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Barneys’ fall ad campaign, “All About Lou,” features French songstress Lou Doillon shot by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Now in the store’s Madison Avenue windows, the campaign includes a marionette and an animated version of Doillon in a video featuring her song “Devil or Angel.” To promote the partnership, the daughter of Jacques Doillon and Jane Berkin performed at a party at the Jane Hotel on Tuesday, where she spoke with VF Daily about the project. Highlights from our chat:
VF Daily: Tell me about shooting this campaign with Inez and Vinoodh for Barneys.
Lou Doillon: I’ve got a very strange and special relationship with Inez and Vinoodh. I’ve been working a lot for the last 10 years in theater or music, or things that have nothing to do, in a way, with fashion. They’ve always had this wonderful thing of calling me once in a while to do the most beautiful project, where I was kind of a girl amongst other girls. This time, I was touring in France and working nonstop, and I was saying no to everything, and suddenly they gave me a call, and said, Listen, this is special. And already I said, I don’t care—special or not, I’ll do it because it’s you guys. They were like, *No, no, no. We’ve listened to your album; this is you. We’ve had a whole fantasy idea around it, with puppets, with alter egos. What do you think?*So we came, and they are the most genius people in the world to be able to pull it off in three days. We worked like maniacs, and they’re wonderful. It’s such a delight to work with people who know what they want. I knew that Barneys respected them for that. When I had the first meetings I realized that, for god knows what reasons, Barneys also respected me as an artist. I didn’t even know that they knew about me.
How does it feel to see this campaign? This time, it’s only you, not with others.
Super strange! You get a kind of girlish giggle, because that’s the only way you deal with [it]. I’m very proud. When I’m by myself in my bedroom, I kind of dance about it. But in front of you, I won’t show it. [Laughs.]
Have you seen the store-window installations yet? The campaign took over the windows.
They’re taking me tonight. I arrived yesterday night, and we rehearsed all night, and I’m off tomorrow for Berlin. So they’re going to take me in a car right now to go and show me. I’ve seen thousands of pictures of them, but I haven’t seen them for real.
That must be a surreal experience.
It will be. I’ll do it alone and [at] 2 a.m.! I’ll just wander in front of it.
You seem to be having a moment now. Every magazine I open there are ads with you in them, on billboards around town. It seems that a lot is happening for you right now.
It’s true that it’s very strange. For the last 14 months, everything has been completely unreal. What’s beautiful is to see when you help people out. When [young model] Lily McMenamy comes to see me and says, *Thank you. I’m a young girl, and I need inspiring women. And I don’t find girls who make me want to read, want to draw,*that’s the best. All the movement of love from young girls, who see me as a kind of, I don’t know, a weird flag-bearer of strange girls who are very, um, romantic. [Laughs.] Deeply romantic. I’m kind of old-fashioned crafts. I always say that I’m a medieval woman, or maybe Renaissance woman. I like to draw and paint and be in love and take care of children. I don’t relate to this kind of modern world of women who want to be stronger than men.
How do you balance music, drawing, painting, and modeling?
It’s a strange mixture. I’ve been on tour for the last nine months, and I’m a bit tired. Right now I really want to lock myself in a studio for six months and see no one. I’m lucky that I find that all those jobs have to do with the same thing, which is a deep desire to express yourself, and a strange egomania of thinking that you’re right to express yourself on absolutely everything. [Laughs.] It’s a dodgy mixture of ego and humility.
