Architect Ferré, more than 20 years have gone by since you set out on your creative trail. What do you remember from your early days?
When I was still a student, I already “created” strange accessories – belts, necklaces, bracelets – that I gave to my fellow students. I made them at home in a sort of workroom that I made up under the stairs. Even now, the best memories I have in connection with that singular beginning have to do with the materials. But the definitive decision to dedicate myself to fashion came later, after a series of important experiences: long stays in India, collaboration with some already established designers, my first collections…

They say that creative people have a different sensitivity, a particular emotiveness. What is your relationship to life, to your feelings?
I believe strongly in life, which consists above all of feelings, those that come from human relationships, family ties or friendships. I think it is fundamental to have certainties, those acquired – for example the certainties of one’s roots or affections – and those coming from experience, that come to us through a personal path of growth and maturity. And I strongly believe in responsibility, correctness, and honesty, toward ourselves even before toward others, in private life as well as in professional life.

We are living through a moment of great social change, certainty gives way to uncertainty. Ideally-structured reality de-structures itself. What do you think about this historic period?
Ours is a reality of contradictions and uncertainties. But it is also characterized by strong stimuli, fluidity and a plurality of phenomena that one time did not exist. Values such as harmony and balance are now read according to different parameters from the past. Today’s chaos is also energy, speed, constant change. As a convinced “humanist” I maintain that humans carry an extraordinary capacity to always understand and decipher whatever happens, going beyond the immediate sensation of disorder. The great systems of thought, the great ideological superstructures have perhaps no more reason to exist. But the most significant instrument to oppose the onset of disorder is the one we have always had: human balance between reason and feelings, logic and sensitivity.

In your life you have traveled widely. Which country do you feel is closest to your habits, your way of being, and your lifestyle?
My place is the world... I deeply love Milan, but I also need to breathe the air of Paris, London and New York. Real and imaginary journeys have marked out my entire creative path: those back in time toward India and the Orient, without which my style would have been very different, and those which are only imaginary. I have never been to Amazonia, except as recounted by others through reading and the cinema. And yet, Amazonia has given me incredible impressions and feelings, often so strong as to offer me starting points for my creations. I would like to able to travel forever, with my mind, my heart, my eyes, and with all my imagination.

What does travel mean for you?
My imagination travels and flies away, but I also feel the need for the solidity and concreteness of life. I am a dreamer, but I move and act with logic, method, and determination. My intuition is also good sense. Travel is for me discovery, the satisfying of a desire for knowledge, a predisposition for the challenge of the unknown, of what is different from what we know and it is therefore stimulating, fascinating, seductive. And it is, at the same time, the desire to widen the horizons of my existence, enriching it, making it more heterogeneous, more colorful and lively. I don’t feel like a nomad, because I possess a strong sense of roots and permanency. If anything, I feel like an explorer…

In your creations, you pursue excellence, an erudite mixture of rigor and imagination. You make use of a language consisting of shapes, colors and materials. How do you recount your fashion? What is your style blueprint?
I take great pains to ensure that the basis of the Ferré style in its every expression – from the garment to the accessory – is always quality. This means many things: uniqueness, exclusivity, originality, added value in the making up… In this way, I like to recount my style as a sort of lexicon, a mix of signs which are constant over time, that remain faithful to themselves, even while acquiring new definitions each season.

You tell us of a sophisticated and joyful femininity, the present and the future. And you do it according to a logic of harmony, of uniqueness. What are the Ferré man and woman like?
I create for intelligent, free, strong “beings” that place themselves into their clothes, which they choose over others because they are “them” and correspond to the needs – or desires – that they have to satisfy through their clothes. Someone strong in temperament, in character, passionate, who also appropriates the clothes physically, gets into them, almost as if to “test them”. I create for those who must know how to choose: how to live, what to do, what to wear, why to buy a garment, a bag. And interpret fashion. And through this know themselves; know their own strong points and limits. Elegance is, above all, personality.

Where do you get the inspiration for your creations?
Inspiration can have various origins. Often the starting point is an impression, a hint that remains in the mind more than another and forms the starting point for an idea, for a dream. It is the emotion of a moment that then becomes a plan. A big-little lightning bolt that immediately starts associations, references to parts of a baggage of experience and knowledge: literature that has left its mark, passion for a certain type of art, memories of a journey, the fascination exerted by some iconic person. And soon the dream takes shape, comes together, coalesces into a dimension of shapes, volumes, structures, materials. To become a collection.

During the last few years many fashion and accessory names are becoming parts of great luxury multinationals. There are those, however, who have transformed luxury, from something almost elite into a mass phenomenon. What is your idea of luxury and what do you think of the changes in train?
I believe that contemporary luxury must be a luxury “of substance”, to be looked at very freely without mystification. First of all, because aspiration to luxury – understood as beautiful, rare, particular – is as old as humankind and therefore has a raison d’êtreeven in times that require that all act with awareness and moderation. And “my” luxury comes to life in harmony with today’s life: measured, comfortable, solid, expression of individuality and instrument of poetry. Attention for the absolute value of the product, capitalized as exclusivity but also answering to the dynamics of life. A taste which is certainly refined; little worried about the exteriority as an end in itself but much concerned about the essence of things.

For your new publicity campaign, you have chosen as testimonial personality the American actress Julia Roberts. What aspect of femininity do you want to emphasize?
I chose Julia Roberts based on a sort of elective affinity between my style with its distinctive characteristics in quality and uniqueness and a woman of the same caliber: not only a great actress but, in fact, a great woman, intelligent, strong-willed, aware. And that is exactly the type of femininity that I want to “recount”. Femininity made up of sweetness and temperament, divine, vibrating with energy…

How will next summer’s woman dress?
With innocence, lightness, a touch of frivolity, aware and therefore composed: it is easy for me to sum up in these words the feelings that run through my Women’s collection for summer 2006.I want to tell of a joyful and divine, but sober and graceful, femininity.
The innocence is that of the intense midday light that beats on the facades of Mexico’s colonial buildings and sumptuous cathedrals. White is not just a color: it is a declaration of vitality and purity and forms an important part of the collection, marked by precise lines and volumes.

And the man?
The man knows how to separate and recombine the pieces of his wardrobe. He wears, for example, the very formal plain dark suit – so precise in construction as to be easy and de-structured – over an open shirt, without a tie. Instinctively and ironically, he looks for something new, without reneging on the codes that have always been his.

Your creations are a condensation of feelings and experiences that pass through exploration, discovery. What is your objective?
Exploration and continuous searching, the wish never to feel as if one has arrived, always to try out something new, always to feel feelings and to manifest them in what I do. I think that fashion is a reading of life – passionate, individual, original – that the creator offers through the lens of his or her personality and that the users interpret based on their own character and needs. And I think that fashion must offer answers: to needs and wants, but also to desires and expectations. In this sense, “my” answer speaks of rigor and poetry, planning and imagination. It speaks of balance in beauty, that takes the necessary stimuli from the richness of tradition, just so as to be able to invent, innovate, experiment without pause…