Carton d’invitation celebrates the fashion journeys of Supermodels, designers, journalists, stylists, creative directors, illustrators etc. Stars of 90s Paris as well as emerging creatives in conversation about "life before the internet" and making fashion now.
I was a TV reporter in the Golden Age of fashion in Paris in the 80s and 90s, back when it was a new thing to bring video cameras into that elite world. Now I am a documentary maker and writer thinking about embodiment, glamour and sartorial disruption. These podcasts honour legacies. Touching and fun - a fashion history archive.
37. Doug Woodham, Biographer Jean-Michel Basquiat | New York
Doug Woodham has written the first substantive biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat to appear in 25 years. Subtitled The Making of an Icon, this book traces the arc of Basquiat's life and his posthumous trajectory into the pantheons of both fine art and pop culture. Moderately known in his lifetime, Basquiat is one of very few artists whose works now sell over 100 million dollars - that puts the 27-year old who died in 1988 of a drug overdose in a select league of seven artists including Picasso, Rothko and Leonardo da Vinci. Licensing deals engineered by his father, the executor of his estate, have meant that Basquiat imagery is emblazoned on everything from sneakers to bathmats!
Who better to unravel the threads of this story than Doug - the former president of Christie's Auction House US and now a financial advisor to art collectors. He interviewed more than 100 people while working on the book and explores the childhood trauma that coloured Basquiat's life and creation. He also reframes Basquiat through the lens of intellectual giftedness...he was as Doug says in the one percent zone, reading New York Times articles as a child in primary school.
Doug explores how the association with pop culture icons from Madonna to Andy Warhol during his lifetime and U2 and Metallica posthumously became a form of currency - "marketing gold" as it were.
Doug grants that ruthlessness and a sense of knowing helped Basquiat launch himself in the downtown New York scene. And he suggests we should accept that personal agency and creativity are not mutually exclusive.
In this podcast, Doug also unpacks ways Basquiat used fashion to create an indelible mash-up of paint-splattered Armani suits and dreadlocks that still reverberates today.
Find Doug's book in your local bookstore or online! Doug's website is informative as well: https://dougwoodham.com/
To find a video excerpt of this podcast - and to learn more about the Carton d'invitation documentary project - find me on Instagram @cartondinvitation
Original music for this podcast: Aahley Rivera, Chloe Hsu and Myla Carlos.
3 Dec 2025
36. Julian Roberts, Subtraction Cutting | University of Portsmouth
When I was in Montreal screening my documentary, I met a sincere and creative group of young people who spent their weekends in pattern cutting workshops - and it was in talking to them that I first heard about my guest Julian Roberts. These pattern makers at Lignes de Fuite were experimenting with the possibilities of something called Subtraction Cutting - and they told me all about the inventor of this method, Juilian Roberts.
Julian is a UK fashion designer with 23 years experience as an academic in graduate fashion and textile design as well. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.
As a designer, Julian showed 13 collections of his own under the label names Nothing Nothing as well as Julianand at London and Paris fashion weeks. The British Fashion Council gave him “The New Generation Award” five times!
In 1998, Julian developed a method of garment cutting that has since become internationally recognized. He’s literally travelled the globe - taking lessons in Subtraction Cutting to 40 countries and counting!
And by the way, he shares his work freely online as well - those people I met in Montreal were reading his work - and trying things out step by step.
Julian speaks here about funny memories of going to Paris fashion shows as a student, launching a brand and easing into a career that now encompasses teaching, travelling and creation.
When it comes to fashion students and young designers just starting out, Julian is not at all doom and gloom on the business of fashion. Based on the diversity of his own career, he shares an inspiring and quite comforting take on embarking on a life of design.
Julian can be found on Instagram @subtractioncutting. You will find links there to his "Free Cutting" videos and online resources. You might soon be picking up a pair of scissors yourself! Please be sure to send me any pictures of clothes you might make!
Thank you for listening to this podcast and do subscribe! To learn more about the overall Carton d'invitation documentary project, go to Instagram @cartondinvitation.
3 Nov 2025
35. Sony Chan, Comedian, Designer | Paris, Hong Kong
Sony Chan is known in France for her subversive humour on radio and television (you don’t quite know what is happening: a perfectly turned out woman with impeccable manners starts sending up French propriety with absurd commentary). She is also in more recent years a star in Hong Kong, doing sold out comedy shows where she once again inverses tropes with beautiful manners and a lot of style.
Sony is an online fashion icon as well - not an influencer as she will explain but a very active ambassadrice for all things French for her Hong Kong audience.
Sony came of age studying 90s supermodels in magazines. Chameleon Linda Evangelista was her most powerful influence as she struggled with gender as a young person. Ever since, fashion has allowed her to “signal” who she is to the world.
Always intending to work in “show business”, Sony actually attended a very prestigious architecture school in Strasbourg. Her parents convinced her that university was a good idea and the architecture school was near her house. After that, she managed get herself fired from a string of design or fashion adjacent jobs until she finally made it to the stage in her thirties. She tells funny stories about some of the things she did to lose those jobs!
Just for the record, she did her first stand-up comedy gig wearing a yellow Christian Lacroix teardrop dress!
Nowadays Sony also designs accessories and curates Parisian shopping experiences for her Hong Kong audience. You can find her shop at https://sonychanselects.com/.
She is @sonychanfrance on Instagram
What first inspired me to reach out to Sony and ask her to chat on this podcast was how her story echoed the story of my children, in that she had to adjust to a new culture as a child. She moved from Hong Kong to France when she was 11. Something that wasn’t easy but it seems in Sony’s case to have given her a kind of superpower when it comes to reading cultural codes.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
4,657,713,475
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 46 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
30
Social presence
0
YouTube
93
Engagement
60
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