5 homes, 1 houseboat, 1 castle, 100 Lacoste shirts...the designer shares his schedule.
7:00 A.M.
The first ray of light wakes me up. Then I go running for an hour, an hour and a half, minimum an hour. I do all of Paris. I live next to Place Vendôme, so I cross the Tuileries all the way to the Jardin des Plantes. I do one turn there, and then take the Left Bank on the river, so there is no car pollution, all the way to Place de la Concorde, back to the Tuileries, do a turn, do a sprint, and wshh go home. Dead. Then I stretch, and—I'm so proud of it—my shower has a steam room in it. I got it because I suffered for years staying in hotels in Italy with bad, cold showers.
8:30 A.M
I have breakfast: Tons of tea. Earl Grey. Fruit and a baguette. During breakfast there is something I cannot resist, apart from my boyfriend, it's actually the phone. I have a phone breakfast. Always. I call friends, boyfriend, family. Checking who is where. Is everything fine? This is breakfast.
9:15 A.M. I dress up and go to the office. Safquat, who works for me, comes in the morning, opens the window, and gives me the weather report. Once I have that, I start with the shoes. Let's go brown, let's go black, let's go sneakers, let's not go sneakers. I basically have three possibilities for clothes: jeans, suits, and chinos. In the winter I have my favorite, favorite pants ever, the moleskin from Hackett. I don't use any products. I am super quick to get dressed.
9:45 A.M.
Most of the time I come to my studio by Vespa because when I have other things to do during the day, I need my Vespa. I have a weekly schedule, and I have the day schedule. The day schedule arrives the evening before via SMS text. It takes me a long time to review my schedules in general. I have to review my plane schedules, which always end up changing.
10:30 A.M.
I work with the team organizing things—where I have to go for different reasons, what my projects are, what I'm thinking of, et cetera. I work with the team downstairs, reviewing everything, like the shoes, the bags, and the cosmetics line, all the projects. I'm very detail oriented. Everything that takes a lot of dedication and creativity I do in the morning when there is light and I'm really concentrated. When I'm drawing, I'm drawing with the light, being completely open and creative. I can't draw in the evening. I need light and I need warmth if it is a summer thing, and I need cold if it is a winter collection. The good thing is that I have houses to go to whenever I'm working. I draw according to the place.
The country house is a 13th-century French castle. I go there to design the winter collection because it is a cold place. In Portugal the collection can be more transitional because it can be cold or it can be hot too. In Egypt I design the summer collection, as it is always hot. So my houses are always used to design the collections because they put me in a very specific mood. It's easier for me to be into, you know, sandals and light things instead of thinking about boots lined with fur when it's 45 degrees [Celsius] outside. I also bought a small house in L.A., in Silver Lake, which I love. Super nice! Super-nice views. I love L.A. The good thing is that all the houses I have are not like massive houses where—gasp—you arrive and you're thinking, Oh, my God, it needs to be redone. They are actually small houses, like, I wouldn't say mobile homes; I exaggerate. But it's like, you know, small houses so I can easily move and I don't feel guilty. It's low maintenance basically.
1:30 P.M.
I have lunch in two places. One, if I want to be vaguely, vaguely discreet—and what I mean by that is not to be interrupted five times by people—I go right behind my office, just next door to L'Epi d'Or. Which is delicious and a super-classical Parisian restaurant, bistro-type. There is a back door to the restaurant. Or I go to the Bistro Volnay, which is the most delicious restaurant ever. It is really good French cuisine but light. I always have a proper lunch. I feel miserable if I don't. I never have wine at lunch. Otherwise, I will have to go to sleep. I'll have an appetizer and a main course, no dessert, two coffees. But we have lunch. In France you cannot not have lunch. If you stopped the French from having lunch, you will have a second revolution, I can tell you this. Not going to work—it is part of the French privilege.
3:00 P.M.
The days sort of don't really look alike. After lunch I go to the atelier to see prototypes. The atelier is where we have the made-to-measure, the bespoke shoes. I'll look at the different types of patterns we are going to try. We prepare the details here, and then I'll go to Italy with those details.
5:00 P.M.
Yesterday I had an appointment of two hours about cosmetics in the afternoon. Before that I had an appointment with an architect I'm working with to see the facade of the store in Istanbul.
6:30 P.M.
I had a meeting about the Cinderella shoe we made for Disney. The appointments can be anything from editing things to looking at textiles.
9:00 P.M.
Dinner is after nine. If it's a professional dinner or a fashion thing or if there is an opening of an exhibition or a thing like that, I leave from the studio. I have a small circle of restaurants. Funny enough, I think for the French, and as a Parisian, you are very lazy about restaurants. If you like a restaurant, you end up always staying with the same one. If I don't feel like eating, I go to a Japanese restaurant next door. If I really want to lose weight, I go to this Thai restaurant—they have great soup. Soup to me is like nothing. If it is Sunday in Paris, in general I go to the cinema in the evening. Sunday is a hard thing in Paris because everything is closed. If I go to the cinema and I'm in the Eighth Arrondissement, I go to this delicious Danish restaurant. It has great soup, great salad, and great crab. I'm allergic to fish, but for people who love fish, it has fantastic grilled salmon, herrings, things I cannot touch or look at, otherwise I might die. You do not need to make a reservation, which is heaven.
1:00 A.M.
When I arrive home, I almost have a hard time brushing my teeth. I need to go straight to bed. The vision of my bed already puts me to sleep. It's a 17th-century Portuguese bed, quite high—a super-big, super-nice wooden bed. It faces a huge screen. I just press a button and the screen comes down to watch movies. I was super happy I could watch movies in bed, not realizing that when I'm in bed, I do anything but watch a movie, let's put it that way. It puts me to sleep in five seconds. I have never been able to see a full movie on that screen. But I love documentaries. I always follow the big Bollywood blockbusters. I have seen every single Marilyn Monroe movie, I have seen every Marlene Dietrich movie, I have seen every Greta Garbo movie, I have seen every Lana Turner movie. I sleep in white cotton sheets. I'm allergic to silk, satin, and prints. Even polka dots drive me crazy. I always sleep naked—if it's warm, if it's cold. I never sleep more than three days in the same bed, I've realized. For the past seven years now at least. Well, the perfect day would be if I had, like—I wouldn't be too, too demanding—four extra hours. Just think if we could stretch it to 28 hours. That would be perfect.
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