Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci recently sat down with Style.com for an interview on his famous models through the years. In his interview he opens up about working closely with the likes of top girls like Natasha Poly, Lea T, Lara Stone and of course his longtime muse—Mariacarla Boscono.
On Lara Stone:
“I remember discovering Lara Stone. She was an exclusive, and she came here by accident to see me because of her friend. I fell in love with this girl—and she was very different compared with the girls at that moment. She has a beautiful form, but she was not the classic skinny girl. [I] fell in love with that. Her story is beautiful to me because I think it shows why it is so important to meet each girl in person—without that personal interaction, you can’t get a sense of who the girl really is.”
On Mariacarla Boscono:
“Some people probably find the idea of a muse outdated, but I think it’s so beautiful, because being a man designing for a woman, I think it’s so great to get an opinion from a real woman. [Designing] for men, for me, is easy, because I’m wearing the clothes and I understand what men need. But for a woman, it’s only my dream, and it’s beautiful to make a dream become reality. And with Mariacarla, I think it is like a real artist. But you know, it’s not only me. Looking at the past: Gianni Versace with Naomi Campbell, Alexander McQueen with Kate Moss, Audrey Hepburn with Monsieur Hubert de Givenchy, Monsieur Saint Laurent with Betty Catroux—everybody had their muse…”
On Lea T:
“There were people who were against a big couture house using a transgender woman in a campaign. We didn’t care what people said, and in the end she wound up doing so many shows for us. [She was there] the first time I translated my couture to a new format; I was going from fashion show to a portrait in the Place Vendôme. So many people were talking about that because I didn’t want to do the catwalk, but so much work goes into a couture collection that I wanted people to be able to see the details.”