Gareth Pugh autumn/winter 09

on the reasons why Gareth chose to do a video presentation instead of a show...

First and foremost was the fact I had just done this big menswear show in Paris four weeks before the women's show. At a time when everyone is worried about money, I didn't want to come over as being overly brash by doing two big shows.
I didn't think it was the right kind of mood. It was my first menswear show and it needed to be like a proper show and it was important for me to do that. For the womenswear it was more about taking it down to a different sort level, trying to take away the shine or varnish of a show. It was much more about being realistic about things. With shows, it's sometimes nice to get away from something that I'm used to.

on the ideas of the video and Natasha finally doing it...

I wanted it to be a black silhouette against a white backdrop. We really wanted to use someone who was a new face. Someone like Karlie Kloss and she did my last show and was really amazing. The problem with using a really young girl was that video is very different from catwalk and as the girl was coming from New York we didn't know beforehand what she could do. Natasha (Vojnovic) has done a lot of stuff with Nick Knight before and she's got a lot of videos behind her where she really demonstrates what she can do and we wanted someone who was very confident in front of the camera.
New girls who are good on the catwalk aren't necessarily going to be good on video. As soon as you press record they might know what to do. Natasha is very intuitive about understanding the movements that go with the clothes. What I said to her was that the idea was to be something like a flamenco dancer.(nothing referencing the clothes). Something that is very feminine and chic in the way they hold themselves but still very hard Elegant and haughty - it's that hard feminity that Natasha really embodies.

on the statement of this collection...

It was me trying to do something different. I was getting very bored with doing very tight on the top and big on the top, that inverted triangle thing. So I just turned it on its head and did something that was very solid in the base. You're working with that different kind of volume that opens up a lot of different things that you hadn't work with. It was quite interesting as it's not really my kind of thing. It's using that different element but to make it look like something that I did. Rather than being quite aggressive, it's quite attractive in a way - a different kind of hardness.

Gareth Pugh interviewed by Susie Bubble

source: dazed digital