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New York Times
24-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Premier League Draft – Picking our best all-time XIs and then arguing about it
The NFL draft begins in Green Bay on Thursday night — and across in London, The Athletic's UK football writers are having a draft of their own. Four writers converged in the war room — that is, a podcast studio — to draft their all-time Premier League XIs. The rules were simple — 60 seconds per pick, a snake order, and at least five players who appeared in the division before 2010. Individuals should be judged only on their performances in the Premier League, rather than the sum total of their careers. This is how it unfolded — and you can listen to the podcast this weekend. Jacob Whitehead: I entered the draft room armed only with a spreadsheet and a headful of dreams. But in the event, I focused on the decidedly more unromantic notion of relative scarcity — which positions had fewer top-tier players than others. That meant my first pick of the entire draft — Mohamed Salah — was slightly surprising, but he and Cristiano Ronaldo were the only right-wingers I really wanted. The alternative options at left wing were far better, meaning I was comfortable letting Thierry Henry fall into Jack Lang's lap. Advertisement Elsewhere, the midfield is nicely balanced, set up with a No 6, a No 8, and a No 10, not unlike Arne Slot's Liverpool side. Rodri will sit and cover, Frank Lampard is free to crash the box, and then add in David Silva's distribution. I also went for centre-backs early, taking my top two options in Virgil van Dijk and Vincent Kompany, alongside my first-choice goalkeeper, Petr Cech. The strength in depth up front meant I was very happy when Wayne Rooney fell to me as the penultimate striker selected. I left full-backs until the end — for me, Kyle Walker and Ashley Cole were in their own tier, meaning it made sense to wait until my final selections once that pair were taken. Leighton Baines whipping in crosses towards Rooney and Lampard? That's the future my nine-year-old, Everton-supporting self dreamed of. Jack Lang: Did I come into this process with an overarching strategy? Reader, I did not. The plan was to be reactive and roll with whichever punches came my way. In the event, I have to admit to being completely thrown by the third round of picks. I had already nabbed Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne by that stage, and was looking at the central midfield options with a view to building a nice little 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation. There was only one problem: Alan Shearer was somehow still available. It would have been high treason to ignore him, so I didn't. That had two knock-on effects: I had to go 4-4-2 and my top three or four central midfielders were gone by the time I got to pick again. My engine room, therefore, does look a tiny bit lightweight. But those are the sacrifices you make for having a front four of Henry, Shearer, De Bruyne and Eden Hazard. Alisson was my first-choice goalkeeper, so I was delighted that no one else picked him up before the final round. The defence looks very solid, too. My team also has a quirk that I only noticed after the fact: I don't have a single left-footed player. Go forth, my orthodox kings! Oliver Kay: If I had a vague plan, it was to focus on the spine of the team. But I was immediately thrown into a panic by Jacob making Salah his first pick and talking about the scarcity on the right wing compared to other positions, so I went for Cristiano Ronaldo for my first pick and was slightly surprised to find myself going for Steven Gerrard for my second. Advertisement But, gradually, my team took shape. And rather than focus on the spine, I ended up deciding to leave goalkeeper and central defence for later because there were enough roughly equivalent candidates for those positions. It might have been a slight gamble but I picked up John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Gareth Bale and Peter Schmeichel with my last five picks. Am I happy with my line-up? I'm delighted. Look at that Chelsea-heavy back four, that formidable midfield, that world-class front three. So much quality, so much aggression, so many big personalities. Would Ronaldo leave Alexander-Arnold a little exposed on the right-hand side? No, because Gerrard would be rushing over to cover with a thunderous tackle. (I'm assuming thunderous tackles would still be allowed in this nostalgia-influenced exercise.) If I were nitpicking, I might wonder whether, with Alexander-Arnold, Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Ronaldo, Bale and Harry Kane, this team might end up taking a few too many shots from distance. But let's be honest, a lot of them would fly into the top corner. Duncan Alexander: Being able to pick any player in the Premier League's glorious 33-year history is kid-in-a-sweetshop stuff. Then again, there have been 4,963 players in the competition's history and no confectionery outlet would dare toy with that level of variety. This was an impossible, yet joyous task. Where some got giddy at grabbing a Shearer or a Lampard, I wanted to try and construct something that got to the heart of what the Premier League represents — an intoxicating mix of northern European physicality and the sort of otherworldly flair that simply didn't exist in England before the 1990s. To that end, I was delighted to pair Tony Adams and Nemanja Vidic in the heart of defence. Goals and grit? Yes please. Andy Robertson's monstrous assist total gets overlooked by many, not by me. Roy Keane and Yaya Toure also provide physicality and goals, while David Beckham and Dennis Bergkamp not only have the same initials, but also delivery systems that work in any era. As does Ederson 'four assists in 2024-25' Santana de Moraes from deep. Advertisement Who are all these technicians aiming at? Oh, just Luis Suarez and Sergio Aguero paired together up front. A total of 253 goals in 285 Premier League games from any angle you can think of and a few others too. And while we're here, Paulo Ferreira's Premier League record is 102 wins from 141 appearances, with 56 clean sheets and as many title wins as Arsenal. Look, you may not want to try and manage this side, but by god, you'd pay to watch them. Lang: Jacob and Oli have similar teams: complementary skill sets in midfield, a striker who can drop off and create, one full-back more attacking than the other. Oli just about has the edge, courtesy of three-quarters of that amazingly frugal Chelsea defence and perhaps just a tiny little extra dose of X-factor further forward. I have the utmost respect for Duncan — as a man, as a professional, as a lover — but his side is borderline disastrous. Aguero, Suarez and Bergkamp are all going to get in each other's way. Beckham is not in his best position. I thought he was joking when he picked Ferreira and it was the same for Ederson. I'm no doctor but I prescribe a good, long look in the mirror. Alexander: Jacob's team feels nicely balanced. Initially, you fear there's no out-and-out goalscorer but then again, Rooney had a few bountiful seasons playing as a No 9 and Salah and Lampard have fired teams to league titles from the wing and central midfield. Baines was a sentimental choice but, as a man with 53 assists and 32 goals, he's a classic example of a great-yet-often-overlooked Premier League career. Oli's team has the purest Premier League Years vibes, although you fear team spirit would collapse in game one over penalty-taking duties. Shame he missed the one other Chelsea defender worth selecting, though. Jack, meanwhile, was extremely pleased to land Henry and Shearer but just look at that midfield behind them. Is that Hazard constantly getting in Henry's zone? And why is De Bruyne being deployed on the right flank as a poor man's Beckham when the real one was there all along? Whitehead: Some nitpicking. I, too, almost fell off my spinning chair when Duncan chose Ferreira as his fifth pick and while his front three would be very watchable, it feels like an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary waiting to happen. Beckham is out of position, too. Advertisement Jack's team keeps growing on me — it's defensively very sound, but Fabregas will have a lot of work to do in linking defence and attack. Hazard and Henry, though — what a day for wing play and silent H's. Oli's XI, with its beautifully balanced midfield, is even stronger. My main question is whether his Chelsea defenders would have the pace to survive in the modern Premier League. And even among four squads filled with egos, his team could power a small nation for six months. Kay: Apart from my own team, my favourite is Jacob's. I really like the balance of that midfield three (Rodri, Lampard, David Silva, three Manchester City legends) and if we're imagining peak Salah, peak Rooney and peak Ryan Giggs, that front three would work wonderfully. Giggs was past his electrifying best when 4-3-3 came into vogue in the mid-2000s, but in his younger days, he would have excelled in that role. Jack has the strongest central-defensive partnership and the two best centre-forwards and I'm delighted he picked the unheralded Denis Irwin. But I wonder if his line-up might be just a little lopsided at the front end. Might it make more sense to switch to a 4-3-3, with De Bruyne in a midfield three, Henry drifting to the left wing and Hazard on the right? Hazard preferred the left, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you asked him nicely. I love Duncan's front three and I love the idea of any midfield with Keane in it, but even when opting for a very Chelsea-heavy back four, I must admit Ferreira never crossed my mind — though I've hardly been able to stop thinking about him since. Kay: A team that we didn't pick would stand comparison with those we have. Think about this XI: Edwin van der Sar; Gary Neville, Jaap Stam, Martin Keown, Stuart Pearce; Freddie Ljungberg, Fernandinho, Luka Modric, Robert Pires; Eric Cantona, Andy Cole. If we had five people around the table, we'd have a fifth extremely good team. Lang: It makes it crystal clear how reductive the instant 'Would this guy make your Premier League all-time XI?' chat really is because the competition is fierce. Any of these teams could rationally be produced as an all-time XI, even before the player pool was split into four — well, maybe except for Duncan's. But when you look at these players written out, you have 30 to 40 players who could conceivably make the cut. Advertisement Alexander: You could almost build a different team for a variety of different scenarios. A team you'd always fancy to get something away at Stoke City, or a team that would get fans off their seats with ridiculous long-range shooting, a little like Oli's already. But we're heading towards 40 years of the Premier League and there are so many layers of quality. Whitehead: One thing it shows about English football is how it's built through the spines. I began talking about relative scarcity, but there are so many centre-backs, central midfielders, strikers, that it was never an issue. It was far more about who would get wingers first, or maybe even full-backs. In other leagues, that might not be the case. Lang: In La Liga, it would be wingers, or dinky little attacking midfielders. Would Italy in a comparative era have more amazing defensive midfielders or centre-backs, perhaps? Whitehead: It's interesting how many players we chose straddle 2010. I know we talk about the Premier League being strong now, but was that almost a golden age? Kay: I would almost say it was an in-between era. Choosing 2010-11, for example, I remember it being a low-quality season. Manchester United won the league by nine points. Blackpool earned almost 40 points and were relegated, Scott Parker won player of the year at West Ham United while being relegated. It was post-World Cup, English football was at a real low, and you had this 'golden generation' of players coming towards the end. Alexander: That era is being eulogised with the 'Barclaysman' thing, maybe not that season specifically, but people remembering obscure Wigan Athletic players. But every era has its great players, mid-tier players, and poor players. Depending on what age you are and what frame of mind you're in, you can pick a great team from any era. Kay: I've insisted on picking lots of players from this era in my team — Gerrard, Scholes, Vieira, Henry — and we have it in our heads that this is the best there's been in the Premier League. And maybe they are, but that conversation is much more fluid when you look at Rodri, De Bruyne, Van Dijk, Alisson and Salah. They are modern greats, and will go down as greats whether people recognise it now or not. Advertisement Whitehead: I was wondering how many more seasons players at the top now would need to get into this team. If Erling Haaland carries on at his current rate, when does he enter the conversation? There are quite a few others. Alexander: It's a great question. Haaland's already got several Premier League records to his name and hasn't been mentioned once until now. But it's that impact you make, not just statistically, but in the Premier League ether. You think of Vieira and Keane and Gerrard and you can feel the sweat of a Super Sunday. And maybe that comes with time, and people will look back at the recent seasons of Man City vs Liverpool games with the same reverence. Lang: Sorry to labour the point, but there's also a tonal difference. The players of that generation were ever so slightly unknowable to us, just because I think there was less direct contact between players and fans. It was more mediated, not as many games were on TV — you'd catch glimpses of them and in a way that buffeted their legends. Modern players are constantly on every screen that we look at. Whitehead: Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise, but going through our teams, and just two or three of the 44 players we chose were not primarily known for their time at a 'Big Six' club — Shearer, Baines and, possibly, Kante. Of course it was always going to be 'Big Six' domination — but I'm surprised it's to that extent. Where are the cult-hero figures? Is it bad that this amount of talent coagulates at the top of the league? Kay: We did an exercise in lockdown called Premier League 60, doing big profiles of the greatest players in the competition's history. And that was very big-club heavy, we had people asking: 'Why isn't Matt Le Tissier in there? Or Jay-Jay Okocha?'. But equally, you can look at these things as a Manchester United fan or a Manchester City fan and think: 'Hang on, we've won this many league titles and only had 10 representatives?'. In terms of our consciousness, this list has to include players who performed at an absolutely elite level for four, five, six seasons — and that's why you're looking at the big clubs. Alexander: On Le Tissier, he's the sixth-top scorer of the 1990s with 98 goals and had the most assists with 62, ahead of Steve McManaman and Cantona. He was a one-club man, and we've all seen the highlight reels, but did he really affect league titles? Not really. And that's what gives you that longevity and legend. Kay: We've not even got Didier Drogba, Andy Cole, Robert Pires, who would be higher than Le Tissier in my estimation — inevitably, the best ones end up at the same handful of clubs. (Top image: Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic; Chris Brunskill/Fantasista, Ben Radford/Allsport,)
L'Orient-Le Jour
16-04-2025
- General
- L'Orient-Le Jour
IMA restores fragment of Gaza's millennia-old memory
"We must not throw Gaza's heritage into the sea!" declared Jack Lang, president of the Arab World Institute, at the inauguration of the exhibition "Treasures Saved from Gaza, 5,000 Years of History," which will run until Nov. 2 at the L'Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris. "This exhibition is an act of resistance. More than ever today, especially since the massacre of Oct. 7 and the subsequent destruction, Gaza's rich history must come to light. Nothing is worse than neglect and oblivion ... The archaeological heritage nourishes the contemporary Palestinian identity, and its preservation is the indispensable corollary of respecting the human rights of Palestinians," said Lang. In partnership with the Museum of Art and History in Geneva (MAH) and the Palestinian Authority, the IMA presents a selection of 130 archaeological masterpieces dating from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era. Oil lamps, amphoras, bowls and terracotta figurines, funerary steles, architectural elements, statuettes of deities in bronze or marble, such as Aphrodite (Hellenistic period) unearthed at Blakhiya, as well as the spectacular fragment of Byzantine mosaic from Abou Barakeh (Deir al-Balah) dated 586 AD. These are testimonies of Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic civilizations that followed one another on the soil of Gaza, a land of plenty for caravan traders, a port of wealth from the Orient, Arabia, Africa and the Mediterranean. Gaza is full of archaeological sites from all eras that are now in peril. 69 severely damaged cultural sites The exhibited relics come from the collection of Gaza businessman Jawdat Khoudary, who had offered them to the Palestinian Authority. Arriving in Switzerland in 2006 for a temporary exhibition at the MAH, these pieces could never be repatriated to Gaza due to successive wars in the enclave and the Israeli blockade. The Palestinian Authority requested that the MAH keep the objects until conditions for a "safe and undamaged" return are met. Thus, the IMA drew from the 529 items stored since 2006 in crates at the Geneva free port. Additionally, a mapping of bombings shows a visualization of schools, hospitals and destroyed civilian buildings, but also cultural sites. Based on satellite images, UNESCO has counted "69 severely damaged cultural sites": ten religious sites (including the Greek-Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, destroyed on Oct. 19, 2024), 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, seven archaeological sites, six monuments including the Pacha Palace built in the 13th century, two storage places for movable cultural property and a museum. As for the monastery of Saint Hilarion, a complex recognized for its universal value, it was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger on July 26, 2024. Unpublished photographs, treasures of the Biblical School Another room is dedicated to previously unpublished photographs of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. They come from the collection of the French Biblical and Archaeological School (EBAF). Founded in 1890, the institution has been located since its creation in the Dominican convent of Saint Stephen in Jerusalem. At its inception, it was a practical school of biblical studies. Its objective was simple: to study the Bible in the physical and cultural context in which it was written. That is, on site, to take into account the entire oriental environment. The clichés of the Dominican brothers-archaeologists were published in monographs or scientific journal articles, La Revue biblique. These are unique documents that show the quaint charm of the agglomeration surrounded by small gardens, the picturesque palm groves in the dunes and the fishing port. A landscape vanished with the Great War and the English bombings of 1917, which led to the loss of much of Gaza's architectural heritage. The arrival of displaced populations from 1947 and the creation of Israel, followed by the massive arrival of refugees after the first Israeli-Arab war (1948-1949), where nearly 200,000 "castaways of history" joined the 80,000 inhabitants of this coastal strip of 365 square kilometers, cut off from its hinterland. An exhibition born out of urgency The war was triggered by Hamas's attack, which resulted in 1,218 Israeli deaths. The military operations launched in retaliation by Israel killed more than 50,000 Palestinians. "The priority is obviously human, not heritage," exhibition curator Élodie Bouffard told AFP. "But we also wanted to show that Gaza was, for millennia, the culmination of the caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, developed because it was at the meeting point of water and sand." The genesis of these "Treasures of Gaza" is inseparable from the war in the Near East. By the end of 2024, the IMA was finalizing an exhibition of relics from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but the Israeli bombings of Beirut made the endeavor impossible. "It stopped dead, but we couldn't let that defeat us," recounted Bouffard. The idea of an exhibition on Gaza's heritage arose then, in haste. "We had four and a half months to put it together. That has never happened before." The exhibition design was entrusted to two talents of Palestinian architecture and design: Elias and Youssef Anastas, founders of the architecture and engineering firm AAU Anastas, and Wonder Cabinet, based in Paris and Bethlehem. Their work explores the connections between craftsmanship and architecture on scales ranging from furniture to territorial studies. Their works are part of permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire (in Orléans, France) and the Vitra Design Museum, a private museum dedicated to design and furniture, located in Weil am Rhein, Germany, near the Swiss border. Elias and Youssef Anastas received, notably, the grand prize of the jury as part of the 2024 edition of the Arab World Institute Design Award. L'IMA redonne à Gaza un pan de sa mémoire plurimillénaire détruite
New York Times
15-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Dortmund 3 Barcelona 1 (3-5 agg) – Guirassy hat-trick not enough for incredible turnaround
Barcelona flirted with disaster before eventually booking their place in the Champions League semi-finals with a 5-3 aggregate win over Borussia Dortmund. The Spanish champions came into Tuesday's quarter-final second leg with a commanding 4-0 lead, yet allowed a spirited Dortmund side to rattle their cage and spent the final 10 minutes defending frantically. Advertisement Serhou Guirassy was the star of the evening, netting a hat-trick — after scoring two against Barcelona earlier this season — but it is Hansi Flick's side who progress, with Bayern Munich or Inter Milan awaiting in the next round. The Athletic's Jack Lang, Seb Stafford-Bloor and Anantaajith Raghuraman assess the key moments. Given that the first leg of this tie was about as competitive as an afternoon nap, Barcelona could be forgiven for approaching the return match with a degree of confidence. It looked, on paper, like a simple case of turning up, doing the basics and focusing on the challenges to come further down the line. Dortmund, though, had other ideas. Nico Kovac's side started like a house on fire, chasing every ball and swarming forward at every opportunity. Maximilian Beier went close with an early effort. Guirassy spurned two presentable chances before converting from the penalty spot. The excellent Pascal Gross saw a goal chalked off for offside. Karim Adeyemi, effervescent, geed up a crowd that didn't really need it. Barcelona were completely rattled. Ronald Araujo and Frenkie de Jong gave the ball away cheaply. Gavi ran around like a busy little dog, and not in a good way. Even the attackers were off it: Raphinha kept going down blind alleys and Lamine Yamal's passing was uncharacteristically scattershot. The match calmed down after 20 minutes or so, but only really because Dortmund lost momentum. It was telling that the start of the second half followed a similar pattern: the home side taking swings, Barcelona ahead on the count but punchdrunk and swaying as Guirassy nodded home from close range. Bensebaini's own goal looked like a full stop but wasn't. Barcelona's defence jellified for a third time, allowing Guirassy to complete his hat-trick. Julian Brandt had an effort chalked off by the assistant referee. The dying stages — fraught, stretched, dizzying — felt like a slow descent into psychodrama. The final whistle came as a relief. Advertisement This is knockout football. You don't get bonus points for doing things the easy way. But there was much for the other remaining sides in the Champions League to pore over here. Barcelona are unplayable at their best, but they are also vulnerable. Jack Lang Nobody had a more eventful tie than Guirassy. Across the two games, there has been so much to admire about his all-round game. He's a far more skilful player than he's often given credit for and that showed again on Tuesday, with smart pirouettes and turns in deep positions, and clever use of the ball at the centre of Dortmund's attack. But life as a centre-forward at this level is unforgiving. Guirassy took his penalty with staggering class in the first half and, after fine work from Julien Durenville, re-awoke the Westfalenstadion by crashing a second home to make it 3-1 with 15 minutes left. But it will likely be the chances that he missed that live longest in the memory. The two in the first game in Barcelona, which would have made that night more respectable, and two more in the first half in Germany, before his penalty, when better finishing could really have dizzied a disorientated Barcelona. That's a tough reality. He did as much as any Dortmund player to get them back into this quarter-final, but was as culpable as any for it never quite being within reach. Seb Stafford-Bloor Ultimately, this was not good enough from Dortmund, but still a performance and a night they needed. They went out on their shield, at least. There were times when Barcelona looked genuinely fragile and when, especially in the first half, Dortmund appeared that they might create a chance any time they drove forward. Had Julian Brandt's goal to make it 4-1 survived the offside flad and counted, goodness knows what might have happened next. Advertisement A bittersweet observation is that a more efficient team — one that was a little colder in front of goal — might well have wiped out the first-leg deficit. Still, within its context this was a triumph for Dortmund, because this team's flaws are not what frustrates their fans. Most often, it's the lack of character and urgency which is bemoaned and makes them so inferior to Dortmund teams of the past. Systemically they were better, too. Kovac abandoned the back-four he used in Spain, reinstating a 3-4-3 that provided a lot more security around the edges of his defence, which were so exposed in Barcelona. The midfield was more balanced. A fit-again Nmecha and Pascal Gross carried and picked their passes nicely. For an hour, Gross was the best player on the pitch. And, up front, Max Beier and Karim Adeyemi were a huge problem, duelling nicely around Serhou Guirassy. So, this wasn't the miracle they needed to qualify for the semi-finals, but it was a Dortmund who stirred their home crowd and — most importantly — worked, in both senses of the word. Seb Stafford-Bloor Barcelona's poor start to both halves was heavily dictated by their inability to escape Dortmund's four-man high press. Given Ronald Araujo's limitations in possession and Pau Cubarsi playing on the left side of central defence to accommodate the Uruguayan, Barcelona struggled to play out from the back. Frenkie De Jong repeatedly showed for the ball but had limited options, repeatedly playing it out wide to the full-backs, who booted it forward or misplaced their passes. The Dutch international did not do himself many favors either, looking lax in possession at times and unsuccessfully appealing for fouls when he was outmuscled by Dortmund's midfielders. All of that resulted in him losing possession seven times in the first half. Advertisement The second half brought a marked improvement. De Jong showed much more composure in possession, twice flicking the ball over an onrushing Dortmund player and collecting it on the other side in his own half to retain possession. His composure was crucial to Barcelona wrestling control back after going 2-0 down and creating openings, including Bensebaini's own goal. Pedri's arrival seemed to make his job easier and Barcelona seemed to be heading for a comfortable victory before Guirassy's hat-trick goal made for a nervous final 15 minutes. Anantaajith Raghuraman Sunday, April 20: Borussia Monchengladbach (Home), Bundesliga, 4.30pm UK, 11.30am in ET Saturday, April 19: Celta Vigo (Home), La Liga, 3.15pm UK, 10.15am in ET
Arab News
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
France's IMA launches Arab Fashion Award
PARIS: The Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris has announced the launch of its Arab Fashion Award — the AFA-IMA — to promote and celebrate the rising stars of the Arab world's fashion scene. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Since its opening in 1980, the IMA has supported Arab creativity in all its forms, including fashion. It has hosted numerous shows and exhibitions highlighting the role fashion plays at the intersection of cultures. Philippe Castro, chief of staff of the presidency of the IMA, and the man behind the new initiative tells Arab News that 'the moment seems ripe' for the launch of the award. 'We're seeing Fashion Weeks popping up in Riyadh, Dubai, Beirut and Marrakesh. We're seeing enormous creativity in fashion design in the (Arab) region as a whole and there is a growing appetite for these designers. They deserve our attention,' Castro says. 'Christian Dior once said, 'The air of Paris is the very air of haute couture.' The same can be said today of the air of Riyadh, Beirut, Egypt, Morrocco and Tunisia. All these places have a long tradition of couture. Take Tunisia, for instance; it's no coincidence that master couturier Azzedine Alaïa came from Tunisia.' If Paris is the world capital of fashion, that is thanks in no small measure to Castro's longtime colleague Jack Lang, president of the IMA. As Minister of Culture, it was Lang who saw the potential for fashion to become a booming industry for France. In 1982, he succeeded — in the face of a lot of pearl-clutching — in making the Cour Carrée of the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens the principle venues of Paris' runway shows, moving fashion front and center in public consiousness. The number of fashion shows in Paris doubled between 1980 and 1990, after which fashion was definitively established as a sector that means serious business. 'Jack Lang made fashion fashionable.' Castro says. 'We're very lucky to have him as our president. He gave an unprecedented impetus to young fashion designers in the 1980s. Having worked alongside him for many years, as a big advocate of fashion, this award seems natural and inevitable.' Castro is a regular visitor to Saudi Arabia, where, he says, he has witnessed 'an incredible evolution in fashion' over the past decade, especially in Riyadh and Jeddah. 'There is a tangible effervescence and dynamism visible with people on the streets. On my most recent visit to Riyadh, I visited concept stores selling abayas. I find the reinterpretation of the abaya and the thaub brilliantly creative,' he says. 'The designers have limitless imagination; they know how to explore their own culture creatively. I was also fascinated to see superb Saudi-designed streetwear for the first time. I fell for a towelling beach robe with pockets and a hood inspired by traditional Saudi robes — pure creative genius!' Navigating the international fashion world is a complex challenge for young international designers. Creative talent is not enough, they need experienced professional mentoring. So the IMA is partnering with the world-renowned Institut Français de la Mode (the French Fashion Institute) to help the award winners develop their professional skills in cutting, patternmaking and marketing as part of the prize. This first edition of the AFA-IMA is deliberately fluid. Jewellery and accessory designs are also eligible for entry. The award has two categories; Emerging Talent and Innovative Talent, with an option for the jury to grant a third award to an established Arab designer. Other categories may be added as momentum grows. 'It will evolve according to the type of entries we receive and be adapted accordingly,' says Castro. 'This is an haute-couture — not ready-to-wear — process.' The award is open to designers who are nationals of Arab League countries or part of their diasporas. The jury consists of key figures from fashion, art and culture including Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode; Pascale Mussard, the founder of Hermès' upcycled luxury brand Petit h; Lebanese fashion designers Rabih Kayrouz and Milia Maroun; Elsa Janssen, director of the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris; and Manuel Arnaut, editor of Vogue Arabia. 'We composed our jury of people at the pinnacle of their profession. We always aim for excellence,' says Castro. 'The members will follow the prize-winners' progress closely. This is not a one-off. It's a long-term initiative to showcase the region's enormous creativity. 'We composed the jury of good friends of the IMA — a friendly needle and thread which will make dazzling embroidery. It's a project that comes from the heart, because fashion is all about emotion. If there is no heart, there is no point,' he continues. 'We are living in an era of severity, if we can diffuse some beauty into the world, so much the better for us all.'
Iraqi News
13-02-2025
- Iraqi News
Former French Minister of Culture visits Al-Qishla Heritage Building and Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad
Baghdad - INA Former French Minister of Culture, President of the Arab World Institute in Paris, Jack Lang, and his accompanying delegation visited Al-Mutanabbi Street and the Qishla building in central Baghdad today, Thursday, stressing that the development in this area of Baghdad has turned it into a tourist attraction center. The correspondent of the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said: "The former French Minister of Culture, President of the Arab World Institute in Paris, Jack Lang, and his accompanying delegation visited Al-Mutanabbi Street and the Qishla building in central Baghdad." He added that "Lang, who was accompanied by the Iraqi Arab poet, Shawqi Abdul Amir, Director General of the Arab World Institute in Paris, and a number of employees of the Department of Maintenance and Preservation of Antiquities at the General Authority for Antiquities and Heritage, was briefed on the development work in the street and the Qishla building, as they are among the most important landmarks and symbols of Iraqi culture." For his part, the former French Minister of Culture confirmed during his tour that 'the development in this area of Baghdad has turned it into a tourist attraction center, due to its heritage and spiritual character that symbolizes the culture and authentic history of Iraqi society,' expressing his 'happiness with the warm and generous reception as he wandered through the alleys and cultural streets of Baghdad.'
