Hello Vogue Paris, I'm Etienne Daho and I'm going to talk to you about my icons.
My childhood icon is Syd Barrett.
He made the first Pink Floyd album, which is a masterpiece,
and two other heartbreaking albums.
And then he completely disappeared.
He went to Cambridge.
He had everything going for him: he was charismatic,
he invented psychedelia, he was handsome.
He truly was a kind of Swinging London character who was quite exceptional.
And then, he disappeared.
It's a big mystery, we don't know what happened,
he died at 60 years old in Cambridge without ever having played guitar again.
I don't know much about it.
I feel like having style means inventing your own fashion,
your own style.
I think that we have some examples like that in France,
we really have some key figures of the chanson française,
from Barbara to Gainsbourg, Hardy, Birkin, Dutronc,
who invented their style, who have a look for life.
And I think it's very strong to have a signature like that,
which runs throughout a career and which is a very strong signature.
There are so many, but there is one that is explosive,
it's the cover of the first Velvet Underground & Nico album,
which was designed by Andy Warhol.
He designed many others, like Sticky Fingers for the Stones.
It's the cover with the zipper.
There's a theme here because it's a cover with a banana.
And when you peel the banana, under the yellow skin, there is a pink banana.
There is also a very strong sexual connotation.
It's a huge cover for a huge album.
Even people who don't know what's inside are struck by this cover.
I think of a metal armor that Françoise Hardy used to wear in the 1960s,
which is an armor created by Paco Rabanne
and that she wore on stage when she was performing in London, at the Savoy.
The armor weighed 30 kilos, which is huge!
Paco Rabanne had sent workers to London
to fix this armor that was collapsing under the weight
between each concert.
For me, personally, it's Hedi Slimane, really.
I met him in 2001, I think, or 2002, and a very strong friendship was born
and he's a designer with whom I really let myself be carried.
I can really get into everything he does.
And he is a music lover.
I inevitably get along with such a designer, who is very inspired by music.
Lou Reed.
But Lou Reed in 1974,
where he was this kind of insect, quite hyper, with a leather jacket with studs on it,
nails painted black and hair cut very short, dyed blond,
with big glasses that covered his face.
It is almost the definitive image of Lou Reed, so powerful and graphic.
But at the same time, he is also a great writer and composer.
For me, he's the greatest. Really.
There's a picture of Chris Stein,
who is the leader of Blondie, who photographed Debbie Harry,
who's the singer of Blondie,
and Bowie, and they're both embracing.
It's a pretty tender, beautiful image in black and white.
But beyond that, it's really the two icons,
it's Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley in modern times.
There are plenty of them, but there's one that I recently visited again,
which is the Hotel La Louisiane.
It's a hotel that has been passed down from generation to generation,
four generations of owners already, all from the same family,
where all the important artists have stayed,
from Miles Davis to Jim Morrison, from Juliette Gréco, Pink Floyd
to Tarantino today.
The walls have really absorbed the energy of all these artists who have been there:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Grace Jones…
The list is absolutely impressive!
I myself had a few moments in this hotel when I was a teenager.
I wrote a song called L'Hotel des infidèles in my last album
and it's a place
where you feel that the walls are impregnated with this energy, this wildness.
It's a very strong place, really.
There's a lot too.
There is a recent cover that's very beautiful,
it is the one with Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon.
It's very strong because we see three very important personalities,
there is a family link, but they are three completely different artists.
And we see Jane who is a warrior, really, with her smile,
there is the melancholy of Charlotte and the defiant side of Lou.
And beyond that, I think that what this picture is about
is quite upsetting because it's the absence of Kate Barry.
And when I see this picture, I can't help but think about that.
I'm reading his biography right now, so I'm into it, it's John Waters,
who is a director who is called the pope of trash cinema.
But beyond that, he is a witness of the American society.
He shows society with all its flaws, but with a lot of humor.
I'm reading his biography called Mr. Know-It-All, and in a time of hygiene, of self-righteousness,
it's really good to see him talking about bad stuff
with so much humor and so much fun.
So, really, he's really…
I'm happy to live in a world where there's John Waters.
Thank you, Vogue Paris.
And don't forget to subscribe to the channel.