RUBIN SINGER

Oscar de la Renta said: “I wanted to meet with you, but we have nothing available for your interest.” And I said, “Please, with all due respect, I will wash the floors here. I just want a paid job"

I Thank you for welcoming me here in your studio. It is my first time in an Atelier in downtown New York. It looks fantastic.

RS This is where I have been now for almost four years. I’ve been in this area since I started my career in 2007, so it’s kind of what I’m used to. It’s the garment district, and so it’s kind of been the easiest place for me to work because all the things that I need are really around the corner: zippers, the threads, the buyers that are coming here come here. So it makes everything a lot easier because we’re so centralized.

I You are Russian, correct? You sound quite American…

RSI was born in Austria and I grew up in Paris, France. A long time ago, I was 12, so I’ve pretty much been here ever since. I had two years around the world, but I’ve been here a long time. Upbringing and then moved to New York; it was very exciting. It was a time when everything was happening here and my father’s career was really on fire and things were great. So, you know, it’s a wonderful time to grow up—it’s not like it is now.

I What do you miss about Paris?

RS An appreciation for aestheticism and many things. It’s just the French way of life, which is so different from the New York way of life, which unfortunately, as time goes on, you always go back to it. So it informed a lot of my work and a lot of my affinity for the arts and how to live.

I I hope you do not mind me asking, but have you ever model? You have a standard easter european model face.

RS Yes. I was doing it before. Funny story, when I was doing the Super Bowl—at the time I was a spokesperson on television for toothpaste— I was doing infomercials and commercials. And I had my first fitting with Beyoncé; it went really, really, really badly because what she had selected had a crotch and shoulders, and I didn’t think about the fact that she needed to move. So the first fitting, she gets in it and she’s like: “I can’t move” (it’s like a straight jacket). So it was an awful, awful fitting. The next time everybody was so nervous about all of it; I was dying because it was such a bad first fitting. She comes in and she’s like, “I have a strange question for you.” I’m like, “Yeah.” “Do you ….

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