“Fashion Should Not Please.” Demna on Fearlesness, Desire, and Why Failing Is Good

The concept of creating desire comes up often in your discourse. Can you expand on that? As a fashion designer how can you create desire?

First of all you have to be your own filter. If you not desire yourself, how can you possibly trigger desire in others? At the same time, collections have to be personal, but it cannot be just that, because in that case it isn’t fashion anymore. If it’s too personal it becomes an art project, and I think we should be careful to distinguish fashion from an art form, because while fashion is about vision, it’s also about product a lot, and it’s about the way we consume. Personal stories are super important, but as a creative and visionary you have to be inspired by the world around you. Fashion is a mirror, but it can be easy to get lost in that, and say, ‘Look, I’m so great, now I made holes everywhere because I went through a war.’ No. There must be a degree of interpretation and translation of your personal story. So, going back to the desire question, I think desire is about sensibility, and you need to kind of train it to create desire, whether it’s a product, a fashion show or a movie, or whatever you do. I think it’s something that you have in you and you have to train it, it’s almost like sports, from a creative POV it’s pretty much like going to the gym. If you don’t train yourself measuring that desire or creativity you’re never going to get there. I personally exchange ideas a lot, ask around a lot: my interns, my assistants, people I live with, even the cook! I want to know in my studio who they think is the potential consumer of something we’re working on. 

How can you train yourself then?

It’s by trying and making mistakes, allowing yourself to make mistakes. Very often in fashion we do not have this space, we do not have the possibility to fail. This is a big problem; today there’s zero patience, we want it now, we want it super successful, we want the blockbuster, but this is very dangerous because in order to make something great you have to fail many times. And the possibility to fail is such an important element which I think we need to bring back in fashion. Especially for young people, because I remember myself, how scared you are that you cannot make it because nobody cares about you, nobody is going to pay for it. So we should tell young creatives: ‘Hey, failing is great!’ Because it’s the only way for you to succeed.