CARLA SOZZANI

Carla Sozzani is a tireless pursuer of beauty, a sophisticated figure, ethereal and impalpable on the outside, a powerful revolutionary soul on the inside. Empress of the Milan art scene for more than thirty years, she started from her first love, publishing, through which she conveyed her vision and thought with clarity, taste and character, and then moved on to the celebration of photography in her gallery, where she showcased all the major international photographers. Sozzani also created her living magazine, 10 Corso Como, the prototype and crystalliser of the Concept Store and replicated it in five other locations around the world… What next? She has created a brand of prêt-à-porter and handicrafts, NN studio, she has been a talent scout for great designers and artists, she has revived and brought back to the pinnacle of her career her very dear friend and couturier Azzedine Alaïa, she is in charge of his foundation and is also a fashion collector. Carla Sozzani has dedicated her life to beauty, to the pursuit of her creative intuition with great success and now also dedicates herself to mentoring young people, sharing her experience.

Louise Baring interviewed Carla on several occasions, over the course of seven years, and the result of her research is contained in the book Carla Sozzani: Life, Art, Fashion published by Thames & Hudson for the English version and by Ippocampo for the Italian one. Baring’s text is a clean, frank portrait of Sozzani and the Milan of her years. It is a dynamic tale, full of interesting anecdotes, at times moving, at times amusing; it delivers a vision of a fascinating woman, full of curiosity and eager to share with the world what her eyes see.

As an interdisciplinary mind, I completely embrace the multifaceted facets of Carla’s soul and her professional reflection, I was bewitched and this book inspired me enormously, as did its presentation at the Triennale in Milan, during which I laughed, was moved and had goose bumps from how close I felt to the protagonist of this book.

I invite everyone to read this text, to discover the many creative souls, all of them gentle, of Carla Sozzani. Let yourself be inspired by his inexhaustible energy that conveys a countercultural vision that affirms that you don’t always have to want to appear, to be over the top, you can be reserved, polite and modest, revolutionising your world one creative project at a time, with class and lightness, without ever ceasing to search for beauty.

Curator, art director, concept store creator, mother of many artistic projects in multiple disciplines, what is it that unites everything? What is it that fuels this creative fire?

Curiosity for sure and also always looking for what I think is beautiful. Beauty is everywhere, that’s the problem. The world is all to be discovered and you learn something every day.

I get up in the morning and think what am I going to learn today? And that gives me an energy that never runs out, unquenchable.

Curating a magazine or an exhibition or a selection of clothes… taking care of your instinct, taste and sharing it with others. What else would you like to curate? What other arts would you like to encounter?

Editing was my first passion, then exhibitions were a consequence. Editing is the thing I’m most passionate about, because when I have to, for example, conceiving a collection, which I did in the past, I get tired, whereas editing never tires me because I have to discover something I don’t know.. I would like to edit a project that has to do with the world of cooking, which is something that has always been abstract for me, because I don’t know how to cook. I would like to do a book on the cuisine of Azzedine Alaïa, of whom I was very good friends. He had this myth of the kitchen, of welcoming all the people around the table, as a meeting point. So I would like to contaminate publishing with cooking in a social sense.

About Sharing Beauty and what you enjoy, What satisfies you most about sharing?

Definitely when people say “I feel good here”: that is the thing that has given me the most satisfaction. So many times people have come in and said “it gives me the chills”, or “today I didn’t feel so good, now I feel better”. It’s nice to share with young people, to share what little I know, or don’t know yet, learning with others is extremely interesting. You also learn a lot by talking to young people because they ask very direct questions.

The desire to communicate has always been one of the things that has driven me in my career, because working in magazines you work for a project and not for yourself, so everything I have done afterwards has always been a consequence. 10 Corso Como was my living magazine and it was nice to share a space where people felt good. Once, early one morning, there was a mother with a child, there were birds singing and I heard the child ask the mother ‘but is this a sacred place?’ It was exciting.

It has reported in the past that your greatest fear is that of disappointing your loved ones. How have you done and how do you cope with this fear?

It is a weakness, but also a strength, because, actually, when there are bad moments, which there always are, moments when things don’t work out and you have to overcome them, there is no point in wasting time and that is the spur. So it is a weakness but also a great strength at the same time.

Have you always had an interdisciplinary artistic vision or have you developed and deepened the different areas one by one?

Right from the start, because when I was working for Chérie Moda, in the early days, I probably learnt to do many things at once because I also had to follow a cookery magazine, knitting, from paper patterns to haute couture, to children; all very different subjects that probably got me used to handling many things at once. In fact, my daughter often says that I never listen and tell her, “but I can’t do two things at once”. It’s true that I have changed many situations, sometimes driven by curiosity, sometimes because it just happened that way. Certainly there has also been a crescendo, because since the 1990s, for thirty years, I had the gallery, did the exhibitions, NN studio, worked with Azzedine Alaïa, founded 10 Corso Como and opened in five other places in the world. Thirty years that was like fifty. I didn’t even realise it, I wasn’t tired, I always recharged myself. Even when I worked at Elle, I was dedicated to the Romeo Gigli brand and I always multitasked. This can be a good thing, but also not, but it’s my way.

Why did you start in publishing? Which aspects of magazine publishing were the most fun and stimulating? And which the most tedious.

I was studying Foreign Languages and Literature at Bocconi, my mother was a friend of this lady who owned the Chérie Moda magazine, so I got into publishing, I started proofreading, and then I became so fond of photography that it became a passion for me. On the other hand, to express oneself one either uses writing or images, to learn one either travels or reads, which is always a way of travelling. Even when I was very young, I loved the printed page, leafing through issues of Bazaar and falling in love with Alexey Brodovitch (art director of Harper’s Bazaar who revolutionised the concept of a fashion magazine). I had a year where I couldn’t go to school, I was at home with tutors and at that time I was just reading, I had shut myself up a lot and my mother had fashion magazines in the house and I would avidly browse through them, along with art books.

I have to say that I have never thought about what others would like, but what I would like to communicate to others or share, because you cannot please everyone, the important thing is to create a community with whom you share the same values. That’s actually the goal of journalists: to convey a point of view with which to share with others who have the same point of view. And that’s where editing begins on everything, because anything can be edited, in everyday life we all do it, even when we go to the florist we edit.

Thinking instead about the more tedious aspects of publishing, it has to be said that there is always a part of the job, of all jobs, that is less beautiful… in my case they were the budget, the tight schedule, the organisation. At Vogue I was working on 24 issues a year simultaneously: Vogue Gioiello, Sposa, Bambini, Pelle and Shopping.

The most fun aspects of the job were definitely the travelling, working with photographers, with the extraordinary people I met. Also when I did the exhibitions I was able to talk to fantastic people… it was a whole path of really extraordinary encounters so I feel very lucky.

What was it like to have had the opportunity to meet and forge deep relationships with contemporary artists and geniuses? What values have they transmitted to you?

They were encounters that made my life full. Many times people say to me “but do you realise that you have done thirty years of exhibitions, today you would be rich!” But the greatest enrichment has been what I have known, what I have understood, what I have met, a continuous enrichment. With many artists I became very close friends, I forged stronger, family ties, like with Roversi, Sarah Moon, I remember dinners with Hiro who told of his childhood, escaped from Japan, wonderful stories. I was really privileged.

What about printed paper excites you?

The scent of paper… We experience paper with our five senses. When a new book arrives, it is like discovering it for the first time, isn’t it? Sometimes it even happens to me that I can’t look at it right away, I need to leave it there for a moment and let it decant before I pick it up.

How did the idea of 10 Corso Como make its way into your mind? Was it a lightning idea or a layering of ideas over time?

Definitely Lightning. I was walking on the street in New York and I was wondering what do I do now? Because I was coming back from a period of radical change and of uncertainty, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And suddenly, it was so strange, I imagined this Living Magazine! I didn’t want to go back to working in magazines, also because my sister was right, we would have had unnecessary conflicts. So I thought, what’s the difference, after all, between clothes or bags or furniture or flowers and having them photographed and buying them and sharing them? And so the pages became tables, instead of flipping through, I created corners where I put together candles with books, shoes with incense… back then it wasn’t like now, each section was on its own. Instead I had Japanese ceramics next to the clothes, following the Bazaar concept, that is, a big mix of everything within the same container.

Concept store: gallery, bookstore, shop, restaurant, rooms… Would you have liked to add more facets to Corso Como?

Maybe I would have liked to have had more space to devote to music, but I didn’t want to make the bookstore smaller, also because it had been called one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. I would have liked to create something more alive on the terrace, more plants, to experience it even more.

Fashion is a continuous testimony to the passage of time and its desire to crystallise it in form and fabric. What will never bore you of fashion? What, on the other hand, has bored you?

Research never tires me! I am also in awe of Suzy Menkes, a real journalist who never stops researching. What bores me instead is when I see something that is not personal, that is useless. Seeing new creatives and their vision, even if not yet mature, but catching that embryonic intuition, is very exciting.

What struck you about Alaïa when you met him and what lessons did he leave in you? In what spirit do you run his foundation?

Alaïa struck me immediately, with his smile, his openness, warmth, friendliness. Obviously his being an extraordinary creative and also, above all, a craftsman. He would tell me “I am not a designer, I am not a stylist, I am a Couturier.” I was fascinated, I would spend hours with him in his atelier while he worked on the canvases of his clothes and we would talk…. From him I learnt constancy, perseverance, patience, the loneliness of those who create… that also with Kris Ruhs… artists, they live from loneliness after all, because otherwise the social artist is something else, isn’t it? And then Azzedine’s generosity was wonderful… he was my great friend.

World of craftsmanship, have you ever done any creative, manual production yourself?

I would like to but no, I wanted to do photography, but then I’m not patient, because I’m already thinking about doing something else. If one wants to be a photographer one has to take being a photographer seriously, if one wants to paint or be a tailor, or any kind of arts and crafts one has to do that… I had taken painting lessons as a child, but I think one has to feel a real need and desire to express it. I mean, I’m not an artist, I don’t have this desire, but if I had to take scissors and scotch tape to make a magazine, I would do it right away!

I heard that if you were to create your own magazine, it would be in illustration. What kind of strokes do you prefer? What does illustration allow compared to photography? Which artist would you inaugurate this magazine with? Let’s create it together!

Photography is yes fantastic, I have spent my whole life dedicated to photography so it seems absurd for me to say this but illustration makes you dream more, it stimulates the imagination. There was a beautiful fashion illustration magazine in the 80s called La Mode en Peinture done by Prospere Assouline. I really like the work of Mats Gustafson, Francois Berthoud, then there are a lot of interesting young people. What illustration allows is to think about other things. If I had to start an illustration magazine I would do it with them.

What strikes you about an artist? What common denominator do the artists you have exhibited in the Sozzani Gallery have?

A personal point of view. In my opinion, when you go to see an exhibition, you have to be struck by something you don’t know or that if you do know, you discover with other eyes, and this is where editing comes in again. The authenticity and integrity of the artist are other characteristics that I look for and that you can see in their work which, even if it is not perfect, communicates, has a feeling.

What are the basic ingredients, in your opinion, for making a living from art and from what you love today?

You don’t have to be afraid of anything and you have to be independent. You have to be lucky enough to do a job that allows you to be free to make your own choices. That is a privilege… Otherwise you can dream! The dream, as Azzedine said, is for everyone, there is total freedom… Dreams are one of the most beautiful things we can have, like children or more than children; you can build a whole world with them, you can live a complete, total world, a cloud…

What do you see in the future of your Foundation? New artists with whom you would like to collaborate?

I would like to devote myself more and more to Education. I am no longer so interested in doing more exhibitions; of course I will follow Kris’s exhibitions. Now I’m more interested in passing on what I know to the next generation, being able to talk to them and to help them. It’s a new form of sharing in the end. I don’t want to do a school, I would like to do a one-to-one thing, spending time with someone is very important, I don’t want to do the classroom, but a more intimate thing, like we are already doing, Mentoring courses. We had stylists spending one day with me, one day with Sara and one day with Silvia, who has been by my side for many years.

Periphery, gentrification, thanks to your vision and being a pioneer, you re-evaluate the social context. What is closest to your heart in today’s society?

I’m a big fan of the city of Milan, I adore it.. Maybe it’s an instinct… with 10 Corso Como it was a coincidence, maybe even today, but I have to say that I am infinitely fond of the area where I work, for example now I have become Bovisa Centrica. Everything is here, everything happens here. I like discovering new places, restaurants, etc. Maybe the fact that I was born in Mantua, which is a small city, then I grew up in Suzzara, which is very small, I look for the size of the village; I recreate a micro village already here in the foundation and maybe living in a more intimate context, I feel at ease and then it is stimulating. When I say “come and visit me in Bovisa” and they ask me “where?” I like to let people discover a new part of the city, to write a new page in another neighbourhood.

On a professional level, which intuition, idea, project has made you most satisfied throughout your career?

Probably the gallery: I think I gave so much to the city of Milan, I was able to share so much and I felt a very strong reward from the people who came to the gallery, who were happy to see the exhibitions, to discover new talent. This is the thing that gave me the most joy. After all, I like to build, I am a Builder.