Alber Elbaz to Expand the Family?

H&M is whetting our palate with a series of videos, posted on YouTube, meant to provoke our curiosity about which brand or designer will be their next collaborator. Some have suggested Tomas Maier of Bottega Veneta, or Carolina Herrera; today’s frontrunner is Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. But this may dissuade such rumors; our interview in which he talks about fashion as a family, not a 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!”

Working with H&M may feel more like a family of man. But timed to the opening of Lanvin’s New York flagship, a collaboration with the world’s oldest house might bring the whole family together.