Business of Fashion – 5 Novembre 2015<\/p>\n
PARIS, France \u2014 It was October 1988. In an old Parisian theatre playing host to a runway show, 22-year-old music producer Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sanchez was on the cusp of his fashion debut. He\u2019d been invited to collaborate with a new acquaintance and a former Jean Paul Gaultier assistant named Martin Margiela. It was a seminal moment for both men \u2014 Margiela was also making his own debut. As the now-iconic Tabi boot made its first appearance, leaving its cloven footprint in red paint as the models walked along the runway, Sanchez provided the soundtrack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the same ideas about fashion, music, sound, how to create,\u201d Sanchez recalls. To compliment Margiela\u2019s unconventional design approach, instead of mixing, he made a sound collage using reel-to-reel tape. \u201cI was editing music, like, in cinema,\u201d he says. He also placed microphones in the backstage area, \u201cso when people were entering the show, they could hear what was behind, what had been in the head of the designer.\u201d It provided an unfettered peek into the mind of the elusive Margiela, who would come to be known as fashion\u2019s \u201cinvisible man,\u201d categorically turning down interview and photo requests.<\/p>\n
Sanchez has since made a career out of collaborating with designers on a conceptual level, his carefully-curated, cerebral soundtracks cementing his place as one of fashion\u2019s most respected show music producers. He\u2019s matched Miu Miu with movie dialogues pulled from the films of Visconti and Fassbinder; he\u2019s mixed Metallica and Beyonc\u00e9 together for pop culture aficionado Marc Jacobs; played Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cWork Bitch\u201d for an empowerment-themed Prada runway; and staged a Margiela promenade in half sound, half silence.<\/p>\n
Sanchez is the master of a minimal soundtrack. He loves the idea of a \u201csoundscape, layers that you don\u2019t really notice at the moment of the show, but maybe a few hours later, you\u2019re going to think about. Almost like a perfume that stays on your clothes. Sound is not like an image,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt\u2019s much more. If you have five people who listen to a sound, they might come away with five different impressions. That\u2019s something I really like. There\u2019s something quite magical about it.\u201d The idea of audio-storytelling reverberates through Sanchez\u2019s work. \u201cSomeone like Orson Welles when he was doing radio, sound illustrators in the ’50s and ’60s, they were almost doing films with sounds. This was very inspirational for me about how sound can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even at a young age, Paris-raised Sanchez intuitively connected with sound. His earliest childhood memory is his grandfather listening to Spanish radio. Abbey Road, the Beatles album his sister brought home from London when he was six or seven, acquainted him with the idea of music as a vehicle for storytelling. \u201cI really fell in love with that record,\u201d he says. \u201cThe second side, there\u2019s no gap in between songs \u2014 it\u2019s almost like you have one track.\u201d<\/p>\n
Music was also Sanchez\u2019s gateway to fashion. As a teenager he \u201cwas really into\u201d Joy Division and New Order, who had album covers by Peter Saville, the same graphic designer who worked on Yohji Yamamoto\u2019s iconic lookbook-style catalogues in the ’80s. After dropping out of college, Sanchez dabbled in public relations work, first at a theatre and opera house, then as the assistant to fashion publicist Mich\u00e8le Montagne. There, Sanchez recalls, \u201cIt was this environment of all these very creative people. She was working with Martine Sitbon,\u201d who would soon be named creative director of Chlo\u00e9, and \u201cwhose husband Marc Ascoli was the art director for Yohji [Yamomoto] at the time.\u201d It was just before Sitbon started working with Helmut Lang.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter three months,\u201d he says, \u201cI realised that public relations was really not my thing.\u201d But a seed had been planted. \u201cI was always playing music in the office. Once, Martine had a problem with her soundtrack, and Mich\u00e8le told her, \u2018Ask Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric \u2014 he knows music really well.\u2019 She explained her collection to me, I pulled together a lot of records and ideas, and I started to think: maybe there is something to do with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of the ’80s, when Sanchez first delved into show soundtracks, \u201cmost of the shows were still in the format of the ’70s, which means a very, very long show,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were 150 outfits, all with different themes. Usually there was one [type of] music by theme, so it was not continuous.\u201d His first show with Margiela in 1988 was \u201c25 or 30 minutes\u201d long, he estimates. \u201cNow, a show is eight or 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The process of creating a show soundtrack depends on the client, Sanchez says. \u201cWith Miuccia Prada, it starts with incredible conversation about the clothes, the fashion, but also politics, what\u2019s happening in the world. With someone like Rei [Kawakubo of Comme des Gar\u00e7ons], she\u2019s not going to talk, but it\u2019s very important for her to show me the clothes.\u201d For her Spring\/Summer 2015 show, Kawakubo simply gave him the word \u201cred\u201d as a starting point.<\/p>\n
Sanchez characterises the process as a duet between the designer and himself, a creative back-and-forth that takes about 40 hours of work from start to finish. The working period can span months, a few days or, in an extreme case, overnight. \u201cWith Guillaume Henry from Nina Ricci, I\u2019d only worked with him once before, so for the [recent] October show, we started working in July,\u201d Sanchez says. \u201cWith [Miuccia Prada], we start maybe a week before the show. But it\u2019s different. Because I\u2019ve worked with her for 20 years, I\u2019m looking for sound for her all the time. It\u2019s not like I arrive a week before and say, \u2018So, what are we gonna do?\u2019 I already have all these things in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanchez is constantly researching. \u201cWe have over 100 hard drives [in my studio] covering every kind of music: classical, opera, experimental jazz, music scores,\u201d he says. \u201cPlus, I\u2019m buying records, films, books almost every day. In the beginning [of my career], I was always going to record stores, but now with Amazon and eBay, it\u2019s nonstop. I\u2019m always reading about experimental music from the \u201850s, \u201860s and \u201870s; when I read something I don\u2019t know, I go on the Internet and then, maybe this artist is related to this artist… suddenly you have a huge vast world [to research and discover].\u201d<\/p>\n
With Kawakubo, a sort of kismet happened this past season. Sanchez had been watching David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet when he saw \u201cthis band I really like, Tuxedomoon, was going to release a record about Blue Velvet. I got a copy from the record label, listened to it and thought, \u2018Maybe I should keep that for Rei.\u2019 When I arrived at her studio a month later, I showed her the record, and she said, \u2018You\u2019re kidding. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve been thinking about also.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Often, Sanchez and the designer will decide on the base of the soundtrack \u2014 a general direction \u2014 and make tweaks as the show nears. \u201cWe build up the soundtrack as the collection and the styling [are decided],\u201d he says. \u201cThe hair, the makeup, the attitude you want to give to the models, the venue \u2014 all these things are important to creating the soundtrack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be flexible,\u201d he maintains. \u201cIt\u2019s something you learn with fashion \u2014 it\u2019s better to be quick and flexible. With theatre or film, you have something like eight months [to work through the creative process]. Two years. [With fashion,] it\u2019s really quick and there\u2019s no rehearsal. Often it\u2019s a little bit like by magic that things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, sometimes shows don\u2019t happen as planned. A few seasons ago at Marni, there was an unexpected power failure. \u201cWe had to do the show with no lights and no sound,\u201d Sanchez says. A similar situation happened at a Givenchy men\u2019s show in 2011. \u201cI pushed the button, and everything stopped,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat\u2019s the interesting thing about fashion \u2014 everything is last-minute. You can\u2019t control everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flexibility can also mean having to change an entire soundtrack immediately before a show. \u201cOnce, for a Vuitton show with Marc Jacobs, we had the soundtrack almost finished the day before, when I realised that Gucci had done the same thing. We changed the soundtrack completely, overnight.\u201d Sanchez prides himself on creating \u201cmade-to-measure\u201d sound for each show. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s very important to give this exclusiveness,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
To that end, he sometimes composes an original piece for a show. At Calvin Klein this past season, \u201cI had the sound moving in the space \u2014 it\u2019s something that I do for my personal work, and so Francisco [Costa] asked me if I could do it for the show,\u201d Sanchez says. \u201cThey built four huge speakers in the room, and with computers, I made it so that in a certain part of the space you could hear certain elements of the soundtrack \u2014 the sound was moving the whole time.\u201d Each person in the room heard something different.<\/p>\n
In a way, the runway soundtrack is one of the last pieces of fashion to remain exclusive to the people sitting in the show venue. Because of music licensing and copyright issues, the soundtracks Sanchez creates are often replaced in the videos of shows that appear online. \u201cWhat people are listening to on the Internet is not what people are experiencing at the shows. [Only] during the livestream can they listen to [my soundtrack online]. Usually the sound is changed, because the rights [to the music] would cost a fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thus, Sanchez creates his soundtracks \u201cfor a live performance,\u201d he says. \u201cThe way you experience the show live in a big room is not the same thing as when you experience it on the screen. What you see is very different, which means that when I look up my work on the Internet, I [usually] wish to do something else.\u201d Indeed, when it comes to the soundscape, Sanchez thinks designers should do more to consider the experience of the online show viewer. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of things still to be done with this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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