This is a guest post by Maria Pierides, one of our fabulous competition winners. She’s been hitting the tents at Somerset House as a guest fashion reporter for My Fashion Life to cover as many of London’s spring shows as she can make – find out how she got on when we armed her with a bag full of tickets and sent her packing…
Who: Ziad Ghanem
What: High fashion with high drama – poetic, sensual, mythical, provocative and erotic – all under one umbrella. Curve-enhancing corsets and bodices were mixed with floaty organza gowns, while vintage fabrics spiced up the texture. Apparently the theme of the show was a tale of a nun possessed by demons, with love and sacrifice being her only form of salvation. An illuminating theme if ever there was one.
Highlights: Without a doubt, our highlight of the show was teeny-tiny little bridesmaid Janet Younan, aka Ziad’s adorable little niece. We never thought we’d hear as many coos and aaws at a fashion show! The temporary tattoos and the fact that he used models of all shapes, sexes and sizes was another plus.
Lowlights: We genuinely hope Ghanem’s finely crafted work isn’t upstaged by the theatrics of the show. His collection would still speak volumes without a single gimmick.
Overall: You’d think after we got over the initial shock of the photographer pit giving way and making five or so photographers and their cameras topple into each other domino-style, the rest of the show would be drama free. Boy, how wrong we were. The entire show was an exhibition of full-on drama. The models didn’t walk down the runway, oh no – they danced, glided, shimmied and most importantly – performed. Every turn of their heads, swing of their arms and even blink of their eyelids was a performance. The atmosphere was, excuse the cliche, electric – we’ve never seen the audience applaud every single design with such enthusiasm after it left the catwalk.
Ghanem’s signature style of modern silhouette meets cult couture still remains as it has done every season for the past ten years. Now we understand why over 2,000 ticket requests were made for the show – we felt privileged to be among his guests can’t wait to see what he conjures up next season!
