”With every new collection I conceive the striking image of my mother in a flared tulip print silk dress reappears endlessly in my mind” confesses Elie Saab in the press release of the Spring-Summer haute couture presentation.
The Lebanese designer takes us to a hot and spicy city of his birth, sunlit casually-festive Beirut of the sixties. The strongest impressions that we experience and which surreptitiously determine the course of our lives come, as we know, from our childhood.
Colors and senses of native Beirut echo in every outfit Elie creates : tender green of spring blossoms, pale blue of misty horizon and lively yellow of mimosa. Sheer light texture, so beloved by the maestro, embodies the childhood dreams of a summer breeze bringing in the Lebanese capital the freshness of the Mediterranean.
Aesthetics of the Elie Saab’s style – feminine and modern at the same time, – is also inseparable from youthful memories of the seventies, inhabited by elegant ladies in airy ankles length dresses, the most refined and sophisticated of which remains his mother. It is in her honor the designer, usually quite indifferent to prints, conceived several dresses with flowers in his new collection. Yes, with the very same tulips we started our story with.
Amid his signature “dresses for princesses” the designer put a couple of embroidered with beads sheer trouser suits and weightless dresses with capes, reminiscent of salon robes. Adorned with ostrich feathers of a delicate peach hue these images are echoes of the past: nonchalant and festive, exactly as Elie Saab remembered it.

Photo credits: Elie Saab / Kim Weston Arnold