>>  Alber Elbaz is in town, divulging that he's in talks with Acne jeans to do a denim line starting in 2009, and hopefully also to dress a gal or two in those fabulous Lanvin party frocks of his for the Costume Institute Gala. 

But more imminently intriguing was the conversation he and NY Times critic Cathy Horyn had over a lunch of chicken dumplings:

[Alber] offered that, in his view, fat designers tend to have a lightness to their clothes (because they [want] what they are not), while thin designers, lacking the particular dream, seem to have the heavier hand. We didn’t mention any living names, of course. Let me say at the outset that we’re making a vast generalization, but the conversation, so typical of the barmy directions that Mr. Elbaz and I can go over a satisfying meal, got me thinking.

I threw out some names. Dior? He was a big fellow—died, I believe, after a powerful supper in Italy. You can’t say some of his New Look dresses were exactly light.

“But he loved a small waist,” Elbaz said, imitating a hand-span waist.

It would be especially interesting to apply this theory to before-and-after designer cases: Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld come to mind.  Did they have something before that they lost with the weight?

More fodder for thought from the Alber-Cathy lunch powwow:

The conversation made me think of another fashion challenge posed many years ago by Suzy Menkes while some of us waited in Paris for a Romeo Gigli show to start. Name five designers, Suzy said, who changed fashion and who were married. I can only remember two names that the group accepted—Pucci and Courreges. I tried to get Ralph Lauren’s name in there but, as I recall, I met some resistance. This was a purist group.

*image: gettyimages