Runway redux for Elbaz
When a charity fashion show gets a standing ovation from a Vogue mastheader -- in this case, West Coast editor Lisa Love -- you know the designer must be white hot.
Alber Elbaz of Lanvin was in Beverly Hills on May 12 to re-create his fall show at a benefit at Barneys New York for the Rape Treatment Foundation. Models descended the store’s center staircase dressed in confections that were Old World, with satin bows and tulle petticoats, but also modern, with frayed armholes and hems. Barneys New York Creative Director Simon Doonan’s witticisms were the soundtrack: “Here’s Lulu, from the town of Brie, who grew up surrounded by fromage ... and Fifi, looking very French Resistance.” A black velvet dress was hemmed in white fur, and another shimmied with tiers of black ruffles. “Very Gigi,” Doonan cooed.
Chloe Sevigny, in a dusty pink Lanvin dress with a low back finished with bows, sang the designer’s praises. “I’ve worn [Elbaz] since he was with YSL. I get sent lots of samples, but with him, the whole package is just so absolutely pleasing.” Sevigny said her mother wore the classic Lanvin fragrance Arpege, and pointed to the mother and child logo on a medallion hanging from the black leather handbag she was carrying. “I love that,” she smiled.
(Jeanne Lanvin was but a milliner until her daughter Marguerite was born in 1897, and she began making dresses first for her dolls, and then for her daughter too. Her clients liked what they saw, and the house of Lanvin was born, growing to more than 1,000 employees in the 1920s.)
Of course, Sevigny knows fashion; she was the creative director at pal Tara Subkoff’s label Imitation of Christ a few years back. But she’s not sure about L.A.’s place on the fashion map. “I think Hollywood is for movies and New York is for designers,” she said. “I can’t see L.A. being a real springboard.”
Later Doonan, who got his start in fashion here doing the windows at Maxfield, chatted about how he and partner Jonathan Adler have been working overtime on the overhaul of the Givenchy spa in Palm Springs. The spa is scheduled to reopen this fall, though he said it’s looking unlikely they’ll meet the deadline.
The benefit wasn’t all about fashion and folly, however. The Rape Treatment Foundation raises money to support the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, which provides free, 24-hour emergency care for sexual assault victims and training for police, prosecutors and medical personnel. Gail Abarbanel, director of the center, told guests, including Anjelica Huston, Kelly Lynch, Sheryl Crow, Calista Flockhart, Kristin Davis, Rachel Griffiths and David Schwimmer, about some of the serious work it does. During the day her staff had been preparing for the party, a 2-year-old, a 14-year-old, a college student and a schoolteacher had all been raped. “People often don’t realize how frequently victimization happens in our community and the spectrum in terms of age,” she said. “The 14-year-old child walked into the clinic carrying a teddy bear.”
After the speeches and the show, guests dined at tables set up on the designer sales floor, where the clothing racks usually stand. Elbaz, with his thick black glasses, infectious grin and a purple fabric flower stuck in his lapel, worked the room. “He’s just so cute!” one guest gushed.
Born in Casablanca and raised in Israel, Elbaz arrived in New York 20 years ago with $800 in his pocket and the dream of being a designer. But because he has been at so many houses throughout his career, he has had difficulty establishing his name beyond fashion insiders. He worked for seven years with Geoffrey Beene and spent time as head designer at Guy Laroche and Krizia before what looked to be his big break in 1998, when he was hired to design Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, the first to do so after Saint Laurent himself. Elbaz was forced to leave after just three seasons, however, when Gucci Group bought the company and installed Tom Ford.
“Yves Saint Laurent was the myth of the designer, the dream of everyone in the industry,” Elbaz, who lives in Paris, said the day before the benefit. “It was beautiful to see behind the name there was someone so gentle and sensitive and warm. But I had to leave because someone bought the company. I was emotional, but it was life, it was business, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had to start a new life. I thought about leaving fashion. My biggest dream still is to be a doctor.”
Lanvin, owned by Asian media entrepreneur Shaw-Lan Wang and looking for a much-needed reinvention, approached him in 2001. “After four hours in the archives, I didn’t need to see any more. I saw design and desire, and those are two elements you don’t see too much in fashion today, where so much of it is about styling and marketing,” Elbaz said.
His lovely fall collection, shown in Paris in March, offered novel, user-friendly looks such as a gown with an optional train that can be unhooked from between the shoulders, and round-toed pumps with removable bows. The designer, who sketches to CNN instead of music -- because he says rock ‘n’ roll or classical, for example, can influence the shape of his designs -- has also become a celebrity favorite. He hand-delivered a dress at midnight to Sarah Jessica Parker while she was in Paris filming the final episodes of “Sex and the City.” She stopped in the Lanvin store on Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore, and Elbaz was upstairs in the atelier. He rushed down to say hello and help with alterations on the black taffeta gown with satin bows and petticoats she was buying to wear to a party at the Plaza Athenee. Because there wasn’t a messenger service open to deliver the dress to her at such a late hour, Elbaz did it himself.
“I’m a big fan,” he said. “I love television. I was sad when that whole story ended. I know these girls and I know what they were wearing and I know the stories. I felt close to them.”
Elbaz believes designers should know the people they are dressing. “There was a time, especially in the 1970s, especially in America, when designers were very close to their clientele and they could make the dress to match the sofa if they needed to,” he said. “But since then, there has been such a trend of the designer becoming creative director, being very far from what women are wearing. My studio is above my shop. What I’m trying to do is to meet all the clients and talk to them. And after a year and a half, I design for the women I know, the women I love and the women I want to know. All the ones I don’t like, I don’t design for.”
