Focus on Morocco and the art of embroidery with Fadila El Gadi, Moroccan fashion designer. Acclaimed internationally, she has always associated her creative work with the ancestral art of Moroccan embroidery. The most widespread styles of embroidery in the kingdom are those of Fez, Meknes, Sale, Azemmour, Rabat and Tetouan. Preserving traditions while updating them, such is the goal of Fadila El Gadi.
Pants, coats, dresses, kimonos and of course the essential caftan, all these unique pieces are made with silk, cotton or cashmere, pearls and gold thread. This lover of crafts has also realized another dream in her hometown of Sale: founding a second-chance school where you learn to embroider.
I’ve always loved costume, fashion. I wanted to create a contemporary clothing brands but with craftsmanship.
Fadila El Gadifashion designer of the eponymous brand and founder of the embroidery school of Sale in Morocco.
I create all the time, constantly, I travel a lot, therefore, I am all the time boiling. I need to create, there is no limit to my imagination.
Born in Salenear Rabat in Morocco, Fadila El Gadi grew up there in a artisanal world between weaving and embroidery. Salty is a city known for the quality and variety of its embroidery workshops. At a very young age with her sisters, she was introduced to techniques, style, tradition and know-how in craftsmen’s workshops during school holidays.
After getting her baccalaureate, she went to fashion school in Rabat then opened a workshop, and launches its eponymous brand in 2007. She uses embroidery in all her creations. His admiration for ancestral craftsmanship leads him to update it in order to make it known internationally. Over the course of encounters and collaborations, she dares to show structured, simple and timeless collections whether in silk velvet, cashmere or cotton, there is always Moroccan embroidery handmade by artisans on the clothes of Fadila El Gadi.
“I had the chance, in my life, to have beautiful encounters that have helped mee and gave me confidence. I try to give a little what I received: Ihas recognition. And above all I am very touchede by the craftsmen I work with, they are wonderful, they are delighted when its waynt their embroideries, their work worn by first ladies, celebrities or princesses, it makes them prouds.»
To avoid the decline of this know-how and Moroccan craftsmanship, She opens, in 2016, a second chance school for children, girls or boys, in order to safeguard the ancestral heritage of Moroccan embroidery.
” I noticed that there was a loss of know-how, hence the opening of the school. It is with training that we must seduce young people. Most older craftsmen find it difficult to transmit and at the same time, I wished give the chance to young people who are failing at school or who have not never been educated. I have the ability to have more classs but financially it is not possible and it is good to have two classes of 10 to 12 students and make them want to learn this trade which is honorable.»
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