June 7, 2011 |
FROM THE VOLT (WINTER 2010)
“There are many faces to my personality,” Anna Dello Russo tells me. “That is why I love clothes so much. It’s more like a different expression of myself. I don’t even know what I am. For me, fashion is perfect, as it conceals a lot and I find it quite therapeutic. It helps me survive as I can make myself feel better hypothetically. I can hide my insecurities and think positively. Fashion is my mantra".
“Beyond the clothes is a very insecure girl. In a good way. I am anxious and also very fragile. Most fragile women try to force all their paranoia and insecurities. In a good way. It’s like, if you live a very hectic lifestyle, you paint your life, you paint your room, you paint yourself to feel better, to feel courage than be like a mouse.” The phone line crackles with laughter. “You can use that as the headline, ‘Anna Dello Russo is a mouse’.”
In the morning she’s flying to New York for fashion week. She’s just got back to Milan from Hong Kong. She will then be flying to London, Milan again, Paris and, finally, Tokyo. In one month. All this is being filmed by an Italian TV crew. They’re doing a documentary, World Fashion Tour. Her excess-baggage fees must be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. How do you pack a month’s worth of three to five daily outfit changes, plus options? “I stop between each city in Milan. I always say, you know I need a pit stop, like when you see Formula 1, you know the cars do a pit stop. Change the tyres, refuel. That’s what I do, change the luggage, refuel. Otherwise, it’d be impossible.”
Originally, when she graduated from university, she had wanted to open her own boutique. Her father said no. In that case, she wanted to be a journalist. He said fine. And off she went to study for a masters degree under Gianfranco Ferre at the Domus. She was “discovered” by Annalisa Milella, who brought her into the Condé Nast fold and encouraged her to go for a job at Itallian Vogue when it was taken over by Franca Sozzani. After 12 years, Sozzani put her forward for the position of editor-in-chief of L’Uomo Vogue.
“It was a great opportunity to work in a different approach. So I took this opportunity and thank God Franca gave it to me, because it was a big step in both my mind and my career. Working on a shoot is different to understanding how to make a magazine. I was lucky, because at that point, the men’s fashion scene, it was unbelievable. It was very strong creatively. It was the time of Hedi Slimane, it was the time of Raf Simons. And, for me, it was an incredible opportunity to understand another market, which was completely different from the women’s market, but at the same time, it was really at a very good moment, during the ‘golden age’.” It also afforded her the opportunity to work regularly with Steven Klein, shooting almost every L’Uomo Vogue cover during her tenure together, because, for her, “he has the most amazing talent when it comes to taking portraits”…
Six years later, though, she stepped down, “Because, at that time, I really was crazy to do fashion for women not men, and I said to Franca, ‘Franca I should go because I need absolutely women’s fashion. I cannot do another men’s collection’ and she said, ‘Yeah you’re right, absolutely you should’, and that’s the story.” Her favourite photographer, though, is Steven Meisel. “And Helmut Newton. Absolutely. I love him so much.”
At the moment, she is editor-at-large at Japanese Vogue, as well as consulting for how many brands? We’ll never know because she will never tell. What she calls her “new career”, though, was born online. To call her the queen of the bloggers would be an understatement. They are all utterly head over heels, as she is for them, for giving her “the chance to be myself in a different way”. As a thank you to the internet and all her supporters she’s releasing a fragrance in time for Christmas. The bottle, of course, is OTT baroque fabulous – a gold, glitter-covered shoe that you can “when it’s finished, use as a bauble, hang it on your Christmas tree”. It will only be available to buy on Yoox.com. She has had offers the whole world over from boutiques that desperately want to stock it, but she likes that it’s only available online, accessible to everyone. She calls it her “little pop triumph”.
She has also had her own blog since February of this year, in which she documents her life, everything from the photoshoots she has worked on to collages of her face atop runway outfits she “j’adr’s”, and photographs of all her many, many collections. Anna is a self-confessed collector of anything that catches her eye: clothes, shoes, costume jewellery, sacred art, miniatures and, most recently, ceramics – her love because they are from the south, like her. As she puts it herself, “I’m so sensitive, and so ‘paranoic’. I like to put ammunition in my life. People take drugs, I take collections. In my country house, there is this gold window. Every season when I go on holiday, this golden window is empty and every season I say, so what are we doing, what are we putting in the window? And I decide the mood. And I start to buy. Because there is a flea market there where you find incredible stuff, which I display inside the gold window. This is my hobby. When I’m finished, I throw it away and start another collection.”
There’s also a rather infamous and regular rules column that Anna posts up on the aforementioned blog every once in a while. The rules are there for herself and her assistants and anyone else who would care to follow them. The favourite and most quoted in the office is “when you don’t feel to dress means that you are depressed. You need a fashion shower”. It all boils down to her being “a bit like a dictator. I’m a bit strict with me. A bit ‘fascist’. I like training people and, with my assistants, I always try to teach them. Train them for fashion. I always say, ‘These are my rules. Listen to me.’ But I have many rules for myself, too. I’m a very disciplined person. Sometimes I break my rules. Well, maybe once. I’m a soldier. Swim every day, study yoga every day. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I have to do it.”
It’s this rigorous daily routine that inspires and focuses her most. Along with daily meditation, because “when you look inside of yourself, the space is endless. It’s infinite. When you practise yoga, because you touch yourself and access your energy, your idea becomes clearer. You have a moment with yourself, with your imagination. Wash away the bad things, leave the good ones. And this helps me. Opens my eyes. Helps me to focus”.
She’s most proud of herself, and when probed, her puppy Ciccolina. They’ve been together for three years. “We have an incredible relationship. We are always together. She sees all the collections. She comes with me to see them. But she doesn’t like to wear any clothes. When I used to be in Japan, you know they have many, many labels for dogs and I used to buy stuff for Ciccolina. I mean, it’s crazy there. But she doesn’t like clothes, she looks at me as if to say, ‘I feel really ridiculous.’ A friend of mine used to call her Natasha Poly, because she’s long and skinny.” And, with that, she’s off. There’s a plane to be caught and packing to be finished.
by Natalie Dembinska
Photographs by Giampaolo Sgura – www.giampaolosgura.com
