Collaboration, Stoppard points out, isn’t a 21st-century phenomenon, but it has seemed to accelerate in the last decade, a fact that she chalks up to the industry’s fast pace. In the book, she quotes Rolf Snoeren of Viktor & Rolf, who said, “Having to do this on your own would be horrible. It’s a gift to be able to do it together.” As she watched the list of fashion partnerships grow, she started asking herself: “Who has the control? How is power balanced? Are there issues over ownership?” She came to the conclusion that collaborations “rely on some magic special ingredient. It’s a bit like romantic relationships really, it just works or it doesn’t.”
Stoppard’s first criteria for entry was that the relationship be unusual. “It would have been very easy to do a whole book just based on designers and their stylists or designers and their ‘muses,’ ” Stoppard says, “but I felt like that would have been too expected and maybe tired as a concept.” The second criteria was scoring in-person interviews with the collaborators together. That, she admits, was a bit like herding cats, and in the case of Shaun Leane and the late Alexander McQueen, it wasn’t even possible, but overall she was pleased by how much time her subjects gave her. “I think it’s a credit to how passionately everyone feels about the importance of collaboration.”
Fashion Together is a stuffed full of photographs, ephemera, and some of the most candid designer interviews you’ll read anywhere. “People were very willing to share their stories.”
