Etoile opens in style in Dubai
Fashion Desk

Paris—“It’s the realization of my dream,” smiled Middle East retail queen Ingie Chalhoub seconds after opening Etoile, the most adventurous multi-brand boutique in Dubai, the world’s most shopping obsessed capital. Located in Dubai’s mega retailing space, the Mall of the Emirates, Etoile is designed to be the local equivalent of fashion emporiums like New York’s Barneys and Jeffrey or Daslu in Sao Paulo.
Mega models Yasmin Le Bon and Angie Everhart and a small regiment of international fashion honchos – Laudomia Pucci, Burberry’s Rosemarie Bravo and Michael Burke of Fendi – attended the opening and gala dinner, at which French chanteuse Arielle Dombasle performed.
“We want to mix the offering, just like a woman mixes and matches what she wears,” Chalhoub told FWD. “We will have haute couture, luxury ready to wear and new brands, in a complementary offer. There is a different customer in the Middle East, not someone who wants a total look, but one whose moods vary.”
Etoile offers everything fashion forward pieces by Christian Dior, Guy Laroche and Christian Lacroix to pretty racy lingerie from Chantal Thomas and John Galliano, whose bras retail for 630 dirham, roughly $150 at current exchange rates. Plus, Chalhoub plans to exploit Dubai’s bomming tourist market. Some six million tourists will visit Dubai this year, with 15 million expected in 2010.
Etoile is located on the second floor of the Mall of the Emirates, a giant, 400,000 square-meter hyper air-conditioned space with a plethora of western brands – everything from Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein to Starbucks and Haagen Daz. The mall is so large it even has its own internal ski resort – five runs where snow falls permanently, providing the surreal sight of women in black chadors bending to gather their kids at the end of the runs.
Like her favourite western retailing destinations, Ingie did not skimp when it came to decorating Etoile, hiring famed French interior Jacques Garcia, whose Hotel Costes in Paris was the most influential boutique hotel design of the past decade.
And if Garcia’s rather novel Marilyn Monroe worthy pink padded silk changing rooms with oval mirrors, faded gold counters and bizarre 20-foot high Perspex warrior women did seem a tad too eclectic, it certainly stuck in the mind.
Chalhoub has always been a prescient retailer. She began her fashion career back in 1983 when she first brought Chanel to the Gulf, the first season that Karl Lagerfeld began designing for the French label. Today the Chalhoub Group manages five Chanel boutiques in the Middle East and is planning to open the first Chanel high jewellery store in the region next month. We predict the same sort of success with Etoile.