Luuux

This year style bible Vogue Paris celebrated it’s ninety year anniversary, with a star-studded party of untold decadence and glamour, and a bumper issue featuring contributions from a substantial chunk of the fashion elite. Needless to say it was a runaway success, but it also proved to be the rather inspired, if sad, reason for the publication’s enigmatic editor, Carine Roitfeld, to step down from her post, bowing out on an undisputed high earlier this month.
Paris-born Roitfeld had held the top position at the French magazine for ten years, but it’s only in the last couple that she has emerged as one of the industry’s most visible stars, with the rise in popularity of front-row snapshots and blog culture turning her into a sartorial icon for women around the world, even more so than many of the celebrities that grace the pages of her magazine.
A former model, Roitfeld was deemed by The Satorialist as‘the sexiest editor in fashion’ (partly down to the fact that she smiles in photos, like a normal person), and though she has already categorically stated that she did not leave Vogue in order to work with her close friend Tom Ford on his new womenswear line (and we’re going to ignore those murky rumours about her being fired), we hope she finds some new exciting project to dazzle us with very soon. In the meantime, we’ve decided to pay tribute with our five favourite things about the lady who epitomises Parisian chic.

Her look
Style pages and fashion bloggers don’t go nuts about Roitfeld for nothing, she has perfected the artfully careless way of wearing couture as if it were as natural and comfortable as your favourite pyjamas.
‘I really don’t have that many clothes’ Roitfeld has said, and whilst that may sound prosperous coming from someone with her access to fashion, she does seem to make amazing outfits out of the same sort of thing again and again.
Her look is very sleek, over-sized, tailored coats of obvious quality and luxury, skin-tight trousers and sky-scraper heels, all worn without effort and total French aloofness.
She loves tactile fabrics, especially animal skins, and wears an abundance of fur, leather and snakeskin despite it being unpopular with many people. But then it’s that kind of maverick attitude that makes her so special, ‘I like to wear high heels and sweat pants, white shoes in the middle of Winter’
Credit where credit is due however, Roitfeld’s look is partly down to Tom Ford, she has said ‘(he) was really pushing me to do the dark eye make-up, to wear huge heels and keep things very simple and lean.’

Her work
Paris Vogue is considered the magazine for fashion purists, and with good reason, the shoots are on an artistic level of beauty, giving only the minimum of input to commercial restrictions, and despite being the editor, Roitfeld still took the styling reigns on occasion.
Using some of the world’s top models and photographers (particularly Lara Stone and Mario Testino) Roitfeld’s vision of Vogue has produced some of the magazines most spectacular issues. But a picture says a thousand words so here are some visual aids…

Her patronage of designers
Every editor has their designer pets, but Roitfeld has a knack for sniffing out the most desirable new talent. Her most prominent relationship is with the aforementioned Tom Ford, whose unabashedly sexy, glossy reinvention of Gucci in the Nineties worked in perfect unison with her own provocative brand of styling.
In addition, she also heavily supported Balmain’s Christophe Decarnin since his early days at the label, a bandwagon everyone else began jumping on after he had transformed the aging house into a hotbed of modern cool. Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci is another designer she has championed, and again one whose slick, moody aesthetic is reminiscent of her own style.

Her quotes
Granted, she is not quite as spectacular as Karl Lagerfeld when it comes to bon mots, but Carine has still come out with some memorable one liners…

'It's a little bit boring, this casting. We need to have a wider variety of beauty, no?'

‘As you get older, the snake is more chic than the leopard’

‘With French women you first see the woman and then you see the clothes.’

On why she loves Cartier ,‘Do you know why? Because Cartier is the jewellery you give to your mistress. It is not the jewellery you buy for your wife.’

‘In France we drink wine and eat cheese and bread and finally we stay slim. I am skinny, and all my girls are skinny. People think I weigh my girls in the office but I do not’

‘I don’t want to wear this uniform. I don’t want to be just an envelope.’

‘I love pills. I cannot sleep, so I love pills. My doctor, he tells me that I begin to lose my vision because of the pills.’

Her embrace of the controversial
Despite the controversy that surrounds many of Vogue Paris’ shoots, during Roitfeld’s tenure the magazine’s circulation has increased by 45%, and by her own admission she purposely eschews the safe in favour of the interesting, ‘I like to have something every month that is – how you say? – not politically correct’
She loves nudity in shots and freqently uses cigarettes as props, her inventive and provoking covers and shoots have been met with plaudits and admiration within the fashion industry, and on occasion landed her in hot water.
Some of the most divisive and talked about shoots she has overseen include, model Lily Donaldson wearing a prosthetic pregnancy bump and smoking, Lara Stone in black face, and most recently, dressing children up to look like adult models, a move which infuriated LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, who threatened to pull all the LVMH ads.
Whatever the opinion though, what cannot be denied is that she keeps fashion challenging and interesting, constantly exploring and pushing boundaries, celebrating it as more of an art form than so many of her competitors. It sees it as something exciting and meaningful, rather than just a way of shilling skirts. And for that, she will always have a special place in our hearts.

Credits:
All text and pictures from: www.farfetch.com