A few centuries ago, a family gathered around their beloved deceased and watched an artist capture the deceased’s finest features in one last portrait. This particular painting is only a fraction of what would become a long tradition; in which each wooden souvenir is a brief reminder of the long-gone friend and a minor edition to the expressive collection.
The Fayoum Portraits were only found a few of decades ago. Even though it is highly believed that many other cities followed the tradition, the scientists only found portraits in Fayoum. The funeral paintings are a reminder of the Roman era in Egypt, as evidenced in their artistic details. Each painting includes countless characteristics from ancient Egypt.
The masterpieces have influenced and inspired many artistic projects ever since their discovery. However, the young designers behind Allaga chose to take it in another direction. The local design project used the portraits as the main basis for their latest fall/winter collection.
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“This season, our theme and mood-board came right from El-Hawara where the few funeral portraits were found. These paintings were drawn from memory and buried alongside its owners to help their souls find their way back to their bodies,” Mohamed Taha, one of the 15 fashion designers, said.
From the leaf crowns that adorned the owners’ heads to the earthy colour palette, the Allaga team did not leave any detail out of consideration. Even though the portraits did not elaborate the time’s fashion, the team followed their imagination and guts to dress up the ancient citizens.
“We usually follow a strict timeline; this collection took a little less than a month. We are a big team and so each designer worked and studied the painting he/she loved the most, then we all worked on one collective mood-board,” Taha said.
The team maintained its signature silhouettes and fashion approach. Nonetheless, the Roman influence was vivid in the intricate embroidery, as well as their colour choice. The embellishments included minor ornaments that represent the time’s architecture and the city’s agricultural nature.
“Sometimes we sketch the design and ask the embroiderers to follow our vision and other times we leave them to express their own thoughts because they also have their own approach. We brief them about the theme and ask them to implement their own vision,” he said.
That being said, the collection’s centrepiece went right through time and space to reinterpret the historic portraits. The blue shirtdress showcases the designer’s modern take on the monuments with its embroidered back, which carries a stitched replica of a woman’s portrait. From the hair to the iconic jewellery, the fine details of the dress truly highlight the era’s style.
As for the fabrics, the group’s ethical guidelines were once again manifested in their environment-friendly choices since they managed to avoid any syntactic materials and maintain their extreme support of home-grown materials.
“Our guidelines strictly limit our fabrics to genuine materials, with great focus on handcrafts and hand-woven textiles,” Taha said. “Our garments aim to support at least one of Egypt’s vanishing handcrafts. For instance, the embroidery is mainly done in Siwa while the patchwork is always sourced from the scavengers’ neighbourhood, where they recycle used fabrics.”
The collection was showcased in a very artistic and oriental theme in Shakti Art School, where the models did not strut down the runway but rather posed in front of the numerous cameras to keep the portrait theme going on.
“We chose Shakti Art School because it is an artistic project in the first place, whether the portraits themselves or our garments,” he said.
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This project is an extension of Allaga’s journey to showcase the social responsibility of fashion and pay back to the local artisan community. “Allaga’s main goal is to help local artisans that are highly neglected and currently under the threat of vanishing, along with their exceptional crafts,” Taha said.
This particular collection also has an additional goal that adds to the brand’s long-list of entrepreneurial approaches. “Tourism is currently the number one topic; everyone is talking about the decreasing rates. Therefore, we wanted to highlight a local attraction and encourage tourists to go check the place and indulge in its artistic brilliance,” he said.
Allaga is a German-Egyptian collaborative project between Global Projects Partners Berlin (GPP), the German-Arab Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK MENA), Import Shop Berlin and the Fashion and Design Center (FDC) and part of the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry, Industrial Council for Technology and Innovation.
“The collection has already been showcased in Berlin, Germany. Allaga has an agreement with GPP in Germany whereby they fund our winter collections and host us in Import Shop Berlin,” Taha said.
