'With Karl [Lagerfeld], you never know exactly what you will do,' says Carine Roitfeld, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, the French edition of the fashion bible. 'You have an idea but you never know how it's going to finish, how long it's going to take or who is going to come; it's always a surprise.'
Roitfeld is discussing her collaboration with the German fashion designer for Chanel's The Little Black Jacket book, which debuted in Tokyo on March 22 with an exhibition of photographs from the project.
She is sitting, small and snug, in a corner of the Tokyo Park Hyatt lobby, where light refracted through morning drizzle has cast a dusk-like ambience. Roitfeld's style, so often featured in the pages of fashion magazines, is instantly recognisable.
'It's quite simple,' she says. 'Always I am with a fitted skirt, tight jacket or coat, because I'm quite skinny, and then something boyish like this belt or something from a man's wardrobe.'
She combines the masculine with items that are indelibly feminine; today it is the slinky black lace slip dress she wears under it all. Her shoes are black strappy rope sandals with stiletto heels, worn in homage to Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki.
'When I am working with tall people, like Mario Testino, for example, I feel taller and stronger if I can look into his eyes,' says Roitfeld of her preference for stilettos. 'It gives you a different attitude.'
Before bowing out of Vogue Paris in December 2010, after 10 years at the top, Roitfeld had been tipped as a replacement for Anna Wintour (should she retire) at the helm of the American sister publication. As some might remember, her final days at the revered magazine made great media fodder. Rivalry between former friends Roitfeld and Emmanuelle Alt, her successor at French Vogue, was much talked about.
