Bag designers with a social conscience, whose creations have become a must-have accessory
Sarah Beydoun has just come back from London Fashion Week. But as the founder of Sarah’s Bag sips tea in her east-Beirut showroom, surrounded by the colourful products that have made her label a byword for style and sophistication across the region, she remains indifferent to the latest ruffled blouses and mink trims.
“Fashion is over so quickly. We are more art than fashion,” says the former political science student, who – with her best friend Sarah Nahouli, a former hotel management student – created a fashion phenomenon in a parent’s basement.
Sarah’s Bag began life in 2000, as a favour to friends. “The Fendi Baguette handbag was in fashion and I had friends searching for it,” Beydoun explains. “Finally, they persuaded me to have a go at making my own bag, so I started sewing. It took me three days just to finish one side.”
Her design was much admired, but the process took time and required the intricate detail only possible by hand. That’s when Beydoun struck upon an idea. As a student, she had written her thesis on women in prison in Lebanon and now realised she could combine her interest in bettering the lives of underprivileged women with her love of fashion. The final stitching of the bags is done by a local artisan and about 20 bags are made of each design.
The funky, retro-glamour bags struck a chord with label-crazy Lebanese women. “By the summer of 2003, women were queuing up outside the shop, waiting for us to open,” says Beydoun. “Some women from the Gulf were buying 10 bags at a time.
We could only produce 20 a day, so we had to ask them to buy a couple at a time, to allow others a chance.”
It was Nazik Hariri, wife of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik, who introduced Sarah’s Bag to the international jetset, buying 30 pieces to give to friends in Monaco. Queen Rania of Jordan followed suit, sporting one of the chic handbags to a royal marriage, while a silver Sarah’s Bag graced the arm of Catherine Deneuve on the red carpet at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Over the past five years, the company has expanded its range of products to include purses, satchels, shoes and jewellery. Purses start at US$10 and most bags do not exceed US$350, although a special collection on sale in the Gulf, featuring Arabic calligraphy, sells for up to US$700.
Online sales from their website (www.sarahsbag.com) will begin this month and the trip to London has given Beydoun a taste for expanding into wholesale, possibly to London’s Selfridges or Paris’s Le Bon Marché. “We’ve been doing this for eight years now,” says, Beydoun, grinning. “It’s got to the point where we see everything in terms of what would make a good bag.”
Hugh Macleod; portraits by Tanya Traboulsi |
