Etienne Russo and nss france present "Paris Noir" The final chapter of nss france's print trilogy offers a darker and more intimate portrait of the French capital

Etienne Russo, founder of Villa Eugénie and the mind behind some of fashion’s most spectacular shows, and nss france present Paris Noir. Bringing together icons alongside a new generation of creatives, the issue is out this Saturday, June 27th. 

Here's a little sneak peek of what you'll find inside, courtesy of Paris Noir's Editor-at-Large Etienne Russo: 

Dear readers, 

in putting together this printed issue of nss france, what I enjoyed the most has been the opportunity of doing something for the first time. I’ve never edited a magazine before. Learning while doing, exploring unknown paths, taking creative challenges is electrifying, even more so when it means collaborating with wunderkinds, involving individuals whose worlds and views one respects and admires. That’s the essence of what I do in any case: teamwork, spreading nets of ideas and bringing them to life. This time I was able to channel it through a different medium. The energy of the whole experience felt very Parisian: because in fact this special issue is a love letter to the City of Lights.

Paris is a place that I, like many individuals of all ages, backgrounds and walks of life, professionally call home; a city in which I have made stimulating encounters, built fruitful collaborations and produced some of my best work. The magic of the place is exactly this: it calls in and gathers creators and creatives coming from all over the world, giving them a stage to showcase their work and their worth. Paris is where everyone looks at, and which as such works as an amplificator, a magnifier, a loudspeaker. No other fashion capital can claim the same status, with such intensity. If the fashion system is by definition a multicultural multiverse, then Paris is the very essence and the utmost epitome of it. 

Paris is shimmering, rather than being solid or monochrome. Its face is shaped by the humans who move through it every day, behind the scenes or on the limelight, the observers or the observed, the flaneurs and those who endure. It is built by invisible hands, by presences that make it into the official narratives but most of the time do not. The idea, thereafter, was to portray Paris not as a fixed place, but as a multifaceted whole, as a sum of individuals, a place that truly exists only through those who live it. A prism. Paris is an idea as much as it is a physical place. It’s both material and immaterial. As such, it belongs to no one - and for that very reason, it belongs to everyone.

Paris is a hub. A territory in which, through individual experiences, disciplines merge and converge. In thinking of this, I wanted to bring together a veritable creative vanguard moving across Fashion, Art, Design, and Music: people who have real influence, inventors who bring soul to what they do. Everything that has soul is real, substantial. Authenticity is fundamental, now more than ever was before. I’ve drawn a cross section of generations and ways to deal with being and living in Paris. This is not an exhaustive list, of course. Rather, a representation of the community I have personally built; my own net of acquaintances, knowing that infinite other networks exist in the city. Michel Gaubert, Frederic Sanchez and Michèle Lamy were chosen for the way they have contributed, over the years, to shaping the cultural and aesthetic imaginary of the city itself. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, Hodakova, Matières Fécales and Julien Klausner are part of a generational turnover in global creativity. None of them inhabits Paris but they all show here, and recount a more fleeting, professional relationship with the city - one tied to work, movement, and temporary belonging. Meanwhile, artists such as Spencer Tunick reflect on their youthful arrivals in Paris, which turned out to be a formative place of discovery and transformation.

Coming from different nationalities, generations, and moments in personal development, the voices reunited in this issue collectively portray Paris’ creative scene through the lens of constant evolution - restlessness being the engine of invention. Together, they reveal a city that is never fixed, but continuously rewritten by the people who pass through it and the ideas and energy they bring.

If seen in such a light, Paris is, ultimately, a manifesto. The people who shape its identity are so very different, so diverse, so resistant to taxonomy; however, one thing ties them together, and I include myself in the lot: a certain fearlessness, an expressive urge that embraces risk and does away with pavidity; the consciousness of having something personal to say and the drive to do it, all the way. The capital that counts here is not money, which in any case is just an instrument; it is ideas, guts, vision. Sometimes, the less means one has, the more the mind finds a winning solutions, to astounding results. For this to happen, one has to overcome limitations, swim countercurrent, go against the grain. Adhering to the status quo is the only no-no. Paris allows this constructive flow to happen. 

My ultimate intention in putting together this issue of nss france was to turn the polaroid of Paris in this particular moment in time into an everlasting declaration of intents, into a non-scholastic rulebook for the next weave of creators. What Paris urges one to do is clear: be yourself, go for it, challenge the norm, ignore limitations; don’t censor yourself, don’t do what’s à la mode, don’t try to please everyone. Paris says it loud and clear: embrace risk, dialogue with your peers, opt for a fluidity of language. The work will naturally find its audience, and the city is the ideal place to display it.

Time to get to work!

Etienne