Alber Elbaz: the return with AZ Factory, between tradition and innovation

Electrocuted on the way to Silicon Valley. Alber Elbaz has returned after a hiatus of over five years and does so with AZ Factory during the Paris fashion week dedicated to Haute Couture for Spring-Summer 2021, obviously in digital edition. The stylist who artistically directed Lanvin until 2015 leaving a tangible footprint in the fashion world, last November he announced that he would be back on the square with a brand new brand launched in partnership with Richemont. The joint venture was defined by the Swiss luxury group to which they belong, among others, Yoox-Net a porter, a «startup designed to turn dreams into reality».

Elbaz’s is truly a paradigm shift. He entrusts the story of the path of his intimate revolution to the long video published on the brand’s website which is much more than a fashion show. “It took me some time to fall in love with fashion again” he confesses sitting at a desk immersed in the darkness from which his dyed blond hair and his unmistakable glasses emerge “in these years I have traveled far and wide around the world: a visit to Silicon Valley made me dream again ». It is there in the land where the most innovative companies in the world are born that Alber Elbaz asked himself this question: “Can tradition and technology still coexist? The answer is a big yes! ».

Thus began a great research on design, materials and sustainable production up to the small parts, passing through jewels and sneakers: an experience carried out by the creative as if he were an engineer (he says it himself in the video) who designs with markers the clothes to wear in everyday life. The AZ Factory collection ranges from XXS to 4XL and is designed both for the petite woman who does not want to buy her clothes in children’s shops and for those who find it difficult to enter the canonical sizes. The fitted dress is sculpted on the body, it does not wrap but enhances every physicality as well as the little black dress imagined by engineer Elbaz who also makes the zip precious as well as easy to unfasten (prices starting from 210 euros).
In this framework, the sneakers. Renamed by the brand’s marketing team Pointy Sneaks, Alber Elbaz prefers to call them Sneaky Pumps because in this design he wanted to merge the world of women’s shoes par excellence with what is now the most popular with a tip that lengthens the silhouette.

The labels dear to the fashion industry are waning in favor of inclusiveness and responsible production and that is why in this new adventure we prefer to talk about stories and projects rather than collections and capsules. In this horizon overturned by the pandemic, there are another couple of chapters that we will meet in spring: a line of comfortable clothes to go from morning yoga to a zoom call and – could they possibly be missing? – a review of colorful pajamas. “In this year I missed the hugs, the social distance was a killer for me” he adds “so with some artists I thought of pajamas that were a kiss, a hug, to wear either to stay lazily in bed or to go out” . Here is where the old Alber Elbaz meets his future: the challenge is to mix irony and madness with innovation. If this is the beginning, it will not be difficult to win.

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