Norms reassure. Distinctness creates legends”: Julien Fournié on the cover of Harper’s BAZAAR

A surgeon facing a body

Fournié describes a transition that was never quite one. His scientific training was not left at the door of the atelier — it became his method. You cannot build a garment around a body without knowing how that body moves, breathes and exists. Precision, discipline, a knowledge of anatomy: the same demands, transposed.

He draws a distinction that runs through the whole interview: fashion deals in trends, Haute Couture deals in vision, structure, craft and emotion.

“Fashion was never my calling. Haute Couture was.”

What “First” means

Asked about the prefix that returns collection after collection — First Circus, First Shield, First Misfits — he gives it a double reading. Humble first: a runway piece is never the final word, it is a prototype, a proposition. The garment becomes complete only when it is made again for a client, adjusted to her body, her movement, her presence. Haute Couture becomes real neither on the runway nor in the images, but on the person who chooses to live in it.

Ambitious too: each collection is an attempt to enter new territory. For First Misfits, he set out to free embroidery from the heavy aesthetics of the French Second Empire, looking instead to manga, comics and street art — visual languages the old codes of couture tend to dismiss.

“Haute Couture must not become a museum of its own past. It must be alive enough to absorb the art forms of today.”

Aren’t we all outsiders at first?

He answers a question with a question. Every human being is singular before society teaches them to conform. The tragedy, he says, is that many end up choosing the safety of the crowd: following trends because it reassures, disappearing into sameness because it feels less dangerous. He cannot endorse that idea. He resists it, he fights it. Every collection is, in his eyes, a new fight — against conformity, against fear, against the notion that beauty should obey a rule.

This is precisely the motto of the house:

“Norms reassure. Distinctness creates legends.”

Independence as commitment, not posture

What it costs to hold that line is the most frontal part of the interview. Fournié describes a shift of power, from couturiers to brand managers. Many houses now belong to large groups, and identity is too often sacrificed on two altars: the noise of social media and the commercial pursuit of trends. Remaining free to think, to design, to make what you see in your head has become, he says, harder than ever.

His line about groups that presume to assess craftsmanship without the tools to do so is the sharpest of the piece: talent does not fit neatly into a business plan.

“Haute Couture escapes spreadsheets.”

He adds that he can only hold this position thanks to loyal clients who understand that independence is not a marketing posture but a commitment.

What Dior, Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier taught him

One lesson, he says: frustration creates desire. As a studio assistant you bring proposals, technical solutions, alternatives — but the couturier decides, and rarely the way you would have. Accumulated over years, those frustrations become fuel: the urge to explore every path left untaken. That, he suspects, is one of the reasons you end up creating your own house.

Haute Couture, A designation that obliges

On the Haute Couture appellation, he refuses the vocabulary of reward. It is a duty: the recognition that you are making real art from textile materials, innovating technically while honouring the highest traditions of the craft, for women and men living in the world today. He sees it today less as a title than as a mission — and as a dividing line: if creation is no longer at the root of a house, marketing is running it.

Celebrities, handbags, and what comes next

On the stars — Madonna, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga have worn his creations — he says fame in itself does not interest him; dialogue does. Understanding what an artist wants to express, reveal or protect, before they even speak or sing. A Haute Couture look should never be a costume delivered to a celebrity, but the visible form of an inner energy.

On the handbag line launched in 2020, he cuts the misunderstanding short: it was never about making couture cheaper, but about letting more people hold a fragment of that universe in their hands. One-of-a-kind pieces or ultra-limited runs, made in France, conceived with the same level of exigence as the rest of the house.

As for the next ten years, he wants his house to still be fighting: against commercialism, against consumerism, against the idea that fashion should only produce more products, more noise and more sameness.

“If you are truly free, you do not follow rules. You create your own.”

Julien Fournié interviewed by Tijana Misović — Harper’s BAZAAR Serbia, 7 September 2026