“I have never smoothed my hair”: Leïla Slimani, born in Morocco, is explained on her disturbing style but that she has always assumed

Leïla Slimani is an essential figure in contemporary French -speaking literature. Born in 1981 in Rabat, in Morocco, she grew up in a cultivated family, her mother being a doctor, and her former banker and senior official. After studying in Paris at Sciences Po, then at ESCP, she headed for a time towards journalism before devoting herself to writing. His first novel, In the Garden of the Ogre (2014), daring with the subject of female sexual addiction, and announces a frontal and introspective style. But it’s with Sweet song (2016) that she makes herself known to the general public. This novel icking on a nanny who kills the children of whom she has custody earned her the prestigious Goncourt prize. The book has become an international bestseller, translated into dozens of languages. Leïla Slimani develops a work that combines psychology, social criticism and exploration of taboos. In The country of othersthe first volume of a trilogy started in 2020, it is inspired by its own family history to brush a portrait of colonial Morocco through a mixed couple. She questions identity, domination but also post-colonial contradictions.

On the occasion of the third and last part, entitled I will take the firefrom this trilogy she gave an interview to our magazine sisters ELLE. She took the opportunity to talk about her and confided in her appearance and the way she was perceived when she arrived in France for her studies. Upon her arrival in preparatory class in Paris, she admitted to having perceived a gap between the clothes of the French students and her family. “I was very impressed by their style : They had hervé hatter bags, beautiful and clean, wore a nice bracelet, often family. I was different. I had brought back from Morocco certain mother’s clothes and I bought vintage stuff. I loved being seen, so I was wearing eccentric things “, She remembered. Then specify: “This strange style was accentuated by my physique: at the time, It was not so common to see a girl in Paris with a Maghreb physiquethick eyebrows, curly hair. It was experienced as a provocation. I never smoothed my hair. I identified with mestical beauties, with a ‘black is beautiful’ “style. To tell the truth, she deviated from her rule during the last Cannes Film Festival since she appeared unrecognizable during the ascent of the steps to The Phoenician Scheme from Wes Anderson. She had chosen a brushing Ultra-lisse, plated, subtle wink to Hollywood icons from the 1930s and their sophitstic hairstyles.

Farida Khelfa as a benchmark

The figure of Farida Khelfa was also of great help at the time. “She was important to me. She appeased me in my relationship with beauty. She is an Arab woman, Maghreb, with a strong physique. He was cutting with the clichés associated with the eastern woman – lascivious, with generous forms. Farida has a dry, trendy physique. She opened up perspectives for me “admitted Leïla Slimani. And speaking of appearance, the writer remembered what she worn on the day of the Goncourt for Sweet song. “I learned that I had goncourt in a fitting room. I was pregnantI had to change my wardrobe, and I had just put on a red dress with which I went to receive my prize “, she simply said.