MICHEL GAUBERT

Before he became one of the most sought-after sound directors in fashion, Michel Gaubert served his apprenticeship behind the decks at one of Paris’s most debauched nightclubs.“My first real job was as a DJ at Le Palace, a place where everyone was going at the time,” says Gaubert of a venue that was a revolving door of personalities from every cultural sphere.“For instance, I soundtracked the exhibition of Andrée Putman’s reissues for Ecart International that was shown there. Claude Montana and Kenzo were regulars. Loulou de la Falaise, the iconicYves Saint Laurent muse, had her wedding party there.The staff of Le Palace were dressed by Thierry Mugler or Karl Lagerfeld and, in general, the whole fashion world would go there to party,” says Gaubert.

It was at Le Palace that Gaubert refined his formula for the perfect aural alchemical interplay between music, fashion and drama. Gaubert would curate soundtracks for entire evenings at the Parisian club, adapting the sound effects to whatever was happening in the scene,“like for the stage arrival of a giant mermaid, the neon wall going up and down, or the spaceship landing in the middle of the dance floor”. Since those beginnings, his work has been commissioned by top maisons including Valentino and Dior. His longest-running collaboration started in the 1990s and was shared with Karl Lagerfeld.