Alain Elkann Interviews
AN HOMAGE TO FRIENDSHIP. Thomas Persson is a creative director, editor and brand consultant. His understanding of fashion, culture and corporate identity is a resource for global fashion and beauty companies in their visual communication and brand building projects. He created “Acne Paper” an acclaimed magazine published by Acne Studios. He art directed global advertising campaigns for leading fashion brands including Armani and he made two books on the legendary photographer Snowdon. Today he is once again at the editorial helm of a reborn “Acne Paper”. “A magazine is a...
info_outline Erdem Moralioglu - 208 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
CELEBRATING INDIVIDUAL SELF-EXPRESSION. Erdem Moralıoglu is a British fashion designer and the eponymous founder of London-based fashion label Erdem, which he established in 2005. His Spring Summer 2025 collection was shown at the British Museum’s South Entrance amidst its 45 feet high columns. The show was based on The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, published in 1928 and banned in the same year. The book gives voice and form to the love of two women at a time when the idea of gay love between two women was not even illegal, its very existence was denied as impossible. For Spring...
info_outline Dr Amin Jaffer - 207 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
EXPLORING HYBRIDITY. Dr Amin Jaffer is Director of The Al Thani Collection. He is responsible for working with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and a global team in the creation of a museum space for The Al Thani Collection at the Hôtel de la Marine, Paris. He is also Artistic Director of the 2025 edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. For 10 years he was International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s. At London’s Victoria and Albert Museum he was External Exhibition Curator responsible for the exhibition Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s...
info_outline Gad Elmaleh - 206 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
A MISSION TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH. Gad Elmaleh is a stand-up comedian. Born in Morocco, after attending French schools in Casablanca he went to Montreal for 4 years. He was a political science student for a year, worked on radio, wrote humorous stories and played them in night clubs. In 1992 he took The Cours Florent theatre course in Paris. Through his one-man shows Décalages and La Vie Normale Gad was revealed as a humorist, and he is an actor who starred in various movies. Gad has two sons: Noé with actress Anne Brochet, and Raphael with Charlotte Casiraghi. "I love doing movies, but there...
info_outline Kamel Mennour - 205 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
WRITING NEW CHAPTERS. Kamel Mennour is an Algerian-born French art dealer. In 1999 he founded Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris. Today Mennour is a contemporary art gallery representing over forty artists with four exhibition locations in Paris. “I was part of the art scene which was offering a very stimulating position for Paris as a big place on the world map for art.” “The work has to have something very particular that I can become obsessed with.” “We are growing a trinity between the artist with his artworks, the gallery, and the collector.”
info_outline Maria Balshaw - 204 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES. Maria Balshaw is Director of Tate since June 2017. The author of Gathering of Strangers: Why Museums Matter, published by Tate Publishing in June 2024, previously Maria was Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester; Director of Manchester City Galleries; and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council. She is the first female director of the Tate, with overall responsibility for Tate’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations, and each of the four Tate galleries has their own site Director who reports in to her. “We’re reshaping...
info_outline Leonardo Ferragamo - 203 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
REINTERPRETING HERITAGE IN THE NEW WORLD. Leonardo Ferragamo, the fifth son of Salvatore and Wanda Ferragamo, is the Chairman of Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A. since 2021. He studied economics at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), then at Columbia University. He started working for Ferragamo in menswear, and created Ferragamo Men Division. Today, he is also President of the Lungarno Collection of hotels in Florence, Rome and Milan, and CEO of Palazzo Feroni Finanziaria, one of the Ferragamo family’s two holding companies, which operates in real estate and other diversified businesses....
info_outline Jeremy King - 202 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
A RESTAURATEUR ON THE FLOOR. Jeremy King is a well-known London restaurateur. He created some of London’s most iconic restaurants with his former business partner Chris Corbin, including The Ivy, Le Caprice and The Wolseley. In 2024 Jeremy King reincarnated Le Caprice as Arlington to great acclaim, and his latest venture is the all-day restaurant The Park. “I love clarity in a restaurant, which I feel with The Park that we have.” “I work on the basis that the food should never be deemed expensive.” “I realised it is impossible for me to see every customer when they come in,...
info_outline Amanda Levete - 201 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
AN ARCHITECTURE OF OPTIMISM. Amanda Levete CBE is a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award-winning architecture studio in London. Since its formation in 2009, AL_A has refined an intuitive and strategic approach to design and urban thinking. “There’s only one thing in life that you cannot design, and that is heritage.” “We are using architecture to message the technological optimism of fusion.” “A historic context has this built-in resistance that forces you to think in a certain...
info_outline Judy Chicago - 200 - Alain Elkann InterviewsAlain Elkann Interviews
A FIGHTER FOR EGALITARIANISM AND JUSTICE. Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, cultural historian, and educator who lives and works in New Mexico, USA. In 2018 she was named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people, and she has garnered an enduring stature. Born Judy Cohen in 1939, and known briefly after her first marriage as Judy Gerowitz, Chicago attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1970, she adopted the surname ‘Chicago’ and initiated the United States’ first Feminist Art Programme at California State University,...
info_outlineTHE DIFFICULT HAPPINESS OF BEING JEWISH. Pauline Bebe is the rabbi of Communauté Juive Libérale (CJL), a Progressive Jewish congregation in Paris, where she was the first female rabbi to lead a synagogue.
“The philosophy of Judaism is to maintain hope in times of difficulties, and we have to fight for our ideals of democracy, of humanity, of respect for every living person.”
“A lot of Jews feel that they are not understood; that whatever they say or do will not be understood, but they also think that more than ever they have to reclaim their Judaism.”
“I hope for peace. I hope for dialogue with everyone.”