Interview

The logo of Lanvin, the world’s oldest running couture fashion house, is a mother and daughter holding hands. While most designers today might find that sentiment a little too charming and sincere for high fashion, it seemed perfectly in keeping with what head designer Alber Elbaz had in mind when he took over the label in 2001. Women—young and old, skinny and shapely, uptown and downtown—all seem to have fallen for the cult of Lanvin. (Is it still a cult when it embraces everybody?) The real question is: How many mothers and daughters have let a Lanvin dress come between them? I was first introduced to Elbaz’s designs five years ago. What immediately impressed me about his work was its refusal to follow trends for the sake of grabbing attention. This isn’t just cocktail-party attire—Elbaz’s economy of cuts and silhouettes, his simplicity of form, and his generosity in thinking about shapes and sizes that are wearable on countless occasions are what single him out as a genuine realist over simple shock-and-awe maestros in the pantheon of French fashion. The 47-year-old designer was born in Morocco, grew up in Israel, cut his teeth in New York assisting Geoffrey Beene, and spread his wings for a while at Yves Saint Laurent before coming into his own at the helm of the almost-forgotten French-label-that-could for the last eight years. What’s most impressive is how Elbaz started slowly and quietly, without any bells or whistles. The results are dresses, jewelry, shoes—and even his signature ribbons—that won’t ever go out of style. We will all still be wearing Lanvin in 10 years. Take his trench coat from Spring 2008: What woman can’t enjoy a beautiful silk trench coat? The fact that all of us look good in the same thing shows how much Elbaz loves women. He wants his clothes to fit their lives, and not the other way around. While I’d been to the Lanvin store in Paris on several occasions, I’d never had the honor of meeting Elbaz face to face until we met for lunch recently at Il Cantinori in New York. We sat down over soup for a chat about why fashion is meaningful in tough times, why women make better drivers than men, and why a little competition amongst colleagues can be a very inspiring thing.

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STEPHANIE SEYMOUR BRANT: Was your mother a hairdresser?

ALBER ELBAZ: No, my father—a colorist. My mother was a painter. They both worked with colors.

SEYMOUR BRANT: Do you love living in Paris? You grew up in Israel, right?

ELBAZ: Yes, but I love places in general . . . It depends on the people. I used to hate L.A., but I met such a great group of people there that I fell in love with it. When I’m traveling the world, I don’t ever look anymore at the geography—just enough to catch galleries and paintings. Mostly, I look at the people, and people are what give me the energy. I am very much a people person. If I am in a beautiful place but I don’t like the people, I am miserable. The big room or big suite doesn’t mean a lot to me. It is what the people do or don’t do that matters. I think that we are in a very strange time today, when everybody is thinking about what is going to happen, and everybody is kind of cleaning house a little bit. In the fashion world, we are doing something similar. We are taking the fake out and being a little bit more real and simple. In fashion, we have a reputation for being such a façade—fake people—but none of the fashion people who I know are fake.

SEYMOUR BRANT: I completely agree.

ELBAZ: I know amazing people in fashion who are anything but fake. They are very real and very sensitive. They are happy and sad. They are loyal friends. I had a little press conference yesterday. I opened the speech talking about Heidi Klum, who does Project Runway. At the beginning of the show she says, “In fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out.” Every time I hear that, I die. I love the show and I like her, but I am not sure I agree with her on that. If you’re not Miss America, if you’re not the girl of the moment, then you don’t fall into the trap of being in and then being out. I think fashion is about longevity and doing your work. It isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about process—keeping it going.

SEYMOUR BRANT: All the young people in fashion worship the people who have been around a long time. I think it is about keeping something going through the generations. Take my work: Just because I’m not 20 anymore doesn’t mean that people don’t appreciate what I do. In fact, there is a whole generation of models who grew up with me who are still respected to this day. They want to say, for designers and models, you’re either in or out, but it’s not true at all.

ELBAZ: I often think about whether fashion is a reflection of everything else in life. Designers will say, “Gray is the new black,” and the next season say, “I can’t do one more gray piece.” Where does it go? How come the loyalty vanishes? Why don’t you love gray every season?

SEYMOUR BRANT: The whole season thing is nonsense. It’s either beautiful or it isn’t. That’s something I really learned when I started collecting dresses.

ELBAZ: I know you collect a lot of Azzedine [Alaïa]. He’s so good. I love him.

SEYMOUR BRANT: And he’s also such a sweet man, too. He really loves women. And I feel the same way about your clothes. There are only a handful of designers who I feel that way about.

ELBAZ: You know what it is? I love and respect women. I work mostly with women. And you know, our logo for Lanvin is a mother and a daughter. I’ve always said, “It’s not a lion, and it’s not a horse. It’s a mother and a daughter.” I find the logo very emotional. We really started from scratch eight years ago at Lanvin. It’s the oldest couture house in the world, but when I came onboard, it was a great name without much in it. We slowly moved in. I love coffee, but I always say not everything has to be instant. We took the time. It took eight years to move from 15 accounts to 400 accounts. What’s important is to maintain it as a family business. It’s very much like Interview, which you don’t talk about as a group—it’s a family. The nature of fashion is family. You see that at almost every house—it was owned first by a family. It wasn’t owned by a bank. In fact, the bankers went into fashion later . . . And look what happened to fashion!

SEYMOUR BRANT: You need for fashion to remain intimate.

ELBAZ: When it’s a family and the business is yours, you’ll do anything to maintain it, to make it happen, and it shows. When you love someone, and they love you back, then it shows. That’s what I think.

SEYMOUR BRANT: Do you have a big group-lunch every day for people working in the atelier?

ELBAZ: We all eat together at the studio. I have interns who are in charge of the food. At first they were angry. They had their masters degrees in fashion or art and they didn’t feel like they should have to go and buy food. But I said to them, “By going out and buying food for everyone, you’ll get to know Paris, and you can practice your French.” I think when our relationship starts with food bringing people together, it gets deeper. I think relationships get closer when you share more things than work . . . They talk about desire, they talk about what it is that they feel like having today.