A.P.C. Founder Jean Touitou on His Book 'Transmission' and the Notion of Minimalism

What is Transmission about?
It is composed of 3 parts. The first part is called “Percept.” I love the very word of “percept.” I am frustrated it doesn’t exist in French and it’s comfortable for me to use it in the English language. So that’s the title I chose for the first part. It may give the reader some hints, but, this is the furthest I could go to try to explain myself. Some say it is called art; I won’t call it that because I decided to reject the art world. This first part expresses feelings I didn’t want to put words on. Let’s say that I am not intellectually equipped to do so. I am positive I’m not. Ten years or more of philosophical studying would have been necessary. I wanted to open myself with indirect explanations. I couldn’t use theory about myself. I could only use some perceptions.

The second part is expressing ideas — explaining my work into the world of the textile and fashion industry. Sometimes it sure is a good thing to explain and even good to theorize about it. It is good and also challenging to express oneself, something like the au pair girl that turns you on. It really means something in design and styling. In that second part — a good deal of the ideas is also explaining the fashion game and what of it — totally biased. Hell yes, pun intended.

The third part does not need explanation, does it? I do not mean this to be the coffee table part of this book, of course. It means it is quite obvious as one looks at it. It is about the edited reality of what has been done by A.P.C. over the years, about showing the wide spectrum of things that we have been doing. Maybe this could be news for a lot of people, including me.

Do you see it as an autobiography or kind of a milestone for yourself and the brand?
Yes to both. It started with another book idea, some sort of owner’s manual of life instructions I wanted to leave to my children — explaining our family’s origins and a bit of my feelings about being a human being. I had imagined that I would use a copy machine to print it, maybe fifty copies to give to family.

Then it became too much like a paperback. It became much too ambitious and serious, and I didn’t have the time, the skills and the will to do that. It became a little monster I wasn’t sure I could deal and cope with, but this has put me in the process of conceiving the Transmission book. Looking at archives made it obvious too.

How do you feel when you look at your past works, concepts and designs in the book?
I have this feeling that a machine is erasing the past. Culture is disappearing; even white bread is becoming inedible. Food becoming bad is a symptom of culture erasing itself.

I have a feeling of decadence; somehow it’s fine by me from a historical perspective. Empires collapse, it’s all about cycles, but nobody is facing this. Reality is totally blurred by digital flood. For me, this triggers a will of surviving and I chose to do it with a book. It sounds pretentious but I do not mind it. It is my contribution against the way civilization is losing itself.

When I look at my archives and at my brand’s history, I am sometimes surprised. Indeed this book will be helpful and enjoyable for me too.