The front rows might still be emptier than usual, but a number of catwalks lit up this weekend as some of fashion's most storied brands showcased their latest collections.
French fashion house Dior returned to live audience shows on Thursday with a firework-punctuated presentation of its 2022 Cruise collection in Athens, held at the Panathenaic stadium, site of the first modern Olympic Games.
Watched by celebrities including film star Catherine Deneuve, model Cara Delevingne and The Queen's Gambit actress Anya Taylor Joy as well as Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the collection showcased designs inspired by antiquity and traditional Greek dress.
Greek artisans whose work was featured in the collection included a tailor and embroiderer from Argos in the Peloponnese, a silk factory in the north-eastern town of Soufli, and a maker of fisherman's caps from the port of Piraeus.
"I am very interested in the craftsmanship. It's my passion," Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri said.
Cruise collections fall between usual spring / summer and autumn / winter collections – and French houses often visit other countries for the launch.
The peplos, the robe traditionally worn by women in ancient Greece, was a "key inspiration" for the show's tunics, Dior said.
The collection – mostly in black, white, grey, gold and blue – also included sportswear pieces and suits inspired by jackets and pants worn by Marlene Dietrich.
The show took place 70 years after a famous Dior shoot at the Acropolis.
"When I arrived in Dior I found the archive and I said, one day it would be great to realise again this trip in Greece. In some ways, it's an anniversary," Chiuri said.
The designer said getting crowds back, albeit at a limited capacity, was a welcome feeling. The last show with spectators, a smaller affair, was held in September.
"We worked a lot with video, film, but it's completely different to have an audience at our fashion show. It's like a concert," she said.
Milan also welcomes back front-row guests
The Italian fashion industry welcomed back spectators to its shows on Friday, a sign the industry is ready to start turning the page on virtual formats adopted during the pandemic.
The numbers are still modest, with only Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Etro inviting an audience to their men's spring / summer 2022 collections.
"This is the dress rehearsal of the return to normalcy," said Federica Trotta Mureau, editor of Italian fashion magazine Mia Le Journal.
"The lights that go out and come back on, the music that sounds as soon as the first models come out ... it's an emotion that digital cannot give us."
The bulk of the 47 fashion shows taking place over five days will remain digital, with the likes of Ermenegildo Zegna, Prada and Fendi plumping for a virtual display.
In a live show on Saturday, meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana presented a collection inspired by the extravagant lighting installations of southern Italian street festivals.
Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana called their collection “light therapy” for a world that has been mostly denied large gatherings for the past 15 months.
“Fashion is emotion,’’ Gabbana said backstage before the show. “We experimented last season with a digital show. It is not the same. It was without adrenalin.”
Their live show with a socially distanced audience of invited guests was the first inside their showroom since the pandemic forced Milan Fashion Week to go mostly digital in recent seasons.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
