Images by Cindy Reframe
Zaid Farouki, a designer with his atelier at D3 Dubai Design District showed a presentation on Saturday afternoon, Day 2 of Fashion Forward Season 8 at Hai D3.
For anyone who would stop at the Washington DC business studies graduate’s atelier, for which he has a keen open door policy, they would be warmly welcomed and eagerly shown his works.
Unique in that his creations are first designed in a couture methodology in stage one. Then Farouki takes his work a step further with a signature of custom painting works on the garments and he then adds more depth with hand crafted accessories such as belts, headdresses, crowns, and intricate gold threading and draping alongside the garment.
It became apparent that Farouki would be well placed in theatre or the film industry for his depth of story telling drama, more so than a majority of other fashion designers.
Zaid’s personality is developing more in this direction and he made it clear in recent past that a highlight of his career was an actress wearing one of his creations at the prestigious red carpet at Cannes Film Festival (pictured below).
Farouki would be well advised to further court film industry stylists, as well as theatre and film director teams as his garments could easily be seen in these types of features. Also private clients who love drama and a story in their attire would do well to visit Farouki.
This particular collection displayed a white gown that could easily be created for a romantic bride, and to be honest, it would be nice to see more of this.
The rest of the pieces included an amber satin dress gown rich with layers of softest draped waves, a little black dress that was surrounded by gold-bronze metal shape cutouts a bit like a bird cage, to which he later added a sheer sleeveless white gauze dress over it and made a small graffiti statement with bronze spray paint can.
Dresses in dark gunmetal satin and navy blue crepe fabric, a full amethyst outfit with swinging trousers and jacket accompanied by a Bedouin style headmask, and another satin dress in yellow goldenrod appeared in the presentation.
The whole effect was very medieval, a historical representation of royalty and distinct women in the Eastern Europe and Arab region, and it very much took the viewer back to these ancient eras and locales.
Check out our full gallery:
