Elie Saab | The Haute Couture

Elie Saab | The Haute Couture
Paris Couture Week | Fall Winter 2010

Elie Saab loves La Fenice, Venice's legendary opera house. As its name would suggest, this phoenix has burned to the ground and risen from the flames three times. For his Fall Couture collection, Saab borrowed the ruched velvet of La Fenice's curtains, the gilt and blue of its decoration, and even the fire and ash of its hellish moments for one multicolored mousseline gown. Given that backstory, the result was understandably a little overwrought.

Before the show, Saab said, "If a woman doesn't want 'rich,' she doesn't come to couture."
Saab is a proven master of red-carpet dressing, but these clothes sometimes made one wonder in exactly what decade that carpet was being unrolled.

By Tim Blanks


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