Interview

SSB: No, you didn't! [laughs]

AA: Yes. And during the week I'd take them out and sort through them. I had almost all of Tunis at home with me. I loved the Italian girls. When they came for their passport photos they had ringlets of hair and wore communion robes, so they were my favorite . . . Well, after the blondes. [laughs]

SSB: How old were you at the time?

AA: Ten years old. My grandfather also took me a lot to the cinema. One of his friends had a movie theater called Ciné-Soir. There were Egyptian films, Italian films . . . My grandfather would leave me in the theater, go to work, and come back at the end of the day. There was a café next to the theater, and he'd often play cards with his friends in the evenings while I watched all of the screenings.

SSB: So this is where you got your love of film. Who first influenced you to go into fashion?

AA: There was a woman in Tunisia called Madame Pinot. She was a midwife and had helped in the birth of my siblings and me. I assisted her. I helped women give birth to a lot of babies when I was very young. She's the one who first taught me fashion. And she enrolled me in the École des Beaux-Arts. She was very close with my parents and grandfather, and I'd spend weekends with her. On Saturdays we'd wander around together, and on Sundays she'd dress me up and take me to church. She and my grandfather were really the two most
important people in my development.

SSB: You were studying art at École des Beaux-Arts, not fashion. Is that right?

AA: Yes, I was studying sculpture.

SSB: So did you move to Paris to become an artist?

AA: No, I simply loved French culture. I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles.

SSB: Were you already making clothes by the time you moved to Paris?

AA: Yes. During vacations from school I worked for a small dressmaker who had posted an announcement looking for someone to do finishing work. I actually went to see her for
my sister so she could have a job sewing at home. In the end my sister and I both would work on the oversewing at night and
I would bring the dresses back the next day.

SSB: What happened next?

AA: There was a big Tunisian family who had a palace in the Arab section. These two young sisters were always on the balcony and they would see me go by. One day they asked, "What are you doing at that dressmaker's?" I told them, "I am taking a job to buy charcoal and paper for school." The two sisters said, "Oh, we know a dressmaker who is making Dior copies here in Tunis. We will introduce you to her." I started learning from this woman. Then I met my best friend, Leila, whose mother had connections to clients of Christian Dior in Paris, and eventually someone asked if I could come work there. I got the job. But when I arrived, it was the end of the Algerian War. After five days there they said to me, "You can't work here any longer. You're a foreigner."

SSB: So you only worked at Dior for five days?

AA: Yes, just five. It was always women who ended up helping me. Madame Simone Zehrfuss took care of me. She was the wife of the famous architect [Bernard Zehrfuss] and she took me to her home. That day, Louise de Vilmorin, who ended up being extremely important to my future, was there. She was a writer, a kind of Cocteau. She was [André] Malraux's companion. She invited me to her home and there were suddenly so many interesting people.

SSB: De Vilmorin and Malraux were the crème de la crème of Paris. That's wonderful company. Is that really where you started to encounter the Parisian scene?

AA: Along with the help of Simone Zehrfuss, who translated as well as introduced me. So little by little, women who I dressed started to come to me. There were the Rothschilds, then all of the big families of Paris . . .