The Times Online has a sort of funny/sort of sad interview with Lindsay Lohan. It took place two days before she showed her massively panned first collection for Ungaro. It’s sad to hear the optimism Lohan had before the show, but again, sort of funny (in what I will admit is a mean-spirited way) that she’s so out of touch and delusional as to think she could do most of her fashion/style/design work via email and fax.

The article portrays her as vapid but likely well-meaning. But likely dumb and naïve. Mostly things we already knew about Lohan. It does seem like the job designing for Ungaro genuinely meant a lot to her, and she was as psyched as anyone would be to get it. But work doesn’t seem to really register for Lohan no matter what, and it’s clear that Ungaro’s owner only brought her on because she’ll bring attention and money to the label, which he was losing a lot of when he had qualified people working for him.

The Ungaro PR at the headquarters on the chi-chi Avenue Montaigne throws me a triumphant look. For ten days I had been glumly anticipating the hours I’d have to wait for Lohan not to show up, reliability not being her forte. Sure enough, the previous day’s interviews had all been cancelled, but then the PR sat her down and explained why it probably wasn’t a good idea to snub International Herald Tribune and The New York Times two days before showing your first collection on a Paris catwalk in front of A Very Sceptical audience, and Lohan apparently said: “Oh, OK then, tomorrow I’ll be on time.” And here she is, very slim (but not too skinny) in a pair of black leather leggings from her own range, a white T-shirt, black Alaïa bootees, scraped-back hair peroxided for a film she’s shooting — a very, very pretty face, but one with a lived in quality that makes her look much older than her 23 years

…Although today there are paparazzi camped outside the Plaza Athénée, where she is staying, she says they’re not always there. She can get privacy when she wants it and she says she tunes out most of the negative press. “I just don’t read it any more. I don’t go on the net. They want a car crash, which doesn’t make me want to give it to them, but nor am I going to stop myself from doing things that other girls my age would do. Of course I regret some of them. But the media now is so unhealthy. It’s like they’re waiting to devour you.”… Yup. I’d say the reviews of the Ungaro collection pretty much devoured and spat her out.

…Ungaro is part of France’s couture heritage. Why did Mounir Moufarrige, Ungaro’s urbane, Lebanese-born owner, not fill the vacant position Ungaro left when he bowed out five years ago with a highly trained designer instead of an actress with a reputation for getting high… In fact, as Moufarrige stoically recites, there were several highly trained designers shoe-horned into the top post after Ungaro’s departure and all lost him a lot of money. “I couldn’t get a single journalist interested in this house for three years. Now look! They all want to come and see her.”

That Lohan really wanted this gig is clear. She says she screamed with happiness when she finally got it, because Moufarrige didn’t just hand it to her. She turned up to their first meeting with 15 outfits she had rough sketched and then had worked into finished illustrations by a professional artist. Then Moufarrige asked her how much time she could give the label and how much more time she was planning on spending in prison [in 2007 she was convicted of cocaine possession, and driving under the influence, and incarcerated for 84 entire minutes]. She laughed and told him she’d have to see how much time she could afford to spend there. “Then I cried when I saw my office. It’s got TWO balconies overlooking the Eiffel Tower.”

“It’s not as if I have a five-year plan,” she says, “but I really think that with [co-designer] Estrella [Archs], who is amazing technically, we can do this with faxes and e-mail.

… “I never felt pushed into acting. Even though it can get a bit monotonous always being on set [although strictly speaking, she hasn’t always been on set, hence some of her problems]. But the thing is, I never had acting lessons. I panic sometimes when I have a monologue but then weirdly I look at the lines and they just attach themselves to my memory… But, you know, this,” she says, surveying the sequins and the orange ruched leggings and the jackets hanging on the rails, “is what I really love.”

[From the Times Online]

Overall the article does make me feel badly for Lohan, though that is clearly not its purpose. You have to read the thing in its entirety to really get the feeling that this does matter to Lindsay and she does believe in herself. And it makes me feel like a total bitch to be like, “Yeah, but you shouldn’t.” But… um… yeah, but you shouldn’t. How else do you put it? She did a terrible, terrible job. As excited as she was for the perks and the prestige, she was still trying to do a lot of it with faxes and email. I do think she has an eye for fashion, but it’s too hit-and-miss. She gets most of the credit for bringing back the legging (or blame, depending on your opinion). But most of her outfits look like she rolled out of bed and didn’t just put on the first thing she found, but actually rummaged around for the dirties combo she could come up with.

Lohan barely talks about acting throughout the interview, with the exception of that last paragraph about acting being monotonous, and a mention that she has to go back to the U.S. to finish filming something. It seems like she’s over the movie business, and that’s probably a good thing because the movie business is over her, too. But she still has a long way to go before she’ll get any credit in the fashion industry.

Thanks to reader Oxa for the tip!

Here’s Lindsay and her sister Ali with some friends in Paris yesterday morning. Images thanks to Fame Pictures .