HAUTE COUTURE

Mouna Ayoub in Chanel

As I mentioned a few posts back… Eleanor Lambert was spending her summer away from New York and when she got to Paris, she met up with her friend Mouna Ayoub. They attended the haute couture shows that summer – which was the summer of 1995.

I remember Mouna proclaiming her love of Chanel during one of her visits to New York. In fact, Mouna Ayoub has owned the largest private collection of haute couture in the world since the 1980s. Her incredible collection is composed of more than 10,000 items, which she continues to add to each season.

I remember Miss Lambert checking in with the office from Paris at the end of couture week and telling us that Mouna bought every single piece from the Chanel couture show that season!

After the couture, Miss Lambert was off… she did not have time to hang around Paris for long, it was only July and she had a busy summer ahead…

MORE MOUNA....

Mouna Ayoub

The beginning of Mouna Ayoub's story sounds happy enough. But as she goes on to write in her book -- La Vérité, or The Truth (Publisher Michel Lafon), an autobiography that shot to the top of France's bestseller lists in 2000, her 18-year marriage to a Middle Eastern billionaire was no fairy tale. It was a juicy picture of Saudi Arabia's super-rich oil sheiks, she recounts how she was seduced by all the baubles that money could buy, only to discover herself living in a gilded cage, trapped by a male-dominated desert society with zero tolerance for modern women. Her complaints — which she made public during a bitter divorce dispute — may not surprise anyone familiar with Saudi customs that, for example, require women to be veiled from head to toe and forbid them from driving cars. But seldom have outsiders been treated to such a scathing, firsthand account of Arabia's unhappy wives.

Ayoub acknowledges that she owes her extravagant lifestyle in part to the wealth of her husband, whom she gives the pseudonym Amir Al-Tharik in the book. He made a fortune building hotels, conference centers and mosques on government contracts.

French Best-Seller Le Verite by Mouna Ayoub

But if her tale provides a rare look at the extravagance often wrought by unimagined wealth, it also serves as a disturbing manifesto against the extreme restrictions imposed on women by some ultraconservative Arab societies.

Soon after they wed, she says, her husband overheard her laughing with foreign male guests at a dinner party in Saudi Arabia. From across the room, according to Ayoub, he thundered, "Shut up!" Sometimes Ayoub's attempts to circumvent the traditions that keep Saudi women wrapped up were comical: once, in Tunisia, she disobeyed her husband's edict not to leave the hotel, only to run into him at a china shop, where his colleagues did not recognize her because they had never seen her unveiled before. During summers on the family yacht, she would venture ashore disguised as a member of the crew.

From the Article in TIME EUROPE, July 31, 2000 "What Money Can't Buy" By Scoot Macleod

COUTURE! COUTURE!

Mouna Ayoub, LIFE Magazine

When Miss Lambert arrived in Paris, she joined up with her friend Mouna Ayoub...

Mouna Ayoub's interesting story starts off like this:

A beautiful young woman goes from her life in Lebanon to Paris, the city of romance. Soon she meets a tall, dark, handsome and wealthy man who, professes undying love and devotion. Soon she is swept away to live in a far-off land (Saudia Arabia), lavished with the most amazing jewels (the world's biggest jewels), surrounded by servants and blessed with children.

Well, that is how the story starts....

COUTURE!

YSL Couture, July 1995

YSL archives

I thought this image was so incredible... that it could completely stand alone.

Miss Lambert was in Paris to attend the Couture shows taking place in July.

More to come on the Paris Couture... including Miss Lambert's new friend who joined her in Paris...

TO PARIS...

I promise to have a few more dedicated posts about the amazing Sybil Connolly.

After Dublin, Miss Lambert headed to PARIS.

Can anyone take a guess what Miss Lambert did in Paris??