Didier Cometti and Angelo Buonomo, the best kept secret couturiers

Didier Cometti: We were 7 years old. On the first day of school, the teacher sat us down next to each other and we went off hand in hand. As we’re both only children, it was as if we’d found a brother.
Angelo Buonomo: Even though we’re both human beings, when we say ‘me’ or ‘I’, in our heads we mean both of us.

D.C.: Around the age of 10. We used to make outfits for our teddy bears and Barbie dolls, dye their hair with felt pens and organise fashion shows. When we were about 13, we started drawing silhouettes we’d found in ELLE or German Vogue and we made our own magazine with our own typed texts. We took it to school and it went round the class. We decided that one day we would go to Paris.

D. C. : In ELLE magazine, we saw an advert for a fashion design school. It was located in the Bastille district. When we visited it with our parents, it was extraordinary: everything we’d seen in magazines, we were seeing for real.
A. B.: We arrived in Paris at the age of 16 in a small studio where there was nothing, but for us it was everything!

D. C. : In the 1970s, we had long hair and people called us homosexuals, even though that wasn’t our reality at all. I was 11 when I realised I had to protect myself. I started doing the Boy George look and people were afraid to approach me. It was like a shell, whereas Angelo got beaten up. We discovered our feelings in Paris, living together.

D. C.: We started taking courses at this fashion design school, but that only lasted three months because the workshop caught fire. So we took the self-taught route into fashion. We learnt to work by observation.
D. C.: Our lives have always been driven by encounters. In 1989, German Vogue launched a competition. We sent in five drawings and were chosen from 10,000 entries: we were in the top 10. We were given an envelope of 5,000 deutsche marks to buy fabric and make the 5 silhouettes that were to be shown in Munich. We won and were hired for three months by Wolfgang Joop, a well-known couturier based in Hamburg. Alongside him was the greatest German stylist – Frankie Mayer – who also worked for Stern magazine and German Vogue. He took us under his wing.
A. B.: Back in Paris, Frankie Mayer asked us to become his assistants. That lasted four years. He taught us the job of stylist. We were observers in the shadows. The first thing we did when we were on a shoot was to study the clothes and understand how they were made. That’s how we learned.

A. B. : It was an evening shoot at the Pin-Up studio in Paris. We were asked to hang up the clothes and put the shoes underneath. The booth opened up and Grace Jones stepped out! She was wearing Mugler, Montana… Suddenly she asked where the Alaïa outfit was? We hadn’t brought it. Frankie Mayer said to us: ‘Take some money and a taxi and go and get some dresses from Azzedine Alaïa’.

D. C. : Yes. It was 9pm, pouring rain, and the taxi dropped us off at his house on rue du Parc-Royal. We knocked on the door until a lady opened. It was his sister. She asked us who we were. We told her we’d come for Grace Jones. She replied: ‘And I’m Father Christmas!’ and shut the door (laughs). We couldn’t go back to the studio empty-handed. We knocked again and this time it was Azzedine who opened the door. He let us in and lent us the dresses. We finished the shoot at 3am. Grace Jones offered to drive us home with her chauffeur. We drove home in a Rolls with a white leather interior (laughs).

A. B. : We’ve always designed clothes. In early 1992 we took part in a shoot with Jean-Michel Jarre for ELLE magazine. While he was being photographed, he told us he was looking for a designer to make some outfits for him. And that’s how we got the chance to design his jackets for the Oxygène tour in 1993. With the money we earned, we set about designing.
On 10 October 1993 we presented our first collection at 26 rue des Rosiers in a friend’s conservatory. All the models walked the catwalk free of charge in exchange for a garment. We had 28 looks and the theme of the collection was mixed culture. For us it was important that everyone was represented, women and men. It was a time when everyone helped each other.
D. C.: Tyen, Dior’s photographer and make-up artist, was present because we had already started working with him on the styling for Dior’s make-up campaigns.

We met Tyen on a haute couture shoot for Stern magazine. We were to photograph the most embroidered pieces in his studio. After that, he asked us several times to come to the studio with designer pieces and do the styling for his photographs. And one day he asked us to take part in the shoots for Dior beauté. The adventure lasted 19 years. Our job was to create outfits at his request, like the veil for the Dior Svelte advert, for example.

D. C. : We watched him. He’d stand behind the model, look at her in the mirror and all of a sudden he’d draw a face. He was teaching us his craft. He was one of the greatest make-up artists in the world in the 60s and 70s, along with Serge Lutens, Thibault Vabre and Terry de Gunzburg. He was Irving Penn’s regular make-up artist and had worked with Richard Avedon. Tyen was part of that old world where a shoot was a celebration. Everything had to be plunged into darkness, there had to be big bouquets of flowers, the music had to harmonise with the photo. He was in a kind of hypnosis and the shoots lasted until 3 in the morning.

A. B. : By a combination of circumstances. After ten shows, we had to find a boutique. One of the pavilions in the Passage des Deux-Pavillons in the Palais Royal was up for rent. We bought it and opened in 1998. Madame Figaro magazine, which was based right next door, did a small article on us and one thing led to another and we had customers.
D. C.: One evening in autumn 1999, on the last day of Fashion Week, a very chic gentleman knocked on our door. He thought our collection was very beautiful and said to us: ‘I’m the president of Bergdorf Goodman and I want this boutique in my New York shop. The next day, a buyer came in and ordered 150 pieces. Our DIDIERANGELO brand was displayed in the 5th Avenue window for a week. Our stand was next to those of Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga, Ann Demeulemeester, Lanvin by Alber Elbaz and Balmain. Following the exceptional sales achieved with our collections, they ordered the same quantity for September 2001. The parcel left on 10 September and arrived in New York on 12 September. Then we received a letter telling us that after the disaster of 11 September, they were sending back all the collections.
A. B. : Bergdorf then started buying our collections again for three seasons. It was a calling card that opened the doors to all the big boutiques in the world: Harrod’s, Takashimaya, Lane Crawford, etc. After ten years, the lease on our boutique was coming to an end, we weren’t growing financially and we decided to close it.

A. B. : Thanks to Stern magazine. We were still Frankie Mayer’s assistants at the time. Alexander McQueen had shown his first collection and Barbara Larcher, Stern’s fashion director, wanted to shoot images from it. Frankie Mayer was in Cuba and she sent us to Helmut Newton in Monaco to do the styling. This led to the famous photo of supermodel Carolyn Murphy wearing a bodysuit and lace bonnet. The encounter with Newton was quick, but intense. He was a man with the elegance of another era.

A. B.: Staging. His image was built in his head.
D. C.: For him, women were never objects, they were always above everything else. He wanted to show a strong woman who didn’t give in. And it was always elegant, never vulgar. Even when the models were naked.

D. C. : No, we learned by observation from all the photographers we worked with. During shoots for Stern, Frankie Mayer used to ask us to stand behind the photographer to get the same angle of view as him so that we could understand the image they were constructing.

D. C.: Silence and an artistic, mysterious side.
A. B.: She worked with a Polaroid camera, so you never knew what was going to come out. It’s like a dream. When the Polaroid opened, that’s when the magic happened. She’s a timeless woman.

A. B.: He had moved from rue du Parc-Royal to rue de Moussy and we had the privilege of attending all his shows. The day we really started a real dialogue was when we told him we were going to create our own collection.
D C.: He wanted to see our look book, so we brought it to him and he encouraged us. He always gave us lots of advice. We are couturiers in the shadows and the shadows suit us very well because we can create discreetly. From time to time, we attended the dinners or lunches that Azzedine gave at his home, but we liked to meet after the collections, between the stairs and the lift, where we spent hours talking. He would say to us: ‘It’s quiet here, there’s no one around’. He would always say to us: ‘When you have a good idea, you have to keep it, you have to work on it, it belongs to you, exploit it to the end’. He was our greatest sewing mentor.

D. C. : When we closed our boutique in 2007, we took on the role of consultant stylists and did some advertising for major German brands in Berlin. At the same time, we continued to create collections. To present them on the Internet, we needed photos. We bought a camera, tested the lights with an assistant and that’s how we got into photography. Thanks to our images on the Internet, some customers realised that we also did made-to-measure work and placed orders.

D. C.: In May 2023 we received a call from Princess Charlene of Monaco’s advisor: ‘The Princess would like to meet you. Would you be available next week for tea at the palace?
A B.: It was a wonderful meeting with a charming person. The appointment was supposed to last half an hour, but we stayed for two hours. When we left, we were told that it was a casting session. They had identified around twenty designers and we were on the list. We still don’t know how our name ended up in Monaco.
D. C.: A week later, the advisor called us back to tell us that the princess had chosen us. She wanted us to revamp her wardrobe and create a few bespoke outfits for her for major events. The job was due to start in September and run until December. In June, her consultant asked us if we could plan an outfit for the Red Cross ball in July.

D. C.: We had a protocol to respect: we couldn’t create anything too extravagant, too low-cut. At the first meeting, we arrived with a notebook full of sketches and lots of fabric samples. We took the princess’s measurements. Our idea was to create a feminine, elegant, flowing outfit for her. We didn’t want to make her look masculine, which is exactly what she wanted. We came back for a second fitting with the dress almost finished.
D. C.: You design a garment differently when it’s going to be worn by a princess, because she moves differently. We have to push elegance to the extreme. When she’s sitting down, the dress has to fall perfectly. A garment should give you strength, support and protection. Not the other way round.

A. B.: We created a gold dress for her for a gala dinner organised by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. She also wanted an outfit for the National Day on 19 November. The colour of the Principality’s flag is red and white, so we created an all-red look for her, with a long embroidered dress for the evening, a dress and coat, custom-made shoes by Manolo Blahnik and a hat by Stephen Jones for the day.
D. C.: On 19 November, when we saw her shining and smiling, we said to ourselves that we had succeeded in our mission. We also created the dress for the traditional Christmas photo of the royal family. The most touching thing was to see how proud our parents were when they saw the pictures in the press: it was like giving them back the gift they had given us by letting us go to Paris to work in fashion.