
JULIEN STEENMAN
Interview by Juliette Pourrat
In the heart of the Belles Rencontre community, we invite you to meet a multi-faceted, self-taught design expert.The range of his creativity is limitless, and we wanted to share it with you.
Consultant in visual merchandising, scenographer, designer, professor, he has also just designed the stage costume for choreographer Jasmine Fan's latest production.
THE POWER TO BRING OBJECTS TO LIFE.
JULIETTE
Hello Julien, I'm delighted to be talking to you and introducing you to the Belles Rencontres community! Can you introduce yourself?
JULIEN
Hello Juliette, thanks for the invitation!
I'm originally from Paris and I'm lucky enough to have been able to follow a course of higher education in the arts and more especially the performing arts which led to a first part of my career as a scenographer for theater, cinema and even L'Opéra de Paris. About twenty years ago, I changed my career path and immersed myself into the world of visual merchandising.
Self-taught, I've held a number of positions with major fashion houses and worked for groups such as LVMH.
I've been working as a freelance consultant for four years now as I divide my time between Europe and the United States and I also teach Visual Merchandising at Institut Français de la Mode.
JULIETTE
You recently designed the stage costumes for Jasmin Fan's production Color, which brings you back to your first love. How did that come about?
JULIEN
Let's say it is the result of the constant bridges between retail, fashion and art... and the network I have built up over the years.
It's a story of encounters between people with a passion for creation: choreographer, photographer, stylist, light designer and visual merchandiser.
The artistic and human connection was immediate and obvious.
A STORY OF ENCOUNTERS

JULIETTE
I loved the visual in landscape format, where everything blends together: the play of light, the dynamics of the body in movement and the way the costume fabrics falls. I love the fluidity of the garment in contrast to the structure underneath. Can you tell me more about it?
JULIEN
This photo is absolutely representative of the concept.
Color is an international, multidisciplinary production combining dance, digital installations, projections and live music. The work questions our relationship with the image, (video)surveillance and voyeurism, but it also has a highly interactive dimension, giving spectators the chance to interact with the stage space in the same way as Vasna Aguilar, the dancer. There are several sequences in which Vasna - who is equipped with cameras made independent thanks to a technology developed by the Taiwanese team at Art Power - films herself and the audience. The result is projected live onto screens throughout the space, creating a unique narrative for each performance. The challenge for this costume was to create a structure that would allow the cameras to be placed and moved on Vasna's body while guaranteeing him total freedom of movement, hence this elastic frame borrowed from bondage imagery and the aesthetics of Cronenberg's film Crash. The dress has a dual function, aesthetic and technical,
internal and external.
Very simple at first glance, its construction while ensuring that the naked body is not revealed to the eminently close spectators allows for intrusive sequences in which the camera can intrude through multiple openings, revealing the dancer's intimacy to the public.
In addition to the cut, which allows for fluidity and freedom of movement, the technical fabric used to produce the lighting effects underlines the dual themes of sensuality and digitality.



FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
JULIETTE
It is clearly an artistic project that is very different from your consulting work in retail and luxury projects, and to be honest, I love the idea. How do you see the link between all your creative projects?
JULIEN
It took me a long time to make a concrete link between all my practices, between my initial training, the start of my career and the profession that drives me today.
It's a French specificity to compartmentalize, after all, and it's surely my American experience that has, in a way, freed me and, above all, enabled me to highlight what constitutes my practice.
So I came to the conclusion that I was quite simply a scenographer.
Scenographer for Theatre or Product Scenographer for Retail, the challenges and aims are certainly very different, but my process of reflection and creation is the same. I realized that I like to create 'forms', 'concepts', 'objects' that interact with a third party, hence perhaps my passion for contemporary art installations.
"Interaction" is really the key word.
I like to create a display that will interact with the customer, conveying a message, giving a context, providing the keys to understanding a collection, for example, just as I like to create a stage costume that will also provide a context, contribute to the narrative, but also inspire the dancer, giving him or her material and support to interact with the spectator in the best possible way, always serving a purpose.
JULIETTE
Where can we go to see all this work and, why not, your other retail projects?
JULIEN
You can find Color and Jasmine Fan's work on her website jasminefan.de and my work on my own website juliensteenman.com, and of course our respective Instagram accounts: @jasminefan_choregrapher & @julien_steenman

