Serge Lutens: I don’t know if I can really pick out one specific memory.  Between the age of one and seven, the age of reason, they have all merged into one. They became fixed in my brain at the age of ten, creating a single memory. I am a love child, I’m told, and I was deprived of contact with my mother in the early years – so I invented a woman. That just about sums up my story.

Thousands… Some are more literary or imaginary, others are founded in real events, but they are, let me tell you, all real.

Without a doubt it was the cinema. Films opened my eyes and stayed with me once I’d left the cinema. What an impact they had, in black and white on the screen.

About 15, 16. I can’t remember.

Yes of course, but also ciné-club films with those agitated women with white make-up and deep dark eyes making marked symbolic gestures.

I don’t think there were any, nothing in particular, I could have liked. I had to invent a woman, and let me tell you, disgust is very much part of my being. My role was to change things. The chemistry was either there or it wasn’t.

I didn’t see people as they were. They were ghosts, beautiful or ugly, friends or enemies. Bright eyes, long necks, silhouettes, it was definitely a case of love or hate.

People who were too categorical, too caught up in an image of themselves, how others saw them. I’m thinking about a woman called Andrée. She terrified me. When she moved she was a series of volumes: big hair, hairpieces and poufs holding up an impeccably lacquered coiffure. A bound construction with perfectly painted nails, the half-moon clearly exposed. Coming back to the face, I remember a heavy orange-red lipstick on a face which, too, was rather puffy. Her body was most often held in a white dress decorated with daisies or poppies… It was like having a sofa made up of hips, buttocks, thighs, chest, hair and nails plant a red-orange mark on my reluctant cheek. And that mark is still there today!

The 1950s in Lille? It was the same as anywhere else, was it not?

It was a fashion. She was disfigured by it. I’m not afraid of women unless they are – like Andrée – victims of an image they are determined to squeeze themselves into, time and time again.

I was not happy there. I was caught up in hair, hairpins, dryers, curlers and the smell of ammonia. It was all about women who found it impossible to exist in this environment. It was as cringe-worthy as a George Grosz caricature.

I spent my time undoing what wasn’t right, working against the flow. At the end of the day I never learnt anything. I have unburdened myself of everything I was taught.

Fragmented memories. I can still hear: ‘Serge, look after this young lady!’ and then I see a girl whose face is as sad as mine, so I like her, but once she is in front of the mirror, a split appears and I finally see the women in me. Armed with a pair of scissors, I respond, giving expression to everything that has been silenced as I cut the first mesh. But in cutting I go ‘too far’ for the era and those who are watching. I am surrounded by a silence so oppressive that it seems to foster chitter-chatter and whispers. I know that if I turn around and acknowledge them, the cut will never end. So the scissors, my hand, my anger, the time, my age, society, death and my fear cut through the second lock of hair and, in doing so, declare a beauty war against these assholes.

There were events… the war in Algeria, and I was called up. Military service scared me. The thought of being with all the soldiers panicked me. I was frightened of them and even more so of myself. In the beginning, I feigned all sorts of illnesses until a genuine depression hit. There was the hospital and the other mentally afflicted, no doubt like myself. We were called ‘mad’. That’s less ridiculous than ‘mentally deficient’, the term used today.

I think about six months, but that story’s not important. 

It was 1962, the end of the Algerian War but a declaration of another war between three women at Vogue: Edmonde Charles-Roux, Françoise Mohrt and Françoise de Langlade. The latter was seconded from American Vogue to deal with the magazine’s politics. At that time, Vogue really was a publication for intelligent women. There were articles about art, literature and poetry and a very clear vision of contemporary style — not just passing fashion. Françoise Mohrt was in charge of the magazine’s beauty pages.

Yes, and Françoise Mohrt told me she ‘couldn’t believe her eyes’. It seemed wonderful that someone could be so ‘astonished’ by me! I remember the day well for a very good reason: I spent hours waiting in the café adjacent to their offices. There was absolutely nothing else I could do. Then I was told: ‘You will be working for the Christmas issue.’ That was where it all began. Other magazines followed: Elle, Jardin des modes… These publications had their own personalities.

Jean-Loup Sieff and, more importantly, Guy Bourdin. I was with him at the beginning of his graphic period. That was before he moved on to his risqué period: the maid on all fours, the man of the house comes home…

On my first visit to the magazine. Vogue at the time was a temple. I arrived fully-prepared, extremely well-presented as usual. That day should have been the beginning of a new chapter; but life is a long book and we never stop turning the pages. I saw the magazine in a fateful, somewhat otherworldly light. I thought it was an omen that the surname of the travel editor, Simone Brousse, translates as The Outback. You must admit it was unusual! As for Bourdin, his appearance on the scene turned Vogue into a sinking ship. He was waving his arms about in grand gestures but was seen as nothing more than a clown.

He set out to humiliate the model, to make her feel inferior. He loved her and detested her at the same time. I have seen him presenting his photographs speaking in a doddery, nasal voice, turning beauty into something of an object of ridicule.

I worked with more or less all the great photographers of the time and with Penn for American Vogue. He was very strange, very self-contained – a bit like me in fact, very reserved. Everything was done for him. His jeans were ironed and laid flat on a little bed where he could rest, his slippers… no noise and certainly not any music. Models had to be happy, laugh and smile without once having a compliment paid to them or being told they were beautiful, and wait until Penn got the exact shot he wanted. The editor didn’t say a word. She was Diana Vreeland’s assistant. Her eyes were razor-sharp. She honed in on all the faults Penn might find. Avedon, on the other hand, took the model on a journey. Each shot was a performance with its own make-up artists, hairdressers, accessory departments, editors, secretaries – a whole audience waiting to applaud because, unlike Penn, Avedon was a bit of a Casanova. It was all lovey-dovey. It was surprising, and by surprising I mean false to its luxury core!

I liked Helmut Newton. He was a charming, extremely elegant snob. His mother had once told him, ‘You will be the final nail in my coffin.’ How’s that for a compliment? We got on rather well. I was ‘multi-talented’. I knew how to style hair, apply make-up, accessorise and dress a girl for a photo shoot. I even had blue arm tattoos with all sorts of vintage erotic effigies, sailors, anchors and other slightly macabre accessories.

A triple, fourfold career, but I fashioned it to suit myself. In 1967, Dior was planning a make-up line. With the exception of a few lipsticks and nail varnishes created by Christian Dior himself, this was new ground for Dior. I was a young man at the time and Dior seemed to me to be a formidable, outmoded fashion house. Yves Saint Laurent had left, and Dior was far from what it has become today! It was the reign of Courrèges, who liked to think of himself as the Le Corbusier of fashion. It was all change – for me too. I had never learnt how to apply make-up but could see with my own eyes that I knew how to do it.

As soon as I met René Bourdon. He was the Managing Director of Dior Parfums at the time, and also the father of Pierre Bourdon. He asked me to create lipsticks. I replied that I’d never done it and he said, ‘It’s easy. Come with me to the laboratory, and I’ll show you how it’s done.’ I refused. There were too many people. So they gave me some coloured pastes and small dishes, and I set about melting them in a bain-marie, creating the lipsticks thousands of women were going to wear, all in my own kitchen. That was how it was for 14 years! My first creation was a series of shiny, transparent lipsticks. The colours and textures were revolutionary. They were liked by some and, as always, feared by others, because Dior had created a fixed idea of lipsticks and nail varnishes that was difficult to shift. Imagine trying to straighten the Tower of Pisa.

Peter Knapp was the Artistic Director of Elle. He never worked for Dior. He gave me carte blanche to photograph, invent and transform the 1976 haute couture winter collections.

It was time to set faces free. They were all prisoners of foundation, overheavy make-up and stupid ideas for achieving so-called beautification. However it was actually myself who I was liberating.

No, but I showed them entirely new formulations – not too shiny, because I don’t like shiny – which let the texture of the lips show through, unlike the lipsticks which covered it completely. It was a revolution, and I became known as ‘a genius’. That’s what they called me.

Sorry, I’m talking too much. I’ve lost my train of thought in fact.

It just happened. Pictures became more important than make-up. I hadn’t forgotten the time when I got my fingers burnt with hairdressing and in fact the same thing happened with make-up. What interested me was the image of a woman. This allowed me to free myself from her, embracing both sides of me.

The end product was actually never of interest to me. It was my way of understanding this woman. There was a time when it all came together in photography.

When I took my first cautious steps through their door, between 1968 and 1970. Then there was the idea which officially endorsed my shots. It came from an American who wanted to shake up the make-up industry in America and, to do so, link it with a promotion with the Guggenheim in New York. So I accepted the challenge of this exercise in style, basing it on my favourite artists: Picasso, Léger, Modigliani… They called it a homage to art: Hommage à la peinture, Make-up Art.

No, but my work took on another meaning, because I was both a star of the make-up world and a photographer.

Not really because I was first and foremost Serge Lutens, a natural descendant of the ‘audacity’ line.

Never, I would only ever dedicate myself to a woman. Dior was Dior and I was, for every person, what I allowed myself to be at that particular moment in time. Deep down I was only ever Serge Lutens.

Definitely not. Retouching tools had not yet been invented. Everything was done by hand. It was a manual skill. What people do with computers today, I did by hand until I achieved perfection. It took hours: a white base for the face, my way of reaching inside this woman, but I’m talking too much. What I did hadn’t existed as a profession, neither had in-house make-up artists. You didn’t hear talk about it. I invented it.

It was quite a ritual. The models weren’t paid like their modern-day counterparts. Time was for communication, achieving elegance. I prepared the sessions and the models who were to feature in them. A photo a day was enough.

Anjelica Huston, Isabelle Weingarten, Louise Despointes, Susan Moncur were the stars of my shots. Isabelle had the body of a goddess. I wonder whether she knew that. Draped in a panther skin with the paws attached round her waist, her half-naked body painted white, Isabelle danced to Duke Ellington from his Jungle Band period. I saw each girl as an individual. Some wore my dinner suits. The idea of pinching something from a man was chic; a form of self-expression or sort of role reversal. These girls felt things. This sort of model no longer exists. Anjelica Huston told me she heard her parents speaking one day; her mother, the lead dancer with Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and her father John Huston were saying, ‘Anjelica isn’t very pretty.’ At this Anjelica came out from behind the curtains, went back up to her room, sat in front of the mirror and said, ‘I will make myself pretty!’ Being pretty means nothing. It’s the desire to be pretty that makes you pretty.

I worked with the 24x36 format. I like compact cameras rather than the computers of today, covered in buttons. My collaborator, Patrice Nagel, adjusted the lighting.

Umbrellas, soft lighting and a spotlight on the face. A few touches of strong, expressive colours – greens, purples – in the hair or on the cheeks.

Of course. If we wanted to test the film and see the result, we had to wait a whole night. It’s hard to imagine photography as the ritual it was, all the waiting that was involved. Today you see the result right away. The images no longer have to be transposed. They remain inside the camera in portable form.

The idea was essentially for the girls I photographed and myself to change places – a role reversal. If I was making exaggerated gestures, I was really looking for them to take the lead and inject some magic into the shot.

There were two camps: those who loved my work unconditionally and cried when they saw my photos, and others who never had a part to play. It’s always the same!

My work was always challenged. I predicted things – sometimes up to 20 years in advance – and fashion very much followed my lead, but I don’t give a damn about fashion! I have only one audience in me and it is female. The Director at the time was called Bernard Picot. I never accepted being judged by what people might think about my work. Directions are always taken to fulfil a creative need and an inherent doubt, so the designer can never win.

At the time, the popular colours, purple, red, yellow…, in the collections I did for Dior were more than just a choice of eye shadow – women saw them as a form of revolt! This was when women were burning their bras. It was a form of protest, until they noticed that their breasts were sagging, so they started to wear them again. As for the eye shadows, if only one out of three was used up, what more could we possibly wish for?

But Yves Saint Laurent dreamt of a totally black collection! Black was the only colour he liked. The three people known for black are – if I am not mistaken – Gabrielle Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and myself, no less! Black is not a choice. You fall under its charm, and only those who really understand it are true aficionados.

Courrèges for example, he wasn’t a proponent of colour. Bachelard said, ‘Black is the refuge from all the colours.’ You couldn’t put it better. Colours hide, take refuge, in black. Those who have secrets can speak of the black because the colour is within them.

The people at Dior could not believe I was leaving. Did they think I was joking? They thought it was a clever tactic – that I was testing them. They didn’t want to accept the truth.

In 1971 and immediately afterwards to Hong Kong. I liked these countries.

As I already mentioned, cinema was the main factor behind my use of white make-up, but I have always been really attracted to white skins. The pallor did of course come up for criticism, but it caught on in the fashion world.

That’s a very different thing. For me, the link with Japan is perfection, achievement and to a certain extent, death, when understood in the sense of final achievement.

Yes, it was with Dior.  It was a huge success. I had put together a slideshow set to the music of my jazz heroes of the 1920s and 1930s, with a bit of Bach, Mozart…

The press, all sorts of designers, guests of Dior. I didn’t know anybody, and I didn’t want to get too involved. I like to stay in the background. Yet this was where I met designers like Yohji Yamamoto, Kansai and Issey Miyake. I began to work with [the model] Sayoko Yamaguchi when I was still with Dior. She was a true beauty with the sensitivity of a little girl. In actual fact, I’ve only ever worked with little girls. My life has been a masked ball with no adults. 

Yes and her role is inside me. She is at once both my anger and my revolt, because if this weren’t the case, she would not be a woman and, therefore, would not be inside me.

We were destined to meet. They were inside me before I even went to Japan.

Ah yes, with Dior. At times I spent more than a month there for press meetings, but travel bores me – it’s not for me.

I bought a house there in 1974. It inhabits me more than I live in it. A few kilometres away in my palm grove, all I need is a room – enough space for some books and the part of me you’ll never know.

Yes, if necessary. I write. I am very active. My life in Morocco is much more creative than it ever will be in Paris.

Yes, of course. A bit of everything. I sketch rather than draw: clothes, pictures, houses, furniture etc. With Dior I discovered a new world, Morocco shortly followed by Japan, but at the end of the day what I found more than anything was my own personal identity: myself.