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Interview: Camilla Deterre

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF CAMILLA DETERRE

Date: JUNE 2014
Publication: TIDAL MAGAZINE
Interviewer: ANNA GRAY
Photo Credit: KAVA GORNA
 

Camilla Deterre is captivating. With tousled blond hair and heavy-lidded eyes, she has that cool, indelicate prettiness associated with quietly strong women who save their smiles for special occasions. You know the type: never letting on about their insecurities so they seem indestructible and keeping the projects their helming quiet until they’re done and awesome. In other words, Deterre keeps a lot of secrets.

A native New Yorker with Parisian vibes, her sultry look is all DILLIGAF—perfectly beat-up sweaters and great hats. With two careers simultaneously taking off—as an actress and interior designer—she’s part of that space reserved exclusively for the beautifully talented who work hard and know their abilities to a T. Deterre’s focus is on minimal design spaces and weird, dark short movies; she’s slowly and steadily carving out a very unique space in the aesthetic stratospheres of film and interiors. After trying and failing to meet in person for this interview we emailed questions and answers back and forth, piecing together a virtual conversation. Of course, like the downtown fairy she is, we magically ran into each other after the interview was said and done and - don’t worry - I confirmed all of my ideas about how cool she is in person. Read on to see what she thinks about human aquariums, film, food, and her favorite spaces. 

Hey Camilla, what are you doing tomorrow? 
Tomorrow, Saturday, I’ll probably wake up a little too late, take my bike out, sit in the sun, maybe eat something, and go to work. 

When's the last time you held hands with someone? 
Yesterday. 

Would you rather cook dinner or eat out? 
I was never very good at cooking but lately I’ve been really trying to teach myself and do it as much as possible. It’s pretty lame to not be able to feed yourself… [So I’d] rather cook.

Now that you're getting into cooking, what can you make best?
My go-to is just simple pan-seared white fish with roasted root veggies, quinoa, and a big salad with fennel. Although my roast chicken is pretty good, as are my desserts.

So, you're from NYC, what's your favorite party of the city? 
I really love that area on the west side just north of Tribeca but before the West Village. Right by the Ear Inn. That’s an overall like. 

Such a great area! So quiet and empty every time of day. What part of NYC did you grow up in? And what neighborhood do you live in now? 
I grew up in Soho, on Broadway and Spring. I now weirdly live right around the corner from there, although I’m dying to move. 

So why do you love designing? 
I’ve always been very visually oriented, probably obsessed. To control space, or at least control the effect a space has on someone is exciting. Set a tone, memory—I don’t know, it’s just fun.

What about acting? 
Acting...that’s hard. It’s hard. That’s why.

Why is acting so hard do you think? Is it hard to embrace the craft because of its stereotyped associations? Or are you more of a "never care what other people think" type?
I don’t care what people think, I think. 

I understand. So, who's your hero? 
David Bowie is BIG. 

Yes, true. He’s very important. What are you working on next? 
Hopefully shooting a short next month. And a couple of small space interior projects, which I’m excited to get going. Who knows? 

Can you tell me more about your interiors projects? 
They’re secrets.

Okay, fine. What are you dream spaces? 
I really love sterile public spaces, like gigantic marble lobbies. Spaces that feel and sound like human aquariums. 

What are you reading? Watching?
Reading: Hello America by J.G. Ballard and Pirates and Farmers by Dave Hickey. I’m watching The Five Obstructions by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth and I want to watch Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin. 

Under the Skin is amazing! I won’t spoil it for you. Um, what clothing item do you wear the most?
This little black cashmere sweater, I wear it almost everyday. It has holes and patchwork everywhere and accidentally went through the laundry last week by mistake, poor thing. I’m wearing it now, actually.

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Meet the Downtown It Girl Whose Dark Circles and Raw Beauty Are a New York Fashion Week Sensation

There should exist, but doesn’t, one of those long and highly specific German words to describe the kind of face you see once and never forget. For now, the name Camilla Deterre nicely captures the phenomenon. The 25-year-old multi-hyphenate may have only modeled in two shows this week—she featured prominently in Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s presentation today and closed Eckhaus Latta—but she’s already become a sort of avatar of the downtown underground, her unadorned, architectural features offering up a beauty ideal that’s at once classical and very much of this embrace-your-flaws moment. Never before have prominent dark under-eye circles—which Deterre proudly showcases on her more than 13,000-followers-strong Instagram—been a more compelling signature asset.

If Deterre telegraphs a worldly sense of cool, it’s because she was born that way: She grew up at near the corner of Broadway and Prince in Soho (“now it’s a Uniqlo, but there was, like, nothing there”) as the daughter of Australian artist Mark Wilson and German restaurateur Ana Opitz, owner of the late, legendary Lafayette Street boîte Pravda. After graduating from her progressive high school—“I think I learned color theory before I learned to read,” she jokes—she ignored the stack of modeling agents’ business cards she’d been accumulating, and instead began assisting photographer Mario Sorrenti. “It’s always been looming around me,” she says of modeling, “but I didn’t want to be just the pretty girl.”

That attitude might best be exemplified by those aforementioned bluish half-moons beneath her eyes: “I can sleep 12 hours and take iron supplements and it doesn’t matter,” Deterre says, chuckling. “I’ve seen doctors about it. Even in photos from when I was little, I kind of look like a depressed child.” Yet her modeling shots in which they’re masked with concealer—or Photoshopped away—don’t quite have the same impact as the sight of her unadulterated face. In fact, Deterre claims to not own concealer, or any other makeup: “I don’t have, like, any, though maybe now that I’m older I should,” she says. “The more stuff I have on my face, the more I want to be like, ‘No, this is what I look like!’ ”

Skin care, too, is a habit she’s “pretty mellow about”: she uses a face wash and toner she picks up at the East Village health food store called Live Live & Organic—the brand names escape her—and La Mer moisturizer, “because my mother says I should,” and has her skater-blonde lengths touched up just once a year, most recently at Marie Robinson Salon.

And though modeling agents haven’t stopped accosting her, Deterre deliberately limits her exposure, posing only for friends and instead focusing on her ever-evolving creative practice: There’s the West Village restaurant Mimi, which she designed and cofounded, and a housewares line launching this winter called, for now, Making Space. It’s a project that promises to be as engagingly offbeat as Deterre herself: “I want to bring organic shapes into the way we live and work,” she says. “My aesthetic is to kind of counter that untouched, superclean perfection.”

 
 
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