Syrian couturier Rami Al Ali made history on Thursday as the first fashion designer from his country to feature in the official Paris Haute Couture Week calendar in a new landmark for Arab representation in the luxury business. After years of showing his tailored evening dresses on the sidelines of Couture Week, he was invited this year by France’s Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode to join the programme. He sent out models in long pleated dresses in pastel colours, making elaborate use of silk, rolled crepe fabric, embroidery and beading in a collection that reflected his optimism about the future of his war-ravaged country. “We called the collection the ‘Guardian of Light’, and it came at a time that is very hopeful, very promising,” the 53-year-old said beforehand.
Al Ali, who grew up in the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor before moving to Dubai, where he founded his brand more than 20 years ago, was holding back tears as he spoke to reporters afterwards. He said he had been feeling “nervous, excited, tired, happy” about his breakthrough moment, which follows years of dressing A-listers and royalty including Beyonce and Oscar winner Helen Mirren.
Haute Couture Week is separate from the ready-to-wear Paris Fashion Week and is dedicated to handcrafted, one-of-a-kind creations made for red carpet events, galas, and other high-profile social occasions. The programme this week included two designers from Lebanon — Elie Saab and Zuhair Murad — as well as Cameroon’s Imane Ayissi, the sole sub-Saharan African label included in the calendar. Saudi Arabian designer Mohammed Ashi’s brand Ashi Studio was also in the programme. Ayissi, who joined the Couture calendar in 2020 at the same time as much-hyped Indian designer Rahul Mishra, paid tribute to the increasing diversity on the Paris fashion circuit.
“It shows that things are changing, that things are moving forward,” former model Ayissi said this week after his show, which made elaborate use of traditional African textiles.
After studying in Damascus, Al Ali left for Dubai as a young man in search of opportunities in the fashion industry, working initially for two regional brands. He branched out on his own in 2001, building a regional fanbase for his eponymous brand from the United Arab Emirates before creating a following in Europe, including via shows in Paris outside the official Fashion Week calendar from 2012.
The invitation this year from France’s prestigious Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode places him in a new elite category that is increasingly diverse. “I built from my heritage, from my background, from where I was based, also in the Middle East, in Dubai, all of those combined together created the form and the DNA of the brand,” he explained. Given an appreciation of tradition from his historian mother, Al Ali draws on the design aesthetics of Damascus, Aleppo and Palmyra in particular.
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