Elisabeth Quin: Shanghai, what does it bring to your mind, Shanghai?
Peter Marino: Shanghai, I hate to tell everybody in Paris, but I’m from New York and Shanghai is the number 1 city in the world today. So that’s – you’ve got to go there to see it. The energy, the number of buildings being built, the money that is there, their attitude, every single brand in the world trying to get there, it’s still growing, it’s still alive, maybe not yet “culturally”, but that always comes.

EQ: That comes after.
PM: That comes after, exactly. At the moment, I say to everybody, “You want to be a citizen, a modern citizen of the world, you have to go to Shanghai!” You don’t understand, sorry –

EQ: No, no, come on, this is a free world, I mean, I love the way, you just, you know, assume that. Sure. Yes, but that’s since what, ten years ago?
PM: Maybe less, maybe 7 to 5.

EQ: Yes.
PM: Things have changed so quickly.

EQ: Yes, yes.
PM: It’s really – you don’t recognize the streets in Shanghai if you don’t go for one year. Or the next three months. I mean everything is super speed compared to the West, I mean we’re all asleep here. We’re asleep!

EQ: Nap nap!
PM: No, I like it because we used to refer to it, in America, when we grew up, at school, they used to call China “the sleeping giant”. And now it’s reversed because the giant woke up and all the West has gone to sleep. In terms of building and energy and money and thinking “why societies are tired” and all, they’re like oohh. So it’s really an interesting moment with a shift in the world.

EQ: Yes, a shift, of influence and, yes, energies. So when you arrived… you saw the building where the shop was supposed to be built. What happened?
PM: Well, it wasn’t, no, because you just see a hoarding, because the Peninsula wasn’t built.

EQ: Yes.
PM: So you just see a hoarding, you know. You don’t really see that or something, you get a presentation of that and you see your space, but you don’t really, you don’t see the building.

EQ: So you see the space and then? What do you think? Coco’s apartment? Something French? Something of the 30’s? Some kind of sophistication?
PM: The direction came – the direction comes from the directors of CHANEL that this is – the Peninsula is the Kuduri family returned to Shanghai, where they had left it in 1939, so they were making a big statement of returning and… there’s a certain luxury associated with the Peninsula and a certain feeling that they wanted to give. Our brand has nothing to do with the decisions of the Peninsula. Because I’m not a big fan of retro and that’s all I’m going to say, and that’s this. But what I am a big fan of is the timelessness of CHANEL and it is amazing how her style and her feeling and everything is still completely in the front of the modern one. Completely and it’s great and I just want to continue doing that. The direction from CHANEL directors is : “Listen, this is in a very luxury hotel, we’re not going to have huge amounts of traffic, this is not like when you do a CHANEL in a shopping mall. This is the reverse. There, you can 1000 a day. Maybe in this, we have not even 50, there’s a big difference. So Peter, you can try a new formula here, and I don’t have to be quite as, what we call… commercial.

EQ: Mmmh.
PM: So I didn’t have to line the walls with comptoirs –

EQ: Counters.
PM: And I don’t have to put all these kind of things, so it’s great, so I said, “Ah, so I can do this whole thing more like a little relaxed set.” So they said, yes, we’re going to do more selling ceremony, you don’t have to line product on the walls, so I said, ok, look, I have done the Fine Jewelry here, where we’re talking, at Place Vendôme –

EQ: Yes.
PM : And I kind of, people like it here a lot. And what I like is that modernists, journalists, everybody sort of said it’s pretty cool, so I tried to do, basically, that - on a scale which I had never done before for clothing and handbags – what we did here, Place Vendôme, for Jewelry.

EQ: Yes.
PM: And this is a one of, this is one in the world. We don’t do another store like because it’s particularly done for the lobby of a hotel and it’s a one-time thing.

EQ: The store is huge. The space.
PM: Yes, 4800 feet.

EQ: Mmmh. So it’s a huge, a huge space. “C’est coquet, comme on dit en français. Hein? C’est pas mal.”
PM: C’est ok.

EQ: And the ambiance, the feeling of one being in it is like, not being at home, but being in a private place.
PM: An apartment. It’s like being in an apartment, because the hotel is, if I could show you the layout, you enter into… you enter into reception space and then I made, on purpose, to feel like an apartment, instead of immediately a room with handbags or something, I made a long hall, like you would do in an apartment, off of which are the biblio, the salon, salle à manger, so there’s like – and each of these rooms has their own windows and curtains.

EQ: I see.
PM: So you are really going to feel like -

EQ: You arrive in the antichambre.
PM: Voilà.

EQ: And then –
PM: So this is, even as a layout, it’s a distinctly non-commercial layout.

EQ: Absolutely. You don’t see the object. You don’t see the product.
PM: Correct. I’m taking a lot of chances here and I hope they are a big success.

EQ: Yes, basically, you work, of course, like an architect, but also like somebody who’s trying to think differently the process of buying and selling.
PM: And selling, yes.

EQ: Yes.
PM: Yes, that’s true, I could never figure out why women buy anything but I can figure out different ways to try to sell.

EQ: Artists are going to have some pieces displayed like Jean-Michel Othoniel and -
PM: Yes, for sure, in the… When you enter, you know, in the… entry room, he came up with this fantastic idea to use, instead of pearls like…

EQ: Like he did in Hong Kong? Like in the shop in Hong Kong?
PM: He did that one, that was his first, but this one, now he’s become more abstract and uses the colors of black and gold, and for me, it’s something… more abstract, even more beautiful than the white pearl. I think it’s really crazy, so I say to the customers, when you come into the store, the first thing that hits you is not a wall of handbags or anything, but just ffft…

EQ: A work of art.
PM: It is a work of art, and you just have this – space that’s 7 meters high. And I hope the average customer will say, you know, “Is this pretty!” Wouldn’t that be a nice reaction? I don’t know anybody who walks into a store now, or anywhere, and says, “Isn’t this pretty?”. Because you are just barraged with merchandise. But I want this to be like that and then I have this long hall that I made especially again, without counters, just with a carpet that I designed - which is really the hardest thing in the world to do. You can make 8 buildings before you design a good carpet. And it’s quite special, you see, it’s ultra, ultra, ultra thick and it even has different… like 8 different niveaux so you –

EQ: In the carpet?
PM: In the carpet, so it’s like…

EQ: In itself?
PM: Why am I doing that? Because I actually want you to go kind of slowly.

EQ: Ah!
PM: I don’t want you running into my room so –

EQ: You want the carpet to stop us from –
PM: It is! It’s kind of really thick and –

EQ: Yes, yes.
PM: I don’t know. I kind of like this whole thing in the entrance hall, this carpet I made, which is incredibly luxurious with –

EQ: What’s the color of the carpet?
PM: It’s gold and black. And –

EQ: Dominant? The dominant, the chromatic dominants are gold and black? Gold, yes. The name of the Othoniel piece is “Gold lasso”, right?
PM: Yes.

EQ: Besides Othoniel, Yves Klein? Yves Klein! That’s interesting!
PM: Yes, he made this wonderful series of tables basses, you know, and this one is all filled with feuilles d’or.

EQ: OK.
PM: So it’s particularly beautiful and we have that in one area. And the whole method of selling is going to be, instead of a counter or a wall full of merchandise, more sitting in sofa chairs and having very high level of customer service with a presentation to the people and first saying to them, “Listen, what do you reckon, what do you want?” “I want this”, and they are going to bring you things. This is very different level of service.

EQ: Yes.
PM: And you can’t do it everywhere, but you can do it in this place, in a hotel which, as we say, will be low traffic but high level of sales. And for that elegant woman who… and there are lots of them going, “I don’t want to go into a store and be pushed and there are so many people and I can’t get a sales person.” I prefer to go to this location, which we know is not going to have 10 000 people. It’s going to be quiet and the experience is going to be… a lot more genial than in any typical store.

EQ: So basically it’s almost as… they are going to have an appointment, just for them.
PM: Correct. There was a discussion for a long while whether it’s only by appointment. There was a discussion, but most women at a very high level can make appointments with shoppers to exactly have that. You don’t wait a second, you get one of your own rooms, exactly. And many customers, we predict, will do that. Exactly that.

EQ: What about furniture of maybe the 30’s or the 40’s? Are there also some…? I saw some Dubreuil furniture…?
PM: Yes, but that’s completely modern. Remember I don’t really like retro things too much, so for me, what I like is have it really good and really old, so we have some of this with the armchairs, or have it really new and really good, and we have Dubreuil, Ado Chale, some really good pieces… I don’t like anything in the middle.

EQ: Yes, it’s radical.
PM: I might just have no or really, really old. I think everything in the middle is…

EQ: Yes. You remember the first time you entered into Rue Cambon, into Coco’s apartment? You remember precisely what you feel? How you feel?
PM: I was so shocked by all that Coromandel and the big chair. I was really, really shocked because I remember thinking, I thought it was going to be the, you know, the ultimate French experience and I said, but this is completely Chinese. That is why I was shocked. I just say what I remember is a Chinese place. Let me tell you something: you know, already in the 1930’s, this woman was East meets West, and I said everybody else, sorry, I wouldn’t name the other designers, they were all in the French commode, the French entrée, the French mirror, the French this, I mean this woman was doing Coromandel screen on her wall, this is not so French! It was great! That was what struck me. This was like… China? This is so different!

EQ: Yes, at the same time, in France, there was a huge, you know, interest for, you know, Japan, China, I mean you know that, of course so… but she was looking further. She was really seeing things further.
PM: To take a Coromandel screen and have the guts to line the walls of your entrance with it, this is something amazing. Nobody ever did it so chic again. It was a one-time thing in the world. It was great! That is good.

EQ: How would you describe your long-time partnership and relationship and friendship with the CHANEL family, the CHANEL house? It’s almost a family anyway.
PM: Well, the family owners, I’ve been working for since 1981.

EQ: Oh!
PM: Yes, I was 2 years old and…

EQ: Yes!
PM: It was incredible! They took me comme bébé, and they said -

EQ: They took you comme bébé! Liebchen!
PM: I’ve worked for them, I’ve worked for them a very, very long time and the owners, of course, are a family and I’m very close to them and they’re wonderful because it’s so nice not to have that kind of all the interlays of corporate rubbish, it’s really nice.

EQ: And did you foresee what it was going to be, this long-time partnership?
PM: No, but I just, I didn’t foresee myself being successful either. You know, after my third year on my own, you know what my father said to me?

EQ: No.
PM: He said, “Why don’t you get serious now and get a good job?”

EQ: That is nice!
PM: Amazing! He had no confidence in me, it’s like...

EQ: Yes, that’s a good way to give you confidence!
PM: Now you’ve played enough, it’s time to get serious, why don’t you get a good job… So, no, I didn’t foresee anything.

EQ: Mmmh. The CHANEL brand is absolutely special, right.
PM: It was my mum’s favorite brand.

EQ: Was it?
PM: Yes! It was. Really. It was the only client I ever got that impressed her. It was CHANEL.

EQ: Oh yes? And to you, do you fancy, do you like clothes, the products?
PM: I think it’s heaven! I think it’s… Yeah, I think it’s really great and I’ve watched the development of what Karl has done with it, I find it’s really important what he’s done with the brand. I think, historically, you look back at his, at his incredible reign and go, oh my God, this was a period, you know, an amazing creativity and just sort of artistry in this. It’s really, really good. No, I’m really…I love the brand, I think it’s… it’s super for the modern woman to remain elegant and fun and everything like this. And it’s really apart from the other brands. I mean I don’t know if you, as an interviewer, could tell me what’s close to CHANEL?

EQ: What clothes…?
PM: What’s close to it? I mean there’s nothing…

EQ: No, nothing.
PM: It’s really apart.

EQ: Nothing. Nothing.
PM: That’s why I feel very close to it, because I’m also a little bit, in my profession…

EQ: In your own singularity.
PM: In my own profession, yes. I’m…

EQ: One of your kind. One of a kind!
PM: As an architectural atelier, we are very different, the way we produce things.

EQ: The last thing is that, what, when you talk about this CHANEL boutique in Shanghai, I feel it’s going to be some radical experience, from an esthetic point of view and from a client point of view. What’s… what can you do next? I mean… What can you do next for them? Can you imagine yourself doing a more classical or traditional shop?
PM: I’m already doing some things next that are very exciting.

EQ: Yes?
PM: It was just like when they gave me - before this one came - Robertson in California. Which was really fun. And I’m most happy, because I made this one we called a Gallerie CHANEL, where it was just… It was so good because I would watch - this was specifically for young women in California - they would come in, because it was the first time I put CHANEL in letters this big and that’s all there was. A very small thing on the outside, there was nothing. Even the sign. And people would say, “Is this a real CHANEL or…”? I said, “Yes, honey, this is real, but it’s just a different one.”

EQ: Yes.
PM: So I do play a lot. And I have fun. Now we’re doing one for Soho, in New York, which will be very artistic in the experience. All the merchandise will be in a very different way. So that is always something new, that’s what’s so great.

EQ: And in the Shanghai boutique, the sign is going to be big or… small?
PM: In Shanghai, the sign is only outside.

EQ: The sign is only outside.
PM: It’s on the outside, like the address of an apartment.

EQ: Yes.
PM: You’ll see it.