Inez and Vinoodh share a vision

How would you connect fashion to elegance?Inez van Laamswerde: I don’t think they connect. Fashion to me is a very abstract word which encapsulates a very big universe motivated by money. Elegance is very innate, it is almost unachievable through clothes; it’s there or it’s not. However, I do believe that Vinoodh and I can find elegance in everyone who steps in front of our camera. But it has nothing to do with clothes.
Vinood Matadin: Elegance is a memory of the past.

Would you describe fashion as a language and a discourse, as Barthes did it?IvL: It’s a language of signs, of codes, that has to do with status and the projection of who you want to be in your projection towards someone else. The thing that always blows our mind is that the people who think they are outside of fashion or think they have nothing to do with fashion, wake up every morning and decide what to wear, what they want to be, and which language they want to speak with these clothes. If you go for a date, a job interview, or a game of golf, you know the code you need to use for what you want to communicate to the people you’re meeting. Everyone is affected by fashion and by these codes. In short: fashion is a daily form of masquerade that communicates culture, gender, and class.
VM: Most people don’t even know where these codes come from. They just use these codes and they have no clue that somebody one day invented these codes for them.
IvL: Yes, they’re given through role models that obviously have evolved through the years.
VM: The interesting thing is to use these codes and change them. Then people ask questions when looking at an image.

The full interview by Donatien Grau is here