2023-11-16 16:25:03
Trained at La Cambre (and worked at Balenciaga, Dior and Louis Vuitton), Belgian designer Nicolas Di Felice has achieved the impossible: waking up the sleeping beauty of French luxury, the house of Courrèges. Meeting with a creative director separately.
André and Coqueline Courrèges created the Courrèges house in 1961. How do you appropriate this heritage?
Nicolas Di Felice: Inheritance is not just formal. When you listen to the interviews with André Courrèges, who we associate a lot with futurism and who was described as an engineer, you realize that he especially wanted to dress people in the street, and that speaks to me. Having the same concerns is a good start.
An example ?
I find myself in vinyl (Courrèges’ favorite material, editor’s note). It can easily be linked to cinema and music. In the patterns, there is a play on geometry, the skirts for example are perfect circles. And when I have models wear my creations, I always ask myself: is this really Courrèges?
You talk regarding a quest for hedonism to qualify your Spring-Summer 2024 pre-collection.
I imagined the search for a certain hedonism, like a road trip that sails towards a new-age community and a calm culture. The materialization of this idea is linked with my history at the party and the world of the night, where my freedom is. In theory, I watched several documentaries on these new-age cultures, as well as iconographic and audiovisual documents. The silhouettes and clothes are a mix between my ideals, my fantasies and visual documents.
You are linked to the party, you organize Courrèges Rave Parties and you have co-composed the soundtracks for your parades. What place does culture occupy in the House?
I build my collections like stories and I work on them with many friends or collaborators who are part of the world of culture. I integrate them from the creative process, and not just when producing images. I think it comes from the fact that I went to the La Cambre school, which is very arty. I had classes with other students, and not just those in fashion.
What remains of your time there?
I don’t find that being an artistic director is being an artist. On the other hand, this way of working, by integrating culture omnipresently, gives me the energy to create.
Your fall-winter 2023-2024 fashion show in Paris was orchestrated by models whose faces were frozen on their phones. What interpretation should we draw from it?
I wanted to represent the new hunched silhouette that was created by being on our phone. The show also highlighted the distance that is established between people, while we are constantly connecting to others via these technologies. It represented the journey from the light from his phone to his inner light.
Do you understand creation for men and women in the same way?
In 2023, everything is much more fluid, open and free, so I approach both in the same way. There are a lot of common lines between the two bodies and I always have my creations tried on both a female model and a male model.
What definition would you give to the sexy radicality of some of your silhouettes?
It’s liberating the body, and not just the woman’s, that makes this sexy. I want to offer clothes in which you can feel free. Free in movements, but also to be ourselves. Freedom makes you sensual.
The following ?
We are going to open three stores next year: in Paris, there will soon be something new and bigger. Otherwise, we are opening one in the United States and one in Korea.
System magazine looked back on your first three years at Courrèges by talking regarding “Anatomy of a relaunch – The archives of the present”. How did you construct and select your highlights from the last three years for this look back?
I selected a parade plan; it’s something that I love because it’s behind the scenes, and the show is the reward. There are my first campaigns done with Spyros Rennt (he is a photographer specializing in party photography, until the last ones with David Sims). The objects present are relics. Not forgetting the letter I wrote to get this job!
@nicolas.difelice
www.courreges.com
By Anaïs Dubois
Photo Tom de Peyret
1700185747
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