Carine Roitfeld On Not Wearing Comfy Clothes, What’s Sexy Now & Her Uniqlo Line Launching This Week! EXCLUSIVE

It’s over 32°C and in the grand confines of the five-star Shangri-La Hotel, Paris, Carine Roitfeld casually reclines, clothed in a faux leather pencil skirt worn with a snug white tee, peeking out from under a shoulder-robed, leopard-print coat. Topped and tailed by a slip of black silk knotted around her neck and lace-up stilettos. And a jumper folded next to her, just in case. Carine, 60, remains the definition of cool in every sense of the word – just what you’d hope for from a brand ambassador showcasing an autumn/winter collection during a heatwave.

Clearly, the signature sexpot look is in check (‘I wore this skirt because I know it fits me. This T-shirt because it was brand new and proper. And I take the coat because of the air-conditioning. So this is really an effortless look,’ Carine says) but each element – minus these small, expert accessories – comes courtesy of her 40-piece collaboration with Uniqlo. Yes, Uniqlo.

It would be all too easy to put this fashion figurehead on a custom-made pedestal and assume that shopping on the high street would be met with a big, fat non. ‘[That’s] because you don’t know me very well!’ says Carine with the kind of smile that throws a thousand steely editors into the shade. ‘OK, maybe my friends are very high designer but my life is very simple. I’m with my kids... running around all the time... And you know,’ she says, pointing to her tee, ‘wine glasses, after the summer... and full of holes [from] cigarettes, my granddaughter will pull that [the hem], it will be totally like, er, a punk T-shirt.’ There are few people who could get away with walking around in a jersey tee printed with an illustration of their own face (you can buy it for £14.90), and even fewer who could continue to look chic with scorch marks and stretched hems.

Before engaging in this collaborative partnership – and it’s the first time Carine has ever done so with a brand – Uniqlo did sit in her wardrobe alongside the Givenchy, Azzedine Alaïa and Tom Ford. Her refined repertoire includes the Japanese megalith’s classics, such as plain white tees that she’ll wear with one of her 20-plus pencil skirts, and the hi-tech down jackets; noting one occasion when she slept in Uniqlo’s duvet coat over a slip dress on a chilly night in Scotland for Chanel’s Métiers d’Art show.

‘I am very close to Karl Lagerfeld and he was the first one to put his name with H&M. I was working with him on that project and I think he was so smart,’ Carine explains. Uniqlo being ‘cheap in a good way’, combined with a reputation in fabric technology and not being too trend-led contributed to Carine saying yes to this partnership. Moreover, since exiting revered Vogue Paris after a 10-year tenure as editor-in-chief and founding her own magazine, CR Fashion Book, in 2012, the importance of Carine Roitfeld ‘the brand’ has been on her mind and she’s keen to see her name on the street. ‘My son told me, “Think more American.” So I thought I have to do this collaboration, I get to do the magazine and I’m working on my perfume. It’s coming up very soon.’

‘After she touches something, the overall look just changes. It’s like the blooming of a flower,’ says Uniqlo’s design director Naoki Takizawa, who has spent the past year travelling back and forth from Japan to Paris in order to realise Carine’s high standards. Roitfeld refuses to be called a ‘designer’, in respect for her talented designer friends,
but she has curated this line down to microscopic detail
– ‘It’s about the proportions,’ she says. ‘You know, it’s not about a new sort of jacket – everything is very simple but everything is perfect. I’m very picky. I want my skirt this length [points to the above-knee hemline of her skirt], my sweaters are this neckline [she motions a boat-neck cut], the coat is to be a bit shorter than the skirt... My skirts have pockets... I have these little tricks.’

Rifling through the 40 or more garments on a rail, trying on each sample in order to showcase the aforementioned Roitfeld-ready nuances available to shoppers, she’s quick to point out that these, for her, are far too big. It’s not just down to Carine being a size smaller but she repeats, mantra-like, that everything needs to be worn ‘very tight’. There’s plenty of black (‘it’s easier’), eyelets, studs (‘I love stuuuuds’), faux leather, transparent chiffon blouses (‘there is always a little naked in me...’) and herringbone, pin stripes and plenty of leopard and camo. Together it combines to create a grown-up strand of fashion anarchy, no more evident than in the fishnets, monogrammed with CR at the ankle and an important styling element in the Steven Meisel-photographed campaign. ‘It finishes the look,’ she says.

Can a regular girl achieve what Carine calls ‘l’allure’? ‘Of course! I think everyone can be sexy if you feel comfortable. It’s more sexy [to be] covered than totally naked; when I see the girl with a miniskirt and a deep V, it’s too much,’ says Carine, explaining her law of opposites: the faux leather skirt should be balanced with a jumper, the sheer blouse with mannish tailoring and – very important – a bra.

A staunch supporter of curvy girls on the fashion scene, Carine’s collection can run the gamut between French ingénue and buxom babe. She rejects the term plus size as ‘offensive’ and wishes she had ‘more tits’ like some of the girls she casts in shows. ‘Me, I don’t have a good décolleté, I have no décolleté, but I have good legs. Each person has something good.’

Carine dry-cleans everything, dislikes the word comfort and exclusively relaxes in a silk slip dress. So she worked extra hard with Uniqlo to make the line as machine-washable as it is approachable, without scrimping on her recognisable look. The result is the first time Mme Roitfeld thinks she would share the same clothes with her daughter, Julia. Carine also hopes boys will wear the tailoring and that grandmas (and she is one) can style out the cobwebbed sweater. ‘I unfortunately get some age [points to jawline] but I think the body didn’t change so much. I still have my silhouette. I would say this is my stamp. I think from the back you see it’s me.’ Expect a sea of pencil-skirted wiggles near you soon.