Designer – Elie Saab
At the age of nine, most children would be content playing video games or riding their bike, but Lebanese designer Elie Saab was already cutting patterns out of newspaper and using his sisters to model outfits he created out of their mother’s closet. Later, when he turned 18, he opened his atelier in Lebanon. The elaborate wedding dress designs caught the eye of Middle Eastern fashionistas and of royalty, but it was not until 2002 that his dresses drew even more international attention, with Halle Berry wearing one of his gowns to accept her Oscar for “Monster’s Ball.” Since then Elie Saab gowns have been continuously seen on celebrities, crowning him an overnight success…that was twenty years in the making. Inspired by the women in his life, the primarily self-taught designer has said that he is driven by a desire to dress women in elegant outfits.
