Elie Saab Maison, Incanto. (Credit: Photo provided by Elie Saab Maison)
From his earliest days — even as a wartime child — Elie Saab dreamed of bringing beauty to the world to push back against ugliness. At just 12 years old, displaced from Damour to Nabaa, he was already making dresses that his sisters sold without revealing that the creator was merely an inexperienced boy. Inspiration came from an ideal that obsessed him, crystallized in a dress his mother wore for special occasions. Adorned like this, she inspired him to dream of magical evenings he had never known, which he reconstructed in his imagination with such detailed precision that it became a universe of its own. Thus, he overcame misery, danger, and uncertainty, inhabiting his own dream world from which a few dresses would escape to brighten a grim reality. The designer’s meteoric success never distanced him from his stubborn mission: to...
From his earliest days — even as a wartime child — Elie Saab dreamed of bringing beauty to the world to push back against ugliness. At just 12 years old, displaced from Damour to Nabaa, he was already making dresses that his sisters sold without revealing that the creator was merely an inexperienced boy. Inspiration came from an ideal that obsessed him, crystallized in a dress his mother wore for special occasions. Adorned like this, she inspired him to dream of magical evenings he had never known, which he reconstructed in his imagination with such detailed precision that it became a universe of its own. Thus, he overcame misery, danger, and uncertainty, inhabiting his own dream world from which a few dresses would escape to brighten a grim reality. The designer’s meteoric success never distanced him from his stubborn mission:...
