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"I am not a self-confident person” – seven words it is almost impossible to imagine Carine Roitfeld uttering and yet utter them she does, on the set of the NET-A-PORTER shoot. The style icon, uber-stylist and publishing powerhouse is apparently not as assured as she always seems. That she has put herself in the public eye at all, says Roitfeld, is down to two men: “Mario Testino convinced me to put my style on a picture and that gave me confidence. Then I met Tom Ford. I had worked on my own for ten years and I never felt that confident about my style. But Tom was like my stamp of approval. We had the same ideas of fashion and about what was sexy. I was his feminine side.”
Roitfeld’s work with both – the trio collaborated during Ford’s 14-year tenure at Gucci and later at Yves Saint Laurent, with Roitfeld acting as Ford’s “muse” – is enduring. The campaigns they created, and indeed Roitfeld’s shoots with Testino for Vogue Paris, are referenced – yet never emulated – time and time again.
Of course, there have been other influential fashion editors, other stylists who create aesthetics rather than just interpreting fashions, but still Roitfeld stands out. Few editors could leave the “gilded cage” of Vogue, as she described it, and set up an entirely new publishing brand, as she has done with CR Fashion Book. Even fewer with such success – the first edition, launched last September, sold out internationally.
But why? What is it about Roitfeld that sets her apart? “Carine is the ultimate woman’s crush,” explains The Edit’s Editor-in-Chief, Lucy Yeomans, who set Roitfeld the challenge of styling her own look for the new season, by taking pieces from her own wardrobe and mixing them with her picks from the NET-A-PORTER rails. “Not a girl’s crush: a woman’s crush.”
Which explains why, when it comes to Roitfeld, the details are the most important thing. Today, those details are as follows: Her breakfast is hearty – oatmeal, a banana, blueberries and a Starbucks tea. Her outfit is sleek and entirely black. “I like black because it is easy,” she explains, referring to her Balenciaga pants as “jogging” (French fashion slang for casual tracksuit bottoms). On her feet, she sports furry, aprés-ski-type Céline boots (the snowy New York weather necessitating practicality) and on top, the type of tight, wool sweater that ballet dancers favor when warming up at the barre.
In fact, a one-hour ballet lesson now kick-starts Roitfeld’s mornings each day. The exercise is “difficult” she says, but she swears by its physical benefits, which, as her signature body-con style regularly reveals, are clearly working.
Her slight, toned, irrefutably sensual frame is all the more attention-grabbing because she is 58 and also a grandmother. Nine months ago, Romy, her daughter Julia Restoin Roitfeld’s baby girl, arrived, which the “birth” theme of CR Fashion Book’s inaugural issue commemorated. Roitfeld cherishes Romy. Her insistence that she is to be known to her as “babushka”, Russian for “grandmother” or “old woman” – her beloved late father was Russian – made the New York gossip columns, so shocking seemed to be the idea of Roitfeld embracing such a mature role. “Aging – I don’t like it all,” she admits. “I don’t care about wrinkles, I don’t have many. [This is true. She swears by facials and month-long stints at Chiva-Som, the Thai health spa her friend Kate Moss recommended to her.] But my body gets tired. So I do ballet to compensate for the loss of strength.”
Indeed, dance is the theme of CR Fashion Book’s new issue, released this month, which accounts for today’s top-volume playing of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Roitfeld appears, camera-ready, to a fanfare of horns, prompting her to strike a series of graceful, balletic poses in a Saint Laurent djellaba. Swathed in voluminous dusky chiffon, she appears a regal black swan, heavy black kohl lining her sparkling green eyes.
Minutes later, that sharp, hawk-eyed gaze surveys the rails laden with new-season pieces as she contemplates her next look. Intently, she inspects the front, back and inside seams of each and every piece in the line-up, which runs the gamut from Altuzarra to her own Junya Watanabe. There’s never a negative comment or even a skeptical raising of her carefully arched eyebrows. “She’s a new designer,” she explains to a member of her entourage, who enquires about Alessandra Rich, after Roitfeld inspects a languid gown by the London red-carpet specialist. “Love!” she purrs, surveying a pretty pink Christopher Kane cocktail dress. (Roitfeld admits she mostly wears clothes by designers with whom she is friends.) “This is the pair I meant to buy!” she enthuses, placing her French-manicured hands upon Azzedine Alaïa bandage stilettos. “I love shoes,” she confesses. She favors Gianvito Rossi’s footwear because, she says, like Manolo Blahnik, he has mastered the skill for sculpting seductive stilettos, which are both “chic and comfortable”.
It was Testino, again, who prompted her to ditch her ballet flats and commandeer high heels. While the move helped to nstigate a new mode for the vertiginous decorative shoe, Roitfeld explains that, in truth, she gravitated to high heels for practicality and equality purposes: “Mario is so tall and I wanted to be tall working alongside him.”
Her style advice, as you would expect, is fearless. “Use what’s underneath – put it outside,” she instructs, assembling a Miu Miu look by placing a bra top over a sweater. “Do what you are not supposed to do, like wear white shoes all year round, which is what I like to do,” she goes on. “That is one of my tricks.”
It is not true, though, that she makes all her fashion choices without interference. The last word on a Carine Roitfeld look customarily goes to her partner, Christian Restoin. “I always ask him what he thinks and he might tell me not to wear something like a sleeveless dress,” she says. A fashion entrepreneur, Restoin founded cult label Equipment – best known for introducing masculine work shirts into women’s wardrobes by interpreting them in soft, washed silk – in 1976.
After featuring the shirts in French ELLE, where Roitfeld first worked as a stylist, she met Restoin at a dinner party in 1983. “This is a classic,” she says proudly – even though Restoin has long since sold the company – buttoning up a black Equipment shirt over a slip dress by Carine Gilson. “I am not part of the ‘buy and throw away’ fashion generation,” she says. “I have a respect for quality. I like things which get better as they age.”
Of that, Carine Roitfeld is a true living example.
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