Ahh, I love it when fashion gets real. At the Spring 11 Lanvin shows, Alber Elbaz had his models wear flat shoes — almost a scandal in fashion runway terms. And the reasoning was sensible and rational. Again, almost unheard of.
WWD carried this quote, "It was a nightmare. We did the rehearsal and all of a sudden I saw the girls couldn’t walk. I saw the agony in their faces. They were shaking; they looked like alcoholic girls.”
Luckily, he had the sandals from the commercial collection backstage. “We bring everything [to the show site],” he explains. So off the stilettos went and on came the flats. “Only 10 or 12 [of the models] said they could walk in the heels,” he continues. “But the ones that couldn’t were, like, 37 of them. I got very emotional — not that I got mad at them — but I got very emotional that they didn’t complain. You know what? Damn it with image. You can be stubborn and go after an image, but I’m not an image-maker; I’m a dressmaker. If you don’t feel good in something, you don’t look good with it.”
Seriously, could we love this man any more than we already do?
Image from Lanvin Spring 2011