Lamya Gargash was the showcase artist at the UAE pavillion - the first -  at the Venice Biennial.  Photographer Sueraya Shaheen took these great portraits of the artist, which we thought were worth posting. For a few days, Lamya, was no doubt the most popular Arab girl in Venice!

 

On July 1st, the International Gourmand, an award that recognizes the best cookbooks in the publishing world, will release its lists of winners. Among the short listed, is Barbara Massaad, a food writer from Lebanon who's written the reference book on the famed Manakish, manaouche, man' oushe - however you want to spell it.

Bravo Barbara and good luck!

To find out who wins, log on the Gourmand website, July 1st.

 

Our Jeddah reporter interviews Kamelia Kamel the owner of Tifa Boutique, which just opned in Ana Special Mall. The store is a tribute to her mother, Latifa Bushuaib who pioneered European fashion brands in the kindgdom in the early 1990s. Read the story in our Features Section.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Those of you in the UK might have seen Vogue's shoot in Damascus, featuring Stella Tennant in the Syrian capital (May issue).  For once, no orientalist cliches, or flashbacks to Ottoman days. Just some glitzy outfits shot in the streets of Damascus. It looks fantastic.

Ouf, there were so many A list actors dressed in Lebanese designers (starting with Angelina Jolie in Elie Saab) it was hard not to be proud for the small Mediterranean country, which should seriously re-brand itself as a couture heaven - rather than political hotbed!

Even the B listers got a lot of attention, thanks to what they were wearing - no offense Miley Cyrus (in Zuhair Murad) or Evan Rachel Wood (in Elie Saab). But enough with the talking have a look at these pix!

Monocle's little documentary on the last remaining keffieh factory in Palestine, is a great way angle on the situation on Palestine.

At the time when waiving a Palestinian flag  was quasi banned by Israel, the keffieh became the de facto symbol of the Palestinians. Aided by Yasser Arafat, who might well be the most famous keffieh wearer.

Following up on this week's Kuwait story - The Looking Glass - our new Kuwait-based blogger -  reviews the new resto in town that everybody's talking about...

What is it with designer hotels in Dubai. Ever since Armani said he was building a hotel there, designers have rushed on the emirate. Today, Elie Saab, Ferragamo, and Versace are all building hotels or luxury condos in Dubai. Has Dubai became an incubator for a more global trend, we might see being developed in the rest of the world? Or have we become so enamored with designer brands, that we also need our hotel room to be branded?

The girls at Jasmine Box in Jeddah have created a set of boho thobes just in time for Ramadan. Frankly, I think they would do great for a party in Tangiers or a late summer weekend in Mykonos or Ibiza....

First, it was the great filmmaker Youssef Chahine that bid adieu last month. With Chahine, it was the end of an era that passed away. Throughout his great cinematographic career, Chahine had offered us another norm for the Middle East: a place where different religions would live side by side and where injustice and small-mindedness were singled out. It was the Arab world he had known growing up in Alexandria in the 20s and 30s. Perhaps because I shared this vision for our part of the world, I wrote my MA thesis on the life and movies of Youssef Chahine.