SYBIL ROUGE

"I lived in Paris from 96 – 2003. I was still working for Mr Pearl but I was managing 20 or 30 people. The ones from the Royal Opera House I would have to go back and redo. I fell out withPearl in 98 because the work load was so incredible and the stress of it all was too much….It all came to a head around Mugler’ s couture show, people were beading solidly for 3 days, people were losing it, there was one girl who was the head of the beading team who went to beading school, she completely lost it…Pearl said “maybe you should go back to the hotel”, she was found by the police in foetal position, was taken to the police station to sleep it off, and the result was there was a huge enquiry in paris over slave labour in the couture industry and how disgusting it was. Mugler got into real trouble and Pearl would never speak to this girl again. Januaray 98 I decided during that period that that was the last one I was going to do because I just thought that it’s going to take years off my life….it all got a bit much. So strangely, almost subconsciously I fell out with Pearl.I saw a dress from that time in Sunday Times Style recently, Naomi Watts was wearing it, it’s strapless, completely beaded and looks like water…I have a story about that dress. At one point the Mugler girl was a model called Amy Wesson. We had made an outfit for a couture show that was going to be used for the Angel campaign. A catsuit covered in beads, with droplets, icicles, Nadja Auermann wore it for the show. But for the campaign Amy Wesson wore it and she was a heroin addict and for the shoot they put her inside this crystal mirrored shell. They were having to slap her awake, there was someone ready with a needle full of smack to perk her up for the shots….she had a period at the time so her menstrual blood had soaked the inside of the catsuit so I had to unpick the bloody scabby sequins off with tweezers and re sew them on sticking it into a solution of Ariel…” - Sybil Rouge via PONYSTEP

read the full interview [here]