Carton d'invitation

Doug Woodham has written the first substantive biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat to appear in 25 years. Subtitled The Making of an Icon, this book traces the arc of Basquiat's life and his posthumous trajectory into the pantheons of both fine art and pop culture. Moderately known in his lifetime, Basquiat is one of very few artists whose works now sell over 100 million dollars - that puts the 27-year old who died in 1988 of a drug overdose in a select league of seven artists including Picasso, Rothko and Leonardo da Vinci. Licensing deals engineered by his father, the executor of his estate, have meant that Basquiat imagery is emblazoned on everything from sneakers to bathmats!

Who better to unravel the threads of this story than Doug - the former president of Christie's Auction House US and now  a financial advisor to art collectors. He interviewed more than 100 people while working on the book and explores the childhood trauma that coloured Basquiat's life and creation. He also reframes Basquiat through the lens of intellectual giftedness...he was as Doug says in the one percent zone, reading New York Times articles as a child in primary school.

Doug explores how the association with pop culture icons from Madonna to Andy Warhol during his lifetime and U2 and Metallica posthumously became a form of currency - "marketing gold" as it were.

Doug grants that ruthlessness and a sense of knowing helped Basquiat launch himself in the downtown New York scene. And he suggests we should accept that personal agency and creativity are not mutually exclusive.

In this podcast, Doug also unpacks ways Basquiat used fashion to create an indelible mash-up of paint-splattered Armani suits and dreadlocks that still reverberates today.

Find Doug's book in your local bookstore or online! Doug's website is informative as well: https://dougwoodham.com/

To find a video excerpt of this podcast - and to learn more about the Carton d'invitation documentary project - find me on Instagram @cartondinvitation

Original music for this podcast: Aahley Rivera, Chloe Hsu and Myla Carlos.

When I was in Montreal screening my documentary, I met a sincere and creative group of young people who spent their weekends in pattern cutting workshops - and it was in talking to them that I first heard about my guest Julian Roberts. These pattern makers at Lignes de Fuite were experimenting with the possibilities of something called Subtraction Cutting - and they told me all about the inventor of this method, Juilian Roberts.

Julian is a UK fashion designer with 23 years experience as an academic in graduate fashion and textile design as well. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.

As a designer, Julian showed 13 collections of his own under the label names Nothing Nothing as well as Julianand at London and Paris fashion weeks. The British Fashion Council gave him “The New Generation Award” five times! 

In 1998, Julian developed a method of garment cutting that has since become internationally recognized. He’s literally travelled the globe - taking lessons in Subtraction Cutting to 40 countries and counting! 

And by the way, he shares his work freely online as well - those people I met in Montreal were reading his work - and trying things out step by step.

Julian speaks here about funny memories of going to Paris fashion shows as a student, launching a brand and easing into a career that now encompasses teaching, travelling and creation.

When it comes to fashion students and young designers just starting out, Julian is not at all doom and gloom on the business of fashion. Based on the diversity of his own career, he shares an inspiring and quite comforting take on embarking on a life of design.

Julian can be found on Instagram @subtractioncutting. You will find links there to his "Free Cutting" videos and online resources. You might soon be picking up a pair of scissors yourself! Please be sure to send me any pictures of clothes you might make!

Thank you for listening to this podcast and do subscribe! To learn more about the overall Carton d'invitation documentary project, go to Instagram @cartondinvitation.

Sony Chan is known in  France for her subversive humour on radio and television (you don’t quite know what is happening: a perfectly turned out woman with impeccable manners starts sending up French propriety with absurd commentary). She is also in more recent years a star in Hong Kong, doing sold out comedy shows where she once again inverses tropes with beautiful manners and a lot of style.

Sony is an online fashion icon as well - not an influencer as she will explain but a very active ambassadrice for all things French for her Hong Kong audience.

Sony came of age studying 90s supermodels in magazines. Chameleon Linda Evangelista was her most powerful influence as she struggled with gender as a young person. Ever since, fashion has allowed her to “signal” who she is to the world. 

Always intending to work in “show business”, Sony actually attended a very prestigious architecture school in Strasbourg. Her parents convinced her that university was a good idea and the architecture school was near her house. After that, she managed get herself fired from a string of design or fashion adjacent jobs until she finally made it to the stage in her thirties. She tells funny stories about some of the things she did to lose those jobs!

Just for the record, she did her first stand-up comedy gig wearing a yellow Christian Lacroix teardrop dress!

Nowadays Sony also designs accessories and curates Parisian shopping experiences for her Hong Kong audience. You can find her shop at https://sonychanselects.com/.

She is @sonychanfrance on Instagram

What first inspired me to reach out to Sony and ask her to chat on this podcast was how her story echoed the story of my children, in that she had to adjust to a new culture as a child. She moved from Hong Kong to France when she was 11. Something that wasn’t easy but it seems in Sony’s case to have given her a kind of superpower when it comes to reading cultural codes. 

Andreas Bernhardt has a shy laugh when I ask if he was an “It Boy “ in the 80s and 90s. He certainly was!

A 20-year-old kid from Berlin, he was introduced in one night to “everyone in New York”, that’s Keith Haring to Debbie Harry, thanks to a chance encounter with Joey Arias in Fiorucci. He posed nude for Andy Warhol’s last photographs. He became a queer icon in that unforgettable Gay Paris photo by Pierre and Gilles. And perhaps most importantly, he spent many years of innovation as a hair and makeup artist in Manfred Thierry Mugler’s inner circle. Andreas has always had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

In our conversation, Andreas revels in memories of his life within the Mugler “posse”. He unpacks the details - months of rigorous preparation; last minute perfectionism and excitement; shows starting wildly late season after season! Mugler pushed Andreas to create new materials and new ways of working - and we know that those wigs, hair pieces and diamond eyebrows coming down the Mugler runways have become indelible elements of fashion history! 

By the way, Andreas still has those velvet eyelashes he made for Jerry Hall! 

While Andreas had access to all the party scenes in fashion’s heyday in Paris, he has advice to people who get caught up in fear of missing out. 

Andreas is a philosopher; reflects on beauty and the idea of always working from a place of love. He also underscores the importance of discretion in his profession. Let’s face it, he’s seen everything!  He is careful to respect the trust people put in him. 

Supermodels Debra Shaw and Emma Wiklund encouraged me to have this conversation with Andreas because he was a mentor to them backstage - had always done the research and had the backstory they needed to hit the podium with an extra level of knowingness in their comportment. 

So of course, Andreas and I get around to talking about them and some of the other models who have inspired him. 

Find out more about Andreas @andreashbernhardt on Instagram.

To find out more about my documentary and overall project, visit @cartondinvitation on Instagram. Link in bio has a lot of resources as well.

If you feel inclined, please do subscribe to this podcast on your preferred platform. Thank you for listening.

London was already buzzing about Brian de Carvalho! But now his reach is going global. Fergie and the Netflix team promoting Lena Dunham’s new series Too Much just released a remake of London Bridge and yes, they commissioned Brian to create the fabulous Union Jack corseted gown that Fergie is wearing!

He’s also had a gown appear on the cover of Italian vogue - and Lady Gaga has worn his work. The singer Micah too.

Brian is also fueled by the energy of having very recently presented his second show. It was very well received - despite his fears that people might not have approved of the gown he made of 20,000 razor blades.

Brian's trademark is the Serena corset. John Galliano saw him wearing one at Vogue World and took time to study it carefully. Then he told him he must be a designer -advice Brian took to heart and he quit his retail job and produced his first collection a few months later.

Brian is thoughtful - and intentional - in his exploration of 18th dress to express modern queer issues. I hope you enjoy meeting him here in this podcast episode.

Please subscribe if you enjoy this series. Check out my Instagram which gives you an idea of my larger project @cartondinvitation. There is a video excerpt of this interview there too.

Find Brian at https://www.briandecarvalho.co.uk/

Original music by Ashley Rivera, Myla Carlo and Chloe Hsu.

Back in the 90s, when Supermodels headed down the runways from Chanel to Versace to Mugler, Emma Wiklund (formerly Sjoberg) was always one of the chosen few.

Emma was at the centre of what a lot of people now think of as a Golden Age of fashion, whether that day she was the embodiment of total luxury in a high collared Lanvin jacket cut by Claude Montana or the height of edgy cool in a metallic bikini by Mugler. Of course, we can't forget she danced in Mugler's motorcycle dress in the Too Funky video by George Michael and ?. She tells stories here about how that infamous shoot went!

After modeling, Emma went on to become a busy film star in France - think the four Taxi movies. Now she is back in Sweden - an entrepreneur who has created an eponymous skincare line, Emma of Stockholm. She went back to school to learn how to build a company and she invested her modeling money (that was scary) to make it work. In recent years, Emma has beome one of Sweden's most successful skincare entrepreneurs!

Emma is savvy, charming and refreshing - and I was thrilled to sit down and be able to interview her again after all of these years. 

She shares what it was like as Anna Wintour and Andre Leon Talley helped Karl Lagerfeld style her Chanel runway looks in the atelier. Humble, she laughs about how she never got the best dresses on all those runways she walked at Versace but Donatella told her she was cast because whatever she wore sold - in Germany. She recalls the atmosphere in the Dior atelier under Gianfranco Ferre: models had to “zip it”. Be seen and not heard. 

And Emma shares many touching remembrances of her work with Mugler and Montana. She expresses both delight and bemusement that people such as Beyonce and Lady Gaga relaunch iconic pieces that were originally designed for her to wear.

We explore what it meant to be a model - the intricacy of the co-creative process.

Find Emma @emmaofstockholm on Instragram or at https://emmas.com/about/about-emma

Please subscribe wherever you may listen. I thank you for your support of my efforts to create an oral history archive!

Check out my Instagram @cartondinvitation for a video version of this interview and to learn about my documentary project.

Original music by Ashley Rivera, Chloe Hsu and Mlya Carlos.

Onerva Luoma is a young Finnish artist who has come up with a clever - and really fun project - that combines fashion and a library card to make a statement about consumption and so much else.
In her own words, Onerva explains, "The conceptual artwork is called Lead Me out of here (even if I Do not Know if such a Place Exists) and it consists of 55 paintings made on old clothes. Anyone can borrow a painting with a library card, so the artworks will continue their journeys out of the library and into various private and public spaces and situations. The work explores what a meaningful relationship with clothing might look like in the age of climate catastrophe and how we might see clothes as something more than commodities, objects to be bought and sold."

The first time I heard about how destructive fashion was to the environment was back in the 80s in Paris when Katherine Hamnet started talking about green cotton during her fashion shows - so that’s a long time ago. Young designers today must be scratching their heads wondering why ethical production and for that matter consumption practices haven’t evolved all that much since then. As I work on the Carton d'invitation project, I encounter young designers who are trying in their way on a small scale, to address these issues. And that’s inspiring. When I came upon what Onerva Luoma is up to in Helsinki, I contacted her right away and asked if she would come on this podcast to share her brilliant project.

By the way, this is a very inspiring podcast for anyone involved in library work - and I want to thank Danielle Lum of the Toronto Public Library system who consulted with me in advance of talking to Onerva.

Find out more about Onerva: www.onervaluoma.com or go to Instagram @onervaluoma.

Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you might be listening!

To learn more about the Carton d'invitation project and my documentary, check out my Instagram @cartondinvitation

Thank you to Ashley Rivera, Chloe Hsu and Myla Carlos for the original music.

Ubiquitous on runways and in print for decades, Philadelphia-born Debra Shaw has changed the rule book on aging out of the modelling business. She is as busy - and as cool - as she has ever been, darting back and forth across the Atlantic for shows in New York and the European fashion capitals, always stopping when she can to spend time in Paris which is her adopted home. Back in the 90s, I would interview Debra in the midst of backstage excitement at shows by Galliano for Dior, McQueen for Givenchy, Chanel and Mugler. With her perfect line and attention to what designers were trying to communicate, Debra was given the job of wearing some of the most iconic designs in the history of fashion's Golden Age.

It was a very big honour to be able to interview her again so many years later for the Carton d'invitation Podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast and if you also have cherished memories of Debra's work, feel free to leave a comment. Your support for the Carton d'invitation project is much appreciated.

Learn more about my documentary and research - plus see videos of Debra, back then and today, by visiting my Instagram feed @cartondinvitation.

Original music: Ashley Rivera, Chloe Hsu, Myla Carlos

Photo credit: Pierre Tremblay

Via a childhood in Quebec City, fashion studies at LaSalle in Montreal, followed by tutelage under Louise Wilson at Central Saint Martins, Frederic Tremblay has carved a unique place for himself in fashion. He's worked in design leadership roles with everyone from Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch, Reed Krakoff, Draper James (Reese Witherspoon), Michael Kors, Puppets and Puppets and currently Belle and Bloom.

And lucky fashion students at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) benefit from his mentorship as well.

A "humble" Canadian, Frederic puts the focus on all of the great designers he has worked with, building brands from the ground up - but the more you listen to this podcast, you will understand that he is a visionary albiet discreet powerhouse!

His job title changes depending on the assignment: Creative Director/ VP, Design / Senior Design Director / Design Director/ Head of Design / Design Consultant!

Frederic has wonderful stories about his 80's clothing choices (a lot of London-inspired polka dots); sneaking into Paris shows as a CSM student even if it meant setting fire to fake Galliano "treasure map" cartons d'invitation just outside the tents; the thrill of working as a new graduate in the studio of Martine Sitbon (even if his main job was holding pins)!

He speaks fondly about the process of intuiting what his many high profile clients want to communicate through their brands and he speaks appreciatively of the "village" it takes to launch a collection.

Check Frederic's Linked In for more background. Or visit @tremfred on Instagram.

To learn more about the Carton d'invitation podcast and documentary project, visit Instagram @cartondinvitation

You can find a short video version of this podcast on Instagram and Youtube.

Original music: Ashley Rivera, Chloe Hsu and Myla Carlos.

Publicist, model agent, playwright, erstwhile stylist, Fred Howard was the publicity manager for Linda Evangelista’s comeback tour last year. Fred has spent a life in the so-called fashion trenches. Among his skills is preparing models for the red carpet, (avoiding the fries that can bloat and turning up the music and the AC on the way to the venue)! Fred’s worked at Elite Models and DNA, scouted countless models, served as media coach to still more, He even chaperoned models’ apartments years ago, perfecting his knack for helping people be philosophical about failure to launch in the way they expected. He has managed PR and philanthropic initiatives for various celebrities and he continues to write - he and his cousin, acclaimed director, Raelle Myrick-Hodges created the play “He Has The Prettiest Handwriting” which sold out at the Public Theatre in New York in 2022.  Fred is now working on a piece of first person creative non-fiction--sharing tales of growing up in a military family, coming of age as a Black gay man in conservative North Carolina of the 80s, and his youth in the fashion trenches from the late 90s and 00. He’s also serving as a consultant for a scripted series currently in development, set in the fashion industry. Fred is the kind of a person who has always been there but one didn’t always know what he was doing. He is a connector - and someone people can count on to craft - and even protect - their public images. He is an insider who has many stories - and he tells them in this episode of Carton d’invitation!

Find Fred on Instagram @bushwickfreddy

Original music @leonthesinger

Please subscribe here for more fashion conversations! Your support for my project means a lot.

A video trailer for this podcast is available on the Carton d'invitation Youtube channel.

To discover more about my documentary and this oral history project, find me on Instagram: @cartondinvitation