DUBAI: Dubbed the “Queen of the Stage” by the Arab media, Lebanese superstar Myriam Fares has launched a collection with pocket-friendly brand Red Tag.
Fares, 34, made the announcement at an event in Dubai’s swanky Armani Prive club on Tuesday, and revealed why she partnered with the Gulf-based store on its summer 2018 line.
“This is a star wearing the same brand that is affordable for everyone to buy. This is a nice and affordable brand for every woman and young girl who wants to be fashionable,” Fares said, explaining the appeal of the budget-friendly collection.
Wearing Red Tag designs makes the international superstar feel “down to Earth,” she said, adding that “young women try to find clothes similar to the expensive pieces we stars usually wear. But today, this star is wearing clothes that those young ladies can afford — this is really valuable for me.”
Appealing to the young women in question is a major reason why Red Tag chose to approach Fares in the first place.
“Myriam is a hugely, hugely popular recording artist… and importantly to us as a brand, she is a huge style and fashion icon to her millions of followers,” COO of BMA International Group, the holding company behind Red Tag, David Pidgeon said at the event.
“Our customer is typically 15-35, she is focused on fashion, she wants good quality and she absolutely wants value for money. Myriam’s fan base is essentially the same — her fans are our customers.
“No matter how big a star you are, you have to stay in touch with your key fans and they are not all walking around in designer dresses. They want fashion, understand fashion and see fashion, but can’t afford to pay for it,” he added.
The collection is feminine and a sure win for the summer months, featuring pastel pink structured skirts, evening-ready burgundy dresses and sporty, striped trousers.
Considering curly haired Fares is a household name across the Middle East, it seems to make perfect sense that she should choose to launch a line with Red Tag, which currently has more than 160 fashion and lifestyle stores dotted around the region.
The singer, dancer and actress jetted into Dubai after a jaunt in Cyprus, where she performed a clutch of her most popular songs at a concert on April 28. Before that, she holidayed with her family in London, where she stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel and posted a flurry of photos of her time in the city.
In many of the photos, she can be seen posing in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase the expansive British capital, including Tower Bridge and the River Thames.
Fares released her first album in 2003 and made her acting debut with TV soap opera “Itiham” in 2014. Later that year, she played the role of Tinkerbell in a musical version of Disney’s “Peter Pan” in the UAE.
The Lebanese powerhouse is married to American businessman Danny Mitri and has a son called Jayden, who was born in February 2016.
She isn’t, however, the only star to have launched a line with Red Tag. Lebanese singer, actress and model Cyrine Abdelnour has an eponymous Spring 2018 collection with the brand, featuring fun, flirty and affordable clothes in a soft pink color palette.
Abdelnour, whose first album “Leila Min Layali” was released in 2004, launched her latest collection in February, but has been working with Red Tag on sartorial tie-ups since 2015.
Myriam Fares launches affordable fashion line
Myriam Fares launches affordable fashion line
- The “Queen of the Stage” has launched a collection with pocket-friendly brand Red Tag
- The collection is feminine and a sure win for the summer months
Rising stars hit the runway for Chanel
DUBAI/PARIS: Rising fashion stars from across the world hit the runway at designer Matthieu Blazy’s latest show for Chanel.
Staged during Paris Fashion Week, the likes of Mona Tougaard and Bhavitha Mandava, who in 2025 made headlines as the first Indian model to open a show for Chanel, walked the runway.
For the show Tougaard, who has Danish, Turkish, Somali and Ethiopian ancestry, showed off a patchwork look with cutouts across the bodice. For her part, Mandava showed off a series of casual options, including knitwear.
Six months into his tenure at the Parisian stalwart, Blazy staged his second ready-to-wear collection at Paris Fashion Week Monday, where brightly colored cranes rose from a holographic floor — a deliberate signal that the construction is ongoing.
The audience inside the Grand Palais suggested the foundations are solid: Margot Robbie, Oprah, Jennie, Kylie Minogue, Lily-Rose Depp, Teyana Taylor and Olivia Dean all turned up.
Blazy took his cue from a quote from Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel: “We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.”
The collection was structured around that tension — plain against spectacular, function against fantasy — with a discipline his sprawling debut last October sometimes lacked.
The opening looks were austere by design.
Black knit zip-ups, tweed blousons and boxy overshirts arrived with little more than four gold buttons to signal they belonged to Chanel.
In the vast runway space, they could read as underwhelming. But Blazy’s point was architectural: the suit, he said, is “the first brick” — and everything else rises from it.
The collection’s most provocative move was its silhouette.
Blazy pulled waistlines dramatically low — belts slung to mid-thigh, pleated skirts starting where blazers ended.
The references were retro flapper filtered through a modern lens: drop-waisted twinsets, patchwork dresses with floral embroidery, vivid patterned knits with a twenties pulse.
A furry coat in bold geometric color could have been worn in a chic part of London's Camden.Whether the ultra-low waistlines will land with the well-heeled clients who pack Chanel’s front rows is another question.
Selling a radically new proportion to women with deep loyalty to the house is a different challenge than winning critical praise. The final stretch answered that concern with force. Sequined plaid suits arrived in dazzling color.
