Fashion people have been wondering for years if Hedi Slimane would give up his photography hobby turned career to return to fashion design. The ex–Dior Homme designer, who put men in the now ubiquitous skinny pants, gave a long-winded e-mail interview to Style.com about fashion blogs and online media and that sort of thing. Most of us have been aware of the digital revolution for some time, but the very end of this discussion is worth reading, because it’s there that Style.com asks what we all really want to know — will Slimane design clothes again? He gave a predictably evasive answer:
I am not really studying one project but different options and collaborations at the same time. Obviously, I know what I want and precisely how I want to do it. When the time is right, what’s the rush?
However, interestingly, Slimane says he has “obviously had a few discussions” about doing a one-off fast-fashion line. But he doesn’t want to do just a capsule collection. “There is something terribly cheap about it,” he says. However, he’s not totally opposed to the concept:
I would not mind and would be open to some evolution of fast retail, if it was aiming for an original design and a long-term commitment. It would become something else. Something like Apple computers, for instance, where design meets a wide audience through innovation and sense. In the future, fast-fashion retailers might change their philosophy toward real efforts to create a world of their own. One can only hope.
Great, so, at some point in the not-so-distant future we are likely to read a headline about how “Slimane Is Back!” and then we’ll get all excited until we catch the subhead about how he designed a neat new laptop! Well, BOO to that in advance.
The Future Of Fashion, Part Three: Hedi Slimane [Style.com]
