“If everything goes well, we can repeat it,” said Elbaz. “If not, we stop.” But, he said, “the idea is, by the end of the year, you have everything you need”.
Kay Barron, the fashion director at Net-a-Porter, called the collection “modular”. And although, as she said, everyone expected Mr. Elbaz to return making his exclusive silk dresses under the aegis of another traditional brand, and that would have been the easy answer, perhaps it is better. “I can’t wait to try one,” she said.
According to Holli Rogers, Farfetch’s brand director, the platform had no “zero hesitation” in becoming a partner. First, because, she said, “it’s him”. And, secondly, because “there could be no better time to think about a new way of delivering, a new approach to sustainability”.
The pandemic, with its forced closings and reverberations in the supply chain, forced a broader assessment within the fashion system of accepted standards, including the show’s schedule, the number of collections and the amount of material made. Suddenly, the questions Elbaz was asking a few years ago were the questions everyone was asking, and his solutions seemed less like a lonely voice shouting in the wind than a central part of the conversation. Even though your own soul searching started long before it became a broader trend.
“The idea was to break the system,” said Elbaz. “I was never a person who broke the system.” The system, however, may have been broken for him, which puts him in the most natural position of healer. (He says he always wanted to be a doctor.)
“I feel happy that I didn’t give up on my dream and say, ‘OK, I’m going to be the way I was,’” he said.