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"    Photo: Olivier Theyskens and Arianne Phillips; Courtesy of LACMA   Olivier Theyskens, creative director for Theory, appeared in conversation with costume designer and stylist Arianne Phillips at LACMA in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. The charming Belgian designer recounted his career from his early beginnings in Paris to his work on Rochas and Nina Ricci, aided by projected photo collages he created to convey stylistic themes in his work. Theyskens, who now resides in New York, has been making clothes for over 20 years and working as a professional fashion designer for over 15. He told the audience at LACMA&amp;#039;s Bing Theater, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s something I will do all my life because it&amp;#039;s a constant discovery of what you can make new.&amp;quot;   Phillips originally met Theyskens in 1998 in Paris when she used some of his pieces in a Madonna photo shoot. She helped uncover how the designer has evolved since his days of making clothes from his grandmother&amp;#039;s sheets. Flipping through Theyskens&amp;#039;s photo collages, which were arranged by theme rather than chronology, it became apparent that he has had several recurring interests, notably the black dress and the perfectly tailored suit. &amp;quot;Learning to do a suit was so tricky and it was my obsession,&amp;quot; Theyskens told the audience. &amp;quot;It was a necessity. I needed to be able to do a suit.&amp;quot; The designer, who is in Los Angeles to open a new Theory store on Melrose Avenue this evening, spoke with ELLE.com following the event while the audience enjoyed a reception on LACMA&amp;#039;s outdoor plaza. Since we&amp;#039;re at an art museum, we feel compelled to ask: Does art inspire your clothes? It does. It did. I love to see art, and I&amp;#039;m not a very good expert but I think that maybe I&amp;#039;m a good watcher because I really absorb it. I had a collection I only drew but never produced, and it was a collection inspired by [Jackson] Pollock. I loved the gestures. I even drew a collection once inspired by Claude Monet. I wanted to bring more mystery and more depth to what is usually perceived in his work. I could touch the culture of the way people were dressing at that time versus the modernity of his gesture at the end of his life. It was almost abstract and crazy on these huge paintings. So I loved that, and it inspired me. I think fashion is artistic in a way. Some of fashion is pure art, but not everything. Are you trying to create art when you design? Sometimes even a simple thing can have a weird artistic take. I just design with a lot of thinking, and sometimes I design without thinking too much. I&amp;#039;m just driven by the aesthetic of it, and I have a feeling that I would want to wear that if I were a girl. And I want to propose this, because I feel like the proportions make sense now. And I cannot really explain much more than that because I feel it. You spoke during the event about how your collections feel like part of an ongoing narrative. Where are you in that story right now? This is very interesting because I feel that I&amp;#039;ve been able to express a lot of things already since we started together with Theory. I think we are evolving. I&amp;#039;m really looking for expressing more of the brand, and I think the brand needed a certain amount of time to evolve. The Theyskens&amp;#039; Theory line gave it a more immediate expression of modernity, but I feel like the whole brand now has evolved a lot. Theory has an amazing resonance to people and to the way we can dress. What sort of design elements are attracting you right now? I cannot really say, and I never really want to narrow myself down too much to one particular thing. There is definitely a mixture of several things, but I usually never really say what I&amp;#039;m going to do! You mentioned that you love creating black dresses\u2014how can a woman find the best black dress for her? A black dress is beautiful! It&amp;#039;s a good choice. It could be the wrong choice at certain events or situations, but it&amp;#039;s very rare that you see a girl who looks bad in a black dress. Of course sometimes certain colors empower certain physiques, but a lot of times there is some beauty and drama in a black dress. I love the moment in movies when [actresses] wear black, like a widow. Like when I was watching Gone With The Wind, and to me, Scarlett [O&amp;#039;Hara] looked the most beautiful in a black dress. Do you remember the first black dress you ever designed? I started with black stuff very early on. I even had puppets with black dresses. I used to contour the waists of dresses for the puppets so small that when I finished sewing, I could not fit my hand in it. It was always a problem. To me, it was logical\u2014the hour glass figures. Have you been inspired by recently moving to New York? I love living in New York. I always wondered, &amp;quot;Would I one day be able to live in New York?&amp;quot; It came earlier than I thought. I feel super lucky to be living in New York. I love the city, I love the energy. I always loved it. I had pictures of New York in my bedroom when I was young. I think the vibration in the city is great and having friends in the city is amazing. You always have interesting stuff to do, and you have places to go to eat. I rarely stay at home when I&amp;#039;m in New York. I&amp;#039;m always doing things. It brings you so much energy. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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