Show Report

Elie Saab
is known for his red carpet creations – and if you’re taking a turn down a red carpet, expect to be rubbing shoulders with someone shimmering in one of his sequin and beaded gowns. It’s a given, usually. This season, though, you might just be a little more hard-pushed to find one – the Lebanese designer concentrated more on daywear in sombre and sober shades. It was stiff and structured and quite the about turn from someone from whom we usually expect lots and lots of sparkle.

To begin with he went smart with skirtsuits in grey and panels of black, belted and with peplums (there is just no getting away from them), and then came skater skirts beneath shaggy coats, again in grey and then in black. Trousers and a shirt and a pencil skirt all reminded us that these were very much daywear looks, and worn as they were with satchels across the body meant this was enhanced.

But then Saab began to step it up a notch – trousers came with ornate and elaborate tops that twisted and turned and wrapped and unravelled around the torso so that they billowed with a tail, of sorts, behind them. A quick segue back into neutral territory – cue a  simple and softly-shaped coat, a short and a jacket and trousers combination – and then we got into cobweb dresses that went from burgundy to black, panels of tangles on full-length gowns or on svelte short numbers.

Each time Saab stepped it up in the glamour stakes, he then took it back down again. Perhaps this was his way of showing us  there’s more to him than we think

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