A sheet of blank paper lies in front of Elie Saab's seat on the conference table.
Before the interview started, he left a few quick drawings on it with a blue ballpoint pen.
He often does it like this: “I always have a sketch pad to hand.” Elie Saab sketched five female figures today, all of them wearing his evening dresses.
The first model is quite simple, then it becomes wider, the collar and skirts become larger.
Number five is pompous and resembles the expansive wedding dress that hangs on a doll right outside the conference room.
The train measures several square meters.
The fabric is of course intricately embroidered.
The wedding dress stands for the formula Elie Saab just like the five quick drawings from which dresses are to be made.
Jennifer Wiebking
Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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This world is about pure beauty.
Elie Saab has a clear idea of this.
This is one of the reasons why his Paris headquarters are located here at number 43, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt.
On one side the Arc de Triomphe rises into the sky, on the other the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde.
It couldn't be more representative.
The old school rules here, here a man has consistently devoted himself to the beauty of women.
That may not necessarily be the epitome of modernity.
Beauty is a sensitive issue today
Elie Saab is less like the fashion designers of today, who give themselves as employees in large houses, but rather the great couturiers from bygone times who seemingly effortlessly built an empire. Saab is just 57 years old. Even now he speaks so slowly and quietly in his office that one can easily imagine his voice accompanying a documentary with black and white recordings and a fragile sound. Even the high level of tailoring of today is often different, no longer exclusively beautiful. It is more open, like Demna Gvasalia's Balenciaga couture, which also takes the male clientele into account. More suitable for everyday use, such as Maria Grazia Chiuri's designs for Dior Couture. Funnier, like Daniel Roseberry's vintage Levi's parts for Schiaparelli Couture.All three examples show that beauty is a sensitive issue today. It doesn't work without it when people are supposed to spend a lot of money on something.
But beauty alone is easy to misunderstand, because it is not far from there to gender stereotypes.
Right down to men who work hard on women's beauty.
And women who make themselves beautiful for a man's world.
The lavishly embroidered dresses in which women look like prom queens, the glitter pumps that are on the shelves with them, the little clutch suitcases don't exactly refute this impression here on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt either.
At the same time, this is only one perspective on the personality of Elie Saab.
Because his image of beauty should also be so clear because he is more familiar with horror than most of the people who go in and out of Paris at this address today.