Alber Elbaz Lanvin.

Byline: Mark Holgate

Alber Elbaz and his design team are deliberating over a dressmaker's form clad in a black satin dress. The form is suspended from a weighty metal clip and chain that hang from the ceiling of the Lanvin atelier, and the question is, Should this means of suspension be decoratively wrapped in black ribbon . . . or not? Eventually, an answer is agreed upon: Yes to the ribbon-but with a flash of the frankly vicious-looking clip still showing. The decision is relayed to the display staff of the Design Museum in London, where Elbaz will be exhibiting his clothes as part of the biennial European Design Show, alongside a Mercedes Formula One racing car and the work of Dutch ceramicist Hella Jongerius.

This is just one of the million small decisions that a designer of his stature makes on a daily basis, but it reveals a lot about the 44-year-old Elbaz: He takes great pleasure in tingeing perfection with imperfection. He likes it that a beautiful, light-as-air dress-sewn with one single seam-will fall like a drop of ink from an industrial clip that could handle the weight of a side of beef. Elbaz embraces contradiction and intentional imperfection-witness the rumpled gazar that has become his trademark, or the fraying that runs like a fault line down the edge of a jacket. This, he believes, makes fashion more human, more personal.

At the fall show, the seamless rhythm of sharp suits and languid dresses was interrupted by two apparently random floral numbers. "They looked like they didn't belong," the Israeli-born Elbaz says, "but I prefer spontaneity. At least that means you're not sticking to some formula. ...