Rami Al Ali: What lies beneath

The designer's ability to blend modern drapery with Middle Eastern romanticism has made him one of the few regional names to achieve international acclaim. We get rare access to the fiercely private designer and the inner workings of his Dubai atelier.

The fiercely private designer Rami Al Ali at his atelier in Dubai. Sarah Dea / The National
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I’m lost, again, in Dubai; swerving and swearing my way around elephantine-sized highways as if in some sort of nightmarish video game. Worse still, I am late for my meeting with Rami Al Ali, one of the most sought-after couturists in the Middle East. And I hate being late, especially for an interview with the fashion elite – no one wants to rock up at a couture house looking frazzled.

Rami Al Ali’s atelier sits close to the street, maybe 20 feet from the kerb. It’s a rather regular house in a somewhat haughty part of Dubai, not as glitzy as I had imagined, nor as big. More welcoming than awe-inspiring, in fact. His head of public relations (whom he later describes as his left arm) leaves me in the waiting area, where I get the chance to admire Al Ali’s new collection. An assistant is scrambling around putting fresh flowers in a vase – which I am hoping is not for my benefit.

In sweeps a rather fine-spun-looking man, who inhabits the interesting and unusual space between handsomeness and elegance – eyes clear, features that look like they could have been carved by a sharp tool of some sort. There is a lack of modernity about the way he holds himself, like an aristocrat in a painting from the Old Masters. He speaks clearly and safely, smiling politely through the mundane but necessary inquiries I know he has heard a million times before.

Building an international brand as a Middle Eastern designer is no easy feat. In a market riddled with its own history, gaining acceptance on an international scale as a young designer is difficult. There are stereotypes to squash – stereotypes of elaborate embellishment with elaborate price tags that have plagued designers in the region since the 1990s.

Yet what Al Ali, along with the help of already established couturists such as Elie Saab and Zuhair Murad, has done, is help influence a change in perceptions. A methodical creator of faultless drapery, Al Ali’s refined touches of decadence balance the region’s leanings towards romanticism with a much-needed, streamlined geometry. In effect, he is helping to shape a more modern design identity for the region.

Al Ali grew up in Deir ez-Zor, a small city in Syria, close to the borders of Iraq and about as far away from the centre of fashion as one possibly could be. He was, by his own admission, a good kid: polite, on time, organised, by the book. “It was a pretty classic Arabic childhood – nothing out of the ordinary,” he says.

I beg to differ. I imagine it wasn’t an easy thing being a boy who liked dresses.

“It wasn’t expected, if that’s what you mean. I was meant to follow my father’s career into architecture. I used to go and work in his office with him in the summers when school was out. They used to give me flat plans to do because I was good at drawing. I had a feeling it wasn’t right but I thought that time would help me relate; it obviously didn’t. But it was just what you did. It was all about family.”

His only window into the world of fashion was through his mother and sisters.

“You have to understand, worlds were very separate back then – it was only through them that I learned about these private, female-only gatherings. I would watch the attention to detail and hear the descriptions of the fabrics and cuts used in designing their occasion dresses.

“I remember being fascinated by the way a dress could change a woman’s body language – how they would hold themselves differently when they stepped into a beautiful dress. I wasn’t aware at the time of why I liked the whole process, but I knew I did.”

On finishing high school, Al Ali again followed expectations, his grades steering him towards a degree in electrical engineering. “I stayed for six months. Well, I say stayed; I probably went to the college twice during that time. I hated it. It was all about numbers – it just wasn’t me.”

Luckily for Al Ali, it was the 1990s and advertising fever had started to rear its head, with many international advertising agencies opening up in the Syrian capital. Suddenly, for the country’s middle class, design was being recognised as a feasible career path. “Graphic design,” says Al Ali. “It was a new career that my family deemed acceptable.

“It caused a bit of a drama,” he smiles, “but for the first time I did what I wanted and I went back to school and repeated, this time studying the subjects that I knew would give me more options.”

For his finals at the College of Fine Arts in Damascus, he had to create a campaign for a fashion show; he ignored the instructions and designed dresses instead. Was that not a little presumptuous, I ask.

“I certainly caused a bit of a fuss. I had taken some of the traditional fabrics from the eastern parts of Syria and turned them into something modern.”

Again, he was lucky, for if one of his professors hadn’t, in spite of the protestations of the college, recognised a flicker of something out of the ordinary, they would have failed him. “They gave me the lowest grade possible. I didn’t care – that was the beginning for me.”

His parents came to the show and, for the first time, conceded that the whole thing might become a profitable, lucrative career that their son could earn a living from.

Al Ali arrived in Dubai in 1997 to stay with family, knowing that it might better his chances of gaining entry into the United States, where he was planning to continue his studies.

“Being a Syrian, it was very difficult. To get to the States, I had to have a plan. I was going to go to the UAE where I had relatives, with the hope of getting the residency.”

While he was waiting he began interning with some of the smaller fashion houses.

“After about three months, it became apparent that I was doing something different to everyone else. I had a graphics background, and I was mixing it with some of the traditional embroidery from the region.”

He remembers his first client well – as one would if she were a high-profile sheikha from Abu Dhabi. “Nobody was buying Western designs at the time. She was different; she collected fabrics from all over the world and would send them to me and I would create samples for her.

“Everyone else who was trying to break the market was trying to take them away from tradition – I was trying to bring them closer to it, just in a new way.”

His chance to break the UAE market quickly put New York on the back burner, but building an international brand as a Middle Eastern designer wasn’t easy. He was fully aware that he was in prime position in the UAE, an emerging market with unlimited potential. But he knew that in order to succeed, he would have to embrace and reinvent traditional crafts and find beauty in the conventional, without alienating the international market.

To this day, every last component of Al Ali’s collections – from the embroidery to the beadwork to the finishing – is created in-house, which is extremely unusual for a design house. “There is a team of 40 behind those doors,” he tells me.

It isn’t always plain sailing, though. “I am difficult to work for. I want things done immediately, often missing out on important learning processes along the way.

“Patience.” He pauses like he means it. “It’s a major flaw of mine: and something important both personally and professionally that I need to work on.”

Certainly, the economics of couture are not easy. Even when sales from a show are high, the profits are not, necessarily. The upkeep is colossal – yards of the finest fabrics from around the globe, a workshop full of trained embroiderers, pattern cutters and lacemakers, not to mention the hundreds of working hours spent on one single dress. So why does he press on?

“Of course couture is more lavish, more niche and more personal, but it also has more freedom,” he says.

He admits that being granted access by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture could radically change things for the brand. (The Chambre determines which fashion houses are eligible to use the label “haute couture” and, in turn, use the term within their advertising.)

“The rules to be a member are quite clear and we are almost 80 per cent there. They want a studio in Paris and a percentage of your work to be produced in France, using French artisans. It’s something that we are working on. It would open me further in the international circle – they introduce you to the world media – plus it is a great acknowledgement.”

But surely the smart move would be a ready-to-wear line? “I was hoping you wouldn’t go there,” he laughs. “I do appreciate that there is demand. It isn’t an option anymore but a necessity – we are working on it. In fact we are in the final stages.”

Is there ever the concern that his decision to stay in the Middle East has meant that he has missed out on opportunities to expand? “I didn’t really put it in mind – I didn’t think any of it would be possible. I wanted to grow organically. I suppose I didn’t really have a long-term plan. It happened in the only way I knew how. Maybe my route to Paris would have been faster if I had.”

Because, as he himself has proved, when Al Ali does throw himself out of his comfort zone, the results can be extraordinary. “There was a piece I was not sure that would work from my first collection in Paris for spring/summer 2012, a laser-cut dress made of a special fabric that was treated to become stiff. I was terrified about how it would be perceived – it was technically extremely difficult. I only found out that it had been used for the lead shot in Beyoncé’s tour book the morning it was printed. I was woken up by all the tweets. It was a good day for us.”

His latest collection, based on a painting of the death scene of Ophelia by the English painter John Everett Millais, is spectacular, with that other-worldly quality he does so beautifully but a slightly more subdued colour spectrum than his previous collections. A sign, perhaps, that he is maturing as a designer.

“What keeps me up at night is the worry of getting stuck in the same circle, producing the same result,” he says. “I have seen a lot of fashion houses get stuck like that.”

The thing about Al Ali is that we hear much about his creations and not much about him. He’s exceedingly polite. Curious. Proud. Used to keeping his cards close to his chest. But he opens up about the sadness of his last trip home. “I spent my 40th birthday there. It was the beginning of spring, normally a beautiful time in Damascus. The oranges and lemons start to blossom and you have wonderful scents from the jasmine trees in bloom. I like to hold on to those memories, for it was the first time I saw sadness in spring.”

As we are finishing up, I try to persuade Al Ali to let me take a look around his studio, but he clearly doesn’t want me anywhere near the atelier. “It’s like inviting a stranger into your kitchen when there are dirty dishes,” he laughs.

Somehow I manage to persuade him, but I get the sense that he is extremely uncomfortable with us poking around his fantastical creations – he shouldn’t be, of course; everything is meticulous. Not used to doing things he doesn’t want to, and with his guard down, he makes it fairly obvious he doesn’t like it.

On the way up I tap him on the shoulder. “Patience,” I whisper. “Remember?”

“Yeah, I’m working on that one,” he says, as he big-smiles the thought.

ktrotter@thenational.ae