How did you go about deciding what you think has the most cultural value? Say, the Mugler piece worn by Beyoncé for Cowboy Carter. I’m assuming those considerations are part of the process?
The Beyoncé piece is interesting because I actually approached Mugler about getting it last year when we had the show in Milan for a different section in that exhibition. Mugler said they couldn’t lend it, as it was on loan for something else. Later I obviously found out it was for Cowboy Carter. But I think it’s nice for there to be some things that feel maybe slightly more obscure—it was really important to have the Greta Garbo and the Marlene Dietrich outfits to show the depth of Swarovski’s history with cinema and Hollywood, as well as the Moulin Rouge!, which is so instantly recognizable. And the Shakespeare In Love outfit—you know exactly what these things are when you see them. So, for me, it was really important to have the more historical things to show the depth and breadth of that history as well as these super-recognizable 21st century things. With the Beyoncé piece, you get both, it’s super-recognizable, but also there’s all these other histories that are kind of interesting and tied into it.
I’m curious about you liaising with houses and pulling things from other archives, like, say, Daphne Guinness’s pink Chanel.
I flew here with that one; sometimes you have to hand carry [laughs]. I love Daphne, she’s someone who I’ve been really privileged to have a relationship with for years. I’ve worked with her on three music videos, and she’s always supported this. This time she lent this amazing Chanel piece. I didn’t know this, but it’s the show sample. They sold her the couture piece from the show. That’s what she believes it is; she thinks it’s the only one they produced. It was quite funny because I was supposed to pick it up last Friday, and then she sent me this text message like, actually, could you pick it up on Monday? Because I’m going to the British Museum Pink Ball, and it’s the only pink thing I own. Giovanna was texting me being like, are we getting the Daphne Guinness? I’ve just seen her wearing it. But that’s Daphne, one day you’re wearing it and the next day it’s in a museum exhibition. That’s wardrobe goals.
Before you went to the archive and before you started digging, was there something that you thought: this has to be in it?
When we started talking about it, and we came up with the idea, it was actually Giovanna who said, I think it would be great if we tried to do fashion and costume. And I was like, okay, let’s have a think. I started to research and see what costumes were around, and I found this amazing costume collector called Larry McQueen. He’s got a costume collection. It’s all online, it’s all documented, photographed and available online. And he’s just released a book. I can’t even remember how I stumbled onto it, but it was to the point where I was checking if it was real, because it was so unreal. He had the Cleopatra costume worn by Elizabeth Taylor. And he’s a bit like me. We are two men who spend all of our money on women’s dresses [laughs]. I found that he had the Dietrich dress. Now, Greta Garbo is great. Marilyn Monroe is great. But I live for Dietrich as the person I’ve been obsessed with since I was a teenager. And so when I found out that this dress existed, because I’m a geek, I knew straight away that there was a Yves Saint Laurent dress that was based on this dress, and that Marc Jacobs had based a dress on the Saint Laurent dress. So I knew we had to get them together because they belong with each other. For me, that was kind of the trigger point.
