Interview

SEYMOUR BRANT: It’s also pleasure. There’s pleasure in food and feeding people.

ELBAZ: We all eat together. I hardly eat out when I am in Paris. I don’t do lunch dates because it cuts my day. I rarely go out now. I rarely do parties. I don’t do dinners for 10 where you talk about the weather. I can’t take it. I’d rather eat at the studio, because we know each other and we won’t talk about the weather . . . So there is a starting point.

SEYMOUR BRANT: I was really impressed when we stopped by the shop in Paris. My husband had a copy of Interview that he wanted to give to you. He said, “Let’s go leave it at the shop.” I said, “You can’t do that.” He said, “Of course we can.” So we stopped in and, of course, before you know it, I was trying on dresses. I was there for three hours! And then we said, “We really just came to leave Alber this magazine.” Apparently you were upstairs, so they ran up and they returned with a little message from you that said you couldn’t come down, you were so busy working on the collection. But I thought it was touching that you were there, so accessible.

ELBAZ: You know what also, Stephanie? The easiest thing would have been to say, “Alber is not around; he is not in the office.” But they all said, “He is, and he is working.” There is truth to what I’m doing. I don’t have children. I’m always pregnant, but I never had kids. Obviously I’ve never been through labor, but I think that having a collection is the closest thing to it. You’re sweating, you’re in a good mood then a bad mood, you can’t stand it, you’re scared . . . The only thing you can do is close every door and stay on one level and protect yourself in order to be perfectly focused.

SEYMOUR BRANT: Do you still work directly on a mannequin?

ELBAZ: I do. I sketch, of course. But if you compare the sketches to the end result, they have almost nothing to do with each other. Sometimes you have a sketch, and the sketch looks wonderful in your head or on the paper, but women are not two-dimensional beings. It’s not about the front and the back. It’s about what’s in-between. That’s fashion. That’s 3-D. That’s the whole exercise.

SEYMOUR BRANT: You also like to work with a live model, right?

ELBAZ: Yes. You know, I worked with Geoffrey Beene for quite a long time. I was his assistant for seven and a half years. He was amazing. When he died, people asked, “Did he leave you anything?” I said, “He didn’t leave me any money, but he left me my profession. He taught me my work. Everything I know comes from him.”

SEYMOUR BRANT: That’s more than anything else he could give you. And there are things that your mother and father teach you that no one else can.

ELBAZ: My mother passed away recently and it was the worst time in my life. I was in New York a while back, and I called her and I had a fight with her on the phone. She could make me crazy in a second, but she could also relax me in a second. She told me, “When you get back to Paris, call me. I need to speak with my son, not with the designer.” She taught me simplicity and modesty and how much further you can go when you are humble.

SEYMOUR BRANT: To be grandiose is the easiest thing in the world. Were you a good student growing up?

ELBAZ: Yes. I remember when I went to fashion college, the secretary saw my grades and asked me why I was coming to study fashion. I thought to myself, You really have to be an idiot to go into fashion, huh?

SEYMOUR BRANT: That’s terrible. How ridiculous!

ELBAZ: My dream now is to be a doctor. I mean, if I could start all over again, I would go to medical school.

SEYMOUR BRANT: In some bizarre way, designers and doctors are similar. There is an artistry that revolves around the body.

ELBAZ: I would be a family doctor, which is a very intimate practice. But my fashion is intimate, too. I understand women. I mean, between being a mother, a daughter, a wife, a professional, you have to shift from one realm to another—you have to be perfect everywhere. In the end, you see, you have to be like a James Bond kind of person. This is what I, as a designer, have to think about. What is it that I want to give you now? Should I give you a corset so you won’t be able to breathe? Or maybe I will make sure that you will have everything but a corset. How do I make you dream during the day? How do I make you beautiful? You see, I’m not into the sexy thing, where you need to make everything glamorous and sexy. I always find it a bit opportunist, coming in with cleavage and saying, “Hello, darling.”

SEYMOUR BRANT: No, I don’t like that at all. But your clothes can be sexy.

ELBAZ: But not because they are revealing. I think it’s because they give strength. Strong and powerful people are sexy.

SEYMOUR BRANT: I love that about your dresses. When I first discovered your designs, it was in this shop I went to in Florida. They had great designers. The owner would go to Paris and handpick everything. Every once in a while I’d run across a piece of yours and I’d get so excited. It was the first time in so many years that
I put something on that made me feel the way I wanted to feel. It pulled me together. It was comfortable, sexy, and elegant—and it was artistic. Your dresses are so well made.

ELBAZ: I’m very bad at hearing compliments. But we do go through a lot of techniques and processes. I don’t like new dresses, and I don’t like vintage either. For me, almost everything we do has to be like a dress that your mother wore and that you are going to wear. This is how we bring the emotion into it.