Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's favorites, from Kid Cudi to Gustave Courbet

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac by © Joséphine Day

©Marc Domage

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac never conceived of fashion as a closed territory, but as a field of experimentation where history, pop culture, and spirituality intersect. His work extends beyond clothing: a monumental 3000 m² mural at Orly Airport, angels drawn in chalk in the streets of Paris for over thirty years, and liturgical vestments for World Youth Day in 1997 and the reopening of Notre-Dame. My work is a constellation " he confides, a sensitive cartography where eras and encounters respond to each other.

©Philippe Garcia

Kid Cudi

“Kid Cudi exhibited his paintings for the first time, choosing the Rutkowski 68 gallery in the Marais district of Paris. His pictorial work is disconcerting, precisely because it emanates from an artist who perfectly masters his musical medium. A restless genius, Kid Cudi constantly questions himself, and that's what moves me about him. His last album already marked a shift, from hip-hop to a more fragile pop. With painting, he continues this movement: he lays himself bare, walks on thin ice, with naive and refined paintings, populated by clouds and suspended figures. I'm not a rap fan; it's more that rap became interested in my work, when I designed clothes for Jay-Z and then Kanye West. But Kid Cudi is first and foremost a poet of rap, and I deeply appreciate this permeability between disciplines. I've always been sensitive to the amateur gesture in genius artists, like Juliette Binoche's drawings in ' The Lovers on the Bridge Today, we no longer talk about " touch all "But rather, a collection of diverse artists, a total work of art."

Chaillot Fashion Experience

“I worked at Chaillot, the National Dance Theatre, on a new edition of the “ Chaillot Fashion Experience "On this occasion, I invited the dancer Léo Walk to create a performance: Chromatic Outbreak This invitation arose when Pierre Lungheretti and Fatine Layt asked me to be the festival's patron. This performance takes the form of a ten-minute immersive ballet that I stage by drawing live, alongside this talented artist. Presented three times over the weekend in the spaces of Chaillot, it invited the public to a participatory experience. This is my second choreographic creation, after… Le Petit Prince "At the Casino de Paris in 2002: a new stage that I approached with enthusiasm, driven by the dynamic dimension and the poetry of Léo Walk's work."

« Dusty rose by Jean-Jacques Schuhl

"This is a book that deeply moved me. Jean-Jacques Schuhl didn't write much; he was caught off guard by Ingrid Caven. In this little book, a character appears that I like very much, Frankenstein the dandy, who says this magnificent sentence: " There is no more beautiful gesture than throwing a rose into a wide-open grave. This wandering, this strolling, reminds me of Restif de la Bretonne in " The Nights of Paris »Like Restif, Frankenstein the dandy is a flâneur. Earlier, you used the word " nonchalantly "I am always searching for fictional characters who have managed to preserve this unique way of inhabiting time."

“Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Imagination in power” © Marc Domage

The rapper 3010

“I recently worked with the design collective Hall Haus on a series of chairs that I found very interesting. Together, we revisited an African palaver chair. It was through this collective, which comes from suburban culture, that I met the young rapper 3010. He offered me a featuring » on his album « Baraka The project touched me, because the word " baraka » refers to the word « chance "I intervened by telling another story of good fortune... The story of Francesco Baracca, an Italian fighter pilot in the First World War, credited with some thirty victories, who died in a plane crash. One day, Countess Baracca was approached by a young Italian man who asked her to use the emblem on Francesco Baracca's plane: a black rearing horse on a yellow background. This young man was Enzo Ferrari. He liked this symbol because, he said, Baracca embodied luck, the luck of having survived all the battles, but also speed and courage. The Countess agreed, and the Baracca coat of arms became the Ferrari logo. It is this simple and beautiful story that I tell in my ' featuring "With 3010. I love these little stories within the larger narrative of history, this one in particular, which my father told me and which has never left me."

Jacques-Louis David and Gustave Courbet

The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David © Louvre Museum / Mathieu Rabeau

Jacques-Louis David Exhibition © 2025 Musée du Louvre / Audrey Viger

“The career of Jacques-Louis David, whose work was exhibited last winter at the Louvre, deeply resonates with me. A member of the Committee of Public Safety, responsible for sending people to the guillotine, he is also the author of portraits of almost innocent delicacy, sometimes even those of families he helped to destroy. His work is eminently political, driven by absolute virtuosity. This artist of turmoil fascinates me, and this exhibition on the occasion of the bicentenary of his death was admirable. It engages in a dialogue with Gustave Courbet, particularly through…” The Desperate One ", currently at the Musée d'Orsay, a painting of striking modernity. I thus begin with two painters of the past, but of burning relevance today: David, in " The Death of Marat "Or" The Coronation of the Emperor Courbet, in The Origin of the World “Both were profoundly political artists: Courbet participated in the destruction of the Vendôme Column, and both experienced exile. Their work illuminates our present: it speaks of the constant compromise, this compromise of the soul, between commitment to the struggle and the sensitivity of the hand. And then there is genius, of course, two geniuses embarked on a tumultuous path, torn between their political passion and their art. That, above all, is what interests me.”

EXHIBITION “Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Imagination in Power”

At Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac presents much more than a retrospective. A total experience in a world of unbridled imagination. Power to the imagination " brings together nearly 300 works (fashion, drawings, objects, collages) and reveals the coherence of an otherwise undisciplined career. From his coats on the cover to silhouettes populated with plush toys, from his poem-dresses to his collaborations with major figures in pop culture, everything here speaks of the same obsession: connecting worlds. A beautiful book accompanies the exhibition to extend this journey into the singular universe of Castelbajac. Until August 23, www.lesabattoirs.org