photo by Jean-Paul Goude
Just before his succulent fish arrives at his usual table at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, fashion's favorite sensitive soul, Alber Elbaz, confesses that he is determined to lighten up. "I want to have more fun," the Lanvin designer declares. It's easy to believe him, especially when he agrees — no, requests — to suit up as a disco-era crooner in a floppy red tie and let it rip with his Supremes-like backup for his Bazaar portrait. Levity, however, is just one slice of his very complex emotional core. In fact, halfway through his plate of red mullet, the tables turn and big tears start tumbling down his cheeks. Understandably, it's been an emotional day. This morning, the Israeli designer attended a funeral for a longtime employee of Lanvin, then raced back to his atelier to direct 50 seamstresses as they finished the resort and two other special collections destined for New York the following day. "I saw 17 dresses in 20 minutes," he says, devastated by the lack of attention. "There were all these emergencies, and I was running, saying, 'I have an interview!' And I felt so stupid, and I thought, What's my job, to talk or to do?" Wiping his thick-black-framed Lanvin glasses, he is torn up, both mad and sad. "My job is to do," he finally decides. "My job is to make women beautiful. What do I have to say?"
Luckily, Elbaz's work, which manages the rare achievement of both technical and poetic beauty, speaks for itself. Meanwhile, the female devotees who ruthlessly stalk Lanvin's Paris boutique are even greater orators for his success since he became artistic director at the storied French house six years ago. "I buy a separate suitcase just to bring back my Lanvin pieces," confides costume designer Jacqui Getty, just one devoted fan who travels from L.A. for habitual stocking up.
On prodding, Elbaz will talk — even if it involves slamming himself down. "A designer crying!" he chides, cringing at the very idea. It's actually not so very scandalous, as anyone who knows him will freely admit that he is a man who feels and cares deeply. "I don't think you can be a designer if you don't care," he notes, "or be creative if you are not sensitive. You have to be sensitive in order to feel things and understand people." The one thing he understands — to an astonishing degree — is women. With his atelier conveniently located above Lanvin's store (which, incidentally, has just been enlarged and completely refurbished), Elbaz is more often than not on his knees, pinning, or before a mirror, adjusting, observing, and discussing clothes with his clients. "I love women," he offers simply. "I get along with women more than men, and I have more women friends."
"His personal touch with clients is extraordinary," says Adrian Joffe of the Dover Street Market, an insiders' hub for Lanvin merch in London. "He makes them feel so special, as if they existed only for him." Julie Gilhart marvels at the acute attention he devotes to trunk shows at Barneys New York, where she is fashion director. "He says he wants to come for two hours, and then he ends up staying for six hours. No one at his level does that," she says.
But more than impeccable attendance, Elbaz is doing something other designers and, heck, most husbands aren't: He's listening to women. Recently, he had heard so many female fashion complaints, he decided to take action.
"Everyone I know was like, Alber, you know, we're getting married, I'm 49, or I'm 58, I'm 37," he says, spewing out endless bridal paradigms.
"I have three kids. What should I wear?" one asked.
"I don't want to look like Cinderella," wailed another.
"I'm getting married in Bali with only three friends," one said.
"I'm getting married in the garden with just a little dinner. What should I wear?"
"Alber, I'm no longer a size 0," fretted another. "What should I wear?"
"It's my eighth husband, and my name is not Liz Taylor. What should I wear?"
Elbaz now says, "So I thought, Yes, I'm going to think about this."
He did his thinking "more like a woman and not like a man" and dreamed up modern-day wedding attire (including unorthodox caftans, suits, and short dresses, all off-the-rack) under the name Collection Blanche. He even designed an engagement ring with a pearl on one side and a diamond on the other for Van Cleef & Arpels. So far, Elbaz has created 16 wedding dresses for special women around the world (including Demi Moore). "All of them are still married," he proudly reports, "so I love the idea."
He has also created a line of chic travel essentials, T-shirts, and pajamas called 22 Faubourg. Brilliantly, the travel items are in navy, black, and cream (so you won't clash) and are cut square, not unlike a kimono (so you can't goof up when packing). The new lines, both available later this fall, are not stepchildren farmed out to a licensee but part of Lanvin's exclusive mother ship.
"I don't believe in bridge or secondary [lines]. I believe in being the first and being on the road," he says definitively. "I hate bridges. I'm always very insecure on bridges." Elbaz's whimsical sketches cover T-shirts and a wheelie suitcase. "It's a little bit silly," he admits, "but why not? I don't have to report to bankers. I have to report to women."
That means all women. "It works on my 20-year-old daughter and for someone my age," says Getty, 40. "Any girl can wear Lanvin. That's the magic of it."
The only real prohibition to wearing Lanvin is one's bank account, which the designer sympathizes with. "I am not coming from a rich family," he remarks. "I was not in boarding school in Switzerland, and my mother did not wear Balenciaga when she was young. I am coming from the edge of the edge of the middle, so I understand what it is. I remember my time there as well. And I think it's made me what I am today."
Born in Morocco and raised in Tel Aviv by a hairdresser father and an aspiring-artist mother, Elbaz spent his youth sketching. (At age 11, he presented his teacher with a notebook filled with sketches of every outfit she'd worn over the previous year.) He did service in the Israeli army before heading to Shenkar College of Engineering and Design near Tel Aviv. Though he dutifully climbed fashion's ladder and reigns on top at Lanvin, he never took to living large.
"I don't hang out in a certain hotel or certain restaurant," he says. "I like pizza. I like McDonald's. That's me. And I'm not doing clothes because I want a certain elite group of people to wear them."
Elbaz makes clothes because he is devoted to coaxing fashion's cranky wheels toward the future. He dedicates every waking hour to this task, and when he takes a break, the result is unfortunate. "I went to Tuscany to do five days in a spa, and the first day I had this thing that only old or fat people get," he says of a recent failed vacation. "Your back gets totally blocked. I couldn't move for five days."
He quickly returned to his office in Paris. "The moment I came back, I felt better, so it's my remedy," he concludes. His work ethic is an aberration today, when anyone on the cover of Us Weekly can be a "designer." "Celebrities out there think that they can design," he says, astonished at the absurdity. "What if I were to say I'm going to be a ballerina? I can't be a ballerina. I can't jump; I can't do a pirouette. There are certain things that I cannot do."
And there are certain things — like making duchesse satin not feel like cardboard or creating volume without 17 yards of itchy tulle — that he alone can do. "He's one of the most powerful creative-design talents we have in the world of fashion," says Gilhart definitively. Take a look at the racks of your local retailer, where exposed back zippers, frayed-silk hems, and crushed bows cover other labels' merchandise, and you will see the pure breadth of Elbaz's influence at work.
For fall, he carved a new lightning-bolt path with dramatic wide sleeves, inspired by Jeanne Lanvin's work in the 1930s, that are sure to send copyists into overdrive. The collection was a huge hit, but after the show Elbaz was in bed with a temperature. "I always think it's horrible," he says.
Elbaz's humility is in part the result of a long road that included years of anonymity at Guy Laroche and Geoffrey Beene and a not-so-friendly limelight at Yves Saint Laurent. "I think it took many people some time to understand my work," he says, reflecting on years of lukewarm reviews that cited him as "nice, cute, and commercial."
Though he has hit an exceptional stride at Lanvin at age 46, this fact has failed to hit him. "I'm doing okay, just okay," he says. What of the gushing critical praise? "I think maybe now they love me, but tomorrow they will not anymore." He is acutely aware of the time "when you're not Alber from Lanvin, but you are just Alber." So he plods ahead in a serious-minded way. Even after a fashion show, he never feels like partying. "I feel like a woman in labor," he explains, again putting himself in a female frame of mind. "After you have a baby, do you want to go to a nightclub?"
A lot of designers do, and many show off as much skin and get as much newspaper ink as a freshly minted starlet. Elbaz wouldn't dream of disrobing. He prefers suits. ("I feel skinnier in a suit. I feel more protected.") He never wears shorts or even T-shirts ("not even at the beach"). He spends little time on his appearance, but he's "worrying all the time" about it. He doesn't have an entourage ("but if people want an entourage, it's okay, because it protects you"). He doesn't throw hysterics with Lanvin's owner, Mrs. Shaw-Lan Wang. (In fact, he likes her so much, he even included her likeness in his sketch print for 22 Faubourg.) He hates big dinners, no matter how glam. "When you sit at a big dinner, you end up talking about the weather. When you sit with one person, you might laugh; you might cry. This is how I meet people. I don't need bodies. I work on bodies all day long. I need people."
Elbaz doesn't mind hanging out on the sidelines, which, aptly, is where he wants his dresses to loiter. "My work doesn't scream, it whispers," he explains, raising an index finger in emphasis. "And when you whisper, it takes more time, but it goes deeper. There is something very selfish about [designers being loud], because the only thing you show is how much talent you have. Women disappear in those pieces. And my job is to make you look good, not the dress look good."
Fashion editor: Marie Beltrami; models: Ayan Elmi, Elodie Letombe, Mia Niara, and Renée Thompson; hair: Laurent Philippon for Bumble and Bumble, assisted by Mesh Subra; makeup: Dee Dee Dorzee, assisted by Marie Lanne; retouching: Janvier.