48.5 F
New York
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Israeli Fashion Designer Alber Elbaz Dies at 59

Related Articles

-Advertisement-

Must read

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Israeli designer Alber Elbaz, best known for spending 14 years at the helm of France’s Lanvin fashion house, has died at 59, the luxury conglomerate Richemont said Sunday.

A spokesperson for Richemont told CNN that Elbaz died Saturday from COVID-19. Women’s Wear Daily said he died at a Paris hospital.

In a statement, Richemont chairman Johann Rupert said “it was with shock and enormous sadness that I heard of Alber’s sudden passing. Alber had a richly deserved reputation as one of the industry’s brightest and most beloved figures.

“I was always taken by his intelligence, sensitivity, generosity and unbridled creativity. He was a man of exceptional warmth and talent, and his singular vision, sense of beauty and empathy leave an indelible impression,” Rupert said.

The Richemont group paid tribute to Elbaz’s “inclusive vision of fashion” that “made women feel beautiful and comfortable by blending traditional craftsmanship with technology.”

Elbaz started to work in collaboration with Richemont in 2019 with the aim of launching his own label, AZfashion.

Elbaz was born in 1961 on Casablanca, Morocco, to a Moroccan Jewish family. Elbaz’s mother, Algeria, was a painter and his father, Meyer, a hairdresser. He immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of ten and grew up in the city of Holon.Elbaz’s father died when Alber was a teenager and his mother became a cashier to support her four children (Elbaz had a brother and two sisters).Elbaz later served as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, and subsequently studied at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, Israel.

His mother encouraged Elbaz’s early interest in fashion (he had begun drawing dresses at seven years old) and gave him $800 when he left home for New York City in 1985 to pursue fashion professionally.

Arriving in New York, Elbaz first worked for a bridal firm, then trained over the course of seven years as a senior assistant to Geoffrey Beene. In New York, Elbaz dropped the last letter of his first name, becoming Alber so that his name would be pronounced correctly in English as well as because he felt it made a better name for a fashion brand.

He first became known to the public when he was named to lead the French house Guy Laroche in Paris in 1996. In 1998, he became creative director at Yves Saint Laurent. He was credited with reviving Lanvin during his long stint there from 2001 to 2015.

According to a New York Times report, Elbaz turned Lanvin, the oldest surviving but dusty French fashion house, into a more modern and prominent brand whose creations were worn by the likes of Beyoncé, Lupita Nyong’o, Pharrell Williams, Michelle Obama and Harry Styles.

While at Lanvin, Elbaz also collaborated with Acne Studios on a denim collection, called the Blue Collection, at the end of 2008. In 2010, he led Lanvin’s work on an H&M line, including tulle dresses and bejeweled necklaces. Notably, for his fall collection in 2012, the house’s 10th anniversary, Elbaz chose ordinary people to feature in Lanvin’s promotional campaign, including an 18-year-old musician and an 82-year-old retiree.

In October 2015, Elbaz announced that he had been let go from Lanvin after disagreements with the company’s major shareholder, Shaw-Lan Wang. Elbaz also complained about the lack of strategy and targeted investment of the company. Shortly before he was fired, Elbaz had hired Chemena Kamali from Chloé as women’s design director. Lanvin sales subsequently declined and China’s Fosun eventually purchased the line.

French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin paid tribute to Elbaz’ “intelligence, humour and great creativity that changed the fashion world.”

At the helm of Lanvin, the oldest French fashion house, he “wonderfully” met the challenge .

“For 14 years, the visionary genius of Alber Elbaz led Lanvin at the top of international fashion,” she stressed in a statement.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted her “great sadness” at the news, saying Elbaz was “a talented, generous man. He loved Paris so much and will be missed.”

The New York Times said of Elbaz in their obituary about him: Beloved not only by his celebrity clients like Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman but also by his peers, Mr. Elbaz was that rare character in fashion: a truly empathetic and generous designer, both in the clothes he made and in the way he conducted himself within the business. The graceful lines of his dresses mimicked the graceful lines of his life.

The Times also reported that Natalie Portman once called him the “ultimate fashion philosopher-mentor.” “He says things to me like: ‘Wear flats. You’re short. It’s much cooler not to pretend,’” Portman told Time magazine in 2007, when it named Elbaz one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Elbaz designed all of the costumes Natalie Portman wore in the 2016 film A Tale of Love and Darkness which she also wrote and directed. Thereafter he worked with various fashion brands, including Converse and LeSportsac. In 2016, he launched a perfume called Superstitious, working with perfumer Dominique Ropion for the French perfume house Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. He collaborated in 2019 with Italian shoemaker Tod’s, creating bags and loafers.

Editor of Vogue and global chief content officer for Conde Nast Anna Wintour said, “Alber always thought of fashion as an embrace of life at its best. And when we wore his clothes, or were in his wonderful, joyful presence, we felt that, too.”

Despite international acclaim Elbaz avoided stepping into celebrity circles himself, often likening his work to a “concierge’s in a good hotel in Manhattan” who spent his days working with famous and wealthy clients, but went home at night to the outer boroughs, and said this distance from “the fantasy” of fashion helped him maintain its power in his work.

(Sources: AP, NYT & Wikipedia)

balance of natureDonate

Latest article

- Advertisement -