work?
BM: I did a lot of percussion as a kid, so now I use rhythm as a way to add a visual layer to what you are listening to, so that you can hear it better. I always say that I dance because of music; music comes first.
AL: How do you make ballet interesting to people now?
BM: Well, it’s hard to convince adults who have never been exposed to music and dance to suddenly come see a ballet. You have to be exposed to it when you’re young. That’s a real problem with cultural education that a ballet director can do little about. A lot of directors are trying to make ballet more accessible, but that can be damaging. Collaborating with talented people from other media also helps to bring a different kind of exposure.
AL: I agree. In the ’20s and ’30s, the performing arts were more linked – visual artists like Jean Cocteau were very actively involved in ballet.
BM: Yes, people mingled more back then. Diaghilev, for example, loved dance but he also had an eye for art and painting, and a finger in every pot. He could pull all these different people together.
AL: Why do you think that doesn’t happen as much anymore?
BM: Collaboration takes generosity and curiosity, and unfortunately I think ballet is the most limited of the arts. We are talking about an art form that is taught almost like a sport– the education is very limited. You take ballet lessons six or eight hours a day and that’s it. Students should at least be given a taste of some kind of general education in the arts, but it’s just not set up that way, which is a shame.
AL: Do you think there’s anything you can actively do about that?
BM: Some day I’d be interested in running a school that not only has great ballet training but also provides a full artistic education where students can take full advantage of New York, where choreographers can be taught composition, which is something that doesn’t exist. Right now, choreographers are mostly selftaught.
AL: Are you personally trying to bring more collaborations into the mix?
BM: I am. Two major collaborators of mine are the composer Nico Muhly and the artist and designer Paul Cox. I have a new work for the spring season at the New York City Ballet with a new score by Thierry Escaich, and then in October I’ll be at the Dutch National Ballet with a new score by Nico. I’ll also do another piece with Nico at the New York City Ballet in the winter.
AL: I saw you in American ‘Vogue’ recently. Not every ballet dancer is in ‘Vogue’.
BM: I was flattered to be asked. I think it’s important to forge a link between ballet and fashion, like there was in the ’70s and ’80s.
AL: You worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov, didn’t you?
BM: Yes, he performed a solo I choreographed last year. It was an homage to him. The idea was to play with this image of the old and the young, of dance and life and getting old, without getting sentimental.
AL: What do you think ballet has taught you about life in general? All that discipline and focus…
BM: The one thing I’ve learnt as a choreographer is to be very observant. I have something like a photographic eye, and I always look for behaviours, people on the street.
AL: As a choreographer you’re involved in ‘Black Swan’, Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming movie starring Natalie Portman. What are you doing?
BM: It’s quite a complex and multilayered psychological thriller. My role in it is not only to train the actors, but to make a believable work, with lots of movement in the upper body, which is what you’ll see best on camera. I have to keep it traditional but make it relate to the story and make sure it can be photographed beautifully. I’m also in the movie as a dancer and as an actor.
AL: And I’m sure you know that it has been reported on all the blogs that you are dating Natalie Portman, right? You’d better get used to having paparazzi follow you around.
BM: ( laughs ) Oh, shit. I know. The news just broke. But I’m not even going to think about that right now. She’s amazing. It was funny, because I’ve been getting so many emails from people I hadn’t told. And Natalie was worried that she was going to be photographed by the paparazzi.
AL: Why worried? Is she ashamed of you?
BM: No, but her mother doesn’t know that she’s smoking right now.

P.S.
Benjamin thinks that if more students of dance were taught choreography and composition, the world of dance would be much richer. He recently premiered his piece ‘Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once’, written for the American Ballet Theatre, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Benjamin was photographed wearing a cotton T-shirt by COS. Minimize

Emily King: So you started in fashion in the late ’70s, but then switched to architecture in 1986. Was the switch prompted by a disillusionment with fashion?
Sophie Hicks: No, I love fashion. When I first started working at ‘Harpers & Queen ’, cleaning the fashion cupboard, I used to listen to the smart fashion-editor ladies, who, to a 17-year-old, were frightfully grand. They would say things like,‘Oh my God, darling, I have to go to Milan next week; I’m really too exhausted.’ And I’d say, ‘I’ll go!’ And they’d say, ‘Oh no, darling, you can’t go!’ We had quite a funny game – there was this repartee that used to go back and forth between me, who made the coffee and cleaned the fashion cupboard, and them, who were far too exhausted to go and cover Milan Fashion Week! I always stored that away; I thought, ‘If ever I get to the point where I’m so blasé that I am just too tired to go to Milan, I’ll know it’s time to give up.’ And it did kind of get to that moment. I realised I really was too tired. Oh my God, any minute now I’m going to start saying things like those ‘Harpers & Queen ’ ladies!
EK: But it must have been a bit challenging to become a student after all those years of fashion and glamour?
SH: It was hilarious! I went to the Architectural Association for an interview – I thought I was bound to be too late, because I was applying in June to start in September – but when I rang them from Morgans Hotel in New York to find out about the form, they said, ‘It’s no problem, we don’t have any particular restrictions. Just come and see us when you get back.’ So that was nice, because most universities make you apply a year in advance, don’t they? They asked me to bring my portfolio, but I didn’t have one, so they said, ‘Well, you must have some sketches or something.’ I turned up at the Architectural Association to sit before the interview panel – a couple of tutors and a couple of students – and I had been working for Alaïa, so I was top-to-tail in Azzedine, and the only drawings I had were my fashion-show sketchbooks. They must have thought,‘Who and what is this person?’
EK: You sketched things at fashion shows?
SH: Yes, as it came down the runway, if you liked something, you sketched it quickly and made a couple of notes so you could remember what it was. You weren’t allowed to take photos.
EK: And it wasn’t on ‘Style.com’ the next day either!
SH: No! Everything was kept secret then. I was taught to sketch by Grace Coddington, and she still works like that.
EK: You worked with Grace Coddington?
SH: Yes, I worked alongside her in ’81, when she was a fashion director at British ‘Vogue’. I learnt a lot from her. She is a very good teacher, you pick up a lot just by watching. She is an incredible perfectionist and sees things other people don’t. She really notices how clothes are made; she has a very refined eye. Her approach is like that of a film director – she is very precise about what she wants. And she has an amazing memory for fashion: she’ll remember pieces from decades ago, and the collections they came from. I’m sure she knows more about some design houses than the people who work at them. I still see a lot of her. She is the last of a breed.
EK: Could you apply what you learnt from her in your architectural work?
SH: Yes, she taught me a level of attention to detail that is applicable to anything. She made me realise what should be possible, and that still applies to my work.
EK: How were your first months at the Architectural Association?
SH: Well, at first they didn’t believe I was serious, but I managed to convince them that I was. When you start, very quickly you realise that you have to be chameleon-like. You know, because you have to hide, you can’t stick out. But it was great studying architecture in those days. It was pre-computer, so we were drawing and making models by hand. They had a really good workshop, and you could do woodwork and metalwork. It was kind of mucky. I ’d always liked making things, painting and stuff like that, so I loved it.
EK: But you can’t have had a lot in common with the other students, your experiences must have been so different?
SH: Absolutely. The other students were 19 or 20.
EK: And you got pregnant during your time there?
SH: Yes, I had two children while I was at the Architectural Association, I think.
EK: That’s very unusual, to be a practicing architect with children. There are few enough female architects ...
SH: And they don’t have any children! It’s quite silly, actually. But juggling things is quite tricky. Probably the older two, well, all three of them have had a bit of neglect.
EK: That can be healthy.
SH: Yes, but the moment that I forgot to apply for schools for my youngest, Olympia, that was terrible.
EK: But you had already done it twice before! I felt a bit like that with my third child: ‘Haven’t we done this already?’ (laughs)
SH: Yes, it was a bit like that. I forgot to fill in one of the forms for an exam. I rang another parent to ask, ‘What time does it start?’ And she said, ‘It says on the card that they sent.’ But I didn’t have a card! I rang up, but they were horribly strict and wouldn’t let her sit the exam. So poor little Olympia, who was all ready, with her pencil sharpened. In the end she could only apply for one school. She got in though!
EK: Well, that’s a relief.
SH: That was a really bad moment for me. ( Note: Sophie’s children are now all well established in the education system, with her eldest, Arthur, studying philosophy at Leeds, her daughter Edie combining a high level of horsemanship with the odd modelling session while she waits to begin a degree in the history of art at the Courtauld Institute, and clever Olympia facing her GCSEs. )
EK: Do you think your background in fashion influenced the way you look at architecture generally?
SH: I’m freer thinking, probably. I do find architects are often quite trapped – mentally trapped. I think it helps having been in a different world of business before going into it. Fashion is a good world; it’s an interesting world. It captures the zeitgeist, or at least it used to, and sometimes it still does. Architecture takes much longer. It still has to capture the zeitgeist, but it has to be a bit more lasting.
EK: Do you find the timeframe a bit frustrating with architecture?
SH: Not at all. You just can’t be frustrated by architecture; it takes forever. Planning permission takes forever, building takes forever. You can’t be in a hurry. There’s no point in getting worked up about it.
EK: Don’t you feel that the length of time it takes somehow conflicts with capturing the zeitgeist?
SH: You have to see it over a ten-year span rather than the halfyear span. But it isn’t only my background in fashion that gives me a different perspective. I also look at art a lot; that helps.
EK: When did you first take an interest in art?
SH: I remember starting to seriously look at art from the age of about 13. My father took my family to Lebanon just before the first war there, so it would be about ’72, ’73.

P.S.
Sophie received her diploma from the Architectural Association in 1993 and became a RIBA Chartered Architect only a year later. The design studio, Sophie Hicks Architects, that she founded in 1990 was by then already well established. She’s known for design on a smaller scale as well, having been commissioned for several furniture and product pieces, including a perfume bottle for Paul Smith. Minimize

The school’s home is a stately modernist glass-and-steel design by the academy’s namesake on a quiet street in the posh south side of Amsterdam. It is the last building designed by Rietveld, the most important architect of the movement known as De Stijl; he died before it was completed. The students’ power and sense of entitlement can in many ways be traced back to Rietveld, who designed the school to put their actions and their work on display and make them feel as important as the administration through an egalitarian distribution of space and the careful framing of views into workshops and classrooms. People tend to think of the academy as a holistic unity of institution, building and vision. How could an anonymous office building ever hope to replace that?

Now the storm has passed and students and faculty are busy making peace with their former opponents. But the question remains how to house the growing student population, or whether Holland’s best art school should prioritize quantity over quality. For now, it seems the future of the academy will stay tied to its past, unfolding in a building which is nearly identical today to when it was designed half a century ago. Minimize