50 Years in Fashion, 27 Years Running Her Own Store: It All Comes Down to "Freely Exchanging Ideas"

"Information gets 'burned up' too fast," she says. "By the time things reach the stores, they're already old."

Carla Sozzani turned up at the 10 Corso Como store on Nanjing West Road in Shanghai in a black dress, her long blond hair tied back with a black ribbon. She had come to Shanghai to find a new chef for the restaurant on the fifth floor.

It went smoothly. They soon found a very young Chinese chef who cooks healthy, delicious modern Italian food.

"People like to eat with their eyes too. So beauty matters. And healthy food will only get more popular," she told QDaily, with the enthusiasm for food that Italians never lose.

Born in 1947, Carla Sozzani turned 70 this year. She started working for Italian fashion magazines in the late 1960s and went on to edit a special edition of Italian Vogue. In 1987 she brought ELLE to Italy and became its editor-in-chief.

Just before her 20th year as a fashion editor, Sozzani decided to leave magazines.

She saw it as an act of rebellion, though in another sense it carried her editing career on. In an interview with Interview magazine, Sozzani said: "Editing was like an instinct for me — at the time I probably couldn't do anything except be an editor. I wandered by accident into the retail business, which I knew nothing about, simply wanting to talk to readers and share the things I loved. In an era without the internet or blogs, I tried to edit a magazine that was 'alive,' one readers could walk into and become visitors and customers."

10 Corso Como began as a gallery. Out of her lifelong love of black-and-white photography and the collection she had built, Sozzani opened an exhibition space — and a small independent publishing studio — in a windowless garage with a concrete floor at No. 10 Corso Como in Milan. There she worked with designers such as Walter Albini, Pierre Cardin, and Rudi Gernreich to publish fashion photography catalogs, and put on shows with photographers. Before long the place had grown into a complex holding a design shop, a clothing store, a gallery, a bookstore, a roof garden, a café, and a hotel.

Back then, of course, nobody used the phrase "lifestyle concept store." Sozzani says the model was "inspired by Italian pizza": if a pizza can bring together everything good to eat, why can't we bring together everything that is fun and beautiful?

Nick Johnstone, a Guardian reporter who visited 10 Corso Como in Milan, described the "big pizza" Sozzani had made this way:

"This is a place full of curious and beautiful things. Whether you want a whole tea set, a book of Francesca Woodman photographs, a CD of Sufi hymns, a long and unhurried lunch, a cocktail from the fashionable bar, a Marni dress, a photography exhibition… Sozzani offers you all of it, seven days a week, until 2 a.m. every night."

In 2002 Sozzani took the "all-in-one experience" of 10 Corso Como out of Italy for the first time, opening a joint store in Tokyo, 10 Corso Como x Comme des Garçons, with her designer friend Rei Kawakubo. In 2008, 2013, and 2014 she opened three more 10 Corso Como stores, in South Korea, Shanghai, and Beijing. The Beijing one, inside the SKP department store, closed three years after it opened, leaving only a 10 Corso Como café behind.

Every one of the stores was designed by Sozzani's life partner, the American artist Kris Ruhs. Ruhs also drew 10 Corso Como's signature polka-dot pattern.

Plenty of people call her overseas expansion "pioneering" (you can read that word as "risky" if you like). She believes she has always entered a new city before most people there knew what a "concept store" was, though how each outpost performs depends heavily on the local market and on how good the local partner is.

Like many pioneering retailers, 10 Corso Como became the advocate for an idea. In Tokyo, Seoul, and later Beijing and Shanghai, similar "design concept stores," "lifestyle spaces," and "fashion boutiques" spread everywhere. But over the long wait for the market to mature, stores like this came under fire from e-commerce and from luxury shopping done on trips abroad — at 10 Corso Como in Shanghai, you may well swallow the urge you just felt to buy a Comme des Garçons shirt once you see it costs more than the same shirt from a personal shopper.

That delicate impulse — give in to the temptation of the experience, or wait for a better price online — is what decides whether a concept store survives. Like everyone who bets on scarce experiences, Sozzani is an optimist.

"Things go in cycles. When people get addicted to the internet, there will come a moment when they want to break free of it and come back to life."

CS = Carla Sozzani

Q = QDaily

Q: Let's start with an easy question. Photography, as an art, has an immeasurable power to express fashion and the world at large. But now everyone's attention is on their phones, and print fashion media is in decline. Phone screens are so small, and the way you interact with them is so limited. What is that actually doing to fashion imagery?

CS: The way we look at things has changed a lot. Now anyone can be a photographer. But this is an interesting thing: on one hand, everyone can take good photos. From that angle I think it's a good thing — good for everyday life, even for photojournalism. I often see people take wonderful photos with their phones. It helps spark creativity. On the other hand, there is another kind of photography, closer to an art form, that has to be made in a more complicated way, and that is a completely different matter from the photographers I just described. That kind of photography won't stop.

Q: So is there any new photographic form, or any photographer's work, that has caught your attention?

CS: Far too many. But color photography is very popular right now, and I think that's the influence of these little devices too (pointing at her phone). It's interesting. Everybody loves taking pictures, because they think they can shoot something as good as those big productions. But if you look at Man Ray's black-and-white photos, you know at once you could never shoot like that. If you look at Gursky's work, you might think you could (laughs). That's why color photography is so popular now.

Q: With so many channels of information now, what role do you think fashion media, as professional institutions, should play?

CS: Fashion media has always played some role. The voices out there are much more varied now — bloggers, celebrities, singers and so on — whereas in the past there was only the media. Now the people speaking up are a mixture, and there is no way to stop it all happening this fast. Look at the shows: Grace Mirabella used to sit in the front row, and now bloggers sit there. Because everything that influences people today comes out of this little machine (picking up her phone again). Such a small thing, and it influences the world.

Q: Do you find that interesting? Or does it make fashion boring?

CS: There's good and bad in it. This way everyone comes into contact with a lot of information, images, and trends, and it makes people independent. But on the other hand, information gets "burned up" too fast. By the time things reach the stores, they're already old. So people go off looking for something else. To me that brings anxiety rather than calm. That part of it, I think, is a bit bad.

Q: Then what should editors do? I mean, they used to be the only ones doing the communicating, and now a large part of their job has been taken over by other people.

CS: I think magazines should become more beautiful, in the aesthetic sense, fashion magazines especially. If a magazine isn't beautiful we have no reason to look at it. Right? You no longer need to get information from it — nothing in a magazine is new enough. So what people can get from it now is pleasure, the pleasure of "oh my god, this is so beautiful" — the photographer is wonderful, the colors on the page are like paintings… and only then do you want to own the printed thing.

Q: So can I take it that art photography has become more important than it used to be?

CS: Yes. I think magazines no longer need any text at all. You see endless text every day; from the moment you wake up in the morning you know everything. But a beautiful book can make you happy. I've always felt we should stop and dream. People don't have dreams any more; anxiety has taken their place, and they have no time to stop and enjoy anything.

Q: Speaking of "slow living" — you're also the one who came up with the concept-experience store 27 years ago and founded 10 Corso Como. Have you been trying to make it change with the times? Or does it not need to at all?

CS: How should I put it — 10 Corso Como used to be a concept store, but we keep adding more and more culture to it. In Milan especially, and in Shanghai too, where we now have a very large bookstore, almost half of the floor space against everything else put together. Because I think experience matters enormously. Whatever is happening online, it's all "fast fashion," "fast consumption." But on the other hand, more and more physical stores are appearing — even Amazon is opening offline stores. People now have too many ways to shop, either very fast or very slow. 10 Corso Como sits between the two. You don't go out today to buy a plain black T-shirt; you can buy that online. You go out to enjoy some time and spoil yourself, not to buy an ordinary piece of clothing.

Q: So the mood at 10 Corso Como is getting slower?

CS: Slower than ever! Ha ha ha.

Q: So could I say this is how you make 10 Corso Como fit the times? The times are speeding up, and you're slowing down.

CS: I've been running 10 Corso Como for 27 years now, and for me today there is no absolute in in in, or out out out. That sort of thing stands for anxiety, and what I want to make is something that makes people comfortable — freely exchanging ideas, the way you do at home. Not: this is what I've chosen for you, that's what I've customized for you. I don't want that. That's why 10 Corso Como exists in the form it has today.

Q: Do you think the people who come to 10 Corso Como in Milan now are different from before? Is what they're looking for different?

CS: In Milan we have a big garden. Now a lot of young people come in the afternoon or the evening. Maybe for some tea, or for food and drinks that aren't too expensive, and then they finally put their phones down and start talking to each other. I think being social is becoming more and more important for people today. Not social online, but talking face to face. Otherwise, staring at a phone all day only brings loneliness.

Q: 10 Corso Como in Milan was recently named one of the world's 15 best bookstores by Penguin Random House. When you and your team create an experience like this, are there principles, or things you always think about?

CS: When we first designed the bookstore in the Milan store, in 1990, we spread all the books out on tables and chairs, where we could see them, and picked them one by one. In Shanghai, when we moved the bookstore to the fifth floor earlier this year, we used the same method. I really love books — and of course I have two assistants helping me with it. We have a lot of books on design, fashion, photography, art, gardening, and more, plus children's books. On this trip to Shanghai I also went to a wonderful bookstore, JIC Books. I liked it very much; there were a lot of children reading there, which is really wonderful. In Milan our bookstore has a lot of books for children too.

Q: Have you been reading anything yourself lately?

CS: No. Ha ha. I haven't read a single book lately. Maybe because I've been traveling too much. I think there are two ways to learn — one is reading, the other is traveling.

Q: How do you find freshness in art and fashion these days? Where does it usually come from?

CS: It usually turns up by itself. You get the feeling when you're talking to certain people, or when you meet a designer who stands out from the rest. Ask me why and I don't know either — maybe it's just luck. Ha ha. Sometimes the feeling isn't so obvious to other people, but it is to me.

Q: Is there anything you want to do now but haven't managed to?

CS: A few million things, probably! I honestly worry my life won't be long enough to finish everything I want to do.

Q: Then name the one thing you're most impatient to do right now.

CS: Probably a book. Next year is my 50th year working in fashion, so I want to make a book. I had the idea last year, in fact, but there was no time; maybe this summer. I think it's a good idea: a book like a diary, remembering some of what I've seen and heard over 50 years, bringing together fashion, art, and culture, the fields I've followed since I was young.

Q: Among the people and things you deal with day to day, is there anything that confuses you?

CS: Confused, no. Sometimes I feel a bit deflated — "small annoyances" is more accurate. Someone might say to me: "There's no way you can understand what young people are thinking." That annoys me. But I also find it funny, because it has nothing to do with age. It's a stage everyone goes through. Of course it would be best to have the body of 40 years ago and the mind I have now, but unfortunately that has never happened to anyone. Anyway, my hero is Georgia O'Keeffe with a drink in her hand! (laughs)

Cover image and photos without a credit are from: 10 Corso Como