“If someone leaves you or dies it will be the little things that will destroy you, like that forgotten toothbrush. It is not the big act, it is silly things that we are attached to and those objects begin to resonate, ”explains Lou Doillon just a month before the death of his mother, Jane Birkin. We’re in the lobby of The Karl Lagerfeld Hotel in Macau and he’s had fun riding the luggage trolley for a video promo of the grand opening of the fashion kaiser-designed establishment.
The singer-songwriter and cartoonist grew up in a family of strong and iconic women, like the famous Charlotte Gainsbourg. Beautiful, close and natural, Lou Doillon is also a cultivated, reflective and rebellious artist who has inherited her mother’s non-conformism.
Do you consider yourself a fragile woman?
One hand can hold and touch and welcome and say goodbye and kill and save… I mean it’s just the multiplicity of the same that I find extremely moving. Domesticity is what makes me cry, doing the same thing every day is what makes me cry, not being able to do it with someone I love makes me cry. When I draw, I love the fragility of the ink and the fact that there’s a risk of smearing because it’s a line with no sketches underneath.
It draws itself from above. Why that point of view?
We all have a different point of view, usually distorted. I love myself with all the oddities. Sometimes I get dizzy because I’ve spent hours looking at myself like that, it’s extremely uncomfortable. But it is a way of signaling a presence, of studying how I change or move. Or how I was waiting for the birth of my second child… [Doillon had Laszlo a year ago with the illustrator Stéphane Manel. Her eldest child, Marlowe, is 21 years old].
On his Instagram he defines himself as “hyphenate”. What does it mean?
It’s a hyphen between things… I find it tedious to list the things I do or love to do. I like the idea that it’s a brand of something in between and that people see what they want. Some love me as a cartoonist, others like my music or my style. Others just don’t like me… and it’s this kind of intermission where you can add whatever you want that I want to convey.
In his music, repetition, recurrence is a constant…
I am obsessed with the common. I have never been moved by the exceptional, I love patterns. I’m here in Macao, in two days I’ll be in Paris…. I used to collect pigeon feathers, because they are the same all over the world, except if you put a date on them that relates to a place that resonates with you. All this recurrence is what I find most moving in human beings.
Do you follow the trends?
I can never explain why I like something, I look in the mirror and think: “No, I want more volume here”… It’s just a story of full and empty. I have never followed the trend or what people think I should wear. I’ve always been very bad at it, and that amuses designers, because I quickly detect if something makes me vibrate or not and I make my proposals.
What was Karl Lagerfeld like?
Extremely charming and very witty. He was enthusiastic about singular people, and my oddities, my nonconformities and my mixture of origins, of passions, enchanted him. When we did photo sessions he left me very much to my own devices. To him she was something like the epitome of the Parisian. He had such keen instincts that the few times I tried to impress him I could see his curiosity wane. It was a way of reminding me to be myself. He was only interested in genuine people. He had dozens of iPods with all the music in the world. He was a vampire in the best sense. I have rarely seen that level of curiosity in anyone…
And how do you feel in this hotel of your fetish designer?
I always feel a little sad in hotels and a little lonely. I don’t know how they did it, but I find it extremely welcoming. I’m not a good sleeper, and I fell asleep happily. It has the contradiction of being grand and beautiful, with marble and air conditioning, things that usually make me a bit in demand. But I get a kind of sense of absolute beauty, and I love all the little details that make it very cocoon.
Have you resumed your musical career?
I am writing my fourth album. I write about 22 or 25 songs and then cut to 13. I have about 10 and I need twice as many to start discarding… I have no problem with completely turning a song around or throwing it away.
When will you record it?
With the whole covid thing now I think I want to go on tour and try the songs live before going back to the studio.
Do you have a title for this new job?
I need to do the work and then the name already comes out by itself. With the first album, everyone was asking me about the title, the record company, my friends… The last song I recorded was Places, it could have been any other. When the album was titled like that, all the journalists said sure! You are finding your place in music. And maybe it wasn’t accidental. Nick Cave used to say that song lyrics are a product of the subconscious, and that’s where I get really lucky. I do a job where I’m actually sending signals from the past to the future without realizing it. Sometimes on stage I’m singing something I wrote 10 years ago, and suddenly I see a meaning that I’ve never seen before.
A motto that inspires you?
The one I have tattooed: “It’s just a walk.” It’s from comedian Bill Hicks. He was extremely subversive and had a very black humor. It was painful to see him so angry. But he always ended up saying: “Life is like a ride in an amusement park.” I got it tattooed when I was 25 years old. You know we’ve been given the gift of tragedy, we all know that. It’s going to end badly. You will die. Everyone you love is going to die. But then how do you find a way to breathe between all that? If at any point it’s a scary ride or too horrible, I can exit the game whenever I want. It is not a dark thought but a very positive one. As my drummer says: “Isn’t it great that we have a job that doesn’t hurt anyone?
She wears a gold hourglass pendant. What does it mean?
I was in a real rush to finish one of my books when I was asked to draw a version of Just Kids, an homage to Patti Smith. I had a hard time finding how to illustrate it. I was looking for an angle, and suddenly I realized that she is so iconic that I could draw her without a face, without hands, and just with body attitude. But I was late. And just as I was passing by Celine’s store and I thought, baby, you’re going to have to buy time, so I went in and bought this and told myself that I would return it to the store in a week if I couldn’t get the job done on time. This hourglass is like a talisman.
What do you do to discharge energy?
Singing is one way, I also dance, I have fun, I run. And I walk a lot.
And how do you relax?
One way is yoga and another wonderful way to calm everything down is cooking. I’m very much a Virgo, so I can be preparing a full meal for four hours, meticulously chopping onions and carrots. It’s also a good way to relax cleaning and doing laundry. I like repetition and being useful to others in the most basic sense. Sometimes artists like the wind, uncatchable. You have written two songs. Maybe they’re crap or maybe they’re terrific. But cooking for 10 people is really good, or washing the dishes: there is only one way to do it, make them clean. Anything that has a concrete result is extremely reassuring to me.
What is your favorite recipe?
My friends laugh because I like English cooking. I make an extremely heavy shepherd’s pie with butter and olive oil. And if I top it all with cheddar cheese and double cream, then I’m happy. And I love exotic dishes, like Chinese dumplings or Japanese food. I am attracted to everything that is long, tedious, complicated and that gives a result that is pleasing to my eyes. I can’t cook quick meats, I don’t care, but I can make a really big pork pie that takes me two days to cook. Or pastry, because it is rigorous and you have to follow guidelines. I cook with a recipe book and measuring quantities like in a laboratory.
Who has given you the best advice?
Richard Hawley, wonderful English musician after three concerts in Sheffield, where the public is very hard. Of course they had no idea who I was. Hawley asked me to sing solo on the guitar, which I wasn’t used to. Three 30-minute concerts in three different places. I did very well and he said to me, “Honey, I have some advice, I will say a sentence and you will repeat it: ‘Fuck you. You have to learn to say it. Why do you live on the opinion of others? What do you care what people think? You’re wasting your time trying to please everyone.”
