Fashion writer Lynn Yaeger joins Creatures of the Wind designers Shane Gabier and Christopher Peters in the rolling hills of Provence for a master class in fashion at Savannah College of Art and Design Lacoste—and a vintage shopping adventure.
Day One
It is 9:00 p.m. at the Café de Sade in Lacoste, it is still blazingly light outside, and Pierre Cardin, who is the unofficial mayor of this village in the south of France, is at a corner table. I am nursing a glass of rosé, awaiting the arrival of the Creatures of the Wind boys, as everyone calls them, who have just tumbled out of the SCAD van. They scramble up the stone steps, order drinks, and stare in stunned wonderment at the view.
We’re at the Provencal campus, nestled in a medieval village so idyllic it is almost ridiculous. (The Marquis de Sade, who once lived in a castle overlooking the village, liked it here, too.) The Creatures are in town to teach a master class to fashion design students; I am tagging along and mostly begging everyone to take me to brocantes, the flea markets that fill the streets of local hamlets.
Day Two
In SCAD’s glorious sixteenth-century Maison Basse, an atelier that was once a silkworm farm (there are still holes in the walls where mulberry leaves resided) Gabier and Peters meet the students. It’s an all-female group, organized into seven teams of two. The Creatures guys give a brief history of their brand—the name comes from a Johnny Mathis song—and then move on to their main topic: the unleashing of creativity; the pursuit of your influences; the task of opening your mind, regardless of whether this leads immediately to the clothes you create. This kind of deep thinking is a challenge to the students, and as Peters reels off the line’s recent influences—Conan the Barbarian, hokey sci-fi epics, the outsider artist Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, star maps—the kids looked frankly stunned. “A collection is about emotional nebulousness,” Gabier tells them. “In the end, it’s greater than the core of components you bring into it.” Peters adds: “Fashion is an idealized version of your world.”
Day Three
Every time we pass a highway sign advertising the Cirque Landri, I turn into a demented seven-year-old screaming, “Circus! Circus!” So on Tuesday night, we go to this one-ring affair in the middle of a field near Coustellet—the juggler, animal wrangler, and rope-trick artist are the same guy; the aerialist and doggie trainer is the same sullen young lady (am I nuts, or did I see this wench wrapping her legs around a rope in a similar act a few months ago at the Box in Dubai?); the clown is also the stagehand; the bird lady sells cotton candy during intermission. At the sight of recalcitrant pups jumping through hoops, Peters laughs so hard he cries. In any case, everyone is in a very good mood tonight because earlier in the day, on a visit to L’Isle sur la Sorgue, we discovered a Valhalla called La Fripe Chic, an unassuming vintage store with (not lying here!) Balenciaga frocks for 60 euros, red leather Marni coats for 50, Margiela pullovers for 20, and Rick Owens cardies for 15.
Day Four
We’ve settled into a pattern, and it is insanely pleasurable. We spend mornings at the brocantes and vide greniers (French for garage sale)—today the fair is in Bédoin, where Creatures find a pair of vintage Rochas sunglasses in the case for 20 euros that they plan to gift to their friend Liz Goldwyn. A dealer gives me a silvery bracelet when he finds out I am American (maybe something about my French tipped him off?) in thanks, he tells me, tearing up, for the allies who arrived near here 60 years ago and saved France. In the afternoon, we stop at the studio and see how the class is coming along. The Creatures’ recommendations have apparently sunk in—the students’ boards, once crowded with sunny pics of Grace Kelly and lavender sprigs, have become darker, more abstract, more mysterious, more personal—dreamy views of the countryside have been replaced variously with smoking nuns, menacing cicadas, Pina Bausch, and mad houses.
Day Five
Can this be our last day in Provence? How quickly the time flies when you are hanging with cool students, banging around markets, and gorging on poulet fumé. Gabier and Peters look approvingly at the students’ work and the progress they have made. “Never worry about how perfect something is,” Peters reminds them. “Explore what’s special, what’s close to you!” he says, as the Provençal light streams through the windows, and the supermoon, not in a hurry to leave—and nor am I!—still faintly visible in the morning sky.
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