Stefano Pilati
Interview (2021)
Did you have a great interest in fashion from your childhood? Could you tell us what inspired you to become a fashion designer and what fashion designers and brands inspired you at that time?I couldn’t really articulate clearly the desire to become a fashion designer but for sure an interest in clothes and fashion appeared to me at very early age. In the 80s the Italian fashion was exploding and leading the way for many new brands to build empires and my absolute idol was Giorgio Armani for his rigor and minimalist modernity.
After you entered the fashion industry, you were promoted through the major fashion houses, as an assistant at Giorgio Armani, as head of fabric development at Prada, and as an assistant designer at MiuMiu, but in that hectic environment, what were you aspiring to achieve at that time?To learn every aspect of creating fashion it could have been possible to learn and perhaps, one day, make fashion on my own.
When you were appointed finally as the creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, you supervised over all their lines. At the time, you were presenting legendary collections in succession, yet I would feel that this would have been a rather heavy burden upon you. How did you overcome such pressure?Frankly, the pressure was out of this world!!!…I was so happy and grateful that I didn’t allow myself to suffocate in it. Instead, it was a very interesting journey to discover that to fight it and keep myself in balance, sport was the answer.