From our archives. This story was originally published in our September 1982 print edition. Scroll through the images, or read the text, below.
Yves Saint Laurent
If you lived in the United States, where would you live and why?
New York, because of its dynamism in business as well as its social life.
What differences do you see between your American and French customers?
No difference. As in all countries, there are more and less beautiful ones.
What are your favorite restaurants in the United States?
In New York, La Grenouille. In Chicago and Los Angeles, I don’t remember any names.
What kind of art do you collect?
All that’s beautiful because you can mix beautiful things, whether they be paintings. furniture or bronze.
Karl Lagerfeld
If you lived in the United States, where would you live and why?
East and west, New York and Los Angeles, they’re both good.
What difference do you see between your American and French customers?
Elegant women are elegant women. They buy the same things. Taste is international.
What are your favorite restaurants in the United States? Your favorite shops?
Mr. Chow in New York and Los Angeles. Shops? Tiffany’s in New York and Brentano’s in Beverly Hills.
What kind of art do you collect?
Secession Vienna 1905 to 1910 and 18th century.
Hubert de Givenchy
If you lived in the United States, where would you live and why?
New York. It is the most exciting city and the one I know the best.
What differences do you see between our American and French customers?
American customers have more fantasy in their choice, and selection is more varied.
What are your favorite restaurants in New York? Your favorite shops?
Restaurants: Mr. Chow and La Grenouille. Shops: Tiffany’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks and walking along Madison Avenue.
What kind of art do you collect?
Antique furniture and contemporary art. I am most excited with the new American painting.
Emanuel Ungaro
If you lived in the United States, where would you live and why?
New York, for evident reasons. It’s a magic city. It’s THE city.
What differences do you see between our American and French customers?
No real difference. When you deal at a certain level, the attitude is the same all over the world and this includes Rome, Copenhagen and Timbuktu.
What are your favorite restaurants in the United States? Your favorite shops?
In New York, La Grenouille and The Four Seasons, the first for its French accent which is amusing, and the other because it’s an American architectural dream Ir Los Angeles, L’Orangerie. As for shops, in New York: André Oliver. It’s superb. In Chicago, I love a bookstore on Oak Street whose owner, Carol Stoll, has become a very good friend. After New York I love Chicago the best because it’s so modern and dynamic.
What kind of art do you collect?
Paintings—notably Szasran, who is at the galerie Claude Bernard. He does pastels, flowers, plants and is marvelous. You don’t find people who do pastels any more. He also does interiors which are quite captivating. I also collect contemporary art. I love Francis Bacon and wish I could afford him, but I also have at home Albers. I love good paintings, period.
Claude Montana
Montana is that famous man in that famous blouson. Year in, year out, Montana shows the most extravagant leather look in town, then walks on the runway in jeans and what looks like a ten-year-old, battered, nylon blouson.
Of all the designers reviewed in these pages, he is the most unconventional, totally outside the Establishment, even the Anti-Establishment. Little as I know the others, this one I don’t know at all. But a recent conversation with him as well as the answers to AVENUE’s questions revealed an open, fresh and fun approach to life, and a kooky sense of humor.
Montana is the only one who prefers Los Angeles to New York the only one who likes “The Hunting World” better than Tiffany’s. He is also the youngest of the group and one has the feeling he is more attuned to everyday life.
Yet, his collections are staged with a showmanship that is often short of hieratic. Montana a simple man? Not on your life. In those shows, it is as if he were saying, “Couture, couture, where are you and can you be recaptured?” This man of the street is clearly pining for the carriage trade.
In fashion, he is known as the man who made that famous enormous blouson, with all kinds of fringes and zippers, shoulders way out there and a big embroidered eagle on the back. That blouson was a landmark because it put leather totally and irreversibly on the map. It also started a trend toward enormous shapes and an exaggerated look that first hit you like a punch in the stomach. In fact, it did not sell. One had to understand and adapt and translate that look. Now, it is being done in Italy by one of those clever entrepreneurs who saw how much mileage there was in those larger-than-life trends. But Montana must not compromise. His strength lies in the fact that he can be so outrageous—and still get across.
If you lived in the United States where would you live and why?
Los Angeles, because of the climate and because it’s less exhausting than New York.
What difference do you see between your American and French customers?
The biggest difference is that Americans buy the most striking clothes in my collection. They come here looking for something that they don’t have at home. Whereas in Europe, it’s the opposite. They buy the safe numbers. In short, in America. the clothes are very expensive and Americans want a signature.
What are your favorite restaurants in the United States? Your favorite shops?
In New York, for the food, Da Silvano in Greenwich Village; and for the ambiance, Van Dam, which is like the Odeon, with models and fashion people. I never go to Chicago; in Los Angeles, I like Trumps. As for shops, in New York: Hunting World. Tarragon (all about sportswear). In Los Angeles I like Neiman-Marcus and Maxfield Blue.
What kind of art do you collect?
I don’t collect. I don’t like the idea of collections. I buy what like on the spur of the moment.
