Phases Behind the Runway with the Visionary Belgian Production Designer

        A 265 ton, 28 foot high iceberg is imported from northern sweden, and then carved by 35 sculptors in six days1. Waiters serve picnics from 100 vintage pristine white cars of all makes2. 363 dancers and models descend onto Grand Central Station in the midst of five o’clock rush hour, creating a fashion flash mob3. These are just a few fantastical shows that Etienne Russo has produced of late. Chanel, Lanvin, Dries Van Noten, Hermès, Miu Miu, Hugo Boss, and Céline—all of them and more count Russo as their show producer and collaborator.
        However, it wasn’t always all fun and games for this Belgian ex-model and barman—or was it? “Work is a game for over 25 years,” Russo says, adding later, “This job is amazing because it makes you discover. I mean, basically [I’ve been] a student since [I was] 20 years [old].” Russo’s lighthearted proclamations betray the grandeur of what once began with just himself and Dries Van Noten chatting over dinner about creating Van Noten’s first ever show. Russo’s vision has since ballooned into a 40-person team called Villa Eugénie, which is based in Brussels. During the show season, the company can expand to upwards of 400 people.
        A workforce of 400 may seem like a big company, but considering that Russo produces over 20 shows a season, often back-to-back, it’s necessary to have all the moving parts in order—and it’s still a small team at the core. Russo prefers to remain boutique. “My journey is more about quality than quantity,” he explains, “and I want to be able to work on every production and still feel that we are more like artisans. More than businessmen. Business is the consequence of what we do; it’s not the main goal. It’s not the motto.”
        This personal touch has lead Russo to develop extremely close relationships with designers: Alber Elbaz, who he says is a magnificent storyteller; Karl Lagerfeld, who he likens to a cat with nine lives that he lives all at once; and Dries Van Noten, whom he once modeled for. He considers himself a designer’s instrument, sharing and creating one emotional vision. “It’s like a ping pong match,” Russo says, “where we have a talk, and we top one another’s ideas with another. It’s almost like a couple relation. We need to know each other—I need to understand them and make sure that we have a common language.”
        Aside from collaboration, Russo cites his two favorite parts in the production of a show: first, the inception as the research and discoveries happen, and then the final thirty seconds before the show starts. On the building tension, he muses, “There you have the pressure, the beautiful pressure, where you are totally into it. And it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I hope it’s going to be good.’ And they’re like, ‘3, 2, 1, go!’ And then it’s done. It’s there. And the moment you say ‘go,’ it’s no longer yours.”
        In light of his months-long labor being crystalized into an intensely fleeting show, Russo is ever-contemplating the concept of time. For his newest project, he revamped the Living Worlds Gallery within The Manchester Museum—a natural history museum in England. This gallery and the work that Russo and his team poured into it will stand for 15 years. While working with the scientists at the museum, they showed him a 450 million year old dolphin’s tooth fossil that, when asked to guess the age of it, he underestimated by 449.9 million years. “I know what [a] million [dollars] is, but 450,000,000 years?” Russo marvels. “After two years, I still don’t know how to visualize it.”
        Next in the chronology of Etienne Russo’s existence on Earth, he will travel to China to scout locations, and discover culture, architecture, and new people. And he will surely do what he loves most—collect emotions for presentation later, whether it be in eight-minute, glamorous spurts, parading the hottest models of the moment, or filling decades-old structures with nearly half-billion-year-old fossils.