For Rami Al Ali, his first show on the official Paris couture schedule was a watershed moment.
Not just for his Dubai-based couture label, which will turn 25 next year and has been worn by the likes of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone and Naomi Campbell, but also as a designer from Syria.
The fall of the Assad regime in December marked the end of the civil war triggered by the March 2011 revolution and ushered in a new era, one with “a hopeful, promising future,” he said backstage before his show.
His lineup filled with soft blues, gold and rich blacks certainly telegraphed sophistication and breeziness in equal measure.
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Catching the eye were a dress with a velvet devoré effect teased out of organza tuffed on its surface; a gold gown crafted from long silk strands woven into geometric motifs inspired by mashrabiya lattice panels; a sculptural jacket with rope embroidery and cigarette trousers, and an asymmetric number revealing a gold motif in its sculptural side fold. Inspired by mosaics traditionally found in Syrian houses, it was made of hand-cut organza pieces, individually given a gold-leaf finish.
They were the visible signs of the other mission embedded in this fall collection titled “Guardians of Light”: to give a refresher course on the vast cultural and crafts heritage of a country known mainly for its troubled recent history.
“What I noticed in the past 14 years — throughout the conflicts, the war that we had in Syria — is that the most ‘untaken care of’ [field] was the creativity, the heritage and the craft which [are] our identity,” he said.
“And the loss of it is the loss of our identity, so I tried in this collection to bring back those references and make it relevant” to a global audience but also to his younger compatriots, added the designer, who has been working with the Syrian Craft Council, an organization dedicated to ensuring global recognition of the country’s crafts.
If a debut is about showing one’s best face, Al Ali was determined to turn his toward a bright future. His work shone for it.