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How I get dressed
The Israeli designer Alber Elbaz, 45, has made Lanvin one of fashion's most coveted labels
Interview by Marion Hume
Sunday January 14, 2007
The Observer
I
always wear a dinner jacket. I never have this definition of what goes
for the morning or the evening or what works for the weekend. I like
having the freedom to dress as I desire. But yes, I do wear a dinner
jacket for dinner. I like to respect that sort of dress code although I
often machine-wash my tuxedo so it looks very mucked-up and I will wear
a bow tie, but I don't do it perfectly because I don't know how to do
that knot, so I do it my way. Usually, I spend my day perfecting a
dress rather than perfecting myself. Thank God I don't have to look
like a model to promote my work, because that would be a catastrophe.
Nobody would buy anything! I'm behind the scenes. I could be on a diet
of leaves and go to the gym 17 times a week if I really wanted it, but
what I really want to do is my work. But I have asked myself: if I had
a different look, would I design differently? And I think I would. I
think the fact that I never feel perfect and I never feel beautiful and
I never feel skinny makes me search for lightness and beauty, because
these are what I feel I am missing. I always go for whatever I think I
don't have.
If
I wasn't a designer I would love to be a doctor. That is my fantasy, my
dream. A doctor will give you a tablet if you have a headache and I
will give you a dress and we both make you feel good.
The name I
was born with is Albert, with a 't'. I lost the 't' because I moved to
New York and I thought, it just doesn't sound good, 'Albert', not
pronounced like at home, 'Alber', so I took off the 't' and got into
coffee so I could live in New York, though now I live in Paris. In
Judaism, in Kabbalah, which we studied in school, every letter has a
power. By changing your name, you might change your life and when I
took that letter out, my life did change. I was introduced to a rhythm,
a speed I never had before.
When I was in kindergarten in Tel
Aviv, I didn't do any drawings of aeroplanes, only dresses, and my
mother asked the teacher if that was OK and the teacher said, 'Let him
do it'. Is my mother an influence? You know, there would be an
interesting survey on designers and their mothers. Mine - her name is
Alegria - is an elegant woman but it's not like one of those stories
of, 'Oh, my mother had this beautiful sable coat from Christian Dior
and she wore it in Switzerland'.
My father, who was a hair
colourist, died when I was young so my mother had to work very hard.
But at the same time, I do believe that if you have everything, it is
easy to make a dinner. When you only have flour and water and olives
and potatoes, you have to be much more creative and that's what my
mother is all about. She had very little but from nothing she always
made something.
Some of my clothes I keep forever. I have a pair
of blue shoes by Dries van Noten I wore to a meeting that changed my
career. They are still my lucky shoes. But mostly I wear black. I work
by looking at what I am creating in the mirror and I want to stay in
the shadows. I keep my clothes for a long time. I'm not changing every
season any more than I am designing a new collection and throwing the
last one out. I have things I have worn again and again, but over the
years, I alter them, I make them longer, shorter, I change the armhole,
I change the shoulder. One of my biggest fears is arriving to the
airport and checking in my suitcase because I never know if I will get
it back, and I wear the same clothes, you see, day and night, winter
and summer.
As to seeing women in my designs, of course I get
excited. I'm not a blasé guy. I'm not taking things for granted. I'm
not on a high from my own work or anything, I'm very realistic; I work
and I know what I create has to go from my studio to a certain reality
check.
The easiest thing would be to name some celebrity, but it
is very impressive if someone wants something to wear to the Oscars. Of
course it is like, 'Wow!' But I get the same thrill when I am in the
boutique and I see a woman and she looks good and she looks at herself
in a different way; then it is no longer about the dress but how she
feels. That touches me and it moves me.
Have I had tough times? I
believe in karma and I believe things happen for a reason. Ghandi said
that at the end of our lives we will be sorry only for what we have not
done. So if you do a lot, you go through a lot. I take nothing for
granted and today I know things happened for a reason and it pushed me
to a better place. At the time [of being fired from YSL] I was sorry. I
am grateful now.
I think this is a fascinating time in design.
Vintage is over. This is going to be a very important moment in fashion
because we cannot just reproduce; we did the Twenties already, we did
the Thirties, the Fifties, the Sixties, up to the Nineties. Instead, we
have to think. We have to start inventing again.
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