>> Earlier this year, when Fabien Baron left his post as creative director at Vogue Paris to become an editorial director at Interview, people were unnerved, worried that the winning formula in place at VP would be upset. 

As Fabien tells it in a new interview with Hint, he and Carine Roitfeld still talk, but he was ready to move on: "I felt like there were no options left in France to do something important at that time. So I left."

As for Interview, which is officially relaunched in September, "it will be a total redesign."

"The size is new, the paper is new. I think the photography and attention to all the details will be new."

And Stephanie Seymour, newly named contributing fashion editor at Interview (and wife of the magazine's owner), will "be like a muse for the magazine."

"She'll come up with ideas, do some interviews, help us, with anything actually. She's also very charismatic, with very good opinions on things."

But he's not so optimistic about the state of fashion as a whole.

There's definitely a lack of quality going on, a lack of craftsmanship, a lack of intellect. There's also a search for ideas. Things don't look as good as they should. What happened was you had these big luxury brands that advertised themselves really well and opened mega-stores. They've put out a lot of smaller products of a lower grade and communicated those products at a lower common denominator. Then you have mass-market companies like H&M, Gap and Banana Republic that are trying to go up. So today, if you look at the advertising for the two sides, if you remove the logos, what you're looking at is very similar. This overlap has created a blend. High and low are not so different anymore. We have to deal with it.

Speaking of fashion brands, he's been asked to start his own but "said no to all of them."

"It's too complicated. I'm good at branding. I wouldn't know what button to use. I've thought about it, though, but I'm not interested."

Now that's something to respect, someone who knows what he's good at and sticks to it.
*image: source