Projected Yearnings

We asked the Paris-based artist and lighting director Thierry Dreyfus to make the T for our winter women’s issue because he lights so many of the clothes that we see on the runways. (He did 25 shows last season alone.) But it wasn’t just the halos at Comme des Garçons or the bulbed ceiling that lifted from the floor at Rag & Bone that made Dreyfus such an easy and desirable pick. All over the world — at hotels in Belgrade and Athens, in galleries in Singapore and Milan, and at design fairs in London and Miami — Dreyfus’s installations alter and electrify their surroundings and our experiences of them. Here, he tells T how the projected image of our signature initial happened (by accident), and the kind of light he hopes women will wear this winter.

Q.

Where did you get the idea for this T?

A.

I submitted two different ideas: the first was about transparency and it was rather concrete. The second was about pure light, about New York City and the duplicity of life and information. How could I best translate the duplicitous meaning of a perceived reality, I wondered?

Where and how was it made?
I was sitting at the Morgans hotel in New York one evening, like always. The shades were down. I placed the T, which I had cut out of white cardboard and brought with me to New York from Paris, onto the glass window. Next, I took pictures of the night life and the night’s light through the frame of the cutout T; I captured the light of the buildings, then left it there and fell asleep.

The next morning, while working on an urban installation that I’m doing in Asia, I was hectically going from e-mails on my computer to Skype to phone calls with the gallery in Singapore. So I moved the T from the window to the bed. It was the same suite, with the same early morning sun rays coming in, then I saw the double T — the solid one, dense and white, doubled by the projection of the extraordinary substance of light onto the window shade. I waited for the sun to be as horizontal on the horizon as possible Replica Straight Jacket, and then photographed the two.

What were the biggest challenges you faced while making this T?
None, really. It was all done on the spur of the moment.

Please list all of the supplies required for creating this T.
Sunshine, a dose of fresh life, a little bit of time, a curtain, a window, a piece of cardboard that I brought from Paris, solitude, a smiling and open-minded attitude, a cigarette and dark espresso.

Where is the T now?
I left it in the hotel. I’d guess it’s reached a recycling plant to heat houses in Manhattan by now.

T stands for __________________________.
Forgetting about the speed of time.

You designed this T for the winter women’s fashion issue. Is there a kind of light that you think looks best on women?
Candlelight because it highlights self-confidence, strength and sincerity; it illuminates women as elegant eyes looking at her with desire and love, respect and tenderness, do.

What kind of light do you see yourself wearing this winter?
The love light that shines in the eyes of my son and daughter.