interview by OLIVIER ZAHM
Maison Darré, 32 rue du Mont-Thabor, 75001 Paris
MAISON DARRÉ, auricular-oracular
After twenty years of free-lancing as a fashion designer for famous French and Italian labels, Vincent Darré finally opened a small, glamourous and intimate boutique under his own name. It has nothing to do with fashion! It’s a place where you’ll find the most surprisingly unique home furnishings — beds, desks, carpets, mirrors, wallpaper, and more. I talked to him the day before the opening of Maison Darré, which he calls his laboratory.
OLIVIER ZAHM — What’s your new collection about?
VINCENT DARRE — The bed, for starters, is me. It’s called “Le désossé” (The Deboned). The idea is based on the dadaist dances I do at the end of a night. It’s a green chair and a small desk with feet shaped like bones — and a Vietnamese lacquer that took 50 days to apply. Everything is handmade and numbered. The illustrator Pierre Le-Tan will design a printed fabric for furniture and wallpaper. Valérie Lemercier [ed: an actress and stand-up comic] also did some wallpaper. My friends do things for my “house.” It’s all based on my friendships.
OLIVIER ZAHM — Have you always liked bones and skeletons?
VINCENT DARRE — Yes. My parents were Leftist intellectuals, for whom religion was absurd. So of course I was fascinated by churches, which I’d sneak into. I spent my life in churches and cemeteries, rummaging around all kinds of old things. I was fascinated by symbols of death, meta-physics, and the rapport between Surrealism and religious imagery.
OLIVIER ZAHM — I was intrigued by something you said about crypts and paganism.
VINCENT DARRE — What’s interesting about religion is its diabolic paganism, the juxta-position of angels and death. I like Masonic imagery — an eye in the middle of a triangle, squares, jumbles of bones. It’s as if they were evidence of a profound truth.
OLIVIER ZAHM — What about cinema?
VINCENT DARRE — My brother was a movie fan. I always went to movies in their original languages. But I was just as fascinated with musical comedies as I was with German expressionism. I found the two an interesting mix.
OLIVIER ZAHM — Were your parents political atheists?
VINCENT DARRE — Back then everyone in Saint-Germain-des-Prés was an atheistic communist, as if a Communist Party membership was a noble title. I was raised in all that, but also found it quite ridiculous.
OLIVIER ZAHM — Did you hang on to some of their politics?
VINCENT DARRE — Yes, but I was more anarchist than communist. Actually I was Punk. That’s what marked my adolescence. When I read Buñuel’s biography, it occurred to me that Punk was dadaist or surrealist. Following that principle, though, everything could be reversed or effaced.
OLIVIER ZAHM — With a touch of humor…
VINCENT DARRE — The thing that helps us survive is humor. I can’t follow an idea without including humor. I can’t take myself that seriously, so I can’t take anyone else seriously either — especially those who take themselves too seriously.
[Table of contents]
by Olympia Le-Tan
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Bill Powers
by Glenn O'Brien
by Glen Luchford
by Chikashi Suzuki
by Olivier Zahm
by Richard Bush
By Terry Richardson
by Olivier Zahm
by Jeff Rian
by Takashi Homma
by Johnny Gembitsky and Skye Parrott
by Mark Borthwick