Magalie Guérin: Online success is nothing without good foundations
In our AZ Academy mentor series, the Villa Noailles Deputy Director reflects on what Hyères has taught her: visibility means little without clarity, craft and support.
We need new roadmaps in fashion. Leaving school with a mountain of debt and a dream is a strategy few designers can rely upon in 2026. As fees at prestigious design schools continue to climb, we’ve partnered with AZ Academy, a free Milan-based fashion course born out of the late Alber Elbaz’s AZ Factory – his brand turned fashion incubator – and overseen by Richemont, Creative Academy and Accademia Costume & Moda (ACM), to democratise access to fashion business education and a roster of esteemed industry figures.
By India Birgitta Jarvis
On a Riviera hillside festooned with pines and palms, the Villa Noailles stands like a great white cruise liner looking out toward the glittering Mediterranean Sea. For over 40 years it has been home to the Hyères International Festival, a world-renowned incubator for young international fashion designers to develop their practice, but its history as a support-system for creative talent goes back far further. Built between 1923 and 1928 for the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles, patrons to artists including Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Balthus, and more, the villa and its surrounds have long been associated with artistic enterprise and a certain renegade spirit.
Magalie Guérin is the Villa Noailles’ Deputy Director, and a juror and mentor for AZ Academy since its very beginning. An Hyères local who joined the Villa Noailles as an intern more than 20 years ago, Magalie has been pivotal in extending its influence beyond the region and across different disciplines within fashion, as well as curating exhibitions and directing publishing activities. Her mentorship activities are concentrated largely on communication and expressing oneself through the written word, an area which many designers understandably struggle with: My clothes do the talking for me, how can I add anything more? Magalie’s answer is to keep it simple. Here, she unpacks the gap between yearning to be discovered and building something that truly lasts, when to throw away the rulebook, and how to clearly state your intentions as a designer (without talking like a fashion journalist).
“Being a good student might mean being able to connect your work to the history of art, or to philosophy, or showing that you have read a lot of theory. But what works better in the real world, in terms of communication, is to keep things really simple.”
Before we start talking about the mentorship work you do, with AZ Academy and with the Hyères International Festival, I’d like to take a look back at the more traditional patronage model which the Villa Noailles, where you are Deputy Director, is built upon. Can you tell me a bit about the ways Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles supported the arts in their day, and how you carry this legacy forward in your own encounters with creatives?
From my point of view, having the Villa built to begin with was Charles and Marie-Laure’s first action as patrons of the arts. They knew they wanted to have a holiday house in the Côte d’Azur, but they decided to make it into something bigger and more useful than just a place to escape the Paris winters. They commissioned a very new, up-and-coming architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens, to design a house that could be used to live the most modernist life possible – in fact, Mallet-Stevens had never built anything before, apart from sets for cinema, which is how they discovered his work, and from there they gave him this opportunity.
The whole house was created with this idea of being a hub to connect people; they kept adding more and more guest rooms as it was being built, for that very purpose. And everything they filled it with – the furniture, the artworks on the walls – was commissioned from the artists they loved, so that when they invited their very rich, aristocratic friends to stay they would become inspired to commission pieces of their own, and the patronage would continue that way. But more than just giving financial support, they hosted the artists and the patrons together at the same time. For me, it’s a very modern way to support artists, being all together and having a collective experience. Not just through work, but through fun – through parties and dinners and sports. We try and carry this idea through today, of putting talent in a good state of mind in order to create. At the Hyères Festival we have a very busy programme of professional activity, but we also keep some moments aside to just connect over a glass of rosé in the Mediterranean sunshine. That’s the way many great projects begin.
Do you think there is more or less freedom for young creatives now, compared to when Charles and Marie-Laure were starting out?
I would say maybe there is less freedom now, because they need to know everything. About legal, about communication, about production, about business. They have to find money all the time, whereas 100 years ago you had support through private funds. Now it’s not private funds – if a young designer is financed, it’s through a brand or group or through public sales. 100 years ago a person might meet you, like what you’re about, and then bet on you. With their own money! Now it’s more bureaucratic. However, that patronage model could impinge on creativity. An artist might be pushed to make things that suited their patron’s tastes or whims. But something I love in the AZ Academy is that we don’t touch the creative stuff. We know these people are talented, we don’t have to influence them in that department, we’re just helping to make the other aspects that might not come as naturally to a designer, easier. For my part, it’s about how to communicate yourself and your work.
The practitioners who you encounter in your role as mentor, what do you think are some of the misapprehensions they have about what will lead to success in their field? Or in other words, what do young creatives think they need that you might disagree with?
I notice that a lot of them try to reproduce a system, or a model, that they have seen big brands using. Whether that’s a huge, multi-channel communications plan, or a big-budget campaign that needs scores of people to produce. They’ll inevitably feel like a failure when they simply aren’t able to reproduce something on that scale – and I have to point out that it’s not really necessary.
Do you have any exercises that dissuade them from that idea?
Well, a lot of it is through asking quite direct questions. What do you actually want to do? What tools are you confident with? Do you prefer to write? Do you prefer to draw? Do you prefer to make a video? What is the essence of your collection or what is the essence of you as a designer? And then I have them take an A4 sheet of paper and a marker pen and write their intention down. If it doesn’t fit in the space then it’s too big. A lot of them are surprised at how quickly they find the right sentence.
“Online success is just visibility, and it can come at any time, but if you don’t have the foundations of actually being good at your craft, and being prepared when the success comes, then it will be for nothing.”
Outside AZ Academy you also work with a lot of young people at Hyères Festival – do you find your advice changes from discipline to discipline?
In fact, I give the same advice to all of them, although of course they will express themselves differently. And someone who is a photographer or a product designer will often have more experience writing about their own work, from school, than an accessories designer might. But that’s not always helpful, when it can mean pages and pages of complicated analysis that needs simplifying.
Is the art school way of doing things something they need to disengage from?
The need to prove themselves intellectually, yes. Being a good student might mean being able to connect your work to the history of art, or to philosophy, or showing that you have read a lot of theory. But what works better in the real world, in terms of communication, is to keep things really simple. Another good exercise to help clarify these things is through translation. If you try and translate your writing into another language, say English, it’ll become obvious which words you are using are not clear, or precise, or have an ambiguous definition.
Is that something you learnt from experience?
It’s something I learned when I started, over 20 years ago. I was writing statements on behalf of the talent we worked with, and the person translating it from French to English would ask me so many questions about the meaning of my sentences that I quickly understood the language I was using was not clear. It’s quite a natural impulse, I think, to try to write like a poet, or a philosopher, or even a critic or journalist, especially when your subject matter is quite abstract, or emotive, like it often is for a designer. But I try to remind them, no, you’re a designer – write like one. Start by describing your work. Just describing it. The volume, the colours, the techniques, the textiles. That’s a good place to start, then we can build from there.
That idea of proving oneself by getting a gold star for being a good student, that’s something that is exacerbated by social media too, right? This culture of instant gratification and external validators and being an overnight success story. How can creatives fight against that instinct and try to build something with a bit more longevity so they’re ready when that viral moment comes?
Well, you can only ever be really successful online if you’re actually making something in real life. Online success is just visibility, and it can come at any time, but if you don’t have the foundations of actually being good at your craft, and being prepared when the success comes, then it will be for nothing. So much of that other stuff is dependent on other people – a stylist or an editor who helps to put you on the map – but the things that are within your control are the things that come before that. Focus on those things.
So, to be ready when their moment comes, what does a designer need to do?
Effective communication should start from the first moment, the graduate collection or whatever it is. Then having the maturity to know whether you want to use that moment to enter a brand, or to build something of your own. Growing a network that will help you. Manufacturers, press, funding, a place to showcase your work, whether that’s through collective showrooms, or your own space, or competitions and awards. And being comfortable asking for help.
You have seen so many winners – a couple of years after their win, some disappear, while others succeed. What do you see as patterns that make some designers successful and others not? How do you get the most out of winning at Hyères?
The Festival rarely produces immediate success. Most of the more successful careers utilise the prize as a mark of legitimacy, then follow it by a passage in a major fashion house to gain industry experience before the creation of their own brand. In the past, talent scouts used to spot designers during the festival. However, recently we’ve noticed that competition finalists are already working for fashion houses. In the 21st Century the rules have changed, the industry and the audience have new expectations and business models are more diverse.
Smaller brands and one-off collaborations are proving hugely popular. The traditional hierarchy among designers has faded, and the boundaries between different roles are becoming more blurred.Funders and customers seem more willing to embrace models as diverse as couture, one-size-fits-all, and inclusive clothing – things that play to a different rhythm from that of established fashion houses. Some designers are also working in the traditional business and career model and/or hold the artistic direction of famous houses.
Also, in the first two decades of the festival, men seemed to have had more luck or support in launching their own brands. I am thinking of Viktor & Rolf, Gaspard Yurkievich, Felipe Oliveira Baptista, Sébastien Meunier, Christian Wijnants, Henrik Vibskov, Anthony Vaccarello, Julien Dossena, Jean-Paul Lespagnard, Tuomas Laitinen … Women’s successes were often on a more modest scale. Great talented women have disappeared from the media; Billie Mertens, Anke Loh, Sandrina Fasoli, Sandra Backlund. It’s maybe because they do everything on their own where the men have been taught to build teams.
“A lot of designers try to reproduce a system, or a model, that they have seen big brands using. Whether that’s a huge, multi-channel communications plan, or a big-budget campaign that needs scores of people to produce. They’ll inevitably feel like a failure when they simply aren’t able to reproduce something on that scale.”
It’s interesting that Hyères is this centre of creativity without being a major capital. What would you say to young creatives weighing up the best place to base their business?
To think very carefully about what will make them feel free. If a person wants to have the freedom that working for a big maison will give them, in terms of not having to worry so much about all the other business areas, then one of the big fashion capitals will give them that as that’s where those jobs are. But everything is so expensive in those cities, to set up your own business there is much harder. It might actually be more freeing to work from a smaller city, or from the countryside. And anyway, everywhere is so connected now, it’s easy enough to travel. You don’t have to be bound to just one thing, or one place. I was born here in Hyères, and I never thought I would return to this small town after school and build this career, but being an adult here is totally different to what it was like as a kid. It’s full of new discoveries, even now. Be open-minded. And remember you can travel.
On your AZ Academy profile there is a line that I love, about your support for ‘unconventional forms of art and living’. Can you tell me a bit more about what that means to you?
Thanks to the strength of our heritage at Villa Noailles we often find ourselves not following the rules, but inventing new ones. For example, every year, we have to fill out a very long form to explain to the French Ministry for Culture what we did with our funding. They’ll ask, ‘How many visitors to your exhibitions?’ And I’ll phone them up and say, ‘Well, we also make exhibitions for social media, but there’s no check-box for this.’ They’ll say, ‘We didn’t think of that.’ Or, ‘What is the breakdown of your male and female artists?’ We have artists who were male last year and are female this year, or who are gender non-conforming, and they don’t want to categorise themselves and I won’t do it for them. It’s just like how I’m encouraging these practitioners to be as free and creative with the way they see and do other things as they are with their craft, to help them understand that they don’t have to be the same as everyone else or follow a blueprint in order to succeed. If I loved following rules I’d be a scientist!
Finally, I want to bring it back to that Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles mentality, and the point you made earlier about great projects that begin over a glass of rosé. Are you a big advocate for having a social life outside of your practice?
It’s all a bit blurred in our industry isn’t it? I know so many artists who are now my friends, who I met because they were finalists at the Hyères Festival, or they were journalists or partners of the event, or whatever else. We are connected by the same love of art and creativity, but we try to make it soft. Navigating between private and professional life doesn’t mean you have to work 24 hours a day, but actually that your work might be softer, or cooler, or kinder, than it might have been for previous generations. It can be a very rich life.
