Interview: The enchanted world of Fifi Chachnil

Interview - Fifi Chachnil's sofa in the living room - boudoir of her house, rue Jean Jacques Rousseau.

How long have you been doing fashion and lingerie?

I've been making clothes since 84, lingerie since 96. Originally it was a slightly improbable, very excessive ready-to-wear that was found on stage or in nightclubs. I had a hard time making girls understand that they could dress like a majorette to go to work at the bank. It never happened. In 95, I was taking photos in Los Angeles and there, a revelation! I saw people in panties rollerblading, the idea came to me to classify my creations under the lingerie category, which allowed me to make no concessions on style.

(Fifi Chachnil in 1995 in Los Angeles. Photo © Charles Petit)

What is the essence of your style?

My Mary Poppins outfits reached a very high level of femininity, humor, and connection to the show; they were a daily way for me to express myself very loudly and strongly. Excessively short things, frilly panties with lots of ruffles on the buttocks, skirts to show the panties underneath, corseted details. I made maternity dresses with a fur bra based on the idea of ​​a wool baby doll, sequined, feathered, or studded themes. It was a fantastical way of dressing that certainly worked better as underwear than as clothing.

Where did this inspiration come from?

Perhaps a desire for a clear contradiction with the trend of Japanese fashion, black and unstructured. Of course, there was Mugler, there was Gaultier. I was very close to Pierre et Gilles and I worked a lot alongside them. Japanese people and a few Americans bought Fifi Chachnil, but we never presented during fashion weeks, we did everything in an anarchic way. Twelve years after starting out, I told myself that we were going to have to rationalize. Girls now wear sequins and feathers under their clothes, but they don't have to be totally extroverted and totally crazy to go out like that.

(Vintage Chachnil. Fall Winter 1994 Collection. Photo © Fifi Chachnil)

Who were the first celebrities to wear your designs?

The singer of the group Les Mikado, Pascale Borel, Nina Hagen, Muriel de Niagara; then there was Vanessa Paradis, Zazie, girls who were on stage. The problem was that they would undress when they left the stage to put on jeans… And there, I cried. I would have liked them to keep these clothes on in the street, for it to be really assumed. I don't like dressing up. I dressed like that, I rode my bike in these little panties, platform heels with two of my daughters on the front and back luggage racks.

How did you meet the visual artist duo Pierre et Gilles?

We met at the opening of the Fashion Museum. On Jack Lang's initiative, a fashion show had been organized just for François Mitterrand and his friends, at the same time as a Rita Mitsouko concert and a Pierre et Gilles exhibition. For security reasons, we spent hours in this place waiting for the president. It's a love story that began, a family story, we recognized each other on something we have in common. It can't be explained with words. We hit it off instantly and the day after we met, we were doing things together. Pierre and Gilles needed costumes for a Lio record cover, and it started. They came to pick things and then, of course, they idealized everything.

(Fifi Chachnil poses for Pierre et Gilles. Photo © Pierre et Gilles)

Today you are also very close to Philippe Katherine with whom you carried out a music project?

Yes, friendship is a way to find common desires. Philippe Katherine and I understand each other, he wrote me little songs because I found it very difficult to write. I would throw ideas at him and he would transform them into magnificent songs. I performed them for a record that we recorded. The story is beautiful. I have always sung for my friends and every 20 years, I do something. The pianist is Charles Trenet's ex-pianist. In the studio, we had amazing musicians.

(Fifi Chachnil and Philippe Katerine concert in Alençon in 2010. Video: Laurent Kleynjans)

Have you always put on spectacular and warm shows without taking into account the collection calendar?

It's always about the pleasure of doing things with people I share the same taste, at the moment it presents itself.
These little shows respond to the desire to bring together everything I love: light, image, sound, teamwork. After having been in the service of clothing, staging a collection can seem like a gratuitous act. It took me a while to understand the system: I forgot to invite the buyers. It's stupid... There was the fashion show in an ice rink for which my friends learned to skate for over a month before skating wearing my models. Then, the fashion show at the Pauwels circus where Pierre and Gilles did a beautiful number on a bicycle and another on a moped. Tightrope walkers jumped into circles of fire, except that there were no flames. The boys carried the girls in their arms and put them on the swings. Valérie Lemercier paraded at the Paradis Latin in 97 for the first lingerie show with LNA Noguera and Marie-France who came down from her basket while performing a song by Marc Almond.

The show for the launch of the perfume took place at the Lido with all the special effects, water jets etc. The choreographer Blanca Li, very pregnant, was supposed to dance in the middle of the water jet, but on the big day, she was giving birth and Lio replaced her at the last minute, the baby Doll dress was shrunk.

(Fifi Chachnil fashion show at the Lido in 2004. Video Laurent Kleynjans.)

Tell us about your hyper-rational clothing system.

It is the spirit of panoply a fitted dress, straight, simple, to the knees that means nothing but can be flattering with pinkish beige, sky blue or red colors in a crease-resistant and washable material matching the coat with gloves a handbag. I like to marry elegance and attitude with a notion of simplicity.

You know the life of girls. You get up in the morning, but you will have to eventually go until the end of the night and take two or three planes and come back via your daughter's school. So I like the ideal outfit in all circumstances so as not to complicate life. You also have to be able to travel extremely light. The short gloves complete my outfits, they come from Lavabre Cadet.

Are you still making the little bloomers?

Still frilly panties and, this season, bloomers. It's not new, the bloomer was invented by Miss Bloomer in 1923 in the USA, it was a comfortable garment for doing gym. Miss Bloomer was imprisoned for indecency. I made jumpsuits, blouses and bloomers in one piece, in plumetis tulle to wear alone or with a straight skirt whose waist rises up to under the chest to wear under a bolero suit jacket.

You launched a perfume that is completely in keeping with the image of the boudoir?

It was an Englishman, Philippe Maïkovitch, who gave me the idea. We went to see Givaudan, charming people. I loved working on perfume because, like in music, we translate emotions. There is no material, we remain a little in abstraction. I describe the story that I want to tell and they translate.

I wanted a perfume that spoke of the true feminine, and like many of my clothes, this perfume is based on contradiction. Sparkling at the beginning: citrus fruits, then very serious almost masculine notes in the middle: tobacco and amber, and finally the powdery smell of a grandmother's cheek or a baby's forehead, like a shade of talcum powder.

Olfactory memory, I was told, remains intact in the brain. We can perfectly remember the smell of wax on the stairs, or the smell of damp in a country house. Another essential point: the bottle with the bulb. Indispensable, the bulb! Because the gesture is prettier, more ample than with a simple vaporizer.

This perfume, which starts with citrus and ends with a light oriental, was an immediate success and is distributed in all the lingerie boutiques that represent Fifi Chachnil.

Where can we find the Fifi Chachnil brand?

In our stores at 34 rue de Grenelle, 231 feaubourg St Honoré, 68 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Paris and 48, Beauchamp place in Knightsbridge (London).

The brand is present in forty-five countries and what works best for me is choosing a department store, just one, and the best. We tried it in Paris with Le Bon Marché, with whom we were able to build a long-term story. In New York, we are at Barneys. The brand is present in the Middle East, and our points of sale in Jordan are currently very popular with Iraqi women who have become the latest big fans of the perfume.