It was a bright and sunny day as the Lebanese American University (LAU) kicked off its magical fashionable journey with more than a few tricks tucked up its educational sleeves.
With Elie Saab’s virtuoso shining through his partnership with London College of Fashion, Lau’s school of fashion was set to excel for decades and decades to come.
It all started with a long semester of subdued work on teacher Jason Steele’s part along with his 8 motivated students, who in turn presented their marvelous designs in front of a slew of jury members. Each year of the pioneering process comes with a versatile framework, where students are driven to showcase their own personal style, bringing forth the template of the Lebanese patriotism through which they draw inspiration. Only this year, the template was that of great magnificence, as it was Blatt Chaaya’s groundbreaking world. The latter, being a family-owned artisanal firm specializing in colored cement tiles, was a well of inspiration for the students, as they intricately incorporated the handmade tiles into the ingenuity of their designs. Promoting the local and Lebanese craftsmanship is a mainstay at LAU, not only granting students with a state-of-the-art portfolio, but also stirring up the writhing brilliance of the Lebanese economy.
This particular endeavor, which started in 2013, has created a whirlpool of passion and dedication to the Lebanese culture, in the most radical kind of ways. What the local artisanal world did for the economy, it also did for fashion.
The journey unraveled into an illustrious symposium hosted by LAU during Beirut Design Week, tackling the theme of sustainability in a wide array of two panels delving into the worlds of fashion and education, and their implication in supporting local skills and promoting sustainability.
The event wasn’t your run-of-the-mill convention, as it also presented a riot of tailoring and street wear design, particularly made by LAU’s fashion design students. The first panel explored cultural translation of fashion and local fashion/arts education, untangling the role of social enterprises in embedding social and environmental sustainability, while the second panel opened the door to fashion politics, defining religious and regional taste cultures’ impact on the international market. With the widely acknowledged presence of Yasmine Taan, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Design at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut Speakers, Middle East correspondent and Women’s Wear Daily Ritu Upadhyay, Founder and designer of his own label Johnny Farah , Sarah Beydoun, founder and Creative Director of social enterprise Sarah’s Bags and Professor Reina Lewis from LCF- to name a few-the long-awaited symposium was a blatant success.
Perhaps this voyage to the local artisanal world turned the signal for the fashionable segue, granting students- and non-students- the chance to channel their inner artists!
