IT'S ALL IN THE EDIT: CARLA SOZANNI

ACROSS DECADES AND DISCIPLINES, CARLA SOZZANI BUILDS WORLDS ON HER OWN TERMS

By Christopher Michael

The serenity of Carla Sozzani is almost mythical. As the fashion industry quickens its pace and becomes more reactive to crowd culture, she holds her ground, fully immersed in the moment and her work. Before our interview at her Paris office at the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation, I spotted the Italian editor walking with Adrian Joffe, radiating a quiet, commanding presence amid the barrage of street style flooding the entrance to Dover Street Market. She exudes wisdom without ego, perhaps one of the reasons her influence continues to shape the future of creativity. Having been raised in a family whose culture was undeniably seated in things like art and beauty, she carries their artistic legacy further with the Fondazione Sozzani, an organization that aims “to promote and disseminate the contemporary cultural and artistic activity in all its forms of expression,” in part by empowering the next generation by granting access to the brilliance of the past.

Though she has held many roles—from heading the special editions of Italian Vogue, to running her own gallery, to founding retail space 10 Corso Como—“editor” remains the title most fitting to her work. In a world of screens that constantly reflect messages of change, acceptance, and rejection, Carla manages to remain internally referenced, as if to never have known the touch of imposter syndrome. Finding time almost irrelevant when it comes to matters of good taste, and having sustained commercial and creative success across decades of change, she creates spaces so intimate they feel akin to her own home, with shared values and a unified point of view.

CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL: It’s crazy to think that you’ve been working in fashion for 56 years. Do you remember the first time you found yourself paying attention to things like creativity or curation?

CARLA SOZZANI: It was very early, because my mother was passionate about fashion magazines. When I was a child, I was super interested in fashion. And then I started, in ’68, a small magazine.

CM: There’s such an impressive cultural and creative depth that runs through your family. Was that something that was encouraged by your parents?

CS: We grew up surrounded by beauty in the sense that our parents were art-passionate, and we were going to see museums and churches—not for the religion, but for the art of the churches—all the time. This happened a lot, to give us a sense of beauty and culture. We’re privileged because we were born in Italy. It was not really so much about fashion where we grew up, but more about Renaissance paintings, architecture. This helped to form our aesthetic point of view. Fashion was my passion [when I was] very, very young. Franca, a little bit less. We started to wear Pucci very, very young, and we were going to Courrèges, and then started to wear Saint Laurent in a very steady way, starting ’67, when Saint Laurent opened a boutique in Milan.

CM: And you were saying that you started a small magazine before you went to Italian Vogue.

CS: I started this magazine called Fili di Moda. While I was at Bocconi University in ’68, there was the student’s revolution in Italy. At the time, you had everything from Haute Couture to cuisine to children’s clothes to patterns. There was no ready-to-wear at the time. It was clothes that were quite cheap, already made, not at the atelier. The ready-to-wear stuff, the Yves Saint Laurent stuff in Paris in the Rive Gauche. It was ’66 and Milano ’67. We loved fashion, but we were having all our clothes made by dressmakers. Until, of course, I went to London, ’66, ’67, ’68, and started to buy clothes like mini skirts or trouser pants. There were many places in London where you could find interesting clothes.

CM: And at that time, the cultural codes of each major city were even more disparate than they are today, I’d imagine?

CS: Well, London was very interesting. I spent a few years there because, when I went to university, I studied English. But there was a fashion revolution there. In Italy, it was not that way, especially before ’68. After ’68, things changed in Italy as well as in France. Before that, the real fashion freedom was in London.

CM: And you’ve spoken to the differences in terms of codes, as far as fashion culture in Milan versus Paris.

CS: Milano was more conservative in a sense. Even when Walter Albini started a revolution going from Florence to Milano—he is considered the father of ready-to-wear. He really brought fashion to Milano. It started to be more constructive, like Paris, in terms of having shows. But Paris was definitely more of a revolution. There were so many more brands. Giorgio Armani arrived in Italy around, I think, ’74. Krizia and Franco Ferré came later. Valentino was in Rome. But in Paris, it was amazing—there were so many, even at the very beginning. Then, shows started. There were happenings, events. People were happy. They were applauding, participating. Then there were the Montana and Mugler fashion shows. It was such a contrast. There were very individual voices; each had a point of view and each had its vision. It was like going to the theater. There’s always been this openness in Paris toward foreign designers. Milan has always been interesting, but more conservative in terms of being more attached to Italian designers, Italian community.

CM: As an editor at Italian Vogue and editor-at-large at American Vogue—you’ve credited those experiences for the refinement of your photographic eye as a gallerist, as a curator. Do you feel like today, editor is still the best way to describe the role you play?

CS: Editing is what I feel I know the best, because all my life has been about editing and making choices, be it for a magazine or book or collection. Even when I was working with Azzedine, it was more like editing his work and making choices—but I’m not a designer. Even when I started 10 Corso Como, I’ve always been editing to choose the clothes.

CM: In terms of those spaces you’re talking about—be it the gallery or 10 Corso Como—there’s this serenity that you bring to the way you curate an environment. We’re living in an age of overstimulation today and people are more aware of the importance of the environments we put ourselves in, for better or for worse. How do you go about starting the process of creating a space?

CS: I think it’s an instinct. I’m not a marketing person, because they study what has already happened. I’m not interested in what already happened. I think it’s nice to try to do something personal. I think, when you create a space, it has to be like your home—you invite people to share your values or your point of view, because you cannot please everybody. It’s nice to be surrounded by what I consider beautiful or serene. To have a garden—soft, quiet. I remember when I was saying I wanted to do slow shopping. That was the time of slow food. I didn’t invent anything. Slow food existed. But I wanted to do slow shopping because, in the ’80s, early ’90s, we were shopping like crazy. I shop; therefore, I am. There was no pause. You were queuing at the cashier. And when I created Corso Como I said, “No, I want to create a place where I have chairs, where you sit, where you wait for a beautiful package.” I also was influenced by my voyages to Japan and the art of packaging. In the beginning, people didn’t understand why they had to wait to have tissue paper, and why there were chairs around. Finally, everybody loved it. But in the very beginning, it felt strange.

I remember there was a bookshop in New York that I used to love. There were leather armchairs. I thought it was so beautiful that you don’t only buy a book, but also sit and read it. Not everybody’s going to buy the book, but people will come back. One of the best compliments I’ve ever had is when people would say, “Today, I was a little depressed. I came here, and now I feel better.”

CM: You started it in 1991, and you’ve managed to sustain relevance and commercial success across decades—despite shifts around consumer behavior, psychology, cultural and economic climates. What do you think the secret is?

CS: There’s no secret. Curiosity. Like Azzedine used to say, I like to learn everything. I’m not obsessed by what is new, old, trendy. These words I don’t understand. I think I like everything in life. Everything is inspiring.

CM: You once said that culture is as important as commerce. I wanted to hear more about what you meant by that.

CS: Fashion is culture. Whatever we are surrounded by, be it a chair or a book, is part of our culture. Commerce is something that you want to buy. You want to own something because it has meaning for you. I don’t believe in buying for buying’s sake. But if you have to buy your jacket, say, you want to enjoy the process, to understand the culture behind it, what meaning it’s going to have for you. Hopefully, it’s going to be a piece that you’re going to keep for many years.

For example, what I always loved about Rei Kawakubo, Azzedine, and Margiela—my favorites—is that you can keep wearing it forever. This is sustainable and responsible. These values we are talking about so much today always existed. Depends how you approach commerce and culture. I think they’re the same.

CM: One of the really interesting anecdotes from your time at Italian Elle was being fired and being given the chance to say that you left. Instead, you chose to not be paid out, because you wanted to stand by your decision to feature the designers you did, a lot of whom were not the magazine’s advertisers. How do you find that perfect balance of being true to your vision?

CS: Sometimes, you hesitate. I think it’s important to have this integrity. When I was fired, it was not easy. There were lots of articles in the newspapers. I had to explain to my child that I had been fired. But at the same time, I would have been ashamed of myself if I had done something that didn’t correspond to what I believed. To be paid and go would have been like refusing what I’d been standing for. This would be like deceiving myself, the readers, the photographers we were working with. We had a beautiful project. We believed in it. There was not even a doubt to stand for my choices.

CM: I loved when you said Diana Vreeland was fired. It was a reference, like, I’m standing by this.

CS: Yes, she was fired. And what was amazing was that the Italian people didn’t even know who she was.

CM: In 2017, you established the Fondazione Sozzani, which is committed to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary culture and artistic activity in all of its forms of expression. Could you speak to the project’s inception and its current projects?

CS: The foundation has its roots in the Galleria Carla Sozzani, which I founded in 1990. The foundation became a consequence of all those years of collecting and connecting not only to physical art—photography and clothes—but also experiences, books, memories. In 2016, when I started, my sister was sick. I was feeling the fact that we are all going to go. I was thinking, Maybe it would be good to give to the next generation—to see if I can transfer what I learned. So one of its missions is education. I do it with my daughter [Sara]. She’s very involved to help promote and find talents all over the world. One of the ideas of the foundation is not only to keep archives, but also to use archives. It’s nice to give the possibility to the students to look, to touch, to learn from the physical, because schools can explain a lot in an academic point of view, but it’s difficult when they don’t have archives of clothes. My experience with Azzedine, he was an autodidact. He learned a lot from other masters. He was learning, always.

CM: In regards to the time you spent working with Alaïa, you said, “Nothing has ever felt like work to me in my life.” I was curious as to whether or not that was uniquely applicable to your relationship with Azzedine—or if that’s true about your work in general.

CS: I think it applies to everything. When people ask me, “Why don’t you go on vacation?” My life is a vacation! I enjoy what I do.

CM: It would be a failure on my part to miss the opportunity to ask what your advice would be to people who want to break into this space today.

CS: Well, it has become more complicated than it used to be. The world is much larger today. If I can give advice, I’d say try to stay on your own. First, you have to be convinced you have something to say. This sometimes is not easy when you are young—to find your own way, to be sure of what you want to do. It’s normal. We all hesitate. I wanted to study architecture and I couldn’t. My father didn’t want me to start with fashion. Everybody has a process. When you know what you want, it’s very beautiful to just pursue your beliefs.