The Legacy of Fashion Designer Alber Elbaz

Fashion designer Alber Elbaz passed away on Saturday, April 24, at the age of 59, a death that occurred after three difficult weeks of fighting COVID-19 at the American Hospital in Paris. The Israeli designer had spent 14 years at the head of Lanvin fashion house where he revived the brand with his eclectic spirit. Five years after departing the French maison, Elbaz had recently introduced his Richemont-backed AZ Factory brand.

Elbaz was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1961, and moved to Israel at the age of 10. After college, his first contact with the fashion system was with the American designer Geoffrey Beene. Elbaz was encouraged by his mother to move to New York from 1989 to 1996 to pursue his career as a designer. In the late 1990s he was creative director of Yves Saint Laurent for a short time. Elbaz was known to be an ironic and witty designer, and he valued and loved women, always putting them first. He favored stars and celebrities who embraced this very different attitude of dressing. The designer spent 14 years in the Maison Lanvin, where he reinvigorated the brand. After an argument with Lanvin's Taiwanese owner, Shaw-Lan Wang, Elbaz stepped away from the fashion house. In 2019, Diego Della Valle tapped him as designer for the Tod's Happy moments by Alber Elbaz capsule collection, and in 2020 the designer presented his latest project, AZ Factory. In January 2021, he presented his first collection with a young, sporty, and dynamic allure. The clothes reflected his mordern view of how women want to dress, with clothes that move with the body and free the woman from any constriction.

Elbaz was recently interviewed for L'OFFICIEL, in conversation with Emily in Paris actress Lily Collins. In the interview, the designer spoke about his experience launching a new label:

"There is a big difference between creating and recreating, and in the past my job was often about not only recreating but replacing," Elbaz said. "This time I wanted to start from scratch. I’ve been observing women for the last five years; looking at everything that they are going through, the changes in their lives. I’ve always said that if I was ever a producer in Hollywood, the next James Bond would be Jane Bomb, and she wouldn’t be an ex-model. She would be a smart woman that has no age and no size, because it doesn’t matter. Looking at the lives of women today, you can see them running in ten different directions trying to be the best mother, the best wife, the best person you work with, etc. I realized I had to start working on a solution, so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m introducing new technology, but I’m also trying to go a little bit deeper than just looking fabulous. I’m trying to listen to women to see what I can do to bring them their dreams, because at the end of the day, we are just not living in a world of only data and algorithms or instinct and emotion. We can put them both together as yin and yang. It’s not either-or; it’s both together.