Go Behind the Designs of Pigalle's Stéphane Ashpool in this Mini Documentary

Pigalle's Stéphane Ashpool discusses the city of Paris, his friends, and his mother.

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Complex Original

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It seems like Pigalle founder Stéphane Ashpool is getting used to being in front of the camera. Following the release of Ensemble, a short film about his youth basketball team and Pigalle's Spring 2016 collection, Ashpool is the subject of yet another documentary—this time for Collect and Curate's The Modern Man profile series.

The first profile in the series, the film is an eight minute mini-documentary that follows Ashpool after his Fall/Winter 2015 Runway show at Paris Fashion Week. While the film is intercut with show preparation and behind-the-scenes footage, Ashpool gives personal musings on his philosophy, his family (both literally and metaphorically), and his brand.

Ashpool credits his mother for much of his inspiration. He also insists that the members of his crew also have "strong mothers," which build a certain type of character.

"Every time during my shows, you see that women have this very high place. This is because I'm very close to my mother...she's a soldier. All the boys from the crew have strong mothers too. So, you know, after you have this you accept many things."

He continues:

"My closest people in my life—of course I would be stupid to not say it's my mother first. I saw [what] the word 'work' means. 'When you need it, you do it,' and that was her case."


 

When it comes to his collections, Ashpool believes his success is through generating single concept, and sticking to it.

"From what I know I think everyone who is doing collections have a different type of structure to build on. Me, I just go with an idea, and what I do is I really stick to the idea and I try to imagine the final set up, the show, the people who are going to wear this. And from this, I start to think of a color palette, and out of this color palette we do some test, some trials, and out of this we develop a new side like how we're going to present, so that all goes together....We think of a full concept and that is the people who wear it."

As Ashpool says, "Having an idea is so easy, but sticking to one idea and go from A to Z on one idea is the most difficult thing, I think."

 


 

But of all of the inspirations behind Pigalle, the city of Paris is the largest hub of inspiration for Ashpool and his crew.

"It's the best city in the world...Paris is very special. We feel that Paris is smaller than what it is. We feel like this, like we made Paris a village...Even if I move a bit from the area, it's still a village, and no doubt it's the best life that I could expect. 

Watch the documentary above, and catch the feature over at Collect and Curate.

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