[laughter] but she has beautiful red hair, light afro type but red hair. to me, i was like, oh, my god, she is so beautiful. for me, if i want to be friends with someone that i admire, i have to be like him or her, cannot have the red hair. so i say, i also come from nigeria and i am like you. [laughter] i do not think she believed me so i was inventing names. anyway. so she influenced me. she had white skin. you could see her veins. she was very strange but beautiful for me. i was always attracted by different beauty that i saw everywhere. i remember some movies called guess who's coming to have dinner tonight with sydney party. i remember i said to my parents -- i was 12. if i come with a black girl, what will you say? and they say, if you love her, that is perfect for you. years after when it told them what i could say about the fact was going with a guy, they said if you love each other, that is wonderful. so i think i was lucky to have parents like that. very modern. very open-minded. unlike for some, there's no question of religion, of color of skin, or anything like that. people can be all beautiful. it depends on who they are, but it is not a question of color. for me, both of us were beautiful. and i loved color. color of the skin. tattoo on the skin, which is a kind of color. some blue colors that you add. and i wanted to show that. when i started, i remember that there were some beautiful girls. they're beautiful. but i felt like, ok, but there is also beauty. i have a girlfriend which was modeling for me that i met very early when i started that was from a french colony. she was beautiful and black and very inspiring, very nice. i say, yes, why not. for me, a difference was beautiful. they looked to me, and i wanted to show it. another kind of different was the fact that when i saw farida, i said, my god, she is incredible. i was very impressed by her beauty. very frightened even by her beauty. she was kind of a very arrogant imperial. and african and beauty with a special expression. not arrogant. but beautiful. i said, i want to show this girl which is different. does not know how to walk as a model. they have their own personality. i remember this year i was asking a professional model to walk to see if there were walking too much as a professional model because i did not want that. i wanted to tell them, please what differently. not like a robot doing their profession. they have no control about the way they were walking. they learned to do that. so that is that the condition that they did not like. i wanted to show people that it is by the attitude. they were arriving. >>in some ways, a was a very shy person. you can make the casting for me something. to be honest, it is a reason because i am very specific. for me, when i have a boy or a girl, which i have to make the fitting, sometimes to the inspiring me so much. everything becomes full of colors. the color of the skin. it is fabulous for me. i can work and go on and enjoy and it is a pleasure. sometimes things are beautiful, but i do not know why. maybe the attitude also. to feel the clothes. instruct me. i thought, i do not know what to do. i had some difficulty to work with her. it does not mean she is not beautiful or not nice. it means sometimes that some make me dream. summing we dream. >> inspiring you. >> yes. >> one thing that is very interesting in this exhibition if you have a section called urban jungle. you go and see it and it looks as though it is what you would typically say is taking animals and jungle and things i suppose from africa or perhaps india, but a lot of animals in it. as to get closer to the pieces, you realize that these are actually coutoure pieces. it is as though you have tamed the jungle. there is the extraordinary leopard dress that tells you where the coutoure are and how many hours of workmanship are in there. so when you pay the bill, perhaps it is justified. [laughter] there is one that was 1,032 hours of hand or again beating. they're very few designers i can think of in coutoure who would do something like that. we were used to seeing coutoure very much what i would call salon clothing, a very beautiful and very delicate, but not with the sentence animal, vegetable, natural being brought into coutoure. was doing coutoure for use something that you wanted to make coutoure different are doing it -- did it make you different as a designer? >> it is difficult to answer that question. maybe for me, i did not go to fashion school. i learned through looking what was about fashion in tv. at that time, it was only coutoure. and ready to wear. it was for france. like industrial things. no, only coutoure because it was aristocracy, the spirit of france. until the end of the 1980's. the designers of the 1980's. anyway, i was seeing that coutoure, made me dream. i realize that there were people that were not from coutoure but as good as coutoure. when i saw when i thought, i love it. it is nice in different. very creative. fabulous, ginzo. but i love coutoure. the way i was looking at magazines. i what -- i must say that my teacher was a journalist, explaining the clothing. now we call them stylists, which in reality was an editor, especially one which is a dead now. it was very inspiring. one from the magazine "elle." f fabulous, fabulous editor. she was mixing the close. she was doing something else than the panoply. matching, like in coutoure. she was taking an overall and putting with high heels and glamorous jewelry. i loved it. it shows me that you are not obliged. you do not have to wear the matching thing. coutoure, i saw similar things and making the dream, you know? instead, in myself, you know, i am sure that i was supposed to do coutoure. but at that time, there was no place. when i started, [unintelligible] it was more like my family or my mother or the concierge. it was sewing. more the kind of thing. very small. i should say that my days was coutoure. i did my ready-to-wear in my first years. and coutoure without realizing it. i think that honestly most of the designers of the 1980's were completely doing coutoure. it is real coutoure. only the fact that most of those clothes are manufactured after -- even some not manufactured right. maybe a piece that is a piece of art. i do not like that expression. so forget it. bessemer truly like making beautiful things. i went there. one * my partner, boyfriend, arrived -- one time my partner, borden, said mickey should do a direct election. i said, why? the designer from the 1980's. he said, yes, but maybe it is could for perfume, things like that. to have an international passport. ok. but deep inside, i know that i should have loved to make one coutoure collection like that. a dream of the elegance of paris. and i remember that i propose -- it was the last new bid of coutoure that arrived. i thought to propose -- [unintelligible] why don't you take one designer like vivian westwood or others to make one season, one coutoure collection? >> you should call some up immediately and suggest the deal. >> [laughs] that is true. each one to make their own collection should not be back. a very attractive idea. >> as you do not want to talk about art, we will not say your work is art. let's be very vulgar and talk about money. [laughter] it is extraordinary what you have produced in coutoure. does that make any money? quick to be honest, what we produce in coutoure does not make money but it does include money. i must say, i am very proud of that. when i started to do coutoure, after a lot of stories that may be issued do another job, i said, ok, i will do my own collection. i started and never stopped after. on boat one, one woman, done all in lace in the exhibition. it starts like, ok, i did not think to make another one. so i did one after and one after and one after peter i am still doing it now. this is 1997. more than 10 years. >> i ask the question because it is very interesting when you talk about these people who marked the 1980's and earlier. but so few are around now or they are around in a relatively small way. you're in a situation where your company, the majority shareholding is with pooch to do the fragrances and work with other fashion houses. is this some sort of a new beginning? was it important for you to have this? >> definitely. it was a change. when i went to my company, it was a moment where there were more shops and boutiques. so we went with ermez, and it became something that was very funny. we -- one moment i did not even have a collection, which was not scheduled at all. it was not about a contract. there was like 45 persons in my company. so i should do the collection. i thought it was an adventure. i love that adventure. at the beginning of was supposed to be -- [unintelligible] of the established house. for me, it was kind of a challenge. and i loved the idea. i love to do it. also my training, my training was doing this. i do not have my gaultier touch at that time. so then it was like to make jean paul gaultier for ermez. no, sorry, to make ermez through the eyes of jean paul gaultier. i love that. then there was a death. it was seven years after our collaboration. i think it was good to go in, because my life was not with ermez. it was for my own company. so we changed. we pushed. spanish rudes, perfume routes. sounds very good to my ears. i am a quite truthful person >. >> is there always going to be a controversial side of jean paul gaultier? there was a time when you were inspired by rabbis. i believe you're in new york, there were a bunch of rabbis he saw walking by the public library, you turned it into a collection. you must have known this was dramatic and would be alarming to people. >> i should say that in some way, i think i have a kind of innocence. like that is not that big part of me. when it is beautiful, i believe in it. i saw it was beautiful. i wanted to show it. for me, it was so strong, the impression. it was beautiful. and with a lot of meaning for me. it was meaning for people like a minority can come together strong and impact. at the same time, visually and spiritually. i wanted to show that beauty. after my time there, michael was to show the beauty seinfield. -- my goal was to show the beauty i felt. i should make a parallel. what i felt was, for example, jewish has been like rejected, have been rejected. me, for other reasons. and when you have -- there are some people that to be integrated, they change themselves. they hide it themselves. i decided not to hide myself, like the fact that my sensibility was different than my situation was different. i could express it because i went into fashion, and in fashion, there is a lot of gay, so i did not suffer. a lot suffer. i think every minority is that they are ashamed and they do not say that they are. i felt the it was good. you should not ask to be ashamed and to hide yourself. to me, it is courage. i'm sure for a lot of people. maybe they did not say because it is some taboo like religion. it is like, if you are all together on showing who you are, you will be accepted, and people will refine everything normal. i remember one movie which was very beautiful, "chocolat," which shows one guy which is italian, and he goes to work in switzerland. he is not integrated at all. what does he do? he preaches his hair blond to be integrated, to look as if he was from switzerland. at a football game, he is looking with all the other men, and it is italy against switzerland. at one time, the italians win. i find it beautiful and emotional at the same time. he betrayed himself through that reaction, and at the same time, it was beautiful, but at the same time, it is sad that you have to change your color or to hide it. that you have to do something like that to deny even your origin. you have to be proud of your urgent and to show it. >> you are giving me a challenge and a challenge -- giving me a challenge and yourself a challenge. what about cult? that is not something to hide behind. it is so out there, and yet, it can be quite important part of your collection. why? >> i have been very marked by the movement. -- what about punk? >> it is not like a creation, absolute. it is part of living in society. of course, the punk movement was very important. like already taken by the society in some ways. i must say that when i was going to london, i loved that. the inspiration, through the air, to everything. at the same time, i was fascinated. because i was not part of that. but as a voyeur that i am, i wanted to see them. i'm fascinated. i love them. i love the work of westwood. so i love their work because they did something, but they saw something that was happening, rebellion tight, and that mix of conservative with the art still. i love that, so it has influenced me. for example, in london, i saw a black trench coat, and in the front, you say black is not for children. black is bad, and everything like that that is ridiculous, so i told them. i must say that one for me was a learning experience. i love it. >> london has changed, as every city has. you certainly will not have any of those bankers wearing bowler hats and numberless. more to the point, london out is tremendously diverse. paris is becoming in admitting that it is more a diversity, and there's a little line for me quite hidden away the says i'm very much a parisian or i'm interested in parisian women, but not quite sure that i ever met a parisian woman. what do you mean by that? >> what i mean is that my education, i have been looking at old movies that i love. we speak about the reputation of the parisian, which was supposed to dress very well. i think that, you know, in france, the eccentricity -- for me, eccentricity is very chic and it is what i love. it is so much about the good taste, which paralyzed. it is still a city where everybody meets profession, sure, but it is sad that you did not seek only may be in the young people, but you do not see when people are in the rain, let's say, in society, like having the joy to address. like you have to be like the color of the street of paris. you ought not to be remarkable. it is very demanding of the people. so i said to the people, no, we have to be like everyone else. in london, it was completely different, and it still is. more distance that makes them, for me, more fascinating than the french. >> we want to take questions from the audience, but i did just want to ask you a quick question about your work in movies because that has been so extraordinarily exceptional. i think probably a lot of people -- i know you have been to the academy of arts and all the students, but i wonder how many people in this audience know how involved you have been in the performing arts doing costumes. with whom has it been the you have felt the most extraordinary experience? >> i should say that he is a different experience. i think first, maybe pedro, and very close after, greenway, an english architect, who is very talented. i must say, one thing is that i was very lucky because all those people i admire for their own work. they were different. for me, it was a fabulous experience to work with them. it was to get into their story and to see of how they are working. i will tell you, for example, one that is -- in real life, let's say, not in the movie like, it is somebody that maybe -- maybe does not address that well, has not so much sense of fashion, is not interested too much in his art, but when it becomes to the movie, first, he will explain to you the movie, tell you the story he is so much into it, and visually, so much into it. he gets very upset, then he can already imagine how he should like it to be. it is very beautiful because you can see how intent it can be and how the movie becomes a world. it is very specific at some times. for example, the apron of the made from valencia from the 1960's. ok, so i have to go to the market and find one. i not know exactly the apron of the maid of valencia in the 1960's. housewife, sorry. not a mate. it is not abstract, let's say. but specific in the color, which is absolutely inspiring and fabulous to go into the story. the movie was the cook, the thief, that one -- with helen merrin, who is absolutely fabulous -- helen mirren, fabulous actress. he showed me some painting of rembrandt and said, "uc that? could you do the in modern, in today? and i said i will try. yes, but it is part of the job. so i tried. i worked with a dutch artistic director,