Un charmant bric-à-brac à « Tante el Ashrafieh ». Photo tirée de son compte Instagram @tanteelashrafieh
His name is Yehya, « everyone on his team is called Yehya. » He is at once the owner, the stylist, the curator, the cashier, the communicator and the content creator, every role in a fashion house embodied by a single man.
Alone in his vintage boutique tucked inside an old house in Achrafieh, Yehya Kabbani keeps company, between visits from customers, only with his Stockman mannequins and his hanging racks. He sometimes spends hours talking to them.
Each new arrival, each new season becomes an occasion for a small celebration in this space that feels like a private dressing room, with paint spilling like soap at the foot of the racks, a crooked copper chandelier and traditional colored cement mosaic tiles.
The name of his shop is itself a kind of incantation. « Tante el Ashrafieh ? » (the Ashrafieh auntie). It is almost too obvious.
The name evokes such a familiar archetype that it seems to belong to everyone in this coded neighborhood, where tradition has only retreated in order to settle more deeply in the collective imagination.
The Achrafieh « auntie » is, broadly speaking, a strict moralist, always ready to judge others by how well they conform to the upbringing of « respectable people, » be they aging women forever the well-behaved girls raised by nuns, or cheerful widows, contented single women and doting « cat mothers, » devout churchgoers dressed to the nines every day of the week, loyal to their twice weekly blowouts under the salon dryer, the free « touch up » between visits and the unlikely mahogany dye, streaked with blond for special occasions.
With immaculate nails, she turns her back on a living room crowded with trinkets, sitting in curlers on her veranda at morning coffee, watching the street like the most formidable surveillance system, spotting young lovers at improper hours, aspiring matchmaker.
The Achrafieh auntie always has sweets and pastries to offer, vermilion smiles spilling over sharp incisors and, above all, armfuls of gardenias with which she solemnly announces the arrival of summer. She has lived through every war without ever losing a single one of these habits, which range from the unbearable to the irresistibly comic in their repetition.
What does Yehya do with all this imagery ? He collects its traces. The Achrafieh auntie has lived through every war since the day after the golden age, which had the good fortune of unfolding during her well behaved youth.
She owns glittering garments, designer jackets, Hollywood trinkets, shoes any designer in search of inspiration would dream of recreating. She never held back on sequins, kept wearing her skirts above the knee, though with opaque tights, and would lace herself into a corset to slip into a sleek dress for her nephew’s wedding.
All these pieces eventually find their way to Yehya, a keeper of past joys and luminous memories. He gives them a new life, stripped of the « auntie » spirit but still carrying that touch of nostalgia that sometimes makes you want to step into their shoes, into the world of these singular women. Beyond the flaws tied to their role as guardians of tradition, they also carry tenderness, remarkable cooking, a protective instinct and a sense of style that belongs to them alone, something one might wish to borrow to leave a mark.
The Achrafieh aunties needed a curator to keep them from fading into oblivion.
Yehya gives them a second youth by reinventing them.
Instagram: @tanteelashrafieh
