The pink of jacaranda trees blooming on the pathway, the powdery grey
of ancient stones, the deep blue sky framing Beirut’s turquoise mosque
domes and the white, whipped water down south at Tyre… Wherever I looked
in Elie Saab’s studios, I could see the colours of his country. 

The designer’s poetic vision recalled stories of the “Cedars of
Lebanon” and the “Paris of the Orient” of Beirut’s Sixties heyday, when
the international beau monde would frolic in the bay, before the city
was reduced to rubble and stone – first by war and then by urban
re-development.

Yet I knew that for Elie Saab, Beirut is where his heart is – and
where his seamstresses are – which is why I had come to the Lebanon for a
richer vision of his work.

Image credit: InDigital (left) and @SuzyMenkesVogue

by Vogue – Suzy Menkes “Beirut is the source of my inspiration and I am proud that I myself
am an image of success and progress for my country – that is what
motivates me,” said Elie Saab, 52, as I watched him work on his Paris
Autumn/Winter 2016 Haute Couture collection and on dresses for private
clients. He has indeed become a symbol of hope, with a large and
successful fashion business that has sprung from his native Middle East
and journeyed to the wider world.

The first thing I noticed was a single bird, flitting across a dress,
with the designer re-positioning the application on the lace bodice. By
the time the show took place in Paris, there were flocks of birds
created in sequins that glittered on the chiffon and silken dresses, and
even on the “kiddie couture” – children’s dress-up clothes, shown for
the first time in mother-and-daughter displays on the Paris runway.

Birds in flight? Elie Saab, deliberately or unconsciously, had hit on
the subject that is defining this new millennium: migration. Not least
in the current influx to the Lebanon from war-torn Syria.

The haute couture collection was devoted to birds, but also to
America – not the uptown area where the first Elie Saab store in the
United States will open in October, but rather 1930s New York, when
immigrants and émigrés put on a brave face and joined a downtown scene
where jazz was played – as it was at the couture show on a piano on
stage. That era in America was defined by the iconic Chrysler building,
whose geometric Art Deco pattern appeared as a design motif in Saab’s
collection.

Image credit: Elie Saab

Not until I had driven by the village of his birth, its small houses
and lush gardens utterly flattened by the war when Elie was just 10
years old, did I realise the significance for the designer of the flying
bird as a symbol of freedom and escape. His Christian family moved to
Beirut’s northern hills and he and his wife of 25 years, Claudine, have
now become citizens of the world with glamorous homes across Europe.

At the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 couture show held last summer, the story
had been “Beirut: Chasing a Dream”, with a nostalgic vision of the
city. That had been the first time I had felt the designer’s emotion
breaking through his dressy clothes. The following show had taken a big
step into India and its culture, so the American Dream might seem a
logical progression. 

Elie Saab Junior, 25, the eldest of the designer’s three sons, took
me to the company headquarters in the part of the city that has been
redeveloped. There he talked strategy: how his father will head up an
Arabic version of the American television show “Project Runway”,
burnishing his star status throughout the Middle East.

Image credit: @SuzyMenkesVogue

Then there is the effort the family company has made to give
something back to the city, by linking the Lebanese American University
with the London College of Fashion Although Elie Saab himself was
self-taught, he has offered internships in his ateliers to promising
Lebanese designers accepted for the LAU/LCF fashion design programme.

“Today, cultures are blending together – there are no more borders.
That is what the world is going to be like – and that is what we want to
express: the two worlds colliding,” Elie Jr. said. “And on top are the
Orient and the Occident, so the Elie Saab world is really a clash of
three.”

We walked into the store, with its colourful, predictably smart
clothes and accessories; and then upstairs to see a line-up of
ready-to-wear bridal dresses. These will soon move to the building next
door, as the Saab influence spreads across the Beirut Central District
that houses international luxury brands from Dolce & Gabbana,
Roberto Cavalli, Fendi and Louis Vuitton to Tod’s. Elie Jr. explained
that this was the part of the city that had been re-built by Solidere,
the reconstruction and development company founded by Prime Minister
Rafic Hariri, who was later assassinated in 2005.

At the Saab headquarters, we went upstairs to the bright, white and
welcoming reception area and then into the first studio, filled with
seamstresses, which this Francophile country calls “petites mains” or
“little hands”. The workers were immersed in decoration – taking a
translucent piece of tulle and scattering it with gilded paillettes or
stitching on decorative flowers and birds.

In one corner sat an elderly woman, noble with experience, stitching
sparkles on a snow-white wedding dress with the skirt spreading like a
shimmering lake across the floor.

“Mostly they like BIG skirts,” said Elie Saab of the brides who are such an important part of his made-to-order business.

Ah those clients! Like any couturier, discretion is de rigeur. But
their bodies, in dummy form, were all around on shelves in each studio.
They come small and thin, shapely, voluptuous, stout – always with a
name at the neckline, from Middle Eastern princesses to European
socialites. I counted 81, but I knew that there were at least twice that
number when I saw the studio hands who turn bridal dreams into
drawings. They had a stack of illustrations to present to Saab, who
examined each one, explaining to me that after 30 years in business, he
was beginning to get mother and daughter clients.

Image credit: Getty

“But not yet grandmothers!” he said. Although that cannot be far
away, since the designer started work at age 18 in 1982, in the thick of
the ferocious 15-year civil war, slowly building an international
following as he showed first in Rome, then in Paris in 2003. The fact
that Queen Rania of Jordan wore his dress for the coronation in 1999
cemented his reputation in the Middle East.

Yet at the time of his early shows during the French Haute Couture
season, I had felt that the Elie Saab clothes were not drawn enough from
his past – too generic as glamorous gowns expressing lifestyles of the
rich and famous. A dress chosen by Halle Berry for the Academy Awards in
2002 put Elie Saab on the way to celebrity success and now it is
difficult to find an event, from the Cannes film festival to any upscale
party, when his dresses are not on show.

But with the heartfelt Beirut-inspired couture collection shown in
July 2015, he dug deep into the memories of a peaceful and then painful
past.

During my visit, a model came into the airy space where the wide
windows frame the governmental buildings on the hill behind. The
minimalist architecture throughout the interior seemed in contrast to
the hyper-decorated clothes.

The couturier was evaluating every single outfit that would be shown
to clients and press: a cluster of colourful lace flowers needed to be
smaller; a wing of tulle had to curve more to the hipline; there needed
to be drape in the pleats that came in the burning, golden colour of the
sun sinking into the sea along Beirut’s coast line.

Image credit: InDigital (left) and @SuzyMenkesVogue

I would like to have seen more reflections of the city: perhaps the
fretted grilles of a rare grand mansion, opposite the Sursock Palace,
left behind from the days of Ottoman grandeur; or the abundant greenery
of his own townhouse in the Gemmayzeh district; or the house high in the
mountains at Faqra, where Elie and Claudine find peace from their
peripatetic life between Paris and Geneva, where their younger sons are
studying.

But Saab was fixated on the theme of his show, inspired by a
photograph he had found proclaiming: “New York, just arrived, new world,
new hope”. I looked at the mood boards filled with images of that era
of mass immigration, when women aimed to look like Rita Hayworth – all
big hair, broad shoulders and shapely hips swathed in clinging dresses.

Elie Saab is the only Middle Eastern designer who has become
genuinely international. As well as the store openings in Paris,
London’s Bruton Street and New York, he dreams of creating a new
epicentre on Beirut land reclaimed from the sea in a strategic position
opposite the building-in-progress by the late architect Zaha Hadid. It
is one of the rare constructions not peppered with bullet holes. 

The Saabs – neither father nor son – did not want to discuss finance,
yet the family must surely be looking for a strategic investor to help
push the company to a further level? Elie Jr. said that his father is
passing some decisions over to an internal group in the couture house.
But I saw him working at full tilt, with only a stop for a capacious
lunch of classic Lebanese dishes, some favourites offered daily by his
mother. There was another brief break at early evening, when Elie left
the studio to meet me on the roof terrace of my hotel, with a thin, new
moon breaking over the water beyond, where the designer was greeted by
every other hotel guest. 

I asked Elie Saab about the future and he said that when he was
starting out, he felt that he was almost the only contestant to enter
the ring of high-end fashion, but that “now it is saturated”. Would he
think in the future of passing the baton to his sons, keeping the
business in the family, Italian style?

“Yes – I think yes,” Saab said. “I have not pushed it for a second, but it is they who want it.”

When we meet again 10 days later at the Paris show, with images of
the Chrysler Building all around and hundreds of clients sitting in
blocks, Elie Jr. tells me that I will find things very different since
my Beirut visit. And so I did.

First there was the mother-and-daughter element, mostly charming,
although with a few split skirts for Mama that looked more red carpet
than family focused. There was a feeling of a bold and brash step-out
into New York City, with tailored suits, the flesh exposed in these
outfits by a plunging cleavage, the neck wrapped in golden chains; or a
graphic dress worked with black and gold into the Chrysler pattern.

As the evening outfits appeared, I strained to capture the bodices I
had seen in the petites main’s fingers: birds made from gilded
paillettes or black and white feathers; flowers glinting like yellow and
pink diamonds on a gauzy skirt; sequins creating a bodice that looked
like a wing in flight. But I could envisage the bold spirit and bravery
of these émigrés, dressing in tune with Hollywood’s golden age, trying
to keep up with a racy New World.

I would like to have felt more of the optimistic, even bravado,
spirit I sensed through the Lebanon, from the hopeful fishermen on the
rocks at Tyre to the opening of a classy emporium with a display of high
fashion and contemporary art. But throughout the show, the birds were
in flight, reminding me that for all its brash grandeur, hope was the
message hand-stitched into this collection by Elie Saab.