Fun, feminine and a little bit wild, twin sisters Annette and Dani Felder are the perfect embodiment of their London-based womenswear label Felder Felder. Known for a rock ’n’ roll aesthetic, their designs are beloved by fashion-forward musicians, ranging from Rihanna to Florence Welch. I caught up with the duo at their West London studio to talk punks, politeness and gatecrashing Yves Saint Laurent…

Anna Goumal: What kind of feeling do you want to give the women who wear your clothes?

Annette Felder: I think that a lot of our clothes are about combining contrasts. Probably it stems from us being twins and designing together and always finding the contrasts and trying to balance them. So even some of the dresses, which are a bit more sexy, will be balanced with something more playful and vice-versa. I think a lot of women feel attracted to that because they have the ability to show the different sides of their personality without being categorized or put into one box.

Anna: How does being a twin affect your design process?

Dani Felder: It’s quite straightforward; there’s no politeness—a lot of fighting! But also a lot of happy moments. We’re happy with an outfit if we’re both very excited. If one of us is not excited, it’s not gonna happen.

Anna: What’s inspired your Fall 2011 collection?

Dani: It’s mainly inspired by our different muses. We have these really edgy, young girls but then also our mature, more sophisticated muses, and we’ve tried to cement the two.

Anna: Your Spring 2011 collection was quite disco-influenced. If you had to compare this collection to a music genre what would it be?

Annette: I think this collection is more like a journey. There’s a lot of transformation, so it’s hard to pin it down to just one genre. We’ve done that before. We had a grunge collection, an Iggy Pop collection…

Dani: …and the disco collection. There’s definitely a David Bowie outfit in there! But there’s also quite a lot of rock ‘n’ roll going on.

Annette: Because we have looked quite a lot at different music genres and music inspiration in the past, for this collection it is important for us to not connect it too much to a past genre, but to push it to be a bit more modern. Even though it still has the vibe of what we’ve done in the past, [it] is a bit more timeless.

Anna: You’re from Germany, but you live in London. What do you feel you’ve exported from Germany?

Annette: Being quite organized and efficient.

Dani: All the boring stuff that nobody wants to read about!

Annette: Exactly, yes, but you know it has definitely helped.

Dani: But also the dark poetic side—that’s very German.

Annette: A happy melancholy.

Dani: Yes, happy to be sad.

Anna: How do you think being in London has influenced your designs?

Backstage at Felder Felder Fall 2011. Show images by Lucy Carr-Ellison.

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Dani: [It has helped us] be wild, you know! We had that in us anyway; that’s why we came to London.

Annette: Even just the average English person is a bit of a punk in some way, which I find so fascinating—still, after all these years. They have this revolutionary personality…

Dani: …which we love. That’s why we always had trouble in Germany—a lot of trouble. In Germany we were the punks, but here we were like the sweet sheep.

Anna: What’s the most rock ‘n’ roll thing you’ve ever done?

Annette: Nothing that we should say on tape!

Dani: One thing that was pretty cool, though, was when we blagged ourselves into the last-ever Yves Saint Laurent show [designed by Yves Saint Laurent] in Paris when we were 19. We had this skinny black girlfriend who was like a young Grace Jones. So we all got dressed up and pretended to be the models who were running late from another show and made a big scene with the bodyguards, who ended up bringing us backstage themselves. It was amazing. We got in just in time, and it was all his biggest moments from the past decades.

Annette: That was quite a rock star moment.

Yves Saint Laurent video and all images by Ari Marcopoulos

I had the pleasure of meeting Ari Marcopoulos when he was in Milan. The next day, he asked if he made a good impression on me. Well, of course he did. The most surprising part of the aperitivo/chat with Ari—and his smart assistant Camilla—was learning how he became a photographer, not to mention a successful one. In the early years, with no money in his pockets to buy and develop film, he cleverly developed a method to do it all himself. He would buy meters and meters of uncut film, rolling it afterward inside the camera and…voilà. He only needed to learn to develop it. He did this too, and he still brings two analog cameras with him wherever he goes. My second favorite part was the video featured above: His work for the recent Yves Saint Laurent men’s fashion show. The house’s designer Stefano Pilati contacted Ari personally after seeing one of his exhibitions. Throughout our time together, Ari kept recounting that fashion is grabbing him. And well, his work is quite snatching…

Elisa Lusso: Your first name, Aristos, means “best” in ancient Greek. What are you the best at?

Ari Marcopoulos: Rapping, I got some serious gangsta skillz.

Elisa: Your father is Greek while your mother is Dutch. You were born in Holland and now you’re based in Northern California, near San Francisco; to which do you owe the most?

Ari: My mom.

Elisa: You had a pretty enviable starting point in your photography career, since you began next to Warhol and then assisted Irving Penn. At which point is the scene more important than the technical skill?

Ari: Technique is good to know, but vision is more important.

Elisa: What Warhol was representing about consumism and re-production has not only effectively happened but is now evolving and turning into a multiplication and massive copy of information and images. How much do you think the Internet era will affect our visual culture?

Ari: The Internet allows for instant visual reference. It is a cool tool for communication. I guess we’re going to see more and more pixels.

Elisa: You also run your own blog. Do you think that blogging is somehow our individual communication channel?

Ari: The blog is too much work. I pretend I am digital, but I think I’m analog.

Elisa: What will be the evolution of the press in regard to the Internet? Will there will be any…?

Ari: Every piece of information will eventually be on the Internet. Soon they’re will be no need for the press as we know it.

Elisa: In which ways is communication growing in our era? How much is social networking changing our minds?

Ari: Our minds are melting into the Internet, becoming like a hive mind. We should avoid that and stay individuals.

Elisa: You’ve been shooting so many actors, artists, musicians, skaters, snowboarders, family, friends and so on… Which one has been the most confident?

Ari: Terje Håkonsen, such a good snowboarder.

Elisa: The most camera-shy?

Ari: Charlie Ray. He is just shy—and also camera shy.

Elisa: The funniest?

Ari: Cairo and Ethan, because they are funny.

Elisa: The one you absolutely want to hang out with?

Ari: Camilla, because she is smart and has a sense of humor.

Camilla

Elisa: The one you’d go on holiday with?

Ari: John Travolta, because it would be super weird.

Elisa: The most elegant?

Ari: Diana Dondoe. I don’t know why—I mean she is elegant

Elisa: The most attractive?

Ari: Mmmmmmm… I don’t want to say.

Elisa: The most seductive

Ari: Also a secret…

Elisa: You also love to document reality, such as your family and friends and the underground cultures you belong to. How do you achieve the emotional tension we experience looking at your photos?

Romy

Ari: I am interested in people and they can feel it, so they just let me do my thing…

Elisa: How does getting into the intimate lives of people help you get the right shot?

Ari: It is good when people are comfortable with you so the camera does not become an obstacle.

Elisa: I really enjoyed the Claremont video [for Adam Kimmel]. What do speed and risk represent to you?

Ari: Speed and risk make you feel alive.

Elisa: Kids has been such a teenage cultural “manifesto” for many of us. Can you describe how it was following that extremely edgy youth lifestyle? Which aspects [of the film] do you think differ from youth’s attitude nowadays?

Ari: There are differences, but teenage cultural is pretty much the same as it used to be. It is a time in life where you challenge everything. Of course there are some style differences…

Elisa: What did you learn most from having experienced the hip hop downtown culture during the ’80s?

Ari: That fat laces are dope—black Pumas with red stripes with fat red laces!

Elisa: You’ve been involved in a project documenting the earthquake in L’Aquila, here in Italy. Since the very beginning this natural occurrence has been a political issue, as it involved many different financial interests. Did you see that when you were there? What has been the most shocking thing for you?

Ari: The most shocking thing is the amount of destruction. Then the other is, I guess, that people are starting to make a business out of other people’s misery

Elisa: A final few questions… What do you like most about Italy?

Ari: The people.

Elisa: What’s your favorite food?

Ari: Chocolate.

Elisa: What do you like most about California?

Ari: That you can surf and snowboard in one state.

Elisa: Ari cannot live without…

Ari: His girlfriend.

America

Bad

Left: Statue; Right, Cairo

Zipper

Ethan

Barry

Dictation

Morphosis

On his ninth birthday, Yves Saint Laurent announced, “One day, my name will be written in letters of fire on the Champs Elysées.” This in mind, you sense the designer—who passed away in 2008 at the age of 71—would be pleased with the retrospective currently lighting up 15 rooms of the Petit Palais in central Paris.

From his haute-couture beginnings at Dior, through the ’60s gender revolutions to the liberated catwalk lines of the ’70s, Saint Laurent sought to empower females through form and fashion. He created 15,000 pieces from 1962 to 2002, including Le Smoking (1966), the first trouser suit (1967) and the first jumpsuit (1968). The designer shared this sensibility for emancipatory dressing with Coco Chanel, whom he greatly admired. Following in her footsteps, he adopted menswear to women’s sensibilities, inventing clothing that debuted as easily on the silver screen as on the street. Saint Laurent’s enduring influence is further evidenced by the exhibition’s attendees: 85% are female, international tourists and Parisiennes alike, aspiring to the style of his muses, among them Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Hardy.

Upon entering the grand halls of the palais, guests are blinded by the rainbow brights of the designer’s collections. Clothed mannequins, video clips and photographs parade the evolutions and revolutions of the designer’s work. The “aesthetic ghosts” of Saint Laurent’s inspiration appear throughout this chronology. Wagner, La Traviata, Phèdre, and Proust’s Duchess of Guermantes are all name-checked as dramatic and literary muses. The magnetism of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Arletty from Les Enfants du Paradis seeps into the seams of sequined gowns. Deneuve’s classic black dress with white organdy collar from Buñuel’s Belle du Jour is displayed in its simple allure. The iconic lines of modern artists become dress designs; Cocteau’s words are scrawled across satin evening jackets and Mondrian’s geometry divides wool jersey shifts. We travel vicariously through Bambara art and Orientalism, Russian palaces and Moroccan medinas.

The styles before us, once the fabrics of high society, are the predecessors to today’s popular fashions. If now we are familiar with gypsy skirts, jungle prints and Saharan golds, the originals make an impressive contemporary mark, a fact that would undoubtedly please the man who championed the rise of ready-to-wear.

On now-August 29th at Petit Palais, Paris.

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Minimalist witticisms define the day by way of strawberries, lederhosen, ruffles and archivel references.

Images courtesy of coutorture.com

Yves Saint Laurent, 1987. Image by Luc Novovitch/Reuters

When in the hands of a sartorial original like Stefano Pilati for YSL, the inspirational depths of a black leather motorcycle jacket are not to be underestimated.

Images courtesy of Style.com.