Riccardo Tisci Talks Dior Rumors with Donatella Versace
Photo courtesy of Interview Magazine
Dog days: A fierce shot of Givenchy-clad models from Interview's July issue.
So apparently Donatella Versace isn't any better than the rest of us at getting Riccardo Tisci to come clean on those Dior rumors.
Interviewing the Givenchy (for now) designer for the June/July issue of Interview, Versace tries to pin him down on whether or not he'll be replacing John Galliano at the esteemed fashion house.
"I don’t know what will happen," says Tisci, seen carrying a dog while blood gushes from his nose in the accompanying junk yard-themed shoot from Steven Klein. "Sincerely, I feel sorry for John. But for this moment I am leaving aside all the gossip of 'I am going here, I am going there,' because there is a lot of gossip circulating and there always will be. I will tell you, in this moment, I am very happy at Givenchy and it is a moment in which I am bringing the game to the next level. So I tell you, I feel at home. It’s as if it were my son. I don’t know how to explain it. It would be very difficult for me to leave.
"Because I arrived here, with a destroyed house, with nothing. I had to do everything very slowly. And with a little team and a great president, we achieved a lot. I am happy here. For now, it is still Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, and I think that it will be for a long time, because it will be difficult to evict me from my house. I feel good here! No, I would really say that, at the moment, it really is the truth. My truth is this: That I don’t know what will happen tomorrow because you can never know."
Guess we'll have to settle for vague for now. Tisci, however, is more open about discussing his favorite music, namely Nicki Minaj, Antony and the Johnsons, Ciara, Madonna, Courtney Love, Lil' Kim, Beyoncé (who wears his designs in her latest video), and Missy Elliott.
Another favorite? Versace herself, whom Tisci describes as "so much of a Givenchy woman" and "aesthetically ... what the Italian woman is."
But though he admires the Versace label for being "the peak of sexy but never crosses the red line into the vulgar," his heart (again, for now) belongs to Givenchy ... even if he only (gasp!) accepted the job for his mama's sake.
"They called me in to do Givenchy and I just thought, Wow," he recalls. "The first thing I did was sign my name. But I have to be sincere, I did that because my mom was leaving our family home and that thought really upset me. In a way, I didn’t even think ... It could have been Givenchy, it could have been anywhere, but the fact of thinking of my mother in a home for the elderly ... I don’t have anything against homes for the elderly, but my mom, after having nine children, after all the sacrifices, living in an apartment—it gave me anxiety. Being the only male in the family, I said, 'No I can’t let this happen.' Therefore I signed, because I wanted to buy a house for my mom."
Dior, are you listening?
For more of Tisci and Versace's talk, pick up the June/July issue of Interview, featuring cover star Alexander Skarsgård, out now.
