Spotlight # 7: Contemporary Elegance with Sandra Mansour

Lebanese at heart, Swiss-born Sandra Mansour was brought up between Geneva and Beirut. After studying Business Management at Webster University in Geneva, Sandra Mansour enrolls at the Beaux Arts, where she can finally concentrate on her passion: drawing and painting. “ Until then I felt something was missing. I finally found it upon touching material. I printed on fabric the way others paint. I also experimented other disciplines such as fashion design, photography, jewelry-making and architecture”, explains the young designer.

With this experience gained, she returns to Lebanon and finds an internship with Elie Saab. Alternating administrative jobs with sales and press relations in the morning, she joins the Haute couture and prêt-à-porter workshops in the afternoon. There, she works along side embroiderers, pattern-designers and the research studio. “It was a real revelation for me. I could finally mix drawing and creating, give life to the matter. I played around with it by mixing jersey, muslin, satin, silk, sequins and lace. I found my very own alphabet.” To make her desires real and to learn how to compose a collection - from mastering use of computers to handling production - Sandra Mansour moves to Paris, where, a year later, she gets her Masters in Fashion Design at the Instituto Marangoni.

Back in Lebanon, where she sets up her workshop, Sandra Mansour’s inspiration is at its best: Mediterranean joie de vivre, exuberant colors, the feminine touches of her native land. By using simple codes to reveal a youthful elegance, Sandra Mansour shows off a plunging open back, underlines the silhouette with a tailored cut, plays on transparencies to attract gazes, awakens seductive powers with a thin shoulder strap.

 Mastering technique and stylistic effects with great ease and skill, Sandra reconciles the desires of a woman who likes to create her own style by wearing a stone-washed jersey-cotton top – that Sandra dies herself – and a structured organza skirt. Seducing in its simplicity, she plays around with a jersey-jumpsuit, becomes a Lolita in a Prussian blue skirt, combines pink satin with strong grosgrain pieces, where pleats and cuts form a real structural volume. In the evening, she slips into a cleverly sequined dress: hand embroidered on couture tulle, silk Razmir sleeves soften its effect.

A contemporary elegance set off by its simplicity.