MC: Your book "The Vocation" speaks of the social ascension by "the beautiful clothes". What does that mean ?

Sophie Fontanel: My family, who emigrated from Armenia, had only one desire: to integrate by embracing French culture, including that of elegance. My grandmother sewed her clothes herself by taking inspiration from the elegant boulevard Montparnasse. I was taught the love of "beautiful clothes" and the possibility of rising through them. I gradually learned the codes of elegance, like this first key given by a friend who made me understand that a style too fashioned to be stripped, and I began to play.

Do you work with style icons?

Today, it's complicated to identify with celebrities as their style is biased by the game with the brands. Even Cate Blanchett seems disguised. Ado, and even in the 80s, movies, films like "Susan Research Desperately" were great sources of inspiration. Before that, I remember seeing Jane Birkin in a shop. His style had impressed me so much, with his jeans and sneakers, that I had begun to look for myself from where these wonders came from (actually a Levi's and Converse) and understood while I could find my style by myself.

But the real icon is my aunt Anahide, so elegant that - and that I do not tell in the novel - Picasso had stopped to point out to him. However, when she opened her wardrobe, there was not much. For her, the garment was a skin that we give ourselves and she had one per season. The summer one was a white skirt at the knees, buttoned in front, Indian Spartans and a Scottish shirt. Without a purse, she hated them. She was a gallery owner and lived in New York, where, during an internship at the United Nations, I was transformed into her contact.

Transformed, that is to say?

I was in my late teens and did not necessarily take care of my style, but when someone as inspiring drives you to dare, it works. I never felt super beautiful, there was a crack that the style came to fix. The look is not reserved for thin and beautiful people, quite the opposite.

(*) Journalist and author of "La vocation" (edited by Robert Laffont). Released on January 11th.