In the cobbled courtyard of sunny La Monnaie De Paris, two Indian master embroiderers sat at their frames embroidering a landscape with tigers and a chiffon veil with flowers. In his haute couture collection for autumn, designer Rahul Mishra paid tribute to the thousands of Indian artisans and embroiderers who transform his and their imagination into reality on silk, chiffon and tulle gowns each season. Accordingly, small images of their figures, bent over their embroidery frames, decorated the exquisite gowns alongside tigers, swans and lotus ponds.
The dazzling landscape embroideries covered silvered chiffon dresses, long slender filmy coats and enlarged petal-shaped organdie tops further embellished with gold and silver sequin feathers. The Mishra silhouette is long and slender this season, with black and silver coats and trousers to counterbalance the beautifully detailed decoration.
At sunset two days later, on the steps of the historic Chateau de Chantilly, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s entire atelier of petites mains (the highly skilled craftspeople who hand-make haute couture in France) followed the models in Valentino's catwalk finale.
It was a fitting reminder that there would be no haute couture without these often unseen artisans who bring a designer's vision to life. Where would Elie Saab and Zuhair Murad be without the craftsmen and women in Beirut who create the lavish beading and braiding on their couture gowns, or the ladies in Morocco who weave Sara Chraibi’s sfifa ribbon decoration?
“The creators became the inspiration behind the collection,” Mishra said after his show, pointing to the master embroiderer beside him who was absorbed in stitching a tiger motif. “India is the most populous country in the world and I started to think how the brand exists because of the people that work with us,” says the socially conscious designer. “I wanted to show that while they are sitting there, their imagination is in some far-off magical place and this collection is about melding the imagination and the reality of the artisan together.”
Couture has always been about transporting us to magical places, other eras and other worlds. For Elie Saab, fresh from the success of dressing Princess Rajwa, Queen Rania and the Princess of Wales at Jordan’s royal wedding, his imagination stepped back to medieval times. Another era, another royal court.
In the stone cloisters of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, dashing hooded cloaks, jewel-toned velvet Elizabethan gowns and ultra-feminine dresses with intricately embellished corsetry, cowls and trailing trains appeared to the monastic soundtrack of a tolling bell. The effect was both feminine and dramatic with silver, gunmetal and Tudor rose embroidery, created in the ateliers of Beirut, echoing the motifs of the period to opulent effect.
There was a similarly gothic mood at Zuhair Murad, where sequinned ravens, moths and silver spider's web embroidery created a dark, mysterious atmosphere. For a designer known for his bright joyful colours, this season felt very different. Dramatic black feathers, lace and veils, a batwing structure outlining corsets and intricate metal embroideries resembling the gothic Victorian railings of an abandoned mansion served to enhance this mood. A trench coat covered in spider studs and the macabre rose motif on a wedding dress suggested Murad's aim is to serve those who come alive at night.
An altogether sunnier disposition was Rami Al Ali’s collection, which was inspired by Henri Matisse’s time when he was living in Monte Carlo and too ill to paint. This latter period was notable for the French artist's colourful avant-garde cut-out motif collages. “I love a Matisse quote when he says: ‘I am starting to draw with scissors,’" said Rami Al Ali after his show (appropriately held in Paris’s Museum of Modern Art). “It very much resembles what we do as designers: we draw with scissors.”
Accordingly, Al Ali created striking sculptural shapes in silk faille and glossy fabrics embellished with floating appliques redolent of Matisse’s famous figures and amorphous shapes. Evidence of the designer’s scissors at work featured on jumpsuits and dresses where two contrasting fabrics were combined not with a straight seam, but the wavy palm frond outlines with which Matisse played. Even the colours referenced the artist, from blush pink and raspberry to teal and sky blue.
That sense of carving and shaping fashion with a pair of scissors was strong too at Schiaparelli, a house with strong artistic roots in surrealism. The spring collection from creative director Daniel Roseberry set the internet alight by sending out three gowns adorned with faux taxidermy animal heads.
This season was also about dramatic black and white silhouettes, including a winter white coat embroidered with a trompe d’oeil figure on the front. There were nods to several artists, from the blue powdered faces of the models inspired by Yves Klein, gilded palm frond jewellery from Matisse and a dress covered in the painterly brushstrokes of Lucien Freud suggesting a woman’s body.
An haute couture show is a performance and two couturiers took us to the Paris opera house to make that point. American designer Thom Browne was celebrating his 20th anniversary with a special one-off haute couture offering, where the audience was part of the performance sitting on the stage at the grand Palais Garnier, while the seats in the gilded auditorium were wittily filled with suited cut-out figures of Browne himself. Meanwhile, Stephane Rolland used the grand marble staircase of the opera house to stage his homage to one of the greatest opera divas of all time: Maria Callas, the soprano who performed at the Garnier in 1958.
Rolland's collection was naturally diva-esque with models’ hair and make-up styled to resemble the great Callas, and wearing dramatic sculpted gowns adorned with crystal chokers or sculpted three-dimensional embellished shapes. Each outfit was inspired by Callas’s operatic roles, including Tosca and Medea.
Browne, who is also chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers in America, has used the Palais Garnier once before for a ready-to-wear show, but this was an haute couture debut for his conceptual designs. His narrative was of a lonely figure (model Alek Wek) sitting forlornly amid her luggage on a station platform as passengers walk by. The station bell tolls, Visage’s Fade to Grey is on the soundtrack and interesting characters in grey cloche hats and moulded bell-shaped coats wander by along with passengers in tones of grey tailoring finely embellished with silver embroideries and gold bullion braiding.
Everything is grey, even the landscape patchworks on slim city coats and skirt suits, except for the bride in a white coat dress and two mysterious shamanic-type figures at the end who seem to persuade the lonely figure that life is better than she thought.
There is craftspeople, there are artists and, at haute couture, there is also the customer. One interesting footnote to the shows is how couture houses such as Dior, Balenciaga and Alexandre Vauthier are casting models of different ages. In using veteran models such as Carmen Kass and Georgina Grenville at Vauthier, Maria Cristina at Balenciaga and Chrystelle at Schiaparelli among many others, designers are recognising who many of their clients really are.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Barcelona v Liverpool, Wednesday, 11pm (UAE).
Second leg
Liverpool v Barcelona, Tuesday, May 7, 11pm
Games on BeIN Sports
Results
STAGE
1 . Filippo Ganna (Ineos) - 0:13:56
2. Stefan Bissegger (Education-Nippo) - 0:00:14
3. Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) - 0:00:21
4. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) - 0:00:24
5. Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana) - 0:00:30
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
1. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) - 4:00:05
2. Joao Almeida (QuickStep) - 0:00:05
3. Mattia Cattaneo (QuickStep) - 0:00:18
4. Chris Harper (Jumbo-Visma) - 0:00:33
5. Adam Yates (Ineos) - 0:00:39
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EOlive%20Gaea%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202021%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECo-founders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Vivek%20Tripathi%2C%20Jessica%20Scopacasa%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELicensed%20by%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDubai%20World%20Trade%20Centre%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Climate-Tech%2C%20Sustainability%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%241.1%20million%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ECornerstone%20Venture%20Partners%20and%20angel%20investors%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%208%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 201hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.7L/100km
Price: Dh133,900
On sale: now
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
The specs: Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
Price, base: Dh1,731,672
Engine: 6.5-litre V12
Gearbox: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 770hp @ 8,500rpm
Torque: 720Nm @ 6,750rpm
Fuel economy: 19.6L / 100km
Leaderboard
63 - Mike Lorenzo-Vera (FRA)
64 - Rory McIlroy (NIR)
66 - Jon Rahm (ESP)
67 - Tom Lewis (ENG), Tommy Fleetwood (ENG)
68 - Rafael Cabrera-Bello (ESP), Marcus Kinhult (SWE)
69 - Justin Rose (ENG), Thomas Detry (BEL), Francesco Molinari (ITA), Danny Willett (ENG), Li Haotong (CHN), Matthias Schwab (AUT)
Top 10 most polluted cities
- Bhiwadi, India
- Ghaziabad, India
- Hotan, China
- Delhi, India
- Jaunpur, India
- Faisalabad, Pakistan
- Noida, India
- Bahawalpur, Pakistan
- Peshawar, Pakistan
- Bagpat, India
Generation Start-up: Awok company profile
Started: 2013
Founder: Ulugbek Yuldashev
Sector: e-commerce
Size: 600 plus
Stage: still in talks with VCs
Principal Investors: self-financed by founder
What are the main cyber security threats?
Cyber crime - This includes fraud, impersonation, scams and deepfake technology, tactics that are increasingly targeting infrastructure and exploiting human vulnerabilities.
Cyber terrorism - Social media platforms are used to spread radical ideologies, misinformation and disinformation, often with the aim of disrupting critical infrastructure such as power grids.
Cyber warfare - Shaped by geopolitical tension, hostile actors seek to infiltrate and compromise national infrastructure, using one country’s systems as a springboard to launch attacks on others.
STAR%20WARS%20JEDI%3A%20SURVIVOR
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDeveloper%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Respawn%20Entertainment%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPublisher%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Electronic%20Arts%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EConsoles%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20PC%2C%20Playstation%205%2C%20Xbox%20Series%20X%20and%20S%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Results
%3Cp%3EStage%204%3A%0D%3Cbr%3E1.%20Juan%20Sebastian%20Molano%20(COL)%20Team%20UAE%20Emirates%20%E2%80%93%203hrs%2050min%2001sec%0D%3Cbr%3E2.%20Olav%20Kooij%20(NED)%20Jumbo-Visma%20%E2%80%93%20ST%0D%3Cbr%3E3.%20Sam%20Welsford%20(AUS)%20Team%20DSM)%20%E2%80%93%20ST%0D%3Cbr%3EGeneral%20Classification%3A%0D%3Cbr%3E1.%20Remco%20Evenepoel%20(BEL)%20Soudal%20Quick-Step%0D%3Cbr%3E2.%20Lucas%20Plapp%20(AUS)%20Ineos%20Grenaders%20%E2%80%93%207%E2%80%B3%0D%3Cbr%3E3.%20Pello%20Bilbao%20(ESP)%20Bahrain%20Victorious%20%E2%80%93%2011%E2%80%B3%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
Copa del Rey
Semi-final, first leg
Barcelona 1 (Malcom 57')
Real Madrid (Vazquez 6')
Second leg, February 27
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
The%20specs
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2.0-litre%20turbocharged%204-cyl%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E8-speed%20auto%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E300bhp%20(GT)%20330bhp%20(Modena)%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E450Nm%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDh299%2C000%20(GT)%2C%20Dh369%2C000%20(Modena)%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EOn%20sale%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3Enow%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
How to donate
Send “thenational” to the following numbers or call the hotline on: 0502955999
2289 – Dh10
2252 – Dh 50
6025 – Dh20
6027 – Dh 100
6026 – Dh 200
More on Quran memorisation:
How%20to%20avoid%20getting%20scammed
%3Cul%3E%0A%3Cli%3ENever%20click%20on%20links%20provided%20via%20app%20or%20SMS%2C%20even%20if%20they%20seem%20to%20come%20from%20authorised%20senders%20at%20first%20glance%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EAlways%20double-check%20the%20authenticity%20of%20websites%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EEnable%20Two-Factor%20Authentication%20(2FA)%20for%20all%20your%20working%20and%20personal%20services%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EOnly%20use%20official%20links%20published%20by%20the%20respective%20entity%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EDouble-check%20the%20web%20addresses%20to%20reduce%20exposure%20to%20fake%20sites%20created%20with%20domain%20names%20containing%20spelling%20errors%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3C%2Ful%3E%0A
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Xpanceo
Started: 2018
Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality
Funding: $40 million
Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE squad
Ali Kashief, Salem Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Khalfan Mubarak, Ali Mabkhout, Omar Abdelrahman, Mohammed Al Attas (Al Jazira), Mohmmed Al Shamsi, Hamdan Al Kamali, Mohammad Barghash, Khalil Al Hammadi (Al Wahda), Khalid Eisa, Mohammed Shakir, Ahmed Barman, Bandar Al Ahbabi (Al Ain), Adel Al Hosani, Al Hassan Saleh, Majid Suroor (Sharjah), Waleed Abbas, Ismail Al Hammadi, Ahmed Khalil (Shabab Al Ahli Dubai) Habib Fardan, Tariq Ahmed, Mohammed Al Akbari (Al Nasr), Ali Saleh, Ali Salmeen (Al Wasl), Hassan Al Mahrami (Baniyas)
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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3.
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UAE
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4.
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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6.
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)
Display: 21cm Liquid Retina Display, 2266 x 1488, 326ppi, 500 nits
Chip: Apple A17 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
Storage: 128/256/512GB
Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4
Front camera: 12MP ultra-wide, f/2.4, Smart HDR 4, full-HD @ 25/30/60fps
Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID
Colours: Blue, purple, space grey, starlight
In the box: iPad mini, USB-C cable, 20W USB-C power adapter
Price: From Dh2,099
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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