Never has the future been so impatient. Mars is a promised destination and volunteers are scrambling to reserve their place on the first manned flight. It is rumored that a space hotel in the form of floating capsules should open in 2025. And it is precisely this moment that the green comet chooses to return to our sky for the first time in 50,000 years. Fascinated by space and futurism as well as the different visions that humanity has had during its history, the creative duo Azzi and Osta have long revolved around this theme without daring to approach it so much in are beaten.
Three-dimensional embroideries create silver surfaces, tactile, moving like full moon waves.
“There is a thin line between haute couture and costume. A long reflection in pairs was essential to avoid falling into theatricality, or worse, caricature,” confides Georges Azzi. The theme has been revisited by many designers such as Courrèges, Pierre Cardin or Paco Rabanne. Failing to bring something new, it was better to keep quiet on the subject. However, many ideas had caught on. Under the label created in Beirut in 2010, the Azzi & Osta workshops have been exploring and developing surprising 3D embroidery techniques and luminescent paintings for thirteen years. Bosses with new architectures were waiting for the moment to come out into the open. Studies on textures, accessories, optimization of reflection integrate light into the sewing itself. Judging the time has come, it is from this angle that the two creators will approach, in their romantic way, excluding all animal suffering, integrating the vaporous with the martial, a future that is both graceful and powerful. And what better celebration of haute couture than an event such as a gala or an opera? Go for an opera that will bring into space a supplement of beauty created by earthly hands.
Opera gloves are an integral part of outfits.
Radiation irradiates them
This opera is given on Mars, in the springtime of the Earth! The news is on everyone’s lips. The invitations, as for an interstellar Met gala, are distributed in dribs and drabs. Mutant dresses, both romantic and futuristic, organic and geometric, are part of the trip. In their crossing of space, they receive radiations which make them iridescent. Greens, ultraviolets, infraroses of aurora borealis modulate their colors. Unknown vegetation and unreal flowers deposit their mineral poetry and crystal hearts on the textures. Three-dimensional embroideries create silver surfaces, tactile, moving like full moon waves. Beneath a cosmic storm, the veils are lifted, rolled up, the petals are torn off, fragments of stars cling to the organza, form geometric scales, align their points on the sheaths of celestial sirens. Azzi and Osta even imagine female cosmonaut bikers. Their black felt biker jacket embroidered with tone-on-tone leather flames unravels at the speed of light on a dress torn from a starry night.
The pair’s signature pleats, ample, generous, sensual, envelop a bust, dictate the movement of a velvet skirt that extends into a train. Photo Azzi & Osta
New shapes and new inspirations
This swirl of pink, coral, neon yellow, absinthe green, cosmic blue, deep black, streaked with gold and silver shards, this tornado of faille, crystal fishnets, silk, satin, tulle embroidered, translucent organza and velvet, make up creations where all the pieces complement and respond to each other. Short bubble dress, covered with a balloon cape; tailored dress with military shoulder pads, adorned with square tulle flowers; imposing cape over crystal cascading trousers… everything in this collection is sparkle, transparency, light and soft materials. Unprecedented forms open the chapter of new inspirations.
Everything in this collection is sparkle, transparency, light and soft materials. Photo Azzi & Osta
Opera gloves are an integral part of outfits. Connected to an embroidered veil, they complete a spectacular shawl that can also be transformed into a Venetian hood. Cut in a shimmering blue fishnet, they complete a hieratic cupola dress embroidered with iridescent silver triangles. The pleats, the tandem’s signature, ample, generous, sensual, envelop a bust, dictate the movement of a velvet skirt which extends into a train, embroidered with flames of green pearls reminiscent of the hair of a comet. One by one, flying vehicles drop off the guests on the red carpet. On the program, Music from
Earth, the contents of the Golden Disc launched into the universe by the Voyager probes, in 1977, as a testimony to Earth culture. Addressing the cosmic theme with quirky humour, the Azzi & Osta Spring-Summer 2023 collection deposits on Mars an honest example of the refinement of our civilization.
Mutant dresses, both romantic and futuristic, organic and geometric, are part of the journey. Photo Azzi & Osta
A complementary tandem
Partners since their meeting, in 2004, on the benches of Esmod Beirut, Georges Azzi the dreamer and Assaad Osta the pragmatic very quickly understood the benefit to be drawn from the complementarity of their artistic vision. Majors of their promotion, a brief stint at Elie Saab gives them the courage to start as a duo. Their young house is very quickly propelled onto the international scene with a clear identity, structured silhouettes with characteristic pleats and a permanent play on illusion which makes the magic of haute couture, in particular through seemingly rigid volumes which are reveal an extraordinary suppleness or surprisingly light creations that seem carved in metal. Accessories, including embroidered jewelry and geometric necklines, are part of their signature vocabulary.
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Never has the future been so impatient. Mars is a promised destination and volunteers are scrambling to reserve their place on the first manned flight. It is rumored that a space hotel in the form of floating capsules should open in 2025. And it is precisely this moment that the green comet chooses to return to our sky for the first time since…