In the latest installment of 92nd Street Y (a New York nonprofit cultural and community center), former Executive Director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Fern Mallis, sat down with International Herald Tribune Fashion Editor, Suzy Menkes—a journalist with a career that spans more than forty years and a woman who is adulated for daring to write what she actually thinks. Below are a series of our favorite excerpts:
On The Met exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture
“It didn’t have enough of the sense of anger and freedom and drama that was punk.”
On Free Fashion Trips
“I don’t go where I am paid to go and I think that is the way it should be.…Someone like Valentino, such a generous man, so many times he invited me to go many places you can’t even remember what they’re all called. I never went on the boat even though he asked. Of course, I didn’t really have the bikini for it.”
On Fashion in Emerging Markets
“I went to Africa four times last year. The level of handwork is just magical. I went to Nairobi, where they have collectives making bags for Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney.…If these things can be properly regulated by honorable people, then fashion can be a wonderful way of getting people out of poverty.”
On Asian-American Designers
“They have this wonderful American spirit of can-do, get on with it and believe in yourself, which is a very good combination.”
On Kanye West, the “Artiste”
“What I would say to him, particularly after his absolutely brilliant performance Monday, is, ‘Don’t give up the day job or in his case the night job.’”
On Her Foray into Social Media
“It’s equivalent to the revolution and what a privilege to live in such an era. It’s a question of whether you use it intelligently. I try to train myself not to go home at midnight and start looking at my e-mails. I don’t always succeed. I have a Facebook page. I am not tweeting at the moment. During the collections, I am absolutely flat-out. It is very heavy. Heavy is the wrong word because I love it. But it is an enormous amount of work.”
On the European Fashion Houses
“Tragically, all of the big bosses never come to me. I am sure they go to Anna [Wintour] and ask her advice. I tell people what I think, and that is probably not what they want to hear. Fashion [companies] built as houses are like families. Yves Saint Laurent was absolutely built that way. People were treated like family and they felt like family. It isn’t like that anymore. It’s much tougher, not necessarily better or worse.”
