In Conversation: Maurice Renoma - Men's Folio
Interview

In Conversation: Maurice Renoma

  • By Men's Folio

Maurice Renoma began his artistic career by shattering prevailing conventions and breathing new life into menswear at the beginning of the 1960s, before expanding his creative repertoire into other avenues including photography and furniture design. His first published collection of photographs, Maurice Renoma: modographe, unites fashion, photography and art in iconic images of hybrid humans with bestial heads and androgynous gender composites. These days, his camera is a constant companion in his travels across the continents, capturing the life of the streets through people, postures and, needless to say, clothes.

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Renoma recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. What does that mean to you?

It’s a new life for me, because 50 years is a very long time. I started with fashion, but in the past few years it has been more about art – photography, exhibitions, scenography and music. I’m more than just only fashion.

Your start in fashion broke new grounds, particularly for men.

When we started, we brought a revolution during a very conservative time. Fashion for men did not exist then, and we changed that by [freeing them from dated clothing codes]. We made everything possible. Before, you couldn’t go into a restaurant if you didn’t have a suit, laced-up shoes and tie. You couldn’t go anywhere, especially to fashionable places, but little by little we opened these doors for men.

In Conversation Maurice Renoma 6What’s your take on menswear today?

It’s funny because fashion is very strong in Asia now, even more so than in Europe. The Asian aesthetic looks very nice, a little feminine, and the couture for Asian men is very elegant. I think I’m going to have to make separate collections for Asians and Europeans now. Because in Europe, you have the Germans, who are a very hard people, and the French, who do not like fashion because they’re mostly farmers living in the countryside. Only Paris is educated [about fashion]. Fashion is big in Italy and Asia, and it is important for me to come here to understand the customer.

You’ve worked with a lot of big names like Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol and Serge Gainsbourg. Do you ever get star struck?

No, because when the first stars like Picasso came to us, it was his son that brought him to make our clothes. We started with a very small shop and we weren’t professionals, so contact was established very quickly and simply, and everyone was treated like a friend.

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How did your love of photography begin?

It’s not so much a love for photography. For me, photography is an instrument for expression. Just like how fashion is not just fashion, it communicates how you want to be seen by others. I do this less with fashion now because it has become more of marketing and business, and I prefer to be an artist.

I like to show what you can do with photographs. For me, it’s like fashion where you can play with the materials. Before I make my collections, I take the materials and mix them and I like it when things happen by chance. My last work was a set of eight carpets printed with my photographs, sold individually. My father once told me that I’d be selling carpets because I couldn’t get a job without a certificate, and here I am now selling carpets, so he was right!

Tell us about MODOGRAPHE/Mythologies.

Animals are like humans, and we are like animals too. When you put animals in human clothes, you’ll look at them differently. I consider animals my friends as I can communicate directly through them, more so than with humans.

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Do you have a favourite image you’ve taken?

In the second series of Mythologies, I mixed man and woman together because I believe we have parts of each. Also children – perhaps the next step would be children with the bodies of men? I try to find something that no one wants to do because I don’t want to repeat what has already been done. Everything has existed – mythology has existed – for over 100,000 years, and maybe when the first humans came about there was one that was both man and woman, I don’t know. But my work is more philosophical and psychological than historical.

I was very happy to make Mythologies II because nobody seemed to like it. No one wanted to do an exhibition of it, so I did it in my café in a very chic part of Paris. It was a modern, fashionable restaurant, so a majority of the people there liked it. But there were also about 20% who said they couldn’t eat with those kinds of images in their faces. I wanted to keep the exhibition open for three months, but a lot of the bourgeoisie didn’t come back and it was enough to create a bad reputation, so I had to be happy with the time that it was up.

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That must’ve been bittersweet.

It’s funny because it’s totally okay in New York. But France is very conservative, and each time people see me, they tell me it’s a scandal that I did that in France! Many women ask me why I don’t make images of women with the bodies of men, and I tell them that it’s easier for women in general to accept this. Men don’t want to look like women. A lot of the people I photograph are my friends and they tell me that if I show the images they will come and destroy it! But I know it’s a good exhibition, and now, one guy even tried to show it in Moscow and he ended up in jail!

Who would you most like to photograph today?

The problem is, I don’t like anybody in particular! I like everything; I cannot say one is better than the other. Sometimes I’d stop and say, ‘Oh this is nice,’ but I don’t say who or what that is. For me, I feel I have a little more sensibility for these things than others, but I’m fragile because I receive a lot of information. The less information I have, the better it is for me because sometimes you get lost.

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Who are your creative idols?

I am my own idol! [Laughs] No I have no idols, because in fashion everyone takes something from everywhere else. We are not creators; everything already exists and we just pick and assemble.

How do you stay creative all these years?

The girls! [Laughs] You must be excited by something; I travel, I eat, everything here is exciting, and I like to experience many things. For me, life is experimental.

Below: The man himself, Maurice RenomaIn Conversation Maurice Renoma 10