This autumn, the indomitable 50-year-old Farida Khelfa released an insider documentary following former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential campaign, entitled ‘Campagne Intime [Intimate Campaign].’ Airing on national television, it attracting 1.5 million viewers. Talking points? Carla Bruni serving her husband coffee at home while he watched a football match.
Khelfa is a woman of genuine allure with a mega-watt smile and a seductively deep voice. She’s also one of Bruni’s closest friends. They met in the 1990s as regulars at the catwalk shows of Jean-Paul Gaultier and Azzedine Alaïa.
She’s also a trailblazer. Khelfa was the first model of Berber origin to make it big in the Parisian fashion world and went on to work as an actress, before switching to the other side of the lens with her first documentary on Jean-Paul Gaultier. Another documentary, this time on Tunisia, highlighted the dreams and talent of Tunisian youth at the time of the Arab Spring and she’s currently working on a documentary about Christian Louboutin. When she’s not making films, Khelfa is brand ambassador, but also more importantly the muse, for Schiaparelli, the fashion brand that Diego Della Valle revived in 2012 and which is based on the fashion house originally founded by Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco’s greatest rival.
Born to parents of Algerian descent, Khelfa came to Paris from Lyon at the age of sixteen. Throwing herself into 1980s underground nightlife, she became a regular at La Palace, Paris’ answer to Studio 54. There, she met many of the people who would go on to make their mark in Paris’s artistic milieu.
“I really didn’t have the profile of model. I was very voluptuous at a time when models were very thin. I did not have the physique. I was the opposite of all that but even so, the ‘grands couturiers’ asked me to model and so, there you go…” she says, explaining how her unusual and interesting career, as much a mystery to her as to anyone else, began. “I never had a precise plan. There were simply opportunities that arrived in my life and I seized them, that’s all. Nothing premeditated. Nothing calculated. It's all been improvisation.”
Still, Khelfa’s years as a model have served her well for her role as documentary filmmaker. “I know what it is to be before the camera, the doubts we have. Everybody has doubts in front of a camera, no matter if it is for a film or a photograph,” she explains. “You must reassure people all the time. When filming, what is most necessary is to make them forget the camera is there.”
Khelfa may be talking about filming other people but somehow, I get the feeling that her ability to make people comfortable around her, to focus on what’s most important and not get distracted by being observed, might also be the secret to her success as model, muse and image-maker.
WHO Farida Khelfa
FROM Algeria/France
FACT Born in Lyons, to a railway worker father and a stay-at-home mother, Khelfa admits her childhood was decidedly unprivileged.
WHY Whatever hat she decides to wear, whether it’s “muse”, “face”, “ambassador” or even “directrice”, Khelfa has proven to be sparky, original, and very successful. Despite passing a landmark age, Khelfa shows no signs of slowing down.
