Leïla Slimani

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud - Bella Freud

Leïla Slimani discusses identity, fashion as resistance, and the power of transformation through clothing. Drawing from her Moroccan-French background, she reflects on how dressing becomes a way to belong, escape, or ass

Key takeaways

• Clothing is a tool for belonging and self-reinvention

Transcript preview

Hi, come in. Welcome to Fatahneurosis, Leela Slimani. Thank you. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? Today I'm wearing trousers, Leela Slimani. Thank you. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? Today I'm wearing trousers and sweater. of Siena color. I love more and more monochromatic outfits because it's easy and actually I chose this outfit because it doesn't increase and I travel a lot I have to pack suitcase all the time so it's a very convenient outfit to travel. No, it's from Max Baron, you know, this color for me is very Mediterranean, very Italian, very Moroccan also. And I bought it a few weeks ago. I was in Rome. I was working at the Villa Medicis. I was working a lot. And I woke up in the morning quite depressed, I have to say. And I was on the streets of Rome looking at women and I wanted to be a Roman. I wanted to be them. And I saw this outfit in a... Maxima Rassore and I was like, okay you deserve it go and buy it for you so it was just a gift for for myself. That's so nice. Why did you want to be a Rome? I lived in Rome when I was in my early 20s and It was quite claustrophobic and You know when I'm in a place it happens very often that I want to become the others in Rome I want to dress like them. Which is weird because at the same time I like the idea of being different. I like being visible but also probably because I immigrate at a very long young age I have this desire also to belong and to be like the others that no one will notice that I'm a stranger. So when I'm in Rome I want to be like a Roman when I'm in Paris I want to think that I'm a I don't like the idea of looking like a tourist or looking different. Maybe it's a little bit snob also, this idea of being like other women, but it's also because it makes me feel vulnerable not to understand the fashion and the way they want to look and the way they want to appear. And I think Roman women are quite elegant. Yes, definitely. I had that experience when I was a child when I actually when I lived in Morocco and we lived in in the 60s in Morocco for two years and I I really wanted to belong and I dressed in Arabic clothes like the little girls I used to hang around within the square and I spoke fluent Arabic and fluent French dialect and it was a really wonderful feeling. I did totally kind of feel part of and I know that feeling I really it stays with you doesn't it? Yeah and it's also something that is very childish this desire to disguise and you know to put the clothes and once you have the right outfit you are the character you can't you can embody someone else. and people will believe it as long as you act well enough. And I love that this metamorphosis that can happen all the time and it's something for me that is really related to women. You know, I was born and raised by women in a home with my two sisters, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, and what fascinated me when I was a child was that women were changing all the time. Men were very dull. and boring because I always wear suits, gray or blue. It was not very interesting, but a woman from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes out for dinner, she changes, she can change the color of her hair, she can curl her hair, she can put lipstick on her on her lips and makeup, and for me it was something extraordinary, it was a way also to resist to the monotony of the moment. life. And I had this idea that being a woman is hard and I will have a lot of obstacles in front of me, but I can disguise all the time. I can look like someone else. I can decide who I want to be. I can be women, Moroccan, Fantfatal, Gatson, And I thought that for a man, it was not the same. Yeah, that's true. We... It's nice to think of, you know, these guys is that. kind of ways. They're not exactly escape routes but they are means to having another aspect of life where you might be kind of more trapped in a way. Yeah and it's also you know something that I use as a writer because if you want to find the right disguise you have to observe very much to observe little details about people act the way they their bag and things like, very jewelry and things like this. So I love also that how you observe. And then if you spend time in Paris on a terrace looking at women, when I arrived at the age of 17, I was very intimidated by a Paris and a woman. I was like, I will never be like them. They are so beautiful and they look so effortless. it's very different because in Morocco women like the idea of putting a lot of effort in being beautiful. You spend hours in the salon and then you will wear the caftant and all the jewelry so it takes a lot of time a lot of effort and I couldn't understand exactly how it worked for a Parisian woman and I felt very out of place and non-fashioned I went to a Vieteng shop because I didn't have a lot of money and I bought very colorful and eccentric clothes and I was very lonely so my idea was just to wear the clothes pink ones and very 70s 60s and just to walk on the boulevard because I knew that I was visible I was exotic my you know the way I looked was not at all like in Morocco because in Morocco I'm just Moroccan, I'm very average. But in France people would look at me and I like that. Actually I like being looked at by people being visible. You're a French Moroccan writer, the author of extremely successful novels including international bestsellers, Adele and lullaby, and you've won many literary prizes including the pre-Gancor. You're the pre-Gancore. You're the... personal representative of Emmanuel Macron for the promotion of the French language and culture. Do you enjoy being recognized in this way? A bit like being watched on the street, I suppose you're visible. You know, I'm going to be very honest with you. I've always known it will happen. I suppose you're visible. You know, I'm going to be very honest with you. I've always known it will happen. It was not a surprise for me. When I was very young. I knew that something would happen for me, that I had something. And I don't, I mean, it's not that I'm immodest, I hope that I will not look immodest, but I, it was a feeling, an intuition, but I didn't know what success was. And I think that for an artist, success can be very dangerous, because it makes you, it can make you stupid. And the biggest danger is wanting to capitalize on success and wanting to keep it and being afraid of losing it. So no, I don't mind being visible. And there's also the thing that in France when I became famous, I became famous as a woman and as a Moroccan woman. And I was proud also to represent Moroccan women and more generally. women from the Arab world. And it was important for me to always keep my natural hair and to, I don't know, to try to embody a certain visibility, a different visibility of Arab women because in France there are a lot of, not only in France, but in Europe or in the Western world, a lot of cliche when it comes to Arab women, people always think that they are dominated. that they're are like this or like that. And it was very important for me also to show another aspect and another image of an Arab woman. Yeah, it's amazing how people don't want to see different aspects of Arab women or Arab people together. It's convenient just to be reductive and then they don't have to have any conscience. And you read a lot of Russian novels as the team. and I did too and I like the unsparing language around hardship and I found it a relief and what in particular appealed to you about poverty-stricken 19th century life as a young person? You know I remember when I read for the first time Dostoevsky's book humiliated and offended, you're fancy. Insulted and injured, yeah. I loved it so much and what was really striking to me was that it was written by a man in Russia in the 19th century, but I felt he was talking about what was happening around me. Because I was living in Morocco in a very poor country in an authoritarian regime where people were not free to say what they wanted to say, and where there was a lot of violence between social class, between men and women. So I was amazed by the fact that this book that was so far from me. at the same time were telling my story and then I discovered Tolstoy and Tolstoy is like my obsession I mean for me the the secret of happiness is just being on a couch reading Tolstoy because Tolstoy is a writer of details and when you read the book it seems very easy and he talks about certain details I remember in Anna Karanin and the ears of of carrenin or the dresses of of Anna or some dust or really very tiny things of life. But that really touched you or touched me at that time. I felt very close to this character, so close that at that time I thought that I was Russian. And I told my mother, you know, I was Russian before and now I'm just the reincarnation of probably the daughter of the Tsar or something. And so I told her I want to dress like a Russian. You know, I was Russian. And so I told her I want to dress like a Russian. for my birthday I was 12 years old maybe I had a shabka and a very beautiful Russian coat and I wanted to wear it at school but of course in Morocco it's quite hot and I was sweating so much but I didn't want to tell my mother that it was too hot so I would wear it because I wanted so much to be Russian and the first time I went to Russia with my mother it was my gift for my 20 birthday and I was on the perspective Nevsky and I was crying and crying because I said you know I know this place I read so many novels with the characters walking on the perspective Nevsky and I went to the apartment of the soevsky and I remember the guy the woman there she was telling my mother what's the problem with this girl why is she crying like this because I was so moved I think she thought I was completely crazy. So you went when you were 20 yeah. After the death of my father, my father died in April and we went in July, just the two of us, and we were at the same time very, very sad and so happy to discover this country. We took the train, we drank vodka, we were drinking vodka, listening to music, crying and then laughing, and we went to Yasana, puliana to the house of Tolstoy, we visited the apartment of Anna Kamatova. It was probably one of the most beautiful trip in my life How amazing that's such a good idea to go there and never cross my mind I I was reading that You still think about Anna Correnina whenever you take a train and I Remember when I've I remember when I've I mean I also was obsessed with that book it felt like you know her You know? term well and when I then started to learn about co-dependency which is such a dreary term but I thought oh that's what she was suffering from that's why she threw herself under the train and I wondered do you find it easier to show your love for a man or a cause rather than for yourself? a man, I'm not sure, I think it's difficult to, it's difficult for me, no, for a cause for my vocation, for literature, for my children maybe, but it's difficult for me to show love and I think it's difficult for me to receive love. That's something that my publisher told me the other day. He said, you're very nice to people and sometimes I you to be that generous to prevent people from giving you things. Because if you're the one who gives, it's so difficult to give you. And I think he's right. And it's probably linked, of course, to my childhood, to my experience, but also to my work. I live in solitude and I live in a tower, in a tower, like Virginia Woolf said, in a leaning tower. I live in solitude even if I have to of course stay aware of what's happening around me and in the world but I think that I write also because I want to avoid living and I want to avoid real life I want to avoid a lot of things and when you write you have a very good excuse to say no no I'm not available no I'm not coming no I don't care I don't care about And sometimes it's hard because you feel very, very lonely and you feel that maybe you have lost something. But at the same time, that's the only way of life that works for me. Yeah. It's interesting the idea of showing affection and not receiving it, being what my shrink calls a distance regulator. When I'm fault finding he said he says you know could this be a distance regulator and I and it always is the fear of allowing someone to kind of know your fragilities or just anything really it's but then I suppose writing seems to be occupation and I imagine do you have to put these devices in place or you'd never write because other people, especially children can, you know, the received wisdom is that they come first regardless of anything and with writing nothing can come first except that. Yeah, I was reading the other day an interview of Knowsgarde, and with writing nothing can come first except that. Yeah, I was reading the other day an interview of Knowsgarde, And he said that one day he was in a bar and he was talking with a girl, a very beautiful girl and she wanted to meet again with him and she said give me your number your dress and he said no no I have to go home I have a lot of work I have to finish my manuscript and he went back home he was writing and she arrived she rang and he said and he said and it was so difficult to explain to her that she was so less important then the manuscript. And you know even your children sometimes they become your enemies and it's terrible to think that as a mother but the whole world become an enemy you you feel like everyone is conspirating against you to prevent you from writing so you have really to fight to close the door and to make people understand that but at the same time yourself sometimes you're in your office surrounded by books in front of your blank page and you're like, oh my God I spent my whole life doing this reading and writing and reading and writing but did I really live there is there has to be more than books but maybe not I don't know if there is more than this. Each week on the show our listeners get an all access pass into the world of vogue. On Tuesdays join me as I interview influential designers like