DUBAI: Lebanese designer Nadine Kanso has teamed up with Guerlain to design a fragrance bottle for the French luxury maison, she revealed on Instagram on Wednesday.
Kanso is the first Arab designer to collaborate with the LVMH-owned perfume and beauty house.
She designed 30 limited edition bee-inspired bottles, decorated with 1,720 crystals, with Arabic calligraphy that reads “Love.” The crystals are 24 carat gold-plated.
The bottles will be revealed at the UAE’s Art Dubai, which will run from March 1- 5. (Supplied)
“Designing the exceptional piece for Guerlain and having my Arabic signature calligraphy on it is not just a pleasure—it proves to me that beauty and love have no boundaries,” she said in a released statement. “This collaboration gave me hope. I appreciated the love and appreciation given to me.”
The bottles will be revealed at the UAE’s Art Dubai, which will run from March 1- 5.
Kanso is an artist, photographer and jewelry designer.
Kanso is the founder of Bil Arabi. (Supplied)
She started her jewelry designing career in 2006 with a one-off experiment that merged Kanso’s background in design, her love for typography and predilection for all things bling.
The result was the Arabic “noon,” or the equivalent of the letter “N” in Arabic. Using 18-carat gold and embellished with semi-precious stones, the ring — entirely handcrafted and designed — was a hit and soon enough, one letter led to the whole alphabet, which evolved to complete words and eventually full phrases. People began expressing themselves in Arabic and that’s what she named her brand, Bil Arabi, Arabic for “In Arabic.”
“I am a woman who is proud of her identity, language and heritage, and who has strong sense of her Arab nationalism,” she previously told Arab News.