Standing in his atelier modelled after a classic Parisian couture house – think double-height ceilings, gleaming white marble floors, a pair of stained glass windows, a sitting area that borders on boudoir and a grand staircase that leads to fitting rooms – Jean-Louis Sabaji looks a little out of place.
The skinny jeans, geometric patterned trainers, black t-shirts, eyebrow stud and necklace strung with a diamond-encrusted skull, shout ‘creative’ and lend the slim 27 year-old a mildly punk, hipster appearance but suggest DJ or art director rather than fashion designer. Much less couturist.
“I grew up in this atelier watching my father work,” the designer recalls. “Every time I stepped into the salon, I would admire all the mannequins in huge princess dresses and dream that I’d be able to dress them one day, too.”
Since 2009, the year he stepped into his father’s shoes, that is exactly what Jean-Louis Sabaji has been doing. Still one of the newer names in Lebanese couture, Sabaji inherited quite a mantle and has worked hard both to honour the family legacy – Jean Sr. was designer to the Saudi Arabian royal family – and also bring the label to the Lebanese market and broaden its appeal.
It helps that Sabaji always knew he wanted to be a designer and he fondly remembers being sent home from primary school for doodling dresses during class. Rather than ride his father’s coattails though, he set out to earn his entry into the family business and after earning a Masters degree in fashion design from Milan’s Domus Academy, he set up shop in the same Kaslik atelier where his father Jean still designed those enchanting “princess dresses” that had sparked his love of fashion as a boy.
In 2012, Sabaji unveiled his first collection. Designed for the summer season and like all his subsequent collections, it was inspired by nature – in this case bats and other flying creatures. The collection featured a mixture of metallic, feather-adorned cocktail dresses, flowing white gowns with fabric gathered into floral patterns and floor-length black and navy dresses. Ethereal and dramatic, enlivened by splashes of turquoise and beige – in Sabaji’s hands, a colour that was anything but boring – the collection ranged from the short and sensuous to the long and slinky.
Turning his designs into reality is the 35-person team of craftsmen and seamstresses, many of whom were trained by Sabaji’s father and grandmother. Employing traditional sewing and crafting techniques that have fallen by the wayside in the era of mass market, ready-to-wear fashion, Sabaji says he finds the men and women his father cultivated a source of inspiration and their attention to detail and mastery of their respective crafts informs his work.
While other heirs apparent might have been tempted to stamp their own imprimatur upon a place, in some ways, Sabaji hasn’t changed much since his father retired. He continues to design for many of the same clients (and their descendants) as his father, though these days, he has to travel to the Gulf as the semi-annual shopping trips Saudi royalty once made to Beirut are now a thing of the past. And at first sight, the small cloud of black fabric butterflies, used in the shoot for his first collection, decorating the corridor outside his office, seems to be the only visible difference.
The impression is misleading. If the atelier is little changed, its work has been transformed. Sabaji modestly says this is in response to shifting tastes but mostly, it’s due to the designer’s singular vision. Though always wearable, his clothes have become ever more daring in shape and concept, each subsequent collection continuing the house’s evolution away from tradition.
Nature, as ever, informs his work. The Summer 2013 collection featured one of Sabaji’s favourite pieces to date and he says that black satin evening gown embroidered with blue beads bunched into a an orb-like shape at the hips, embodies the central concept of the collection. “The shape of the dress is the earth and it’s black because of the darkness that will cover it,” Sabaji explains. “The blue beading represents the water particles. They flow out from the core of the dress, as if giving life back to the blackened earth.”
He carries a sketchbook in his pocket and designs everywhere but it takes between 3 to 4 months to choose a narrative for each collection. Only then, does Sabaji begin laying out the formal designs. If the idea of an evening gown based on revivifying the dying earth seems fantastic, his current 2014 Winter collection gets even more fabulous.
“Millions of years ago, the earth was covered in water and only two or three per cent was land. So at the time, creatures used to be aquatic. As more land emerged, they left the water to live on land and started to lose their scales,” Sabaji explains. “We started to lose the skin we had and develop the skin we have now.”
“So what I wanted to do with global warming and all the changes that are happening on the earth was to take women back to the era when we were living under water and give her back the skin she lost during evolution,” he says, smiling. “All this collection is about giving women back their ‘lost’ skin.”
The result is a collection that is inexorably terrestrial and resolutely otherworldly. Bestsellers so far have been a reptilian rubber jumpsuit covered in scales that look sharp to the touch but are actually very soft and perhaps the most wearable of the lot, something Sabaji calls his Mermaid gown. This is a white, sleeveless sheath top that gives way to a delicate, sinuous white braided skirt that ends in a bouquet of bright oranges and pinks. The elaborate technique used to make it is a Sabaji signature and has popped up in previous collections. The Mermaid gown, for example, took 150 metres of fabric and 30 days to sew by hand. Despite this, it sold for the relatively modest sum (in couture terms, anyway) of 8,000 USD and despite its avant-garde credentials, proved enormously popular with his father’s traditional clients.
While Sabaji has no plans to quit couture, he’d like to venture into ready-to-wear in the near future. He hopes one day to sell his own line at concept stores and perhaps, his own boutique. “Not every woman can afford a custom-made dress,” he explains, cannily demonstrating that respect for heritage aside, the future is all change at Maison Sabaji. “I want to be available to a wider clientele. Ready-to-wear is the logical next step.”
