Kyle Editor. KYLE ANDERSON wears Raf Simons at his office in Manhattan.
KYLE ANDERSON or Kyleeditor has been declared a fashion activist and victim not only in the Editorial & Magazines atmosphere but also on the Social Networks during the last few years.
From Instagram to Twitter and printed magazines, Kyle Anderson is one today’s most influential digital figures.
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JACQUES BURGA: You’re originally from Sweden. Does this still have an impact on your work in the Fashion industry?
KYLE ANDERSON: I’m from Chicago and my parents from Sweden. The funny thing about Sweden is that when I go shopping I always buy the most trendy item and just out of the runway. That’s not usual there.
Swedish people are very conservative. People dress forward the way they look best in.
So they wear denim, t-shirts, because they look wood on them. I would wear Givenchy you know, punk, which looks very bad on blond-hair white boy. So I found an inspiration in Sweden about dressing about looks good on you.
Now, when I buy things I think more on what’s gonna look good on me (something, maybe, more casual). I used to go to Barneys or whatever shop and buy whatever thing I saw on the runway. But then they are things I didn’t like actually.
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JACQUES BURGA: You’re the Market and Accessories Director at MARIE CLAIRE US. How do you feel about it?
KYLE ANDERSON: I’m very busy. The one good thing about the magazine is that when you look at the magazine and you look at the Fashion section I oversee all the clothing, all the jewellry, all the watches, all the accesories so everybody part of Fashion, I oversee.
In other magazines, there are lot of people doing a lot of differente sections, and most of them have a girl who does jewellry, or accesories, or ready-to-wear. But, at least in Marie Claire, everything has one person’s point of view. So it makes everything look more cohesive, but the bad thing is that is difficult for one person to do everything by himself (but I do have people who help me).
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JACQUES BURGA: Your Accessories features and editorials are not only solid but iconic and chameleon. How is your creative process for that? Does it start as a random idea that becomes a final product at the end?
KYLE ANDERSON: I find inspiration anywhere. It’s never from something amazing. Mostly from Instagram. They might have taken a picture for a garbage on the streets and I keep those pictures, I take screenshots so many everyday and on Sundays I create like a moodboard, and I print them on a piece of paper.
Sometimes it comes from something that has nothing to do with Fashion. And I keep them there for years, and then when it comes the right time and when the right accessory, it just happens.
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JACQUES BURGA: Besides your collection of Rolex watches and Balmain homme leather jackets, what are your favorite items in your closet?
KYLE ANDERSON: When I buy things now, I try to buy things that are black. Something I feel I can wear everyday and then I have ten pairs of different kinds of black pants in different materials and shapes. I don’t why I feel that the older I get, the more I feel I wear like a uniform of things.
So I change the whole look less and I think I know more and more what I feel comfortable in.
My favorite items are probably, I usually a simple Rolex that I have now from like 10 years which I usually wear. I stopped thinking about watches. I feel satisfied about this watch that I stopped feeling the need to find another.
I never have worn Jimmy Choo shoes but they gave me this boots like two years ago and I wear them like everyday. I don’t know why but I wear them all the time. I just can’t like take them off. It’s not even that is my favorite brand, it’s just that everyday I just works.
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Kyle Editor. KYLE ANDERSON wears Raf Simons at his office in Manhattan.
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JACQUES BURGA: What is the thing you like the most and the least in your career?
KYLE ANDERSON: The thing I like the most is seeing new things. I think I get bored very easily, so being able to see new items every hour or every day makes me feel like satisfied: people are always giving you things to look at.
The thing I hate the most is probably traveling. The planes. I feel like I get sick a lot when I travel. When we go to Paris Fashion Week or Milan, everybody is sick. Ok, New York is colder but at the end of the day I get to go home, so no matter what you feel good. The next day you take a shower, you sleep on your own bed, you eat your own food and you feel better the next day.
In a hotel you wake up the next day and you feel sicker. It is psychologic. In New York I never get sick.
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JACQUES BURGA: What project do you have in mind for this new 2016 and the upcoming years?
KYLE ANDERSON: Everything we do happens immediately after the runway. I feel like New York is pretty commercial. Italy is a little more Fashion but in Paris you see the future. So after Paris, we decide to do the story.
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JACQUES BURGA: Does your perception of yourself have changed throughout the years? How does it feel being KYLE EDITOR today?
KYLE ANDERSON: Fashion is an industry for young people. I’m 36 and everybody I work with is 23 or 24 and then they become 25 or 26 they always quit and they get a different job or they get married or they have kids. They move to a different city.
New York, in Fashion, is a very difficult place and If you wanna have a family, a “normal life” you could never have kids because you have to have more bedrooms, or people to take care of kids and in New York it’s not just expensive it’s a million dollars to have an apartment in Manhattan for two kids.
It’s less difficult for a guy because no one expects you to have kids but all the girls I know they moved to L.A., Texas, and etc.
If I had more money I would have kids because I want to give them the safety, everything you could have if you lived in a small town, but in Manhattan so If I can’t offer all those things I don’t want to give them an average life, I’d want to give them an amazing life.
I come to work on Sundays. I love it. Marie Claire, five years ago, was not as popular as it is now. And it is one of the only magazines that is doing better than we used to.
All the rest are doing smaller and smaller and less advertisers. We didn’t have jewellry or watch advertisers when I got here but now we have every single top brand (Fendi, Chopard, Cartier, Chanel). So the amount of pages we have to produce is so much more. And I’m in charge of all those pages and that’s why I work on Sundays.
We are doing much much much better.
It’s ok to work on Sundays for me. Because even If I’m not here (in the office). Sometimes my friends say like ‘Oh, don’t go’, but I’m like ‘First, I dont mind being here at the office when nobody is, actually I prefer that, and then otherwise I don’t wanna be at home pretending to enjoy my day when I am not”.
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JACQUES BURGA: If you were the male version of Kendall Jenner, which model fashion campaing you’d love to do.
KYLE ANDERSON: A lot of different ones for different reasons. I love Versace. And when models are in the Versace show they look so beautiful and healthy and sexy and atractive. These little boys look like macho. But if you see them on their instagram they seem like nerdy.
Gucci is the star now. Who wouldn’t want to be the face of Gucci right now? But it’s very different from Versace.
Now with Peter Dundas, I think Cavalli will become very popular
Then, the girl who walks wearing the bride dress during the Haute Couture, I think, It is the highest position you could ever have. So a brand like CHANEL chooses a girl to walk wearing that dress that is the stamp of approval that you are the number one model right now. It’s like God has chosen you to be the best.
