The Next Creative Directors: Sid Maelfeyt
Sid Maelfeyt
20 years old
First-year BA at La Cambre
Jane Lewis: What are the founding principles, the fundamental beliefs behind your design?
Sid Maelfeyt: The way I work now is really based on what we learn at school. You have to know the design codes, work with the codes, and be creative with the codes. For the skirt we’re doing in class right now, you first learn what a skirt is and how it works. What are all the options with a skirt? If you don’t know every type of pleat and pocket, you can’t be creative with it. When you’re still a student, your first idea is never your final idea.
J: Is there a piece of media, a book or a movie or something similar, that's had a really big impact on you?
S: My favorite movie of all time is Into the Wild. It didn’t have a personal impact, I just saw it when I was way too young. It's quite a heavy movie. And the other one, which I still like to this day, is Toy Story. I’m pretty sure it's 99 percent nostalgia by now, but I do believe it’s great.
J: And when you rewatch it, it's not ruined? Sometimes I rewatch movies from childhood and they aren’t good anymore.
S: Not really, but there are a lot of things in fashion that get worse. The skinny jeans people used to wear in 2010, 2015, those are horrible right now. But the skinnier silhouettes of Hedi Slimane, those are still incredible. Tom Ford’s Gucci, still incredible. In fashion, and Toy Story, when something is good, it stays good.
J: If someone was wearing a full Tom Ford Gucci outfit walking in New York, I'd think they look great. Style is always in.
S: I see these videos of a Belgian influencer asking, “What's a trend you really hate?” and everybody says skinny jeans, but they aren’t a trend right now. It's just something people still wear because most of the population doesn't care about clothing in that way. Most people buy something and say, “This fits nice, I'll wear it for the rest of my life.” I also have a lot of friends like that, and it's nice to get a break from the, “clothing is so important,” mindset.
J: Have you listened to the Fashion Neurosis podcast by Bella Freud? She asked Jonathan Anderson something along the lines of, “could you love someone who doesn't dress well?” And he responded, “Actually, I'd prefer that. I spend my entire life talking about clothes and designing clothes and thinking about clothes. Whoever I'm with, I want them to be so far removed from this whole world.”
S: Rick Owens wears the same thing for years. Duran [Lantink] also wears the same thing every day because he says, “I can’t be busy choosing what to wear.” I was watching a documentary about Karl Lagerfeld the other day. It was so funny.
J: He says sweatpants are a sign of defeat. I live by that. You should not be wearing sweats outside of the house.
S: People tell me I'm crazy because I don't change when I get home from school, but I still have a whole night of work to do. I come home and I stay in my day clothes, shoes on, everything. I can't sleep, I can't relax, only work. It's a mental trick because once I start working in my sweatpants, it’s over. I’m useless.
J: Do you have a favorite artist?
S: Raf Simons. He made me want to do fashion.
J: What makes him an artist?
S: What defines an artist? Most of the time it's just the context you put something in. If you see some of the things Demna designed [at Balenciaga], I think they're amazing, but a lot of people, if they saw it in the streets would ask, “What is this?” So it depends on the location you put something in. If you put something in a white room with lights on it, it's art.
J: I love where fashion and art intertwine and you can see how much craft, skill, thought, and design was put into a garment. To me, that feels very much like art.
S: That's why I like the Prada shows. It's so casual, but it's not at all. Everything is well thought out, even the hair of the models. Some of the best hair stylists in the world are working on that. It's not just messy hair. No—it's messy to perfection. How do you make something look casual? That's a concept I find interesting because it’s difficult.
J: How many hours did you sleep last night?
S: I went to sleep around 3:30 a.m. and my alarm went off at 9:15 a.m. because it's Saturday so I could sleep more than normal. You have to take it, all the hard work. It's necessary.