Carine Roitfeld: “Anna Wintour’s a politician, I’m a stylist”

Former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld may have recently stepped down from her glossy status, but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to fade out of the fashion limelight just yet – she just wouldn’t want Anna Wintour’s job, that’s all.

“I’m very French,” says Roitfeld, explaining the difference between herself and the editirix.

“In America, they’re not even allowed to show a hint of nipple in photos. Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in the global fashion industry, the first lady of fashion. She’s a politician; I’m a stylist. They are two very different jobs. Incidentally, despite all the rumours, she is actually very nice.”

But despite her departure from the editorial industry Roitfeld is certainly making good use of her new found free time, make no mistake about that – already she’s worked on a photo-based autobiography Irreverent, starred as Barneys’ latest guest editor and stylist and managed to find time to style Karl Lagerfeld’s autumn/winter 2011 Chanel campaign.

But putting all the glitz and glamour aside, there’s one thing Roitfeld still feels strongly about, and that’s John Galliano’s dismissal from Dior.

“I had no idea how unhappy John Galliano must have been,” she tells Vogue UK. “You have to be very unhappy and lonely to praise Hitler in public while completely drunk. But drunkenly shouting ‘I love Hitler’ and calling people in a bar a ‘dirty Jew-face’ is unacceptable. I don’t think he really believes what he said; they were simply the actions of a drunk.”