Pierre Rougier on Vision, Trends, and Challenging the Algorithm

What's Contemporary Now?

Pierre Rougier, a distinguished fashion publicist and founder of PR Consulting, boasts a career spanning several decades. After studying political science in Bordeaux, Rougier honed his skills in Paris and London with Hermès, Yohji Yamamoto, and Maison Margiela before making his mark in New York in 1993. There, he directed communications while representing icons like Helmut Lang and Alexander McQueen. Establishing PR Consulting in1997, he catapulted emerging talents like Narciso Rodriguez and Nicolas Ghesquiere, then at Balenciaga, to prominence, also fostering brands like Proenza Schouler and Hood By Air. Renowned for discovering and championing young designers, Rougier continues to hold the opinion that a strong vision and sometimes counter-trending codes are often the precursors to a designer’s success.

Episode Highlights:

• Rougier grew up far from the front of culture, and though his interests in fashion were indirect at first until he moved to Bordeaux—a larger city—to study.
• He started his work in fashion boxing Hermes products before moving to London, still employed at Hermes, learning English and partaking in ’80s gay club culture there.
• Yohji Yamamoto employed Rougier to work a PR position, giving him his first taste of serious work and long hours associated with the industry.
• Using his London connections, he opened his own PR firm as the Antwerp Six were coming into the spotlight, and worked under Martin Margiela for four years, until he felt that his aesthetic and vision were too overwhelmingly connected to that one house.
• Moving to New York, Rougier worked as communications director for a company that held brands like Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, and Michael Kors.
• Rougier speaks on learning that the antithesis of what's trending is always on the precipice of an arrival.
• He says the conversations in fashion are less now about what designers like and more about what designers find that works, and is successful.
• Before the internet, there were few photos of shows and most people waited to see items in stores to determine the zeitgeist; now, Rougier says, the urgency of marketing makes everything “extremely transactional.”
• He says it’s fair to say that in fashion, elitism has trended out with a shift to exclusive community identities.

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