Happy Moments

After A Few Years Away From Fashion, Alber Elbaz Is Back With A Collection For Tod’s. Dubbed Happy Moments, He Celebrated It With A Series Of Funny Videos. He Tells Elle How The Project Was Born And Discusses His Personal Rebirth.

- Adriana Di Lello

An avatar. Or, to put it in pre-digital words, an alter ego made of paper and ink; that’s what he decided to put on boxes and press releases as the seal of this collaboration. Alber Elbaz is a true artist, one of those who nurtures creativity by embracing the whole range of human emotions, from the most terrifying to the lightest. He is a vane exposed to the winds and you can perceive his struggle in his creations. Few people like him are left in the world because intensity, evoked for centuries by Art, is scary today. Yet Elbaz has been always expressing it with grace, as he is doing here. He chose to live far from fashion for some time (he was the beloved creative director of Lanvin for 14 years), and he’s back with a collaboration for Tod’s, which is a hymn to happiness. Tod’s Happy Moments by Alber Elbaz, his footwear capsule, shakes up the Italian brand’s classics, using neoprene, sneaker soles, funky lamination, a rainfall of logos. All celebrated by six videos shot at Studio 5 in Cinecittà by Elbaz and Michael Haussman, it’s a celebration of joy. Cropped blonde hair, dressed in a pinstripe suit and his signature red bow tie, Elbaz explains his new project — he is full of enthusiasm and he takes you deep down into the folds of his thoughts. We experience a certain connectedness: beyond the black curtain, set up in the movie studio to talk in private, and with Belgian musician Plastic Bertrand’s 1978 hit single Ça plane pour moi blasting in the background.

Why do you want to talk about happiness in a fashion collection?