A Conversation with Farida Khelfa, the brand ambassador for the House of Schiaparelli

The former actress and model is thrilled that Diego Della Valle and Marco Zanini have brought a beautiful name back to the heart of Paris, and chosen her to represent it.

The actress and model Farida Khelfa is the ambassador of the fashion house Schiaparelli. Reuters / Philippe Wojazer
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It was six years after purchasing the Schiaparelli label that Tod’s boss Diego Della Valle finally revealed his plans for the brand – and the first point of order, long before the creative director Marco Zanini was announced, was the appointment of a brand ambassador: the beautiful, extraordinary Algerian-French model, actress and style guru Farida Khelfa.

At 52, Khelfa has seen the best of Parisian life and fashion, from meeting Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Louboutin as a teenager in a Paris nightclub and modelling for all the big names of the 1980s to helping run Azzedine Alaïa’s business and directing Gaultier’s couture atelier. Add her sinuous lines, ready laugh, quiffed-up crop and vivid red lips, and you have the perfect character to inhabit the surrealist luxury of Schiaparelli’s Place Vendôme atelier.

How did you come to work at Schiaparelli?

Diego Della Valle asked me to be the ambassador of the house – I don’t know exactly why he chose me, but it was really great, because I had worked with designers who loved Schiaparelli, so I knew who she was, how important she was, and of course I said yes. It is such an important house, and we forgot how important she was. Now we can give her an homage, and I’m very happy for that.

What was so important about Elsa Schiaparelli?

She was ahead of her time. To combine fashion and art was revolutionary in 1927 – because she did things with Dalí, Cocteau, Picasso, all the great artists of the time. And today when we do that, we think it’s so modern to bring artists into fashion, but this was a century ago. She was an intellectual, very smart and educated, and she had very strong ideas of what style was. She knew how to make a look for herself, and she was already 37 when she started in fashion, thanks to Paul Poiret. Right before the war, she was the most important designer.

What are her design signatures?

There are so many strong looks. She created so many innovations in fashion: newspaper print is hers, camouflage is hers, the body-shaped perfume bottle is hers, the use of a zip in fashion is hers ... But maybe Dalí and surrealism was the most important. It was a really strong style for her.

Was she unusually powerful for a woman of that era?

It’s funny, but they were all such strong women then – they are not as strong today as they were a century ago. We think we are liberated but it’s not that true, because men today are still the most important people in fashion. All the great couture houses are run by men. But Schiaparelli, as a woman, she could understand the body better, and she had something to say, a willingness to break the rules, to lose the corset. But they were all different: Madeleine Vionnet, Madame Grès, Jeanne Lanvin, Coco Chanel – and they were so important. Today men are important, and we don’t know why.

What is your role as brand ambassador?

Being an ambassador is like being a diplomat somehow – so you relate people together, you make a link, and I hope I will be able to bring talented people to work together to do a beautiful brand, with a beautiful clientele of women wearing Schiaparelli. In couture houses, you never have a really defined role: it’s a lot of different things that you do, and you have to adapt yourself to make people work together.

Do you still enjoy working in couture?

Yes, it’s another world. It’s luxury and we need people who know about craftsmanship – les petites mains. It’s very important because it gives jobs to a lot of people and it keeps the crafts alive. The work on Schiaparelli’s original couture was amazing. It was so beautifully done, so complicated. Couture is one of the last places you can work with your hands. Elsewhere now, everything is done by computer, but in couture we have no choice but to work with our hands. Those people who can do it are very rare. And you know, when you’ve made a dress and suddenly you see it on the red carpet or on the front of a magazine? I don’t know – it makes you proud of your work.