ALL THE FEELINGS
New York, November 2024
Dressing up is an art form and JORDAN ROTH is its undisputed master. Since appearing on the Met Gala red carpet in 2019 in a cape piece depicting a grande auditorium by the visionary Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, Roth has been continuously dazzling fashion fans with his spectacular looks. Working as a theatre producer behind some of Broadway’s buzziest shows (Kinky Boots, The Book of Mormon, Sunset Boulevard), Roth knows a thing or two about drama and the storytelling potential of a garment. For Shadowplay, lensed by legendary photographer Paolo Roversi, Roth revisits his outstanding Haute Couture creations and opens up about his seminal experiences of theatre, rejecting dualities, and the importance of unabashed expression of self in today’s socio-political landscape.
Left Full look Schiaparelli Haute Couture by Daniel Roseberry
Right Coat and bodysuit Michael Sylvain Robinson, vintage purple Amethyst Necklace from A La Vieille Russie, all other jewellery Lydia Courteille
What was the first play you have seen that had a profound effect on you? What about it sparked your love for the art form?
I have loved theatre for as long as I can remember – it was always a place of refuge, safety, possibility, fantasy and self-fulfilment. When I think about the first seminal show in my life, I think about the original Broadway production of La Cage aux Folles, which my parents took me to when I was around six. It ignited me on so many levels. Of course, it was dazzling – the spectacle, the fashion, the colours, the textures, the wigs… It had all the elements that might dazzle a budding human like me. Also, it was an exploration of gender and the possibility of free expression that was new to me, and I think new to mass culture. Then, I went backstage after and got to see all the elements that I mentioned that came to life on stage. And something clicked for me then about the existence of these elements, these tools or vocabulary, that existed off-stage in a slumber state and activated when it got on human beings on stage. I don’t think I could have articulated it back then, but I reflect on it as an early moment of insight into what theatre is and how it could make me feel.
Full look Iris Van Herpen
It seems like that moment – when the garments become alive by being placed on the body – is a huge part of your existence today.
Exactly right. For me, clothes speak very loudly to my body and tell me how they want to be moved by me, which is different from how they might be moved by you. And that’s why clothes are a vocabulary for all of us. We all use the same words, but we use them in different ways. We use them to express who we are, how we feel, what we think, or what we’re afraid of… So the opportunity to express what I know and what I don’t know through my body in a vocabulary of fashion is where I live.
Left Full look Valentino Haute Couture by Pierpaolo Piccioli
Right Full look Thom Browne
What are some intentions that you set yourself with the way you approach fashion today?
I think that intention is a very interesting word that you have chosen because for me, there’s absolutely the conscious intention, but there’s also the unconscious one. I’ve come to understand this little by little as I’ve done it more and more, it is both about where it is that I want to go and being open to where I take myself subconsciously. How that manifests in each look is, I will often begin with the context – this is where we’re going, this is why we’re going, this is what we’re doing there. That will usually spark in me something that I want to express and generate, either specific references or energy, and ideas that I want to unpack visually. But then, when I see myself fully dressed or in pictures afterwards, I will see three other references that I wasn’t necessarily conscious of, but that I know are in me in some way. I find it to be a very meaningful and fruitful exercise in both what I know in my head (the conscious) and what I know in my body (the subconscious). The practice of bringing that forth is the process [for me].
Shirt, jacket and skirt Givenchy Haute Couture by Clare Waight Keller, vintage diamond brooch from Kentshire NY
In your process, there’s always a strong level of collaboration with the fashion houses, working together to create these striking looks. When did you first get to experience the making of an Haute Couture garment up close?
It was when Clare Waight Keller was at the helm of Givenchy. I had heard that she was launching Men’s Couture, which was a real radical departure of inclusion. And so I went to the atelier. I had never been anywhere like that in my life. I walked in and there was a glass box with Audrey Hepburn’s creations for one of her films. Then, you would glide up these magnificent stairs into this magic room of gorgeousness and art. I tried on a few garments and I had both an outer body experience and an inner body experience, like I was completely in my body and outside my body at the same time. Which is maybe what this is all about: it is both. So that began a really beautiful and meaningful collaboration with Clare, who is still a dear friend. First, she made me a fabulous suit for the Tony Awards. Then the following year, she made me this red latex and lace extravaganza. And that [for me] was very much the beginning of allowing the boundaries to merge between traditionally male and female garments – a distinction which I now wholly reject, finding it completely constructed and meaningless.
Full look Iris Van Herpen
Left Full look Thom Browne
Something that great theatre and fashion have in common are the emotions that they can evoke in us. What are the feelings that great fashion brings up in you? What about it makes you feel happy?
It’s interesting that you reference happiness because, for me, I know when a piece is hitting me deeply when it taps into my sorrow more than my joy. Again, it is both. I think that is perhaps the theme of our conversation and my life. [Laughs] It is more than both, actually. It is all. Because “both” implies the duality, and “all” rejects that duality. It says it is all expressions of the same whole. But to your question, that’s part of what’s exhilarating about fashion: these extraordinary artists and teams of artisans who are accessing this deep well of emotion. When it comes to the emotional life in theatre and the emotional life in fashion, I think that theatre is an oil painting and fashion is a watercolour. Which is to say the emotion in theatre generally comes from a specific narrative: we have specific characters who are in specific situations that we are told about very clearly. In fashion, though the designer may have very specific characters and backstories [in mind], we are offered a much freer glimpse of that. And because fashion is usually less narratively specific, or perhaps less narratively instructive, it allows the viewer and the wearer to include their own narrative – you are given these triggers to your own inner emotional life, and you get to walk in them.
Left Dress Luchen, shoes Saint Laurent
Right Full look Givenchy Haute Couture by Clare Waight Keller
We’re getting to speak at a rather peculiar time when it seems that the safety and humanity of our community will once again be questioned because of the obvious recent political occurrences. As you’re someone who is very much involved in supporting the LGBTQ+ community through philanthropy and activism, what are some points of focus for you in these upcoming couple of years?
I love this question. First of all, there are and will be more people who are legitimately under attack, whose safety and mental well-being will be attacked. And that will happen in large and small ways, all of which require our collective vigilance. Then, there is the daily experience of aggressions which will add up to an eroding belief in self. And that is insidious and hard to fight because it is an invisible foe. But we know it well because we all grew up under it and still came out through it. Those are the voices that we sometimes mistake as our own, and those are the voices that can really do us harm from the inside. I guess we are back to [this conversation] about the outer and inner body. The attacks from the outside that we can point to – the laws, the legislations, all the ways we are and ways we will be under attack – are the outer, and how all of that external can manifest and trigger the internal is just as dangerous. And I think the antidote is the ways in which we allow ourselves to be seen: unabashedly, artfully, joyfully, sorrowfully. And I can do that for you, and you can do that for me.
And we sort of have to.
Well, we always have to. We just know it better now.
Photography by Paolo Roversi
Fashion by Michael Philouze
Interview by Martin Onufrowicz
Production by Studio Demi
Producer Camila Mendez
Production Manager Caroline Daniaud
Production Coordinator Charlotte Moulin
Fashion Associates Alban Roger
Hair by Yannick D’Is
Make-Up by Sil Bruinsma
Nails by Lora De Sousa
Set Design by Jean-Hugues de Chatillon
Digital Operator Matteo Miani at Dtouch
Post-Production by RetouchGradingBureau
Photographer’s assistants Clara Belleville, Chiara Vittorini and Marine Grandpierre
Stylist’s assistants Zoé Minard-Liévain and Brittany Lovoi
Hair assistant Christophe Pastel
Make-Up assistant Yi-Han Jen
Production assistants Alexandre Costes and Baptiste Crepatte