Feyrouz and her stylists, or how to dress a diva

How to dress a being of light? How can we dress a body that no longer belongs to itself since the entire Middle East, if not the entire planet, has appropriated it? Throwing a fabric at Feyrouz, even one embroidered with moon threads, is taking a double risk: hurting her modesty, she who has never really returned from her poor childhood, in a conservative and pious family, or stifling her aura of quasi-deity by dressing him as a being of bone and flesh. Three genius creators nevertheless gained his trust, brilliantly finding the difficult balance between stage and life, humility and prestige, shadow and light. These are Raïfa Salha who success has transformed into “Madame Salha”, with all the deference linked to this title; Jean-Pierre Delifer and Élie Saab.

When Madame Salha met the demands of the “golden age”

Pioneer of haute couture in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world, Raïfa Radwan Salha, born in Aley in 1926, is one of the characters and talents who accompanied the “golden age” of Lebanon. This era of prosperity and artistic and worldly brilliance needed accomplices to shine, and the seamstress, married at the age of 15 and promised a life of domestic obligations, knows that she has what it takes in the belly to meet the demands of the moment. She, who already sews with talent and almost without references other than the embroidery of liturgical vestments and a few models seen in foreign magazines, begins to build a local reputation by creating costumes for local performances of the Baalbeck Festival. International festival which, drawing spectators from the Arab and Western world, draws attention to local talents. The work of the woman who would become “Madame Salha”, as they called “Madame Grès”, dazzled to the point of earning her prestigious commissions, including that of the wedding dress of Leila el-Solh, the daughter of Prime Minister Riad el- Solh, with Moulay Abdallah of Morocco, brother of King Hassan II. This sumptuous dress with its train embroidered with plumetis and its large floral motifs is recognized as one of the most beautiful ever made. Madame Salha is making a reputation for herself with exceptional trains, some 22 meters long, like that of Princess Leila. She will also create for Princess Soraya, for her marriage to the Shah of Iran, a ceremonial dress embroidered with fine gold whose exceptional weight, 20kg, will accentuate the hieratic figure of the young shahbanou.

Feyrouz’s wedding dress by Madame Salha. Photo DR.

At 21, rebelling against the taboos of the Druze community to which she belonged, and who at the time took a dim view of the empowerment of women, Madame Salha went to Paris where she became friends with the embroiderer. Lesage. Later, she would also become a friend of Madame Grès and the Balmain couple. She will stand out above all with her art of draping and the opulence of her embroidery. Undeniably, she is the founder of the prestigious line of Lebanese haute couture designers whose domination of this industry is now acquired.

But the designer’s relationship with Feyrouz is much more profound. In a documentary broadcast on MBC, a witness remembers that at the time when she was making costumes for the Baalbeck Festival, Raïfa Salha was not content with making the stage dresses for the future diva. While carrying out his alterations, she listened to him repeat his lines and his songs, even gave him the reply, and between them a relationship of trust and confidences was woven which infused the garment with something protective. An armor with which Feyrouz will also equip herself during her marriage to Assi Rahbani, entrusting the creation of her dress to her friend Raïfa, soon to dress the entire high society of the region in addition to its crowned heads and its great artists, from Oum Koulthoum in Sabah.

Madame Salha (far right) and her little hands, surrounding Princess Leila while trying on her wedding dress. Photo DR.

Delifer dressed Feyrouz before Christ

With Jean-Pierre Delifer, also costume designer of Baalbeck in the wake of Madame Salha whose death in 1967 at only 42 years old left a great void, Feyrouz’s relationship developed organically. This delicate creator, at the crossroads of East and West, irrigating one of the wonders of the other and vice versa, sensitively perceives Feyrouz’s expectations. He immediately understood that his role with the singer would go beyond that of a simple stylist. Delifer excelled in the art of balance, offering outfits that were both simple and bright, which seemed to dance with the spotlights while highlighting Feyrouz’s natural presence, never offering low-cut outfits, or with a “modesty”. His work remains a testimony to the fusion between Western modernity and Eastern majesty, a bit like Yves Saint Laurent. This lover of Baalbeck, also a dresser for the Caracalla dance troupe, had sketched out before his death an allegorical novel set in the city and its monuments. During the presentation of a documentary on his life, A whole life in picturesdirected by the filmmaker Élie Adabachi and released in 1999 the day after his death, the writer Jean-Claude Morin states in particular that “if this novel is published, which is to be hoped, we will realize that the hand that writes is not unworthy of the one who fashioned the draperies with as much pride as humility. The drapes of Roman statues are the unsuspected source of his inspiration, as well as the haughty posture of the women of the city, carrying large baskets of multicolored fruit on their heads and “letting long colorful veils trail in the dust”.

Driven into exile by the war, Delifer, whose art is reflected above all in the beauty of his abayas, will attempt a Parisian career by presenting a fashion show at the Grand Hôtel under the title “Les Orientales”, which included masculine pieces. . Critical success is not followed by orders, which leaves the creator with a certain bitterness. This crossing of the desert leaves Delifer with a bitter taste, he who cannot live without creating, he who started sewing when he was still just a child. One day, he was put in contact with the director Martin Scorsese through the filmmaker Maroun Bagdadi. Scorsese asks him: “How would you dress Christ? » “Like a man who should go naked,” replies Delifer, who has already explored this path to the ultimate garment. He is committed. It is he who will create the costumes for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

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Élie Saab, the maker of happiness

Since Élie Saab’s rise to the haute couture firmament, he is practically the only couturier whom Feyrouz trusts to dress him for the major events of his life. A caftan dress, long, black, vaporous, embroidered with star motifs in gold thread, such is the Élie Saab dress that has become a fetish with which the diva made one of her most recent public appearances. It was with this dress that she was photographed, at her own home, in the company of French President Emmanuel Macron who came to Lebanon’s bedside the day after the double explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020. In March last, during a podcast with the Egyptian journalist Amr Adib, the designer revealed his pride in seeing one of the greatest Lebanese and Arab voices wearing his creations.

A stage dress by Feyrouz, blue velvet and white tassels, by Madame Salha. Photo DR

“I met her about a year ago,” Élie Saab then confided, adding: “She is a person who does not repeat herself and is unlike any other… her way of welcoming you, her laugh , he is someone who is above everything. She still has the same spirit, the same youth. I give as proof that she chooses models from our collections that are sometimes thirty years old, proof that time has no hold on her. » If the designer’s contact with Feyrouz is recent, the diva has been dressing in dresses from his collections for several years. She could even say, like Céline Dion during the spectacular “1,001 Seasons of Riyadh” event in tribute to Élie Saab’s 45 years in the business: “His talent has always accompanied me. » The Lebanese creator who suffered, as a child, the sufferings of war and exodus, having left Damour with his family under the threat of a massacre to retreat to Aïn el-Remmane, also took heart passion for sewing from a young age. Fascinated by a dress his mother wore when she went out in the evening on his father’s arm on some social occasion, he remained convinced that as long as women wore beautiful clothes, there would be a chance of happiness. Her debut at 15, her perseverance, her innate taste for glamor have become part of her legend. Élie Saab, with Feyrouz as an unwavering bond, is in line with Madame Salha and extends in her workshops an ineffable legacy, that of a dreamed Lebanon which would retain its capacity to give happiness as well as incredibly beautiful dresses. beauty would cover his shoulders.