On Thursday night, the 35th edition of the ANDAM awards will close out Couture week, with 700,000 euros in prize money awarded under the mentorship of YSL creative director Anthony Vaccarello, winner of the 2011 ANDAM fashion award grand prize. Come PFW, the anniversary festivities will continue with the opening on September 30th of an exhibition at MAD, featuring looks donated by every one of ANDAM’s past winners. Pieces from 2023 grand prize winner, LGN Louis-Gabriel Nouchi and the 2024 winner will also join the museum’s permanent collection. Nathalie Dufour, the founder of ANDAM (National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts) spoke about how fashion has evolved, what’s next, and what many people don’t know about her. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Honestly, it took me a while to feel proud, because when you reach a certain number of collaborators and participants, you have to keep the bar high! Also, I’m not sure I have the time. But the widespread recognition of past winners—like Anthony, who’s now running a major house, is validating. The pride I feel is collective, for what fashion represents now. I don’t think any of us could have known that young designers and fashion would become such a huge thing, economically in terms of French industry, or in terms of power at Paris Fashion Week. But that also happened thanks to the [luxury] groups that were formed, that have grown and that want to nurture young talents. I didn’t think of myself as a precursor then, but I’ve always been kind of a free radical. Not having the weight of a single group behind us is what let me open source all the names that are now associated with the ANDAM prize. It’s the only one that brings all the fashion actors together. Everyone’s invested in the outcome.
ANDAM’s philosophy is really about France: formalizing a structure, collaborating with French savoir-faire, shining a light on things that are made in France, which is different from other prizes. All the industry players are involved. ANDAM makes it possible for brands to do more than just show in Paris; it creates connections across the industry, with French savoir-faire, and carries the stamp of luxury, so it elevates the proposition for everyone. For a designer, it’s about moving beyond the show calendar and upgrading what they want to make. There’s an energy that rises above a group mentality; it’s a guarantee for the exceptionality of French fashion. People who buy luxury want to see newness, agility, something that’s beyond marketing.
In France, 35 years ago, the big luxury groups didn’t yet exist, and the business and institutional milieu—the ministries of industry and culture—weren’t looking at young designers. A whole fashion ecosystem was taking shape, but it wasn’t really about emerging talents. The DEFI (the French governmental committee for developing and promoting French fashion) was already there, and Pierre Bergé was its president. So there I was, an art history grad working for the plastic arts delegation at the ministry of culture, and right away I saw the support that was given to artistic creation in photography and plastic arts, for talents like Martin Szekely or Philippe Starck, and it struck me that fashion, in its contemporary dimension, had no access to the same tools. So early on I wanted to focus on that. I had a lot of detractors, but my ambition was to say this is a cultural industry, so let’s put these young designers on the same level as creatives in other domains.
Symbolically, there was the inauguration of the MAD (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), with the then-minister of culture Jack Lang, and Alaïa, Mugler, Montana—that whole generation turned out. At the time, fashion was considered superfluous, a little frivolous, designers wanted to shine for their creativity, there wasn’t the kind of business dimension it has today. They were more about the show; they weren’t armed to be managers. When I put together my project, the pitch was: let’s identify today the designers who are going to wind up in museums tomorrow and give them access to all the financial and promotional tools we had at the ministry of culture. Jean Colonna, Véronique Leroy, the Antwerp Six, Issey Miyake, lots of Martin [Margiela]… I’ve always been into ANDAM winners!
Even back then, my friend [the curator] Florence Muller told me, if you don’t care for the clothes and store them flat—like she always does—they’ll become damaged. I didn’t have room to keep everything, so I wound up giving a lot to who sold them at auction, some things went to friends, and some wound up in the cellar. It probably helped that I was very young and had the gall to ask him for a rendezvous, but he liked the idea enough to tell me to quit my job and launch ANDAM. He had that reputation of being tough, but he put a kind of blind confidence in me. He was such a grand monsieur and his spontaneity really bowled me over, so for me the question was always about rising to the occasion. I remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, now this thing has to stay on track.’ The more he gave me carte blanche, every time he said to call someone on his behalf, I wanted to show myself worthy. He was really generous, but we always used the formal “vous.” I kept a respectful distance.
Above all, young designers in the 1980s and ’90s weren’t managers. It wasn’t a very organized industry. Designers did it all. That’s changed with all these specialized management degrees. Pierre used to say all the time, you need a counterpart. Yves [Saint Laurent] on his own was complicated; there was always that idea of partnership. The Belgians tended to be much more focused on a relationship with objects, fashion as an object. Margiela managed to build thanks to Jenny [Meirens], but for so many others, it was more about creating a fantasy, something spectacular and hyper-creative.
Now it’s easier to start and to show. There’s a whole system in place. Everything depends on how you’re going to put your brand out there. Alex Mattiussi (the 2013 winner) always wanted to do luxury clothes that would be accessible, and he was right but it wasn’t easy. What’s hard is at a certain point you have to raise funds and establish yourself as a luxury brand that can compete with the groups. We really put that on the table and ask candidates to show us what tools they would use to reduce energy use and climate impact. The innovation prize is all about that: it’s a way of finding the tools and collaborations that could help. That’s where young start-ups come in: we’ve got two new generations that are meeting and finding ways of working together.
I think every brand is using deadstock, everyone is looking at sourcing, at ethics, reducing returns, at packaging—even if all that’s expensive—to find a better way of doing things. I think that the French textile industry is the greenest one out there. I think we’re rather exemplary, and the big groups are investing in it enormously. The Italian culture is super generous, too: this year, Only the Brave is once again meeting with all the finalists for a best practices workshop to figure out how to integrate processes and get them right from the outset. Absolutely, because not only are there good intentions, there’s also a high level of investment to accelerate capacities of reducing [environmental impact] enormously. We’ll be even stronger. We’ll be an incubator with a program that’s even more dense. We’ll be even more efficient in terms of mentoring. And we’ll be awarding even more funds.
I never considered pursuing design but I’ve always been craftsy. I’m always dyeing my clothes, even a Paco Rabanne top I thought was a bit too strong—everyone asks me about it. I’ve always been fairly shy and reserved. Looking back, I regret not accepting Pierre’s invitation to visit him at his villa in Tangiers. But I think he respected me for that.
