INTERVIEW: A.P.C.'S JEAN TOUITOU
Fashion is a business defined by image, it’s fuelled by our desire to use clothing and branding to help portray a version of ourselves that we, at least for the time being, see as a correct manifestation of what we like and how we feel. The reason for choosing a certain garment is a combination of what it looks like, obviously, but also what the brand stands for and if we, fundamentally, agree with the person behind it. Sometimes customers don’t need to tick all those three boxes, but brands are more likely to succeed in the long run if they do.
Saying that, some of the best brands around know all that, and then completely ignore it. Instead they try and achieve three other targets: know who you are, say what you want and keep putting out the best possible products, while neglecting directives from the marketing department. Looking back at the first three decades of A.P.C., that’s very much what its founder, Jean Touitou, has done since setting up the quintessentially French brand in 1987.
Over the years he’s landed himself in deep water a few times, rubbing some people up the wrong way with his opinions. He is nothing if not divisive. He’s also a supporter of Kanye West, not only as a musician but also as a designer. Before Yeezy, Touitou and West collaborated on an A.P.C. capsule collection, one of West’s first ‘proper’ forays into fashion. Both have, separately and together, made friends as well as enemies along the way, but – much like with West’s undeniable musical talent – Touitou has a natural knack for making clothes you just want to wear over and over again. The clothes don’t ask too many questions, they don’t challenge you as much as ‘fashion’ does. And I mean that in a good way. Touitou himself often describes A.P.C. as ‘normal’ and ‘boring.’ There are days when you just want to pull on a pair of jeans and a shirt without feeling like you have to explain and defend your choices.
His menswear presentations are appreciated not just because they’re a nice break from the theatrical fashions of the Parisian catwalks but because of Touitou’s running commentary when introducing his collections. His dry humour and personal observations mean it’s an honest and authentic experience. Though sometimes slightly awkward, and other times a bit controversial, it’s Touitou’s genuine approach to clothes and people that make him likeable. And that then takes us full circle to how we started: you might not agree with everything he says, or even like him, but there’s no denying A.P.C., as a clothing brand, is fuelled by Touitou’s personal charisma, which more than enough makes up for the ‘everyday wardrobe’ aesthetic of the brand.
Instead of dissecting the latest A.P.C. collection or analysing his inspiration sources, it’s always interesting to find out a little more about the person behind the brand. We sat down with Jean Touitou to explore his past, his journey from North Africa to Paris and how his background in a political group hell-bent on radical activism helped make A.P.C. into what it is today, a brand that ticks those three initial boxes – but in its own unique way.
Your family moved from Tunisia when you were only ten years old, what impact has that move had on you?
The concept of a lost paradise can be applied on anyone. What you leave behind is the lost paradise of your youth, it’s the moment you wait for your mother to give you a midnight kiss, those things you can only go back to in your memories. It doesn’t matter what country you’re leaving.
You consider Tunisia and your early years there to be your lost paradise?
Yes, I do but I’m trying to be positive about it. The paradise of your childhood is meant to be lost anyway but, having said that, I believe it’s a sort of robbery: you’re taking something out of yourself when you can’t stay in your homeland.
In regards to the geography of it and the culture of the country, you had friends and you went to school in Tunisia. What was the local pop culture like?
The pop culture was delivered to us. My father used to travel a lot in Sweden and Boston for the tannery business he worked for. He would go four times a year to Simrishamn in the south of Sweden, and he’d travel a lot to Paris, and he would bring back music from the trips. I remember listening to ‘Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones on a 45.
And what did he bring you from Sweden?
He brought wooden clogs – very exotic for a 10-year-old kid in Tunisia!
Do you work with Tunisian references at A.P.C. today?
Not so much, unless you can name them to me, because my culture today is the French culture.
Why did your parents decide to leave Tunisia?
It was a cultural thing. I’m totally secular myself and I don’t believe in God, though I do happen to be a part of Jewish culture, and Jewish culture was colonised by Islamic culture in the 6th or 7th century.
There was an anti-Semitic culture?
It wasn’t aggressive, like in Poland with the nail and the hammer. But there was something that you could feel, that nothing was going to happen for you if you stayed there. So I don’t blame my parents, but there is a feeling that something has been taken away from me, the older I get, the more I feel this.
That’s not very nice…
You can work on it. I bought a house in the south of Sicily that is only 30 nautical miles from the coast of Tunisia. I can look at it at night. I can see the lights from the cars from the island.
Was that a conscious decision?
Well, I also happen to love the island. It’s a pretty wild volcanic island and there’s only a population of 4,000 in the winter and maybe 8,000 in the summer.
“Capitalism is like the rain, you can’t fight it. But there’s a moral way of trading and doing business”
You got involved with a radical political organisation once you moved to France?
Very early on I started to read Marx and Lenin, and that took me to a revolutionary organisation, yes. I didn’t want to do anything work-wise that meant I had to touch money. I was a true puritan and I believed that to touch money was wrong. I found out that, to avoid being involved with money, I could be a state worker and wear a grey suit.
So you were essentially looking for a low paid job on purpose? You trained to be a teacher, right?
Yes. I knew I didn't want to be in business, because I thought business was evil. Simple as that. Also, as a militant you have to have a militant job. At the same time, since I was somehow a young intellectual, I didn’t want to do what my fellow Maoists did, going to factories and doing actual hard labour.
Did they perceive teaching as being part of some sort of cultural elite?
No, not at all in my organisation – the more you read books, the more you will accumulate culture, the better it will be for you as a revolutionary, and so being a history teacher was good for the organisation and good for the people.
Why history?
During my A-levels my history teacher was so bad, and I was getting high on challenging him and I would look into books ahead of him, and I was excited to make him look like a hypocrite. ‘I’m sorry Sir, but there is another way to look at it.’ I just wanted to punch him in the face, it was too easy really, and that gave me a taste of history.
So for you it was more a theoretical approach to history, using it to challenge authority?
Yes, maybe, at least in the beginning. Then, when I went to university I was very happy and good at it, and then came the question, ‘So, what are you going to do with your life?’ And I thought if I’m at university and they’re teaching me to be a teacher then I should be a teacher. But then I went to live and travel in South America for more than a year and that changed my perspective.
What radical organisation were you involved in?
We only referred to it as ‘the organisation,’ because it was a secret organisation; we wouldn't know the other people’s names, we all had code-names, no phoney names, not like 007, but code-names.
What was your code-name?
It was ‘Dublin’ because I was obsessed with Samuel Beckett. You chose your own code-name. One guy was a total maniac, and he called himself ‘Karl,’ after Karl Marx.
Looking back this seems quite comical, but it was serious?
Yes, it was deadly serious, but it seems funny now.
You’ve said before that you were after a new approach of capitalism – what does that mean?
Capitalism is like the rain, you can’t fight it. But there’s a moral way of trading and doing business. For example, for each US dollar in the ‘real economy,’ there is 500 ‘created’ dollars, and maybe we could all agree a ratio of 1:500 is a bit hysterical?
Are you referring to a ‘fake economy’?
To me it’s fake, but to a lot of people the financial world in London, for example, it’s not fake. To me it’s a huge Ponzi scheme; there’s too much money being printed. And that money has to go somewhere. Do you know what they call that money in the finance industry? They call it ‘dry powder.’ It’s a military expression to describe when you are over stocking on ammunition and you have no target to aim it at, and that’s the problem today.
How do you apply your take on this to fashion?
I’m applying it to fashion by limiting my expenses, and I don’t borrow too much money from the bank. I keep it in the ‘real economy,’ not the fake one. If I do a fashion show it will of course cost me six digits but it will be in the lower half of six digits, just over five.
Does that also affect the clothing? I mean, A.P.C. is expensive but it’s far from the most expensive brand around?
It has the price that it should have. I could make a lot more profit if I wanted to. I know where I could get a T-shirt made for one dollar, but I’m focusing on quality. I wouldn’t worry about bringing my customers to our factories; I’m not ashamed about the places we manufacture in.
If you live and buy in the fake economy, eventually that will crash, we’ve seen that happen in the past…
Yes, I’m happy it’s not crashing because we’ll all be in trouble then. But it deserves to crash, because we’re not living in the real world.
Generally speaking, what has age done to you? Are you wiser, are you more conservative, are you more curious?
I believe the older you get the more radical you become.
Most people say the opposite – you start as a socialist and you end up a conservative…
Frankly, I consider myself more radical than 40 years ago. There’s a lot of things I will never allow in my organisation.
Perhaps the more powerful you’ve become, the more you’ve enabled yourself to be radical?
I’m happy to say my name is Jean Touitou and nobody fucks with me. I’m proud to say that I did not compromise; I kept the same ideas from the beginning.
“I don’t like the idea of a ‘creative genius,’ I like the idea of a team”
Let’s talk about music a little bit. You ran a record label for a while, called Roadrunner Records?
That was a long time ago, yes. It was a mail order business for punk, psychedelic, ’60s music from America. We used to buy dead stock of great music that was collectable. And then came the digital industry and everything got copied onto cheap CDs. Art in general, and what I’m trying to do in my own life, excuse my French, is to fuck with beauty. I don’t consider myself to be an artist, or a businessman for that matter.
You once said you’re a producer rather than a designer?
Yes, I put things together. I like this thing that Proust said, that he never wrote his novels, he harvested them. I really like this idea, to harvest things and put them together. At A.P.C. I harvest the right people, and I harvest the right fabrics, etc. I don’t like the idea of a ‘creative genius,’ I like the idea of a team.
This goes back to the name. A.P.C. means Atelier de Production et de Création and the word ‘atelier’ implies that it’s a group of people…
Yes, but I didn’t decide on the A.P.C. name, the market decided for me. In the beginning there was no brand name, I just labelled each garment with the season we sold, so ‘Hiver 1987’ for example. But the press got tired of accrediting a different name to every season. Also, some stockists said, ‘We love your clothes and they never go out of fashion, but because they are branded by season, our customers ask for the sale price.’
Fashion, and the world we live in, is a very different place today compared to 1987…
I would say it’s the same old shit frankly – it just got bigger, with more megalomaniacs. The fashion industry is the one industry where everyone is a star.
What do you like the most and the least about working in fashion?
Right now it’s the total hypocrisy of politics that I dislike. Sooner or later the idea of calling something a men’s collection will be forbidden. Because there shouldn’t be any mention of a gender and the very idea of labelling a collection a men’s or women’s will be gone in two or three years. I’m sure we are going there, we are trying to offend no one.
And what do you like the most about the fashion industry?
When designing clothes we’re dealing with beauty in a less tortuous way than if you were a writer or a painter, because when you’re deep in creation it’s really torturous. When you write, for example, it’s a long dark tunnel in which you go and it’s difficult. What I like about fashion, as opposed to fundamental art, is that it’s applied art and about developing artistic ideas that you work on by tweaking them. It’s not that torturous, at least the way I do it.
You put painting and fashion in different categories? One is more ‘arty’ than the other?
Well, it depends on the painter. Basically 99% are rubbish, the painters who do achieve greatness are torturing their lives.
Do you mean that the best art comes from darkness?
Probably. But, the way I see it, you don’t have to live in heartbreak or be a drug addict, you can make nice things without being suicidal about things.
A.P.C. sold compilation CDs way before brands started putting together playlists, etc. That has always been part of your expression. Does that go back to Roadrunner Records?
It was very expensive to run Roadrunner, so I decided to save the music project until I had the means. When I had put away enough money from fashion I started a music studio, with a good producer. It’s thanks to fashion that I have been able to produce music. There are certain fields that I feel good operating in and sometimes I find that joy in writing and sometimes in playing and producing music. But I don’t want to do those things all the time.
Your first job in fashion was at Kenzo, but you’ve said that you got that job ‘by accident’ and that you just ended up in fashion without planning it?
Yes, Kenzo was an accident. At the time, the CEO of Kenzo was a very creative person and he needed lots of staff in his company. But he realised that a lot of staff would not understand the business so he only hired people that were crazy enough for him, and this is why I got the job – because of my past. I was a revolutionary and then I went on a road trip to South America, so I was hired!
It sounds like the equivalent of brands only hiring teenagers to do their social media today?
Yes. It was a bunch of mad people, but we worked well together. The energy was amazing, it was magical. And it’s that energy I’ve tried to recreate at A.P.C. When I saw that group of people at Kenzo it didn’t matter what they did, I wanted to join them even if they were carpenters or cabinetmakers! I ended up being their accountant, believe it or not.
And that’s how you see A.P.C., as being part of a crew, belonging to a group?
It’s funny because you’re making me think of things I would never have thought of otherwise – you’re a good shrink [laughing]. The Communist party always fails, but A.P.C. is like a Communist party that doesn’t fail. Maybe that’s because I’m not overly concerned with media success and money, but I’m happy there is a group of people aiming in one direction and working in a small way, but globally.
So, arguably, the Communist experiment failed, but the A.P.C. experiment lives on?
We’re still experimenting with utopia. Believe you me, it’s tough to be independent. How many respectable independent brands are there in fashion right now?
Depends what you mean by respectable?
[Lauging] True. There are zillions of fashion brands that are more textile brands than fashion brands. But it’s true, who are we to call somebody respectable or not? But this I know: 30 years ago the Fédération Française de la Couture did not give me an official slot in the official fashion calendar because they thought I didn’t belong in fashion. And since I’m a bit proud I didn’t ask twice. I asked once 15 years ago and they said, ‘Oh, you must be a member of our syndicate,’ and I said, ‘Yes please, send me a form’, and they said ‘Oh, we’ve ran out of forms.’
Have you applied your Communist ideas on to A.P.C? It’s still independent?
The idea of not being owned by a major conglomerate has nothing to do with Communism, it comes more from the fact that I don’t like being told what to do, whether it’s about trends or to use a specific leather for my bags.
Did anyone ever approach you to buy the brand?
Yes, of course. I even have a price in mind. But I’m not selling!
Back to you setting up A.P.C. When did you go from accountant at Kenzo to designing?
It came to me when I joined Agnès B after Kenzo. I was helping her organise the production but she was manufacturing in shitty little factories. I took her to the next level of the industry without hurting the quality of the product. And then she said asked me to look after the men’s line.
So you started without any formal education, has that been a pro or con?
I can do you a drawing right now but I would never have imagined I’d make clothes from drawings. When I was working there I realised that it’s far from simple but if you have a good idea and the right manufacturing, you can put together a collection. That experience freed me from the idea that to be a designer you have to be a genius and wake up with inspiration at 3am.
You were also developing your aesthetics, your own menswear image, as well as learning about production, I imagine.
It all happened in those years, 1986 to 1987. There was a Japanese invasion in Paris, with all those incredible textiles in black. And Margaret Howell, to me, made the perfect jackets.
Tell me about Paris in 1987. What was the culture like, what was the attitude and the music like?
I remember that a lot of people loved going to a joint called ‘La Palace,’ but I hated it. I couldn’t stand disco because I was so anti-clubs. That’s where I felt suicidal, frankly. My way of trying to be revolutionary at the time was to be in love with pure rock ‘n’ roll. I went to those clubs a few times but I didn’t like the glamour.
The ‘80s was a time of opulent glamour, as you say, and in the ‘90s it turned minimalist as a reaction to that. If you look at A.P.C., it’s not minimal per se but it’s far from extravagant. Are you a pragmatic menswear designer? As in you need pockets and zips everywhere.
Yes, A.P.C. is pragmatic, but I thought the look of being pragmatic was revolutionary, I thought too many details and shoulder pads for men would take the dignity out of the clothes – to me that look was ridiculous.
I suppose it’s a bit of a wardrobe brand, no? Suitable for whatever you are doing and whenever you’re doing it?
Yes, there’s an element of wardrobe to A.P.C. through the integrity in the design and the quality. In the end it’s ‘boring.’ I’m happy to fuck with boredom, to make it part of our lives, it’s important to be able to be bored. I don’t want to be exceptional, because everyone is a rock star, everyone on the street is a rock star, and A.P.C. is an antidote to that!