Elie Saab revisits the Paris of the Middle East
Designer draws inspiration from his hometown Beirut for his haute couture show.
Saab’s showstopper was a wedding gown with the delicacy of butterfly wings, encrusted with tiny sequins and pearls in pale pink, green and silver. PHOTOS: AFP/REUTERS
Tulip prints, light-as-air silk gowns and as many sparkles as stars in a Middle East night sky – Elie Saab’s haute couture show may have taken place in Paris on Wednesday, but his inspiration was clearly his native Beirut, reported AFP.
The Lebanese designer’s elegant outfits have a solid fan-following among the wealthy and the famous, several of whom attended the show in a museum a slipper’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. Among them were American burlesque star Dita Von Teese, French actor Clotilde Courau, and Alain Delon’s daughter Anouchka, seated under a tropical arrangement of greenery, birdsong and Arabic music.
His collection was “a tribute to the city that I love: my Beirut,” Saab said. More accurately, it was a tribute to a Beirut he remembered from his childhood, back when the capital was known as the ‘Paris of the Middle East’ for its beauty, marred in a 1975-1990 civil war and today still on the brink of turmoil because of regional conflicts and tensions.
He shared that, every time he gets to work on his couture wardrobes, a vision of his mother in an evening gown spurs him on. “With every new collection I conceived, the striking image of my mother in this tulip print silk dress reappeared endlessly.” His ensembles were more subdued. Lace, feathers and thousands of tiny sequins were worked in dozens of different ways.
Collection by Karl Lagerfeld
Saab, a favourite of the well-heeled on the red carpet, served up more of his trademark romantic gowns in shades of powder blue, beige and pinks. The showstopper was the wedding gown with the delicacy of butterfly wings, entirely encrusted with tiny sequins and pearls in a palm-frond pattern in pale pink, green and silver.
While Saab drew inspiration from his hometown for the collection, Karl Lagerfeld’s show for Chanel at Paris Fashion Week offered escapism from the ongoing global political tumult. The line majored on bare midriffs, a floral dreamscape and eye-popping shades of electric blue, tangerine and canary yellow, reported Reuters. Life-sized grey paper buds opened to reveal exotic multi-coloured blooms, and clusters of oversized hand-stitched flowers hanging heavily from hems of coats, exploding from shoulders or swinging from full skirts cut below the knee.
Thousands of pale pink sequins adorned a slinky skirt and matching bolero length short-sleeved jacket, their weight slowing the gait of the model. Oversized bouquets of flowers, in eclectic combinations of blue, crimson and pink, or tangerine and red, sprung from the shoulders of dresses in periwinkle silk, or red and orange. More subtle shades of dusty pink, grey and ivory also made their appearance in delicate petals, imparting lady-like chic to long tunics and coats.
“Especially after this dark, horrid beginning of the year, there was something like this needed, I think,” said Chanel’s creative director, noting that his ideas were conceived well before 17 people were killed in violence that began on January 7 at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. It took six months to create the hundreds of flowers used in the collection, the German designer said. “I live in a protected world, so I can keep something like a dream reality,” he conceded.
Lagerfeld noted that his ideas were conceived well before 17 people were killed in violence that began on January 7 at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, but seemed well-timed. It took six months to create the hundreds of flowers used in the collection.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 30th, 2015.