Jean Touitou

He’s dressed Japan and dominated NYC’s West Village, but here the designer behind A.P.C. clothing talks about his little-known North African heritage.

You were born in Tunisia. Tell us about your heritage.

It’s a very simple story, but also very complicated. My family was Jewish and living in Tunisia for centuries, way before Islam arrived in North Africa around the 8th century. When I go back, people say I’m a stranger, but I say ‘so are you, and much more than me’. My father’s side of the family was from Algeria, and my mother’s Tunisia. In Algeria, around 1870, the Jews weren’t given citizenship, so the French government took advantage of this, and said that as they had to be something, they may as well be French. This is the only reason I have a French passport. The Jews kept their identity, but became more and more French, discovering French culture.

And how did you end up in France?

When I was living in Tunis, we were speaking partly Arabic, partly French and also a little bit of Italian, because there was also some Italian culture there. It was a bit like New York. Then the French left Tunis, pushed out by President Bourguiba and his allies. And suddenly it was like, ‘sorry guys, you’re not with us’ to the Jews. It wasn’t stated like this, but from a professional point of view I knew that my father, who was importing leather, couldn’t get a license to import anymore. There was corruption and bureaucracy, but when you’re educated in the culture of democracy, which he had, you cannot deal with this. So in 1960 my father decided to move to France. We had the cultural luggage to come, because Tunis was almost a French province, everybody still speaks French there.

Has any element of your heritage crept into your designs?

No, not at all. We’re part of one world, and we have one culture. I’m not going to start doing djellabas. I don’t really have any involvement with Tunisia. The only thing I would say is that when I go back to Tunis, there is a feeling I cannot have anywhere else. I know it is my birthplace. For example, the golf course – there’s the same trees that were there when I played when I was nine years old. When I go back, I’m almost in a trance because it was my childhood. The light in this part of the world, the green blue of the water – despite anything wrong that happened there, it still remains virgin to me.

To read the rest of this interview with A.P.C. Clothing’s Jean Touitou, read Issue 22