Meet Yolanda Zobel, Who Has a Whole New Way of Seeing the House of Courrèges
Yolanda Zobel is the new artistic director of Courrèges, her appointment being announced early in the year. My own association with her goes back much further; when I first met her, she was working with Paulo Melim Andersson at Chloé. Since then, Zobel has worked for Jil Sander and Acne Studios, among others, behind the scenes, but pivotal to the creative life of their design studios. Moving center stage is a first for her, and the conversation which follows was not something she took lightly; like everything she does, there’s a sense of things needing to be thoughtful and worthwhile, not just a frivolous throwaway moment.
Our chat not only goes into a little biographical sketch about who she is and how she sees Courrèges, but also what she believes is important when you take on the leadership of a house. Zobel is a spirited and soulful individual, and a smart and opinionated conversationalist, one who’s quick to point out that this new vision of Courrèges isn’t only hers, but a shared venture. That includes the house’s CEO Christina Ahlers, and the collaborators whom Zobel has drawn close around her, like Marcelo Alcaide, a good friend from her adopted home of Berlin, who has worked across art, fashion, and throwing club nights; Matthieu Prat, of the multidisciplinary studio Diplomates; and the New York art director Babak Radboy, who has proven to be such a terrific coconspirator with Telfar Clemens.
And as you’ll see from Zobel’s show Wednesday evening in Paris, they’re not the only people she has chosen to partner with. The Courrèges after-party will be hosted by artist Isabel Lewis, and also feature participation from Vava Dudu, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Yasmina Dexter, and DJ Marcelle, amongst others—an after-party, incidentally, which will be live-streamed to seven radio stations around the world. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First things first.
Yolanda, thanks for taking the time to speak. I know you’re not super keen on being interviewed.
You know why? It’s that there’s a lot of noise [in our industry] right now, and the difference between where I was when I started [at Courrèges] and now is huge. So, I had to really start talking, start communicating through words, instead of through [something like] the choice of colors. But I’m still really far away from being confident. I like it, I like to talk, but I don’t want to talk really so much before what I’m doing is out there.
That’s fine; in some ways this is as much about telling people who you are as what you’re going to do. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
I’m German, from Konstanz, though my parents are not from here, they chose this place to live at the end of the ’60s. My mother is French, from the north of France, and my father’s family is originally from East Germany, but he was born in Morocco and raised in Spain, then he moved to Germany when he was 16 to study, and met my mom, and then they moved to Konstanz. It’s at the border with Switzerland. It’s beautiful, but a bit boring. But there was this artistic vibe, because Ulrike Ottinger, this amazing filmmaker—do you know her? You have to check her out—and some painters who were friends with my parents lived there, so there was obviously something that attracted them all to move there, similar minds.
I grew up in this little town that seemed to be very uninteresting, but they were having a lot of parties at home and they were going out a lot. My French mother, this beautiful woman, she was really into clothes and was really sad that she left Paris, and she invaded this German town with her Frenchness. And then my dad, he does jewelry, he was a very passionate person, always surrounded by a lot of people. He is eternally young. When he came to Berlin a few months ago I took him out, though the only thing that stops him these days is the cigarette smoke!
How old is he?
He is 76. He has this unbreakable spirit, and I think that’s much more where I’m coming from than [where I am from] geographically. I come from this mother and this father, who really gave it their all. [Laughs] And without them, there would be no such thing as me being here.
And you’re living between Berlin and Paris, right?
I have a place in Paris and I have a place in Berlin, and I go to Berlin all the time because this is a place where I feel I’m at home, and I can just, like, breathe. I could never let Berlin go. I’ve had to let it go for periods of time [because of work], but I would always come back, and I decided not so long ago to really happily remain. I found this amazing apartment in Kreuzberg. And you know whether it’s there or in Paris, I need to live where there’s everybody, from all over the place, where it’s vibrant; I really like living with all sorts of cultures. Kreuzberg is very authentic; there’s a coexisting, co-living, and co-respecting of German culture and Turkish culture. There are no chains, there are no Starbucks.
Whereabouts are you in Paris?
In the 10th, between Paradis and Saint-Denis. Very lively, and very bubbly, and very brilliant. I go out on the street and I feel alive. And I take usually the Vespa, I like the fresh air, and the Vespa feeling gives me a bit of . . . freedom. And then I arrive really smoothly [to work] in the Eighth Arrondissement. When I discovered the Vespa, I was like, Perfect.
Was it a big decision to go back to Paris?
For Courrèges, I could come back to Paris; I felt that it had a spirit of revolution, of being counter-bourgeoisie, of radical change, of innovation . . . things that I was like, okay, this house did things in the ’60s which are really relevant today.
I guess Courrèges was a liberation of the fussiness of Parisian couture, the constraint of all that construction and high heels . . . .
And then you had that genderless thing going on, the uniformity, all the same flat shapes and patterns; so very avanti. I could connect to that. And then I felt, okay, this is not happening by accident that Christina [Ahlers, the house’s CEO] has been chosen to revive Courrèges, and it’s not an accident that she is calling me and saying that I’m the only person she wants to do it with.
Is it an irrelevant thing, these days, for a woman to go to a house started by a man? We have Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy . . . .
You mean does it matter or not? I think it matters.
In what way, and why?
I think it matters because in today’s society, men and women are still far from being equal, and if this world would be more addressing the feminine essence of nature, it would be a better place. It took me quite a while to connect to my womanhood, my femininity. And then to realize, oh my god, everything is in there that I was looking for. So I think for fashion, there can be something very helpful in doing clothes, because I look at every woman and I see all these different women: We are mothers, and we are lovers, and we are daughters, and we are sisters. I adore women. I adore men too, but women are like . . . magic. And that’s why it’s kind of relevant that women do clothes for women.
And how will that play out in your Courrèges?
I want to take this idea of Courrèges, which is in this little box, take it down to the street and open it up, slowly give it freedom. It’s a nice metaphor because I feel the Courrèges woman is a bit petite and tight and her shoulders are small and she has this miniskirt and everything’s a bit square and everything is constructed. And I want to free her so she can move again.
It was always so much about precision, clothes meant to evoke a futuristic, modernist sensibility.
Well I want to give—how do you make the clothes with that story today wearable? Like the past is still the past, and I want the spirit of the house . . . .
What do you think that spirit is?
The spirit is about freedom, that’s very important. And emancipation, so inclusiveness in terms of gender and age. I kind of like to talk about “humanwear” more than womenswear or menswear . . . . You obviously have to be mindful, and mindful today means that you cannot say any more “I am not political” or “I am not an activist” or “I am not interested in social culture.” Because otherwise you are really living against every sense of . . . duty, I think. It’s a duty to make the work we’re doing. It’s not about decoration, it’s not about simple tricks, it’s about realness, about digging deep, really deep; thinking about I need to feel good, about how I spend my money and what I buy. It’s not about ways to be wasteful.
Do you see men’s being part of your story of Courrèges that you want to tell?
Definitely.
So you’re also doing menswear. Or, things that men can wear. Let’s put it that way.
Yeah, that’s a better way, because menswear, we can’t talk about that yet. Because I’m not a magician. In three months, I want to; this is not a six-month project or a one-year project. I am taking this very seriously, in the way that I’m choosing my collaborators to make this happen.
Tell me about why you’re doing a show and not, say, a showroom presentation?
We’re doing a show because I’ve arrived and I need to mark my presence. And I think the initial act, which is the show—the first show—is going to be read, very clearly, as an initial act. And it will be very clear that it’s a work in progress. So I’m not there to say, “Here I am, and I’ve solved the problem of new-generation Courrèges in three months,” because it’s not a one-man show, or a one-woman show, it’s a lot of different aspects that have to be curated in a mindful way. So it’s a very delicate exercise that I’m loving every moment, and this show will be the beginning of a long love story.
Is the atelier still based at Rue François 1er, above the store?
Yes, yes. And for me, it’s very powerful to be in that place, obviously. I changed [the studio] to the room where Mr. Courrèges was working also, and it’s a bit . . . it’s so full of stories and history and every crack on the wall . . . you know? It’s his. It’s kind of amazing to come to such a place. It’s like time has left signs. It’s a bit run-down, which is really funny. I like it. There has not been a surface cleanup. But we started to paint fresh, and build some walls, and make new offices, and started to take—we started taking the dust away that was all over the place. And I had to meet all of the people working in there, and talked to them one by one, so it was like meeting everybody. Going to the archive . . . .
How was that?
It’s amazing. Like 10,000 pieces or something like that. And they were being unboxed and categorized. And an immense . . . the hugest thing because it hasn’t been touched since Mr. Courrèges left, it’s untouched. Nobody took care of, like, “Okay, we’re going to save this, give this to a museum . . . .” It’s amazing to see the clothes, and try them on.
What things have you particularly liked in the archives?
The very famous things. But there were other things. There were other things that are very bizarre. The combination of materials, also the shapes, unexpectedly drape-y, rustic-y . . . . I’m very attracted to the cape, like, his obsession with the cape. I was drawn to the cape, I was drawn to the shoes . . . .
What were the shoes like?
The shoes are amazing. It’s like, simple, perfect, architecture design, functional, sexy . . . .
Are they flat? High?
Yeah, flat, or with little heels, but mostly flat. No high. Actually, there’s one high, that is also quite interesting.
Are those from the ’60s? The ’70s?
They come more from the ’70s or so. And I really like the suit, le tailleur, the pant with the jacket, the pant with the shirt, the pant with the T-shirt, the pant with the tunic. So I was really into that, and for me this is one thing that I am really attracted to play with. And I love [them] being done in the same fabric, the top and the bottom; that’s the idea of a tailleur, no? But how to make these tunics that are between a minidress and a top. So very interesting . . . . And then this functionality of all of these little pockets and buttons, very fun. The question is: What are the archetypes of Courrèges? And then the other thing . . . What is futurism today? That was the other big question I had to deal with, constantly every morning when I wake up. [For me] it’s going back to nature, we are part of nature, so how do you implement that?
Do you feel that there’s a different energy in Paris?
Yes, there is a different energy. Even though I’m always very critical of Paris. But there is a new generation of kids, less established people, and I want to work with them. I’m really into that. And that’s why I like New York also, because the American way of doing thing when it comes to clothing, and selling clothes, and labelling clothes, and so on, it’s kind of sexy and a bit more fresh and spontaneous.
I feel there is this incredible energy and explosion of youthful activity; it’s really great, really positive.
That’s what I mean, no matter what generation you are, there’s a responsibility, especially for the older generations, that have not have—that maybe didn’t grow up with certain things, the lack of being brought up with people who are not following the norm, or are thinking outside of the box. And also maybe not being part of the minority, politically or culturally. There’s a whole new generational way of thinking, and for the younger people, it’s something that they just grew up with.
It’s intrinsic.
Because they have had that information from the beginning . . . but it’s the duty of the older ones to really look into too. They cannot just say, “I have nothing to do with this, because I did my time.”
What were you doing before coming to Courrèges?
I took some time off, it was very important . . . after Acne, before running to do more, I took this quick turn away from work, and I think this also made me who I am today. I had a break, a full break, and it was like this reconnecting with who you are, and finding out about things that you couldn’t get an answer—like no one could give you an answer to come problems—so for me connecting with nature, and connecting with myself, how do I do that? So I went to India and started to stop being distracted by other things and just being with myself, and started to feel good. And this feeling good and this knowledge and this wisdom and this inner feeling, this is what I brought back, and what made me want to work again.
