Fadwa Baalbaki was born in Beirut in 1969, into a childhood shaped early by creativity — and, just as early, by upheaval. When civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975, she and her family fled to Paris, a city that would quietly plant the seeds of her future. There, captivated by the work of Azzedine Alaïa and Yohji Yamamoto, a young Fadwa spent her free hours thrifting in Châtelet, reworking secondhand pieces into her own — the first sign of an eye for construction that would define her later career.
She returned to Lebanon in 1994 as the war ended, married, and raised three children, setting fashion aside for family. It wasn't until 2008, designing jewelry for private clients, that she noticed a gap: Beirut had little space for emerging designers to be seen. She opened Little Black Dress, a concept store built to give young talent a platform of their own.
In 2011, she took the leap into her own name, opening an atelier in Beirut focused on made-to-measure work — where her precision and hands-on approach with every client quickly built a devoted following. By 2014, she debuted her first couture collection in Abu Dhabi, and has released a couture and bridal collection every season since.
Today, every FADWA BAALBAKI piece is still made entirely in-house in her Beirut atelier — worn on red carpets by names like Hannah Waddingham and Gabourey Sidibe, and defined, above all, by the same one-on-one devotion she started with.
