Sies Marjan’s Sander Lak Brings His Friends, His Clothes, and a Favorite Photographer Together for The Second Girlfriends Project Photo Series Inline
Photo: Nigel Shafran1/4Nur El Shami, creative consultant–special projects manager for Isabella Rossellini, New York
“Sander and I met in Paris in 2008, while we were working at Balmain; he was one of the first people I got to know there. There was a certain affinity; we just hit it off. We spent a lot of time at the office together and a lot of time socializing. We would host a lot of dinners: He likes hosting and I like to cook, and we were almost like this old couple having 15, 20, 30 people over. It has developed into a special, beautiful friendship. We are very similar, and we can look at each other and know exactly how the other feels; we both like to talk, we both like to analyze. He is a very straightforward person; there’s no walking round the park with him. I moved to New York a year ago, and I can’t imagine the city without him; he is part of my New York. One day he texted me and said he really needed to talk to me, and he introduced me to the whole concept of the project. I was touched to be part of it, to be part of an important moment in Sies Marjan’s life. In general, in culture today, it feels like things have never been more real, and on the other hand, have never been more fake. I like that this project isn’t about filling the air; there are feelings there, yet it doesn’t over-intellectualize things. When Nigel was photographing me, he told me: “You look like Snow White; you’re too classic.” I had had to keep looking at my phone during the day because I was waiting for news about something, and when he saw that, that was how he wanted to shoot me. In that moment. It takes away the dream a little, but there is an integrity to the image. It doesn’t present something that isn’t there.”
Photo: Nigel Shafran2/4Boya Latumahina, art director, London
“We’ve known each other since 1996. We met the first week of the first year of high school in Holland. We couldn’t have been more different, but we bonded over our love of film; we’d go to the cinema to watch one movie, then sneak back in to watch another, and stay there till 1:00 a.m. Most kids were in clubs; we were at the cinema. He bought me my first mascara at 13 and designed my prom dress when I was 18 and we were bored in class—it was black, very tight, and had a turtleneck, and he said it would look good on me because I had shoulders like Angela Bassett! He emailed me out of the blue and asked me to be in the project because I was one of his oldest girlfriends. That experience I had of Sander as a 17-year-old, and then to jump into the future, where he is now . . . I am very proud of him. The pictures are emotionally charged because they are his past and his present; they’re truthful, because he doesn’t leave anything out. The shoot itself was exciting but mildly nerve-wracking; there was a little tension in the atmosphere and the light was nonexistent, because it was intended to not be too orchestrated; the reason Sander chose Nigel was because nothing he does is too posed. The location—can I be super-frank?—was like someone had done it in the ’80s and never touched it again, like the sun had shone a little too long on the wallpaper. There’s something cinematic about the pictures, but not in a Hollywood way; there is almost something uncomfortable in them, but that’s Nigel’s eye. They have the same kind of magic as there would be in a movie frame.”
Photo: Nigel Shafran3/4Ken Paquier, designer and illustrator, Paris
“I met Sander about eight years ago at Balmain; he was a designer there and I came in as an assistant. We actually became closer friends when he left Paris to go work for Dries Van Noten in Antwerp; he always says I am the only person who laughs at his jokes! I visited New York for the first time this summer, and he showed me the initial Girlfriends Projectand I asked him why I wasn’t in it—and I was half serious about it. Actually, I was really serious about it! He told me he wasn’t doing menswear, and I said that’s not a problem. When I heard Nigel was shooting this project, I looked up his work, and the fact that he took pictures of people who weren’t models was kind of reassuring to me. I don’t like having my picture taken, but the time I was on the shoot, I never felt like I was being asked to be a model. It’s kind of daring to choose the imperfections of your friends over the flawlessness of models; it makes things so sincere, especially these days when things can be so cynical and harsh. To work with his friends can’t have been an easy decision, but it reflects Sander; he doesn’t make easy decisions, but they’re honest ones. I just saw the picture an hour ago. It’s beautiful, even if I still see myself in it. It has a strange, eerie atmosphere, where you wonder what’s happening. It feels like something dramatic has happened or will happen; that I am hiding something—or from someone.”
Photo: Nigel Shafran4/4Patty Lu, artist and art director, New York
“The first shot we did was of me curled under the piano; Nigel said he’d love to see how it looked. He doesn’t work with any inhibitions; he does whatever he is drawn to. I was into it, but Sander was worried it might look too staged. I was interested to see how he and Nigel would collaborate together. They are from different generations and different worlds, but they both embrace the idea of evolution of people, environment, themselves. When Sander first talked to me about the Girlfriends Project—we became friends when we were working at Phillip Lim years ago—it made complete sense to me. He had gone to a thrift store and found all these old pictures of several different women, and they captured the evolution of how they dressed, their hair, their changing lives; he wanted to apply that to his friends and how they change. I think it’s important to promote authenticity right now. It doesn’t mean that there is no fantasy to real life, but people don’t want just fantasy, they don’t want to be just sold to; they want real people, with real lives, things they can relate to. Sander genuinely considers his friends in his design process; what we would be doing and wearing in our everyday and in our fantasy lives. He likes domestic life, even if he works in fashion. He’s always thinking about how his work can reflect a sense of honesty.”
