The Art of Soundtracking a Fashion Show
From Chanel to JW Anderson to Raf Simons, Michel Gaubert has been the go-to catwalk DJ for decades. This is how he lives and works.
- By: Alec Leach
- Photographed by: Tyrell Hampton
For 30 years, Karl Lagerfeld only wanted music from one person: Michel Gaubert.
The legendary Parisian sound designer and DJ cut his teeth selling records at Champs Disques, a record store nestled in an arcade on the Champs-Élysées, and DJing parties at The Palace, a club frequented by the likes of Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, and Kenzō Takada. That’s where he crossed paths with Lagerfeld, who Gaubert began working with in 1989. Their highlights of that collaborative partnership include Fendi’s 2007 show on the Great Wall of China and the 80-piece orchestra for Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2011 show.
Along the way, Gaubert put together soundtracks for some of the industry’s biggest houses—Dior, Fendi, and Balmain—alongside more avant-garde labels like Raf Simons, sacai, and JW Anderson. People talk about culture in the age of social media being one giant remix, but Gaubert has worked that way since day one: one of his early mixes for Lagerfeld clashed Luciano Pavarotti’s operatic tenor with a Frankie Knuckles house beat; he once sampled an autopsy and produced mixtapes for Colette, another legend in the Paris scene. He speaks fondly of the city’s music scene, but also of Berlin, London, and LA, and has a particular fondness for Italian pop music.
I caught up with Gaubert over Zoom to talk about his career, how the fashion and music industries have changed over the years, as well as the evolving dynamic between the two pillars of our culture.
Alec Leach
Michel Gaubert
The industry must have changed so much in your career.
Yes, yes, yes. Right now it’s at the same time exciting and very strange. There’s lots of shifts happening.
Just ten years ago, people were wondering if we really needed shows because everything was happening so fast on Instagram. But fashion week is bigger than ever now.
Yes. During the pandemic, everyone was making films, but it’s not the same. Films are a good complement to a show because they push them further. But honestly, there’s nothing that replaces a show. You need three dimensions to see the clothes.
And most designers like to have a real show rather than doing a film. The show is the happening of what they thought for the past six months, and they see this an accomplishment of their work, know what I mean?
You need to see the clothes move.
Yes, exactly. And you need to feel them in the space. And the music is important. If you hear it live, it gives it a different dimension. We did some music for some fashion films, which was great. It’s a different way to work. With a fashion show, you don’t have much rehearsal because the models are not available, so it’s more fragile. With a film, everything is shot and we have five or six days to do the music. So everything is perfect, everything is synced, and you can go back to it and change it and redo it. But in the show, you get what you see. It’s really an amazing feeling.
There’s also something to the way that the music fills a room that you wouldn’t get watching on your phone.
Exactly. The sound isn’t great, and if you’re in a taxi, you cannot play it too loud. And then you get your notifications on top of what you’re watching, so you’re constantly distracted. It’s not ideal.
People also miss the sound of the shoes hitting the ground, especially with the women’s shows. You get this really sharp sound you’ll never hear on a livestream.
Even if it’s flat shoes, you hear the ruffling of the fabric. You just feel it differently. It’s more vibrant, it’s more sensitive.
How has your process changed over the years, during these transitions?
One thing now is that the music is ready much earlier than it used to be because of copyrights. We need time to negotiate it. Everything has to be approved by Instagram. And you have to do that 48 hours before a show. It’s quite dictatorial and it’s a bit nerve-racking.
We’re living in Silicon Valley’s world.
Yes, exactly. For better and for worse.
Do you miss when the industry felt smaller?
In a way, because it was more spontaneous. Nowadays it’s much harder to be spontaneous. And not only for the music, but a lot of people are aware that the collections are going to be out in the world five minutes after the show is over. So a lot of people are concerned about what it’s going to look like on the screen.
It was more intimate back then, too.
Fashion became as big as pop music. Everyone knows who Chanel is, who all the designers are. It’s like football—Beckham is going to go here and Ronaldo is going to go there, and Matthieu Blazy is going to Chanel. And it’s more industrial now, maybe it’s less candid. But it’s interesting. It’s a different game.
When I think of the past, I always imagine that brands would need musicians to show their work to the world. And these days, with what’s happened to the music industry, sometimes it feels like musicians need the fashion houses more than the houses need the music.
Well, it’s a double-edged sword. With a lot of musicians it’s like, oh my God, she’s wearing this, she’s wearing that. When I grew up in the ’80s, you never knew that Frankie Goes To Hollywood was wearing Gaultier, unless you read an article somewhere. Now when you watch all the red carpets, everything is branded. So yes, the music industry and the film industry need fashion more, but fashion also likes to play the game.
With the scale that the industry is at now, it’s reaching so many more people than it did 15, 20 years ago. Do you think about audience size when you’re putting together a soundtrack?
In a way, yes. The audience is so much bigger. And there’s the audience in the space, in the room, which we all tend to prioritize. You want to make sure that everything’s fine in the room. But then you have to think that people are going to watch it on the internet. And like we said earlier, you have to know that some music won’t be so good on the phone. Then we have to make a decision: Do we care or don’t we care?
The Chanel show we did in Hangzhou, it was outside on a beautiful lake. The setting was amazing. And we had live drums mixed with strings. Everyone who was there was moved by that. I don’t know if it translated to the stream, but we have to take this into consideration sometimes. I still think we give the upper hand to the real life experience.
Somehow that element has never gone away from fashion week. There’s always this tension between the customers and the people attending the show.
Yes. But it’s changed a lot. There’s always been celebrities as far as I can remember, but not as many as now. Now it’s crazy. It’s really crazy.
Do you feel the need to surprise the audience with the music you’re choosing?
Of course, of course. I like to say expect the unexpected.
Is there pressure for the music to be current? Is there a tension between keeping the music feeling contemporary and digging into the past?
The results should be something that you feel like listening to now, you know what I mean? Whether you use contemporary music or older tracks or classical music or some kind of weird soundtrack that people haven’t thought of for a long time, it has to talk to you. It shouldn’t sound old. It’s the same when you watch TV. Sometimes they play old songs and it’s like, oh my God, that’s so cool. In Stranger Things, with the Kate Bush song for example, that was a song from 45 years ago, and people were going crazy for it. And the same with Milli Vanilli and the Menendez Brothers. Music doesn’t age the same as images.
Everything’s so fluid now. What’s the difference between putting The Weeknd on a soundtrack or Led Zeppelin? Everything’s so open now.
Yeah, totally. It just has to fit what you see. Rick Owens has been playing classical music for the past two or three shows. That’s where he is at, and that’s his vision. That’s the basis of Hollywood music. But when you hear it, it doesn’t sound old, it just makes sense.
Vivaldi is going to sound very different at Rick Owens than it would at Chanel.
Completely, completely, completely. But also, it’s the same now with clothes. Maybe they make a silhouette coming from the ’30s, but they could be mixed with a pair of shoes from the ’80s. And the fabrics are very different because you can do things you couldn’t do before. It’s the same with music. You can mix Vivaldi with whatever.
It’s the age of the remix.
It’s always been in the age of the remix. In the beginning, I used to mix African drums with Brahms. One of the first mixes I did for Karl Lagerfeld, we sampled Pavarotti over Frankie Knuckles.
That sounds crazy. I need to find that. Is it on YouTube?
I think so. I don’t have the physical tape of that show anymore, which makes me sick.
It’s funny, you have your own personal relationship with music. And the client you’re working with has their relationship to music, and then you try to find a synthesis between them and blast it out to 10 million people.
And it’s funny because with people like Jonathan Anderson, for example, it’s like an iPhone battle. You play something, then he plays something, then you play something, then he plays something. And we always end up finding stuff.
Sounds really fun.
Yeah, it’s a fun game. And even Karl, when he was around, he would tell me, “I like this and this and that.” And then I knew what he meant. But I would bring him some other ideas that would fit what he wanted, but it was different and maybe more adequate. That’s the way I work. I need someone’s image and someone’s input.
How do you keep going? What keeps you motivated?
I love music and I love fashion. And I love the evolution of society. I’m interested. I don’t always like everything, but it’s interesting to see what goes on.
Are you a big Shazam guy?
Sometimes. When I watch TV, yes. Otherwise, it’s mostly when it’s something I know, but I can’t remember what it is. Are you?
I also use it for TV, or if I’m in a bar. If something sounds like The Stooges but isn’t The Stooges, then I just have to get the Shazam out. Are there any designers you always wanted to work with but never did?
I’m fascinated by Miuccia Prada, who I’ve never met. I never worked with her. It’s not like I want to take someone else’s job, but I would like to do it a couple of times just to see what it’s all about. I’m fascinated by her world. I would love to do Marc Jacobs. We know each other socially, and I appreciate his work very much, and I appreciate him as a person. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.
Are there any memories that come to mind where you’re like, “I killed it.”
Oh yeah. There’s quite a few.
Hit me.
One I often quote is the Chanel show in Cuba in 2016, because it was a very human experience. And I went for a week to cast musicians. And every day we were going to concerts. We had a private drum concert in the garden of someone’s house. And then I went to a church and we saw a conductor who was playing in the church. It was completely unbelievable. We ended up using about 120 musicians for the show and party, all from Cuba. And they were so happy to be part of it, and so proud. And at the end of the show, we had all these drummers come down the runway with a finale, and there might have been like 400 guests sitting on each side who stood up and danced with musicians. It was really heartfelt. No one forced them to do that.
Alec Leach is the author of The World Is on Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes, and a newsletter which can be found on Substack.
- By: Alec Leach
- Photographed by: Tyrell Hampton
- Talent: Michel Gaubert
- Creative Direction: Samantha Adler
- Production: The Avenue Production
- Casting: Papergirl
- Photography Assistant: Elliott Gunn
- Retouching: picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom
- Date: February 13, 2025
