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- [00:02]
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- [00:39]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis Leila Slimani.
- [00:49]
Leila Slimani
Thank you.
- [00:51]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them?
- [00:56]
Leila Slimani
Today I'm wearing trousers and sweater of Sienna color. I love this color very much. And I love more and more monochromatic outfits because it's easy. And actually I chose this outfit because it doesn't crease. And I travel a lot. I have to pack suitcase all the time. So it's a very convenient outfit to travel.
- [01:24]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Is it? I read that you were dressed by Dior. You wear quite a lot of Dior. Is it from Dior?
- [01:30]
Leila Slimani
No, it's from Max Barra. And 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 out it in a Max Mara store, and I was like, okay, you deserve it. Go and buy it for you. So it was just a gift for myself.
- [02:09]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
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.
- [02:20]
Leila Slimani
You know, when I'm in a place, it happens very often that I want to become the others. I'm in New York, I want to be a New Yorker, I'm 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 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 people to think that I'm a Parisian. I don't like the idea of looking like a tourist or looking different. Maybe it's a little bit snub 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.
- [03:27]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
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 with in the square. And I spoke fluent Arabic and fluent French dialect. And it was a really wonderful feeling. I really. What I did totally kind of feel part of. And I know that feeling. It stays with you, doesn't it? Yeah.
- [04:13]
Leila Slimani
And it's also something that is very childish, this desire to disguise and, you know, to put the clothes. And once the. You have the right outfit, you are the character, 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. 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 they would 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 all the time. She can change the color of her hair, she can curl her hair, she can put lipstick on her lips and makeup or no makeup. And for me, it was something extraordinary. It was a way also to resist to the monotony of life. And I had this idea that, yeah, 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 Roman, Moroccan, femme fatale, garcon, androgine. And I thought that for a man, it was not the same.
- [05:54]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, it's true. It's nice to think of, you know, these guises that are 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.
- [06:15]
Leila Slimani
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, how people act, the way they wear their bag and things like very like jewelry and things like this. So I love also that how you observe. And then, you know, 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 Parisian woman. I was like, I will never be like them. They are so beautiful and they look so effortless. And I come from a country, Morocco, where 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 caftan 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 fashionable and stupid. And I remember when I arrived, I went to a vintage 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. 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 liked that, actually, I liked being looked at by people, being visible.
- [08:15]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
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 Goncourt. You were 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.
- [08:48]
Leila Slimani
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 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, it can make you vain. 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 represents 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 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.
- [10:42]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, 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 a teenager 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?
- [11:16]
Leila Slimani
You know, I remember when I read for the first time Dostoevsky's book. Humiliated and Offended, Humiliation, Insulted and Injured.
- [11:25]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, yeah.
- [11:26]
Leila Slimani
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 secret of happiness is just being on a couch reading Tolstoy. Because Tolstoy is a writer of details. When you read the book, it seems very easy. And he talks about certain details. I remember in Anna Karenine, the ears of Karenine, or the dresses of Anna, or some dust, or really very tiny things of life. But that really touched you or touched me at that time. And 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 a reincarnation of probably the daughter of the Tsar or something. And So I told her, I want to dress like a Russian. And she bought me 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 20th 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, working on the Perspective Nevsky. And I went to the apartment of Dostoyevsky. 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.
- [13:54]
Nicole Phelps Introduction
God.
- [13:55]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
So you went when you were 20? Yeah, that's such a.
- [13:59]
Leila Slimani
Just my mother and I 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 Jasianapoli and to the house of Tolst. We visited the apartment of Anarch Matova. It was beautiful. It was probably one of the most beautiful trip in my life.
- [14:35]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
How amazing. That's such a good idea to go there. It never crossed my mind. I was reading that you still think about Anna Karenina whenever you take a train. And I remember when I first. I mean, I also was obsessed with that book. It felt like, you know, her. You know, her kind of emotional turmoil. And when I then started to learn about codependency, 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?
- [15:27]
Leila Slimani
For a cause, yes, for a man. I'm not sure. I think it's difficult to. It's difficult for me now 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 suspect 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, 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 the mail, I don't care about the house. 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.
- [17:17]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, it's interesting, the idea of showing affection and not receiving it, being what my shrink calls a distance regulator. I love that term when I'm fault finding. He said. He says, you know, could this be a distance regulator? 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 the hardest and loneliest 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.
- [18:25]
Leila Slimani
Yeah, I was reading the other day an interview of Gnosgaard, the Norwegian author. 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 address. 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 it was so difficult to explain to her that she was so less important than the manuscript. And ye, 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 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 has to be more than books, but maybe not. I don't know if there is more than this.
- [19:55]
Nicole Phelps Introduction
Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global fashion news and Features director at Vogue and co host of the Run through podcast. 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 Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott and Simone Bellotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of editorial content at Vogue US and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the Run through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube ch.
- [20:33]
YourRichBFF (Podcast Host)
The average American spends $1,700 a year on clothes, and a lot of us are spending way more than that. But this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm breaking down exactly how to stop overpaying for your wardrobe without sacrificing your style. Because between the tracking pixels following you around the Internet, the FOMO drops and the influencer hauls, someone is always trying to get your money. I'm sharing my best kept secrets for scoring designer pieces for less. Why second hand shopping is having its biggest moment ever and the one rule I use before buying anything new. Plus I'm answering questions including how to dress well when you have $0 to spend, how to upgrade your wardrobe for as little as possible, and what signs actually give away that someone is truly wealthy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF you grew up
- [21:21]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
in a liberal cosmopolitan home in Rabat, Morocco, and what was the clothes code at home?
- [21:29]
Leila Slimani
My mother was very, very elegant. Very, very she was a very shy woman, reserved woman. She didn't talk a lot. She was much more a listener. She was a doctor, a very good one. And I remember when people would talk to me about my mother, one of the first things they would say was how elegant she was. She was working at the hospital, but she would every day take a lot of time to choose her outfit. And she was also the one choosing the outfit of my father because my father was incapable of doing it. And she was choosing the outfit for my sisters and I also. And she had a very good taste. She was very. She is very tall, very skinny, and she has a style a little bit, I would say, Catherine Hepburn, Diane Keaton. She would always wear androgynous things, but for parties, she was quite sexy also. She could be very sexy. And I admired this very much. And I loved also looking at pictures of my parents, pictures of the 60s, because my father was a hippie with very big hair, frizzy hair, and my mother also, and she kept all her clothes from that time. So when we were young, with my sister, we would spend a lot of time in her wardrobe and dressing with her old clothes. And we said in French, joue est aux dame, pretending to be ladies. And we would be a doctor, we would be a banker like my father. And so many stories we were writing little plays, little novels. And I loved that also, that she kept so many things and that we could discover her past through her clothes. So, yeah, she was very elegant. And my aunt also, who was living with us very often, she was a very beautiful woman, very free. She was divorced, which was scandalous at the time. In Morocco, she was living alone, and she ran a store in the center of Rabat. A store, a boutique of clothes and jewelry. And I loved her very much. I was very close to her. She was smoking all the time and smoking in the street, which was very shocking also. And she would wear a lot of makeup, and I would go on Saturdays or Wednesday when I didn't have school. I would spend time with her in the boutique, and she used to dress me up and put makeup on me. I was maybe 8 years old, and she would put me in the. In the vitrine, you know, behind the glass, because she said, oh, customer will get very interested, and they will come to buy things if they see a little girl. And. And when I think about it, of course now I'm like, maybe it was not a good idea to do this to a little girl. But I loved it. I was an object, you know, I was a doll. And people were looking at me, and I was just doing things like that. And I remember at the beginning, people thought that it was. I was not real, that I was a doll.
- [24:42]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah.
- [24:42]
Leila Slimani
And then children would say, mom, mom, look, there's a little girl in the store. So the store became very famous because of that. And the truth is, sometimes I'd like to be an object, and I'm very feminist. But I think that being a feminist is also having the freedom of sometimes wanting to be an object and wanting just to be seen or to be taken. It's very difficult. I don't really like this definition of empowerment where you have all the time to be a subject. I think that sometimes you also have the right to be an object.
- [25:22]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Well, I think feminism is about freedom. So you choose what mood you're in for whatever is appealing. And that seems to me what feminism means to me. Cause you described your father commenting on how you all dressed, including your mother. And he admired Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn and. And was it an appreciative commentary or did it keep you slightly anxious?
- [25:55]
Leila Slimani
It depended because, you know, in Morocco you have to be very self conscious about what you wear. It's not like in Europe. In the morning, my father will look at me and he would say, no, the skirt is not working. You have to change your clothes because you can't go in the street wearing that. So we had to be, you know, I would never wear something too sexy or too provocative. It's very different from, from Europe. But at the same time, in the 90s, for the first time, I was maybe 15 years old, we saw women wearing veil, but Iranian veil and wearing like the big gray and brown coat. And it's absolutely not traditional in Morocco. It's really something that was imported from Iran, from Saudi Arabia. And my father was very shocked by that. He hated that. How the conservative wanted to, to change Moroccan women. Morocco is about color. Women wear a lot of colors, which is absolutely beautiful. And in the 90s and the rise of conservatism, it was much more gray and brown and ugly. Actually, it's not beautiful. And so my father was, yeah, between those two things, not wanting us to be provocative. And he had this very old fashioned vision of elegance because as you said, he loved cinema, golden age cinema. My father was raised in an apartment above a cinema in Fez, really. And in the bathroom he could watch movies. And so he was very, very young, a very young Moroccan guy and looking, spending all his night with his brothers, looking at Lorraine Bacall or Lana Turner. And so for him that was the elegance. But of course, when I was watching this movie with him, I was like, but those women, daddy, they belong to another world. It's impossible to be like them. You know, when you are a Moroccan girl in the 90s, in Morocco, you think that you're ugly because you never see a movie with you with someone who looks like you. There's never a magazine with someone who looks like you. So I thought, wow, those women, but who are they? How is it possible to live like this, to be Marilyn Monroe or Lauren Bacall or Rita Ayworth. It was extraordinary. I admired them very much. But at the same time it made me very melancholique. Because it was unreachable. And I think my father was. Even at a certain age, he was still the little boy in his bathroom looking at those girls. He had a mirror. Extraordinary admiration for them.
- [28:50]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
But I didn't know that in the 90s, the kind of grey jalaba and the veil and everything came back. Because when I was there in the 60s, a lot of women wore those gray. Those gray caftans and a black veil. And I ironically wished my mother would wear that because she was a hippie. And I mean, obviously she was European. And I thought it would be great if she. She did consider it. Cause she was interested in converting. And anyway, she didn't. But you said your father was mysterious and wouldn't answer any of your ordinary questions about himself. And that he would only communicate through books, which he surrounded himself. Literally piles of books. And I wondered if you approach men in a more cryptic way. Because of never being able to have a straightforward conversation with your father. Or it being much more difficult.
- [29:59]
Leila Slimani
I liked the fact that he was mysterious. And I hope that my children would think that of me.
- [30:07]
Nicole Phelps Introduction
Also.
- [30:08]
Leila Slimani
I liked the fact that he was unreadable. And because it gave me the opportunity to invent him through fiction. And try to know him in another way. And, you know, I don't really know. Was my father like a middleman, a big liar? Was he just very melancholy? Depressed maybe? I don't really have the answer. He makes me think of Gatsby because he was a man without a past. Which is really, really weird in a country like Morocco. In Morocco, you always define yourself first by belonging to a clan. When you meet someone, usually the first question this person is going to ask you is what's the name of your father? Or what's the name of your mother? Who is your family? And my father, he had a family, but he would never talk about his family. And he had no relationship with them. And he was complet. He reinvented himself. And it was very subversive, I think, this gesture. And he was very generous also towards us. Because he said to us, okay, now you will go to France and don't look back. I don't want you to be sad. I don't want you to think about us. I don't want you to feel guilty. I want you to be free. And I will not tell you who you are. I will not tell you as a woman or as a Moroccan, you have to do this or that, go and invent yourself, find who you are day by day. And at that time, I thought it was very violent, because when you're young, that's not what you want. When you're young, you want to belong, and you want to have an identity, and you want to have, like, boundaries and to understand in which side you are. But. But now that I have the age that I have, I understand what he meant, and I understand that it was a great gesture of love to be able to prefer the freedom of your children than to have them with you. And he prepared all his life to let us go away. And my father couldn't travel. He didn't have a passport, so he knew it would be impossible for him to visit us, to meet, to come to our wedding or to meet our children unless we would come to Morocco. So I think it was heartbreaking for him and humiliating also, to say to your children, you have to live your country, my country, to be happier. But that's what he did. He preferred our freedom to our roots.
- [32:59]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
It's really kind of drastic, isn't it? I. I mean, did you find that having that freedom or being told to go, you know, and that you could be free was quite daunting, really, and quite unsettling, because also, as a young person, we need things to push back against. That's how we establish what freedom means to oneself and, you know, what is personal freedom?
- [33:35]
Leila Slimani
Absolutely.
- [33:35]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah.
- [33:36]
Leila Slimani
And when I arrived in France, I was so young, and it was wonderful because I could do anything. I was in this big, beautiful city all by myself. I'm 17 years old, and, you know, it was Paris, people kissing in the streets, which was so weird for me. And I mean, French kissing, not just kissing. And, you know, in Morocco, people don't show their feelings or their sexuality. People mask a lot those kind of things. And the idea of being in a city of visibility, where you don't feel ashamed all the time, there is not this concept of juma that we have in Moroccan culture. So I had to adapt. But it was very difficult also, because being free is difficult, and it comes with a lot of loneliness and a lot of failures. And sometimes you get manipulated by people. And sometimes, you know, some people, they can smell that you're alone and that you're free and that you don't know where are the boundaries. So they will try to instrumentalize this freedom to make you do things you don't want to do. But I have no Regret. I think that freedom comes with that also, and that you have to learn, you have to fail and fail again and fail better all the time.
- [35:14]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
I know it's an amazing gift. It's a huge burden, but at least it's a responsibility to figure out that gifts, you know, if you can do it, it makes you strong. And.
- [35:27]
Leila Slimani
Yeah. And, you know, I have a lot of young writers coming to me and saying, you know, I'm afraid. I want to write, and I want to write about my life and about my parents, and I know it's going to be difficult. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to lie to you. It's going to be difficult. And being free, being a free writer and being a free woman, I hate the idea of going in front of an audience and say, oh, you know, I'm a free woman, and. And it's so wonderful. And look at me. No, it's difficult. It's very difficult. And you have to make also a lot of sacrifice, but it's worth it. And that's what I say to those women. It's difficult. Some people are not going to like you. Some people in your family are not going to understand you. You're going to be judged and probably very lonely also, sometimes. But it's worth it. So worth it,
- [36:20]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
because your father was falsely implicated in a financial scandal which devastated him and your whole family, and he was exonerated after his death. But you said you couldn't have written your first book if he'd been alive. And it's a sort of strange way to be freed from opinion. And I felt that my father's parting gift to me when he died was to free me from his opinion, which mattered so much to me. Did you find that?
- [36:55]
Leila Slimani
Absolutely. And I think it's a paradox, but when people you love very, very, very much die, there's, of course, a lot of pain, but there's also a certain relief, as if you were free from all this pressure that comes from this love and from the judgment or the opinion you think this person has on you. And my father was so important in my life, not only as my father, but also as the incarnation of my Moroccan identity of certain tradition. And I think I would not have been able to be the writer I am if he was still alive. And also the fact that he suffered so much and the fact that he endured so much injustice made me very, very angry, and I felt that he was dead, but he was still here. And my real conversation with my father began after his death. And I don't think that death is the end of a relationship. It's just shifting. It's different. But I talk to him and I think I know him, and I love him more now than before. And there are a lot of things that I understand now that I didn't understand before. And, you know, it's strange, but I always feel that he's protecting me, that he's here. If I have a problem or someone want to harm me, I always feel that he's here. And I want to. I want revenge. I want revenge, and I want to clear his name. And my father wanted to be an artist. He wanted to be a writer. And he wanted so many things. And he was the kind of person who lived with a lot of regrets, you know, the kind of person who always think of all the roads he could have taken and did not take. My mother is completely different. My mother is okay. I take one road, I make one choice, and I never think again about the one I didn't. So my father was, of course, unhappy, because you're always unhappy when you're not able to renounce. And so I think I wanted also to be a writer for him, and I wanted him also to be a character. He's a character in my books. And so now he will never die. He's immortal, and he's more intense and bigger than in real life. And that's my gift to him because I think that's what he had wanted all his life. He wanted to be the character of a novel.
- [39:48]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah. God, that's such a wonderful thing to be able to do. My shrink says phobias are what we create to attach our fears to. And I wondered if you have any phobias.
- [40:02]
Leila Slimani
I have so many. You know, I'm very. When I was young, I was afraid of everything. I don't know why, but I was always afraid of being attacked. I was afraid. I think it's because of my education. My mother was very, very protective and afraid of. Of everything. And as a young girl, you know, we were raised with the idea of danger. My mother would say, you know, you could get. You could be raped. You can get pregnant. Even being in love was dangerous because for my mother, if you are in love, you're not going to focus on your. On your study and you're going to fail. So everything was dangerous. And I remember that's ridiculous. But when I had to come to Paris, the months before, I was in Morocco, and I was thinking, oh, my God, I will live in this big city that I don't know, I will have to take the subway. How can I do to prevent attacks or people who are going to assault me? And I was thinking, I'm going to disguise as a nun because no one could now, really, I was so stupid. I was 16 or 17 years old and I was thinking, okay, I will. I will find an outfit as a nun because then I will look so innocent that no one would like to do something to me. And for many, many years, you know, I was so afraid of getting out at night. And you know something that I thought the other day, sometimes I would go with a guy just because I was too afraid to go at home because I couldn't afford a taxi, a cab. And so I would accept to spend the night with someone I didn't really like. And that's how I thought, okay. That's why my mother told me also that financial independence is so important because just being able to pay for a cab is because we are afraid. We are afraid in the streets alone. So I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid of being attacked. I'm afraid of. Of rats very much. And I'm afraid of stairs. I have a big phobia of stairs. I have this portion where I always think that I'm going to fail and that I'm going to break all my teeth. I have this feeling all the time. So I hate stairs. I always try to take elevators because I'm really afraid of stairs.
- [42:30]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Any idea why stairs? It's quite a niche phobia.
- [42:35]
Leila Slimani
I don't know. I'm afraid of fooling, probably. And you know, my father had a big falling in his life and I always had the. Yeah, that. Not the intuition, but I always thought that I was going to fool myself. Yeah, that. Because now I had this success and I climbed the stair that of course I'm going to fall, that I'm going to be. Be punished. So that's probably why I'm so afraid of. Of stairs. But it's really something horrible because I have to grab, you know, the. The romp. I don't know how to say in English, because I always feel that I'm going to.
- [43:14]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
To fail. Yeah, There's a lot of little stairs in Paris as well.
- [43:22]
Leila Slimani
Very much. And that's why I was living in Montmartre. So can you imagine?
- [43:26]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
This was horrible because you talked about the freedom and the loneliness in Paris. And I always find Paris a very lonely place. And I wondered, do you have any codes or rituals that you've invented for yourself to kind of place Yourself?
- [43:43]
Leila Slimani
Yeah, it's a very lonely place. But that's also the charm of Paris. What I love with Paris, it's a city that I can. You know, sometimes I will put makeup and wear some clothes, not for people, but for Paris. Paris is such a beautiful stage. I'm like, I'm going to get beautiful for you, for you, for Paris. And I love that. And I do that very often when I'm in Paris. And I will take some time in the morning, and I just like to walk on the quay and then St. Germain des Pres and walk like this. And it's one of the rarest city in the world where you feel it's not useless or stupid or absurd just to get dressed for the city and people look at you. In Paris, you know, I live in Lisbon now, and in Lisbon, people don't stare at each other. People are very discreet, and it's something that would not be very polite. But in Paris, even in the subway, people look at you from the head to the toes, like, what do you wear? Okay. And now I understand by how. By how you're dressed, who you are, or what kind of message you're trying to say. So I love that very much in Paris, that you can be very lonely, but at the same time, you're on stage and this stage is welcoming you, and you have sort of silent relationship with passersby. And it's really beautiful. Once you understand it and once you master it, it's really beautiful. You can spend hours on. Yeah. In a park in Luxembourg or on a terrace, just looking at people. And looking at people looking at you.
- [45:33]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah. Yeah. I like the way it's so kind of transactional, the exchange of looks. And I remember once going into Chavez to see if I could.
- [45:45]
Leila Slimani
Oh, I love Chauvet.
- [45:46]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
I know. To see if I could afford to buy, like, some tiny thing. And I saw the way they looked at me, like, forget it. Don't waste your time with her. And then suddenly, the woman noticed my ring. So I've got this fantastic diamond ring. And she completely changed. Everything changed. It was. And I realized the agency of such. I mean, obviously, it's fantastic to have a ring like this, but I don't notice it. And I don't know, in England, people are. They don't see the opportunity for an exchange a lot of the time. And I really enjoyed that. It made me laugh.
- [46:32]
Leila Slimani
But that's also why you can feel very lonely in Paris, because when you don't understand, when you're not fashionable, you feel. And that's something that I have a lot of empathy sometimes for tourists or, you know, because they try to dress as Parisian. You can see that at the Sacre Coeur, they dress very well. And it's so beautiful and so touching to see. To see that. And obviously now with certain TV shows and Emily in Paris and all this, there's a big trend of wearing a beret and all this. But it's very touching, I think. I think it's beautiful to see that. It has to do with what I said before, the desire to belong and the desire to be in. But in Paris, it's very, very difficult to be in. And it takes years and years and years for people to welcome you. It's very difficult. And it's quite a cruel city, I think. It's not a myth, but it's quite a cruel city. When it comes to appearance and to fashion, people can be very judgmental. And there is also a lot of irony. They love to make fun of each other, which is nice, because I love the French sense of humor. I love it. But sometimes it's also very, very posh and very cruel.
- [48:02]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Because you met your future husband in a bar and he came up to you and asked for your number. And you said, said, I'm not giving it to you, but I'll meet you three days from now at 8 o' clock in front of the St. Germain church. And was that a test? And do you always need a test in order to trust, you know?
- [48:24]
Leila Slimani
It was not a test for him, it was a test for me. Yeah, because if he had my number, I just had to answer text and this and that. And I can lie and say I'm not available. But if we have this rendezvous, I have to figure it out with myself. Do I really want to go there or I don't. And if I don't, I will never, probably never meet him again. So I'm the one who have to really think about it. That's not to test him, because I was sure he would come, but it was to test me. And honestly, I hesitate for hours and then. And he was very funny. And he looks exactly like Yves Saint Laurent. He's the Saussy of Yves Saint Laurent. And it's really, really. It's amazing. So amazing that one day we were in a restaurant and Pierre Berger came to us and he said, I can't have dinner here because you look too much like Yves. So I was fascinated by his looks. He was very elegant and he has long hair and the same glasses as Yves Saint Laurent, he was really different from. And very long hands, quite feminine also. And he was very, very chic. So I wanted to meet this man who didn't have the code of the, you know, the viriliste or masculine code. I liked that and the fact that he had a great sense of humor. So I arrived at the church at maybe 7:30 or 7:40, and he arrived at 8. And I said, you're late. Never be late again. And he said, no, you said eight. I said, you, but you should have been waiting for me. And I was really, really rude to him that night. But he kept laughing, and I was like, okay. I think he's maybe the one who can handle someone like you.
- [50:19]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, that's so good. He wasn't fazed by your regulation?
- [50:25]
MIDI Health Advertiser
No.
- [50:25]
Leila Slimani
And, you know, my father died just a few months before, and his mother died also, and we spent the whole night making jokes about cancer and. And we were, you know, testing how far will she go, how far will he go in terms of black humor? And I love that he was able to laugh about very sad things. And that's something that I like with people that are very close to me, that I don't like, people who are like, deadly serious or. I think that. And that's the title of my book, I think you have to take the fire. Of course, people die and house burn and things disappear, and your childhood is far away and you will never go back. But you take the fire and you move forward and you try to laugh during this journey and to make fun of yourself and to make fun of the situation. I'm not the kind of person who try to dwell on disaster or tragedy. Because. Because probably writing also helped me for that. Because writing is about irony, about taking a certain distance with reality.
- [51:43]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Because in your book, I'll take the father, the father, Mehdi, he cuts up all his ties in a frenzy of despair and fury. And it was such a striking image of the ties. And I wondered if ties had any particular association for you.
- [52:00]
Leila Slimani
Yes, because that's really an accessory that I hate. I hate ties for men, for women, I don't care. I think it's beautiful. But for men, I hate that. And you know, during colonization in French tribunal, men were forced broken. Men were forced to wear a tie. And when they would arrive, for instance, their son was arrested because he was an activist. There was always a man in the streets buying ties. And it was a gesture of humiliation, also forcing men to put a tie under jellaba. Because you have to act serious and you have to Act Western. And I always had this vision also of the, how do you say in English, the bandu, you know, this idea of strangulation. And my father every day would put this tie. And for me it was a sign of domination, being in the system, accepting something. And when you think about it, the accessory is quite absurd. Why do you do this and put this thing here on your shirt? So when he lost his job, he spent like 10 years at home doing nothing except reading and drinking. And I had this idea it didn't happen in real life, but I was thinking, okay, if you imagine him one day just having to dress and looking at all these ties and understanding that he will never wear them again and looking at this thing, you know, like hanging and so absurd. And that's how I had this idea. But it's really an accessory that I don't like. And I'm so happy that my husband
- [53:54]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
is not wearing ties because Yves Saint Laurent wore some beautiful ties, but then he had these wonderful open shirts. So maybe he follows that look more because you have a composure and a self contained demeanor. And is there a, an overt place, your dress coat in your dress code that you like to show another aspect of yourself?
- [54:21]
Leila Slimani
You know, my wardrobe is not very coherent when I think about it. And that's. And I'm not happy about it. I would like it to be very coherent. And I dream of, like to have beautiful trousers and very chic shirts. But it's not like this. I have multiple Personas and multiple ways of dressing. I love colors also. And I used to wear a lot of very lively colors, a lot of pink and red, especially when I arrived in Europe because everyone was wearing gray and black. And I thought that the winter was so sad that I loved wearing colors because it reminded me probably of Morocco. But yeah, I love, you know, I love knits very much. I have a lot of knits of Denou everywhere, which is, I think now at my age, maybe becoming a little bit ridiculous. And so I'm going to keep them for my daughter. And yeah, now I'm trying to change a lot of things in my wardrobe, but there are a lot of clothes that I feel I can't wear anymore. And I'm very excited at the idea of seeing my daughter wear them and maybe my granddaughter wear them because it was the same with my mother. I still have some jeans that my mother would wear in the 70s and I have an afghan coat that she bought when she was a student. And I love that also, you know, the, the legacy, the transmission And I think it's very important to still have this desire to buy clothes and to look beautiful. You know, my grandmother, when she was 90 years old, I remember I was with her, and she was a very old woman. She was living in a farm, so, I mean, she didn't have to be very fancy, but she loved to buy clothes. And my grandfather was dead, my grandfather, who used to make fun of her because he thought she was too frivolous. And at the age of 90, I remember that she fell in love with a coat, a very beautiful cashmere coat with floral lining. And she bought it and she showed it to me, and it was still wrapped in the tissue paper. And she was so happy, really, like a young girl. And I remember thinking, oh, if she can feel that, it means that she still has this desire to live. She still has this zest for life. If at the age of 90, she's so excited by buying a coat.
- [57:07]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Because I was wondering, because you are very elegant. I mean, you have a great elegance about you. And are there any kind of slightly secret, fetishy places where your taste goes more into a less chic? Like, I always find I can go there with my shoes. I can wear, like, spiky heels with patent leather. But I'd never, like, dress sexy because I couldn't handle it.
- [57:39]
Leila Slimani
No sexy. Me neither. Never. I, you know, I can sometimes be a little bit eccentric. For instance, I have an obsession for Santiago shoes, which is weird. And I love country music. I don't know why. And I love all the cowboy outfits. I don't know where it comes from. So I have pairs of Santiago, but like Sartore Santiago, that I like very much. I love shoes. My favorite shoes are church shoes.
- [58:19]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Oh, yeah.
- [58:19]
Leila Slimani
Each time I publish a book, I would buy a pair of church. So I have nine pair of church I love very, very much. And that's one of my favorite thing. And I love clothes that last for a long time that you can wear for a very long time. I love also. I don't know how to say in English, I say maybe bombers.
- [58:40]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Oh, yeah. Bomber jackets.
- [58:41]
Leila Slimani
Yeah. I love that very much because I live in Portugal, and in Portugal, like in Morocco, the weather is. It's always like 20 degrees, so I don't need to wear a very hot coat. And so I love this kind of outfit. But as I told you, I travel a lot, and I'm like a turtle, you know, with my house on my back. So I try also to buy clothes that I could wear anywhere for many different weather, different circumstance, and that's something that I really appreciate with clothes, when you can mix, you know, I love trousers that you can wear with a shirt, but also with something a little more sexy and with a T shirt. So that's what I like with clothes.
- [59:35]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Because you've talked about writing for revenge and revenge against the misjustice enacted on your family and the way people withdrew. Also you talked about when you quit your job to write your first book and your boss kept insisting you wanted to spend time with your baby. And revenge is a very male dominated territory and people don't want women to want revenge. And how do you handle using that word?
- [60:02]
Leila Slimani
You know, of course they don't want because the whole society and the whole world for many, many years, for thousands of years was built on the idea that women will forgive. Can you imagine how the world would have been if we didn't forgive? There was always this expectation that we will forgive. And all the religions are based on this also. You will forgive and you will accept, and you will accept that they will beat you on the other cheek.
- [60:35]
Nicole Phelps Introduction
And.
- [60:36]
Leila Slimani
And now I'm adapting a text by Tolstoy, the last novel of Tolstoy, called Resurrection. And it's the story of a woman who doesn't want to forgive. And reading that, that was really liberating because I understood also that the patriarchy was built on that, on this idea that we are that women are made and female are made to forgive, that we are so compassion. And the other day I said on a TV show that I wanted to revenge and that I thought it was important for women to not forgive all the time. And I had a lot of backlash. People hated me for that. And they said, oh, we are not like this. It's not a good image that you're giving of Morocco and that you're giving of women. Women in our culture are forgiving and they are sweet and they are docile. And I'm like, but I don't want to be swee and docile and I don't want to forgive my tormentors. And I want revenge or I want justice if it's not revenge. And I think that what they don't understand is they think revenge in a very vulgar and stupid way, that I'm just trying to kill my tormentor or being violent. No, it's not that I want revenge towards them, but I want to find my way of expressing the fact that I am angry and that I don't accept this situation. For me, revenge was writing, but revenge can be also dressing, you know, like the Revenge dress. You're very angry against someone and you want to arrive in a party and you're wearing this beautiful dress out of revenge. And I think this gesture is beautiful. I would never judge that. I think it's too easy to. Too easy and too manipulative to always expect from women. And not only from women, but I mean, from the people in general and from lower social class. But they will forgive and they will accept, and they are religious and all this. It's very dangerous. And we should be wary of the use. The political use of forgiveness.
- [62:59]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because you're so clear about the excitement of danger and being afraid. And you say there's a monster in all of. And that you love monsters. And I wonder, do you have a favorite monster?
- [63:15]
Leila Slimani
Do I have a favorite monster? You know, I think my favorite monsters are artists, some artists who are a monster. I think that Truman Capote was a monster. Andy Warhol was probably a monster. Flannery o', Connor, in her way, was also a monster. A monster because so different and wanting also to show your difference, not being ashamed of being different. I think that's what makes you a monster. But I don't like when people talk of monsters like animals, you know, saying, he's a monster, he's a pig, he's a dog. Because monster are human and monsters are just like us. And I think that's why it's very important to tell the story of monsters. There was a very famous serial killer in France in the 90s called Guy Georges. And for the first time, his lawyer was a woman. It was the first time in France that a female lawyer defended a serial killer. And she was really, really criticized by the press and by a lot of people saying, how dare you defend a man who killed women and raped women? And he's a monster. And she said this very beautiful thing. She said, but even monsters has a story, and he has the right to tell his stories. And that's something that I defend. And that's, you know, the other side of what I was saying about revenge. I think that literature can be a tool for revenge, but it's mostly a tool that can do justice to people. In real life, it's very difficult to understand each other. Life is made of so many misunderstandings. But through books, as a reader and as a writer, you can go inside the head of someone, inside his soul, and you can be very, very close to all his contradiction. And maybe you can understand something. You can understand contradiction, and you can feel this kind of empathy and of tenderness that is very difficult to feel in real life because we were so busy and everything so fast. But you can do justice to people that are maybe invisible or violent or things like that. It's more complicated in books. So books are a lot for me about. Yeah. Repairing injustice.
- [65:54]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Yeah. Yeah. Justice seems to be the key. And you're a writer and an intellectual. And Zadie Smith said it's weird how people think it's antithetical, that you can be clever and beautiful. And I read that a male literary editor advised you not to attend a Chanel fashion show. One of the great joys of life is being interested in everything, including clothes, which are a great shield and also a sword. And why do you think he had a problem with that?
- [66:29]
Leila Slimani
Because, you know, there is this idea that you shouldn't, as an intellectual, look frivolous and that you should not need to wear makeup or beautiful clothes because you're interested in more important thing. But I absolutely do not agree with that. First, because I think it's very mezot. There's this idea, okay, if you accept, to sacrifice all those feminine attributes and to look more like us, like men, so maybe you will be one of us. But the truth is, it's not true. You know, that even if you're renounced to all this, they will not welcome you and they will not consider you as their. As equal. So it's not worth it. And also, you know, it's. I love fashion very much, and I'm very much interested in it. And a few weeks ago, I was reading the biography of Christian Dior, because, as you said, I collaborate a lot with Dior that I love very much. And I thought that there was so many things in common between the work of a fashion designer and of a writer. Really, the necessity of being so focused on little details, you know, on a pocket, on a drape. Like a writer is obsessed by a coma, by a sentence. And you spend so much time alone thinking about this. The fact also, you know, that fashion designer, when in winter, they have to think about summer, and they have to think about what women in six months will want to wear. So, like writers, they have to step outside of themselves and they have to travel in time. And I think there are so many things in common, this idea of obsession. Christian d', Orsay, I'm obsessed by dress. All my life is dresses, dresses, dresses. And I could say the same. All my life is books, books, books, and all my life is women. I write about women all the time. So as I'm very wary about people Telling you that you should forgive. I'm very wary about people who judge frivolity. I think it's very important to be frivolous, that frivolity is also a way to resist, to resist tragedy and drama and all the sad things that happen in life. It's a tool for dignity to be also frivolous. And my mother, even when my father was in prison and when she was suffering so much and everyone excluded her from Moroccan society, she was always beautiful and she would always take care of herself. I never saw my mother in her pajama or, you know, not wearing makeup or not going to the hairdresser. And I admired that very much and never thought she's frivolous. I thought, oh my God, how proud she is and how dignified she is. So no, I really don't think that intellectual women should listen to that kind of crap. And actually I don't care about people judging me for liking to wear Dior, things like this.
- [69:55]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Also, fashion isn't frivolous. It's a very serious thing. It's a tool as much as anything else is. So it's such a kind of, it's such a short sighted approach. It's ludicrous. Yeah.
- [70:09]
Leila Slimani
And it's about legacy also, and transmission and heritage. And that's also what I like. You know, it's the whole story of women, the story of our body, the story of, you know, when I was reading the biography, when he talks about the New look, for instance, just after the war where women suffered so much, this idea of reinventing femininity and giving women again a circle sense of beauty, of frivolity. And, you know, women wearing those very beautiful dresses from the New look were attacked in the street because people would say, it's indecent and you should not wear this. The war just finished. And it makes me think, you know, actually of conservative and Islamists looking at you and saying, you should not wear this, it's indecent. So I had, I hate that. And for me, me also wearing what I want to wear and being very self conscious about style is also a way to resist those conservative who were very, very hard on me and always judging me. It's a way to protect me. You know, when I go to a TV show with intellectuals or when I'm doing my diplomatic work honestly, when I feel confident about my look, it helps me very much because very often I'm surrounded by men. There's always like 70, 80% of men. And I know that it counts. I know that the way I Look will influence how they will listen to me and will influence how they will decide where I sit during the meeting. So it's also tool and something that empowers me because I know that they will be impressed if I know how I look and if I'm confident.
- [72:15]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
And if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?
- [72:21]
Leila Slimani
No, no. Actually, I'm like, oh, you made a mistake. It's not that nice. But on the contrary, I think that it provokes a lot of empathy. You know, I don't really. I don't feel this kind of tenderness with people who are too well dressed. Actually, that's the opposite. I can feel a certain. I don't know, I don't really like now, people who are very, very, very fashionable when you can really see that, okay, this shirt and these jeans and the shoes and the bag, everything was chosen. And it's too much. It's too beautiful. I like the food. D. Yeah, I think it's very important. Even in. In a house. I think that a beautiful house is a house where there are some things that are kitsch or there are. You need a photo. Because when it's too beautiful doesn't work. So I like when someone is dressed nice and there's like a jewelry that looks weird or something like that. I feel that it's alive, that it comes from somewhere. And today I have to be honest, I'm not on social media, but when I see magazines or sometimes I feel that some actress or some. It's too beautiful, it's too perfect. And I like imperfections. I think that's what makes it very special.
- [73:49]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
And the title of your final book in the trilogy, country of Others, is called. Called I'll Take the Fire. And it's a quote from Jean Copter about what you'd take if the house is burning down and it's pretty hardcore. And would you still take the fire? Is that the key to you?
- [74:07]
Leila Slimani
Of course. Of course I would take the fire. I love this because it's so much panache and. Yeah, because what else could I do? Look at the fire burning my house, cry and take the ashes and put them on my head. No, that's not the point. But fire is something. Fire can heat you and fire can protect you. So fire is something. It's promethean. It's a power. So, yes, it destroys, but it also protects. It's also warm. It also. So things are. There's always two way of looking at things. So rather take the fire. And move forward. And I think that's. Yeah, as I said, for me, one of the secret of happiness is to be able to move forward, not to look back all the time. Because I saw that. I saw that with my father and with a lot of people, with a lot of immigrants, you know, who always say, oh, we'll go back and always listen to radio program from their country and watch. And at the end, it's like they didn't live. So. So no, I don't. I want to take the fire and move.
- [75:27]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Well, it's an amazing book. I loved reading it. It's completely compelling. And it's been totally wonderful to talk to you and for you to be on Fashion Neurosis. Thank you so much, Leila Slimani.
- [75:45]
Leila Slimani
Thank you, Villa
- [75:48]
Interviewer (Nicole Phelps)
Sam.