It's hard to believe that Alber Elbaz
has spent the past decade at Lanvin, and instead of patting himself on the back
for launching the French line into the stratosphere, he’s playing it cool: “No
proudest achievements. Nothing is ever enough for me. I’m always thinking what
is wrong, what needs to be fixed. I feel 10 years older, but no more relaxed.”
Elbaz told WWD. Elbaz was the one who revived the label's beautifully draped
dresses and made them the high quality couture that Paris is known for. Here
are some of my favorite Alber Elbaz quotes from his interview with WWD for his
ten year mark at Lanvin.
On calling Madame Wang directly about
how he was the man for the job:
“I didn’t have to convince her. I
honestly didn’t. I called her and she returned my call half an hour later. I
told her I was surprised she called me back and she said, ‘Listen, if your
lawyer calls my lawyer, my lawyer will answer yours.’ A very direct answer.
That is the essence of our relationship. We are very direct with each other.”
On entering Lanvin:
“When you enter a house like that,
you make a decision whether you want to destroy everything and start from
scratch or you want to be a little bit more positive and that takes a little
bit more time: Looking into the past and analyzing what it is that made that
house exist for all those years. So I start with the positive approach, because
I am not here to hurt the business.”
On being known for his dresses:
“I think that I was very alert to
women, and I am seeing more and more that women are changing. Their lifestyle
is becoming more and more complex and more and more difficult on a daily basis.
So I was trying always to simplify their life. For instance, dresses in the
first collection, a lot of people said they were very romantic, I didn’t see
the romantic side of the dresses; I saw the easiness, the simplicity. I saw
waking up in the morning and having your kids, and your husband and your mother
on the phone, and your work calling you, that was before the SMS, like 10 years
ago, now they do that as well. Women need something a little bit more easy in
their wardrobe, instead of thinking every morning what goes with what, they
just zip it in and at night zip it out. That is how I kind of evolve. I am
thinking of something and, boom, I start to work around it.”
On how he hates the word ‘cocktail
dress’:
“I don’t like that terminology. I
like dresses for night, I like after party more than party. I like the mystery;
I like the dream, like fantasy dresses. I think also that you make women dream.
Women can dream at 9 in the morning and at 10 o’clock at night, it doesn’t
matter. I think it is also important for me to make it pragmatic and practical
and wearable. I always say, “If you can’t eat it, it’s not food, and if you
can’t wear it, it’s not fashion, it is something else.”
On what makes fashion modern:
“Every time I think about modern, I
always think about something awful and ugly, and all I am trying to do is think
that modern can be beautiful. Modernity is not black leather, and modernity is
not 17 zippers and modernity is not rock ’n’ roll or heavy metal. Modernity for
me is beautiful and emotional and comfortable and timeless. I mean, to see a
woman sitting on 50 meters of tulle, I am not sure it’s modern.”
On what his famous friends, including
Charlize Theron and Demi Moore, are like:
“I meet them not during red carpet,
not when they are doing a movie. I meet them when they finish shooting or
before they start. They always think they will never work again and they are so
fragile and so vulnerable and so beautiful and so sensitive and smart and l
love them because I meet them in moments of truth.”
On his fall 2011 campaign video:
“The whole story of the dancing girls started with
YouTube, I mean, all people talk about is YouTube. So we went to YouTube and
saw the beauty of imperfection. The girls in YouTube and the guys always look
very human and that is what makes it funny. It will make you cry and laugh,
because humanity makes you cry and laugh because you can relate to it. And that
is my whole philosophy, that they need to relate to it and that when they come
to the store, I don’t want them to feel like in a pharmacy, that everything is
there and please don’t touch it. I want them to touch it.”
[Alber Elbaz Reflects On a Decade at Lanvin]
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment!