Zuhair Murad Spring Collection 2020

Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad is that it’s a twofer: you have both the designer’s showy vision on the runway and an enthusiastic audience putting on a show all their own. Murad’s ladies take the proceedings seriously, so reliably there will be tiaras, lashings of sequins, towering stilettos, and Mommy and Me–style duets.

This season was no exception, and depending on whom you’re seated next to, watching the show through your neighbour’s smartphone screen becomes a new reality, like it or not. She wants to shout it to the world.

Down the Nile Murad cruised, riffing on the ancient tropes of Egypt—a country he knows well and loves—invoking gods, pharaohs, and queens, though not the most famous one of all. “I decided to go back in history, especially in this place and time, because the pharaohs were so mysterious,” he said, name-checking Isis and Nefertiti backstage before the show.

“There’s a richness of life and fashion, but women were powerful too, maybe even more powerful than men. The mix of power and beauty sums up the Zuhair Murad woman. She likes to seduce.”

The bride was Murad’s “modern queen of Egypt” in a sun-ray-beaded gown inspired by Ra, the sun god, and a lavishly jewelled headpiece. Even so, that queen was no one person in particular.

“When I design for my clients, I’m inspired by them. When I do a collection, I like to rely on my imagination,” the designer said.