Designer Helmut Lang and stylist Melanie Ward share a rare and potent chemistry, a professional formula that can’t be replicated because it’s based purely on friendship. They finish each other’s sentences, share a twisted sense of style and a wicked sense of humor—it’s not going too far to say that one without the other is creatively incomplete. Here they talk intimately about inspiration, oral sex, and why being two is better than one.

V MAGAZINE: So, Vanessa Beecroft just had an installation in Vienna using your—I guess clothes isn’t right.

HELMUT LANG: Boots.

V: Were you involved in this at all?

HL: No, she just wanted the boots for the instal-lation, and we organized it for her. I haven’t seen the pictures yet. I think it’s good because her images are pretty powerful. You’d like it.

MELANIE WARD: I know, I know. I worked with her on a shoot some time ago. The boots didn’t make it into the show last season, but I used them in a picture I did of Charlotte Gainsbourg for Bazaar. Vanessa saw them and really loved them. And the clothes. She loves the clothes.

V: Art and artists have always been a big part of your life-personally and professionally.

HL: I think I’ve been lucky that way. I’ve met artists who have become friends. For me it was very important in my evolution to understand how they work because I’m not a typical fashion-designer brain only. Through my relations with artists I basically understood that I function differently or, at any rate, more like they do. It was very reassuring. An artist is such a strong personality and also a very emotional character-very strong and very vulnerable at the same time.

V: Are there any artists in particular you want to work with right now?

HL: Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer, but there are lots of great artists out there. The bigger blessing is just to know them. Eventually we could do a project together. That’s exciting in itself because it gives you the possibility to express things that you are not able to with your usual work. But it’s not a concept. You don’t choose your friends. It just happens. Like with Melanie. We met through work and then we became really great friends.

MW: I think we also have the same taste. We always have a very similar approach to work and life, so somehow one person reinforces the other’s judgement and makes it stronger.

HL: Exactly.

MW: Helmut and I really question things. We’re never happy with a solution. We bounce ideas and always want to push things further.

V: Do you fight at all?

HL: No.

MW: Not at all actually. No. Only when he fiddles around with the Polaroids at the show!

HL: And when she fiddles around too long with the clothes. No, it’s a really good relationship. We have a lot in common and at the same time we complete each other somehow. I couldn’t imagine doing it otherwise

V: How did you two first meet?

HL: I think I wrote Melanie a letter-which she probably read after two months.

MW: No! You sent it to the wrong magazine.

HL: So it was later anyway. That was about ten years ago

MW: You saw those early Face stories. You thought they were different or something….

HL: I was looking for somebody, and she agreed to meet me in Paris at Café Flore.

MW: Yeah, that’s right.

HL: That’s where we met. And basically we never separated

MW: That was in ’92.

V: Then Melanie, you moved to New York in ’95?

MW: I wanted to expand my editorial possibilities

HL: And I thought this is much too complicated! I’ve got to move to New York, too!

MW: You stalker! Now I live around the corner which is really convenient. We walk home together at night.

V: I was looking at the Hype! issue of Visionaire, and the fake ad you did for “Helmut Lang Industries* with all of those made-up products. It was a joke at the time, but I think you now produce every product featured in that ad— except for maybe the wig and the tattoo.

HL: When we did that ad there was this movement going on in Vienna. It was a funny time because everything was such a local event but the announcement or the fliers made everything seem really, really big. Peter Kruder would make these fliers and you’d think this entire rock event was coming to town when it was just something small at a café somewhere. It’s how we came up with idea for Helmut Lang Industries. It doesn’t seem so outrageous to me now. You have to grow, otherwise you get in this weird routine. Whenever you have the capacity to add a little bit more to the entire feeling, it’s very inspiring. We started the shoes and bags-all the accessories— it’s really great to do them. Melanie’s obsessed with shoes and bags.

MW: Shoes, bags, clothes…! As long as you don’t lose your integrity, growth is great.

HL: For us it’s not about marketing; it’s really about creating quality. We are really working like dogs because it takes a lot to supervise everything, but at the same time it makes it more complete. We’re proud of it somehow and that gives you energy to do the next thing

MW: It’s really good fun actually. In the past it would just be me scotching up shoes with tape and now we’re having them made with our elastic band. Everything is still very much within that organic feeling; the design process is still very us and that’s how we want to keep it.

HL: At the same time it’s very nice not to have to scotch and paint everything ourselves…

MW: I’d be half asphyxiated before a show!

HL: We can turn around and spray everything again ourselves if we need to but it would be odd to pretend that this is the only thing you can do with your life.

MW: We’re curious to see what other possibilities there are.

HL: That’s true.

MW: That insatiable curiosity. That’s what makes us tick.

HL: Being happy with it and then trashing it and being curious for something the next time.

HL: Exactly. So Melanie started recently with oral sex.

V: And you, Helmut? What do you have that’s new in your life to keep you excited?

HL: I have Melanie. She’s trying everything and then she tells me about it.

V: So the onus is all on you, Melanie?

HL: It’s funny because how it happens is I’m thinking around in my head and she’s thinking about things and finally in the design studio if we are both thinking along the same lines about something, it gets confirmed.

MW: It’s a very organic process. Everything we’ve ever done has been that way, totally coming from the gut.

HL: At the same fime, as soon as we have done something the way we want it, we are ready to break it up, to add some humor.

MW: Or take it somewhere else.

HL: We have to twist it around.

MW: Take the dress and turn it upside down. We’ve actually done that.

HL: There has to be a light side to things.

V: Helmut you have a reputation for being very senous.

MW: Really? That’s so not true.

HL: That’s something that was picked up somewhere and it’s probably an image which cannot be destroyed anymore.

MW: He’s got the sickest sense of humor. It’s very quiet and sick. There is that Austrian/ English kind of sick, dark humor.

HL: Melanie and I have a brother and sister relationship-but a good one, not a bad one because it’s chosen.

MW: Exactly. I think we are both extremely eccentric yet very grounded

HL: That’s probably a very good way to put it.

V: That seems contradictory

HL: Or complimentary. It’s a contradiction but at the same time it’s makes somebody so much more complete and more interesting.

V: Do you have complimentary astrological signs?

HL: Yeah, my rising house is her birth sign.

MW: And Helmut’s assistant Christian is the grounded Capricorn who pulls it all together. Sometimes he’s like, “Please can I have your attention for five minutes. We have to choose the fabrics and the colors.”

HL: It’s like we are children at school.

V: What about the spring collection—which is probably the furthest thing from your mind having just shown fall a few days ago

MW: I love those clothes. I think they are totally sexy but totally wearable.

HL: When I first met Melanie she was always completely covered. She’s got an excellent figure at the moment and I started seeing the neckline go lower, things getting more open. It was needed somehow, and Melanie brought that out. I, on the other hand, had been collecting these books with microscopic paintings from the 18th century, organic cells and all that. I showed them to Melanie and she was like, “Oh, really nice, now put them back.* But between the first angle and these organic, cellular, microscopic things, eventually we worked the whole pattern out.

MW: That’s what I love. Somehow it came together and it all made sense.

HL: The collection was good because it started out fun with the wickedness and with a focus on complete femininity and I really found that new. On the one side it was very scientific, serious, and on the other side…

MW: It was about my boobs.

HL: It was about Melanie’s boobs. Okay, I didn’t want to say that but…

MW: We did certain seams to accentuate different parts of a woman’s body. It was good fun to make a Helmut Lang bra.

HL: But then afterward people said it was bondage, and I was like bondage?

MW: It was all animal bones and skeletons. It was quite a surprise for us.

V: Do you ever have the feeling of being completely uninspired?

HL: No.

MW: Never. There’s such a buzz from being constantly surprised even by things that are totally mundane.

HL: The length of life is completely open because we are always moving from one thing to the next and we both see ourselves as getting really, really old and doing a lot of mad and great things.

V: Do you have any goals?

MW: The one thing I’m conscious of is the luxury of time and wanting to keep that little window where we can just wander around and fantasize and brainstorm.

HL: There’s not a professional goal; it’s my goa not to be absorbed in anything to a degree where you don’t have empty time to reinvent and re inspire which I think is also necessary to stay creative, stay open, stay connected to real life somehow.

V: When you first moved to New York, you fold a story about how you went to buy office furniture or something. You put your credit card down and the guy behind the counter looked at it and looked at you and said, “Helmut Lang? That’s the name on the top of taxis.” It never occurred to him that Helmut Lang was a real person. Do you feel that there is a disconnection between Helmut Lang the person and Helmut Lang the brand?

HL: I think you cannot evaluate for yourself what people really think about a brand and I don’t worry about it. Not that I ignore it, it just really doesn’t matter. It’s not really controllable. The two are side by side but it’s not necessary that they match completely. As we said, there are some perceptions that aren’t entirely accurate but that doesn’t matter either.

V: This question has become more interestingl in light of the fact that there is Saint Laurent without Yves Saint Laurent and Jil Sander without Jil Sander. Could there be Helmut Lang without Helmut Lang?

HL: Yes, why not. But that’s not the case now. I can’t say that I cannot imagine that. After all, there is Chanel after Chanel. Yes, it is possible but it becomes another thing.

MW: Historically speaking.

HL: It’s just a different situation and a different outcome. It’s different to feel and work in the spirit of someone; it is more limiting. If you work on your own piece of history, you are able to be continuous but also take unexpected turns and create turbulence and contribute newness and excitement. You free your mind of the expected and then do exactly the opposite of what people expect from you the next season because you feel it is right. I feel that is only possible during the first lifetime of an artist or a trademark. It’s only fashion that allows this anyway. Can you imagine an artist producing artwork under the trademark of Jackson Pollock, for example, or a director doing movies under the trademark of Alfred Hitchcock? Well, think about it!

Photography Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin
Clothing Helmut Lang (www.helmutlang.com)
Makeup Dick Page, Jed Root Inc.
Hair Kevin Ryan
Model Madeleine (Ford)
Printing Pascal Dagnin (Box)
Special thanks to Melanie Ward and Anna Levan