Lanvin’s Alber Elbaz: “I Don’t Have Photogenic Friends, I Have Good Friends.”

Lanvin Summer 2014 show. Photo: But Sou Lai

Lanvin’s Alber Elbaz doesn’t do social media. He has neither an email address nor a deep spiritual connection with the selfie generation, telling Yahoo Style: “I don’t have Instagram because I don’t have photogenic friends, I have good friends.” Ok, then. But the refreshingly old-school designer does have a fascination for “the dialogue between fashion and photography,” be it through a smartphone or photographer’s lens. And thankfully, he’s into sharing. 

“Alber Elbaz/Lanvin: Manifeste,” Maison Européenne de la Photographie’s new exhibition in Paris, takes viewers on an “introspective” journey through the creative process behind the house’s collections via over 350 images ranging from personal snaps — taken by Lanvin’s Art Director Katy Reiss and Alex Koo, Merchandising Director and Elbaz’s beau — to backstage and runway shots by Lanvin photographers But Sou Lai, Mark Leibowitz, and James Bort.

Four spaces within the exhibition capture dramatically different moods, including the pitch-black and white “Lightbox” room, filled with huge screens projecting show images by Lai, and the “Red Room,” where red lights and white photo filters are used to enhance the jewel tones on runway looks. A room dubbed “The Brain” showcases dreamy works-in-progress. “This is where you still smell the perfume of the people who touch the clothes, the process,” explained Elbaz. “We have no Photoshop and no photo shock. We have some pieces that we photographed and we also put the object next to it and you see the photo, so no manipulation.”

In the entrance, lines of cellphone snaps of fittings (roughly fixed with lines of black tape, evoking a celluloid film strip) are layered over super-size wall stickers of the designer’s signature black sketches. “This corridor is kind of symbolic because it’s the passage between an abstract idea and a reality,” said Elbaz. “For me, it’s the hardest thing. You know, as a writer, you have an idea, you have it in your head, and then you read it and it’s not the same so it can turn into a nightmare or a dream.”

It’s ultimately the latter for the delightfully deadpan Elbaz who, after 14 years at the house’s creative helm, continues each season to floor the fashion crowd with his to-die-for creations—not that he doesn’t suffer from backstage jitters, as he revealed when he took a moment out from his exhibition to chat about what it’s like to be the wizard behind the curtain.

Backstage at Lanvin Winter 2012, ten year anniversary show. Photo: But Sou Lai

Yahoo Style: Describe the experience of being backstage at one of your shows in one word.

Alber Elbaz: You know, to do a dress with no seams and to express such a big moment in one word is never an easy thing but, for me, it’s a moment of truth, it’s a moment where everything that we have been doing and thinking about for the last three months is about to give birth. I always feel like a pregnant woman at that moment—and I always look like I’m pregnant [pats belly]. It’s that moment where the hormones and the fear and the emotion all come together.

Does the collection come together backstage? Are there still moments of spontaneity or is everything very organized and finished by the time you get there?

I think spontaneity is the most important element in creation, spontaneity and luck—luck as this idea of missing pieces. I think that when you have too much, you just have to put it together but when you don’t, you have to invent. Part of our [business] is all about power, the power of money, so it’s interesting when you have none of that and you have to come with solutions. Spontaneity is the mother of creation.

Can things be just as powerful and beautiful backstage as they are out front for the people watching the show?

You know, I hardly see shows. I’m always in the kitchen, never in the living room.

So you have no sense of how the show is going?

Never. I always expect a catastrophe, I’m always afraid the girls are going to fall, that the ambulance will come and people will have to help carry them out… I always expect a disaster.

And have you ever had any?

Yes! One show when we had these titanium heels that were like 14cm and I thought they were so beautiful but nobody could walk in them and last minute I had to change all the shoes so they were able to walk, I put them in flat sandals. After the show everybody was saying, ‘Oh, Alber loves women, he made us wear flat sandals’ and I’m like, ‘The heels didn’t work!’ [Laughs]

What’s going through your mind when you come out onto the runway to take your bow?

That everybody hates everything.

Describe your temperament backstage. Are you cool as a cucumber or a sergeant major?

I’m numb. I’m done.

What’s your favorite moment of the backstage process?

After the show when I come off the runway and see all my team.

Do you have any home comforts backstage, to help keep you Zen?

Hair and make-up! [Laughs]

I thought for a moment there you were going to say her-oin…

No, hair and make-up – I don’t do drugs!

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