The fashion industry is in mourning after it was announced yesterday that designer Alber Elbaz, 59, had passed away on Saturday at a Paris hospital from COVID-19. Compagnie Financière Richemont, his joint venture partner in AZ Factory, his latest fashion brand, confirmed the news.
Born in Morocco in 1961, Elbaz was raised and educated in Israel, where his family moved when he was 10 years old and where he studied at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design after fulfilling his army service.
In the mid-1980s Elbaz moved to New York where he worked at Geoffrey Beene; in 1996 he started working at Guy Laroche and later on at Yves Saint Laurent where he was expected to replace the designer when he retired. Instead, in 1999 the Gucci Group added Yves Saint Laurent to its portfolio, Tom Ford was appointed creative director of the fashion house and Elbaz was fired.
Elbaz headed to Krizia for a season, and, in 2001 he became creative director at Lanvin, the house founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889 and owned by Taiwanese publishing magnate Shaw-Lan Wang.
His tenure there was successful because, rather than radically revolutionising it, Elbaz took one element that Lanvin did well - the dress - and reinvented it.
As the years passed the designer managed to revamp the legacy of the historical French fashion house: Elbaz focused on women's needs and on making them feel beautiful.
In his creations he also added elements such as functional zips to make his designs - included his glamorously desirable couture-like party dresses constructed with elegant folds of fabrics and draped elements and often featuring puffed sleeves - modern and comfortable to simplify women's lives. He also put emphasis on costume jewelry designed in collaboration with Elie Top, and his successful collections scored the historical French house a collaboration with fast fashion retailer H&M in 2010.
Celebrities also turned to Lanvin for glamorous styles: Tilda Swinton accepted the Oscar as best supporting actress in Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton" in 2008 and Meryl Streep opted for a a draped, gold lame gown by Lanvin by Elbaz for the Oscar ceremony in 2012, when she won the Academy Award as best actress in Phyllida Lloyd's "The Iron Lady".
The designer also created special costumes for Natalie Portman's 2015 film "A Tale of Love and Darkness", about Amos Oz's youth.
At the end of 2015, after collaborating with Olivier Saillard on a major retrospective of French couturier Jeanne Lanvin at the Palais Galliera in Paris, Elbaz was dropped from Lanvin: at the time nobody saw this coming and the decision was attributed to the majority shareholder. Loved and respected, Elbaz caused staff protests.
Since then Lanvin has seen Bouchra Jarrar, Olivier Lapidus and Bruno Sialelli succeeding one to the other.
A year later, in October 2016, Elbaz received the title of Officer in the National Order of Merit by French Culture minister at the Culture ministry in Paris, and, from then on, he dedicated himself to one-off projects with other brands including a collaboration with Tod's on shoes; a Converse sneaker and a limited-edition makeup line with Lancôme among the others. Elbaz also spent time travelling and researching and, in the last few years he developed an interest in technology.
In late 2019 Elbaz focused on his own company, AZ Fashion, a name inspired by his initials and by the hope of exploring different steps, from A to Z at a more human rhythm and also a reference to the expression "as fashion". The first designs from Elbaz's new brand, called AZ Factory - conceived like a laboratory of ideas (its name hinted at the expressions "as a factory" or "as a laboratory", to rediscover the connection between designers and manufacturers) - were launched in January 2021 during Paris Haute Couture Week with a video.
Explaining he had been looking for ways to eliminate stress from women's lives, Elbaz developed not just a fashion collection or a capsule, but a series of projects or stories.
First of all he decided to manufacture his ebullient designs oozing joy in a wide range of sizes, from XXS to 4XL, to celebrate inclusivity.
Then he developed colourful and functional pieces like pajamas (one of his obsessions at Lanvin) with bright and vivid prints, suited for sleep or to go out.
Inspired by the changes our lives went through with the Coronavirus pandemic and in particular by the needs of smartworking and Zoom meetings, but also by the possibility of quickly changing yourself, Elbaz created the "Switchwear" project, a series of sporty pieces that could be turned into elegant designs by adding a satin skirt or top.
Yet the most intriguing projects for AZ Factory were definitely his collaborations with different companies to develop technological pieces for his "AnatoKnit" dresses.
Combining glamour and comfort while providing women with different body shapes with figure-flattering anatomical dresses in which the ergonomic lines were emphasised to give the wearer the body she wanted, Elbaz worked with MAS Italy, Dutch fabric innovation studio ByBorre and Spanish textile company Nylstar, applying their techniques, high-tech yarns and textiles to chic and glamorous creations manufactured without consuming water, generating air pollution or using solvants.
We don't know what may happen now to AZ Factory (in the meantime all the piece from this collection can be bought online from the brand's site and from other retailers such as Farfetch.com).
The latest post on the brand's Instagram page, after a picture of Elbaz with the words "You made us dream, you made us think, and now you fly. Love, trust and respect, always", is just a mourning black screen with no message, but it would be a shame if all these experiments and ideas would die with him, as Elbaz had conceived this laboratory as a way to reignite desire in consumers.
According to Israeli media, Elbaz died of the South African variant of Coronavirus (last year also Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada died of Covid), despite being fully vaccinated.
Elbaz was worried about the pandemic and tried to help the Coronavirus response efforts: in May last year, to thank the health-care workers for their efforts during the first Coronavirus wave in France, he did a sketch of a group of nurses accompanied with the word "Merci". The proceeds of this collaboration with fashion chain Gerard Darel went to the Hôpitaux de France foundation.
Alber Elbaz is survived by three siblings who live in Israel and by his partner Alex Koo, previous merchandising director at Lanvin. The couple lived in Paris, France, but, according to some reports, Elbaz may be buried in Israel.
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