You have had a senseless episode. Son of winegrowers from Aveyron, at 18 years old you pass from a BTS of fashion to Cholet to the life of Pacha in Shanghai. Tell us ...

I was looking for an internship in Paris. Dropped by a big house, desperate, I enter a Chinese shop of the Sentier. The boss is challenging me: draw a collection in one day. Three weeks later, she sent me to Shanghai to create parts for central purchasing. Appartment of 300 m2, swimming pool, massages, chauffeur, 1000 $ per day of pocket money. A life of prince. After eight months, I left, I was afraid to become a little cunt.

How were your pockets made of Plexiglas and rare leather?

At the Duperre school, my final collection, inspired by Bataille, Foucault and Barthes, had as its theme "the abstruse moment," a moment so difficult to grasp that one no longer sees its meaning. All the embroidered details were hidden, there were glass fronts, and my first pockets in plexiglass and white alligator, another in shark skin. The press loves them. So I decide to start with the accessories - but no it-bag, I wanted a perennial bag, the object of a lifetime. I picked up two concept stores: Barneys and Colette. And everything was chained. I was 20 years old.

How did you come to design the staff of the Hotel de Crillon?

One morning, in the Place des Petits-Pères, I lunch with Nicolas (Ouchenir, his companion, note) and I tell him that I dream of making uniforms. I do not know, but a director of the hotel de Crillon is behind me. She calls me the next day: "Is it always your dream uniforms? I presented a 250-page file, and that's it. It is exciting, the uniform, because it is a work clothes, that will live, must be comfortable, and that can be sublimated with modern cuts. I wanted to break the codes of the uniform, all accessorize, remove the tie that makes banker, replace it with a scarf, with for each service a different knotting. I was inspired by the Carine Roitfeld look, high waist and pencil skirt, from Saint Laurent women's tuxedo. I took the velvet waistcoats of the vineyards, my father's trade in Aveyron. I worked for two years on this project. There are ninety models, all the clothes are made to measure in luxury ready-to-wear materials. For fittings, I saw the four hundred people one by one.

Drawings Hugo Matha Credit: Press

And the Crillon now hosts a collection of exclusive Hugo Matha sleeves ...

We offer custom pouches. Different skins, such as matt crocodile varnished on the sides, or with gold grooves, diamond inlays, precious woods such as macassar ebony. I love working the unique and rare piece.

Hugo Matha cover pages Credit: Press






Article published in MC n ° 732, dated November 2017.