Alber Elbaz

Biography

Alber Elbaz was born in 1961 in Casablanca, Morocco. He immigrated to Israel with his family at the age of 10 and grew up in Holon. After serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, he studied at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan. His life partner was Alex Koo, Lanvin's director of marketing.

Fashion Career

Elbaz began designing for Lanvin in 2001. In October 2015, he announced that he had been let go from the fashion house since he disagreed with the company's major shareholder, Shaw-Lan Wang. Elbaz also complained about the lack of strategy and targeted investement of the company.

He designed all of the costumes Natalie Portman wore in the film A Tale of Love and Darkness which she also wrote and directed.

Art and graphics

In 2006, Elbaz introduced new packaging for Lanvin, featuring a light forget-me-not blue color, a favorite shade which Lanvin purportedly had seen in a Fra Angelico fresco. Packaging included shopping bags imprinted with Paul Iribe's 1907 illustration of Lanvin and her daughter Marguerite, and shoe boxes designed like antique library files, tied with black ribbons to emphasize the precious nature of the product.

Elbaz illustrated the song "Lady Jane" in singer-songwriter Mika's extended play Songs for Sorrow.

In 2012, Rizzoli published a book of 3,000 photographs documenting Elbaz's work for Lanvin.

Awards and recognition

Elbaz's simple, feminine clothing, which has been compared to Lanvin's 1920s outfits, was lauded by the fashion press. Suzy Menkes wrote: "Elbaz is every woman's darling. And that includes Nicole, Kate, Chloë Sevigny, Sofia Coppola and a slew of rising movie names."