Lebanon's Saab lights up start of Paris couture

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Lebanese designer Elie Saab kicked off four days of haute couture catwalk shows with glamorous goddess gowns that glinted like a new day dawning over his native Beirut. Even if his troubled country currently faces political disunity and economic woes, Saab sent out a harmonious vision of full-blooded, fitted femininity, lit up in pastels and sequins, for spring/summer 2007.

"It's not easy but the Lebanese always rise above all difficulties," the designer said after his show in the French capital, which later this week hosts an international donors' meeting for Lebanon. Despite a protest organised by the pro-Syrian opposition in Beirut since December 1 aimed at ousting the Western-backed government, Saab said for him it was business as ususal. "Really we are...