Incollect Magazine - Issue 9

Incollect Magazine 21 Beirut. “I never felt I really belonged anywhere and in the end that became my greatest creative asset,” she says, sitting in her studio in an old residential building in the affluent Gemmayzeh district of Beirut that doubles as her showroom for clients. Here she leads a team of 20 designers engaged in everything from consumer home product and furniture design to one-off custom commissions, art, fashion, and jewelry, and a range of interior design services. Today Debs is among the leading designers in the Middle East — she has won numerous awards and embarked on a series of collaborations ranging from limited- edition hand-carved and inlaid packaging for the luxury brand Dior to bespoke recycled material hand-crafted tiles for Kohler. “One could say that Nada is the Philippe Starck of the Near and Middle East,” says the legendary Parisian design dealer Béatrice Saint-Laurent, one of the first dealers outside of the region to fully understand the universal importance and value of Debs’s project of reviving and reinterpreting traditional craft in contemporary design. “I love her multicultural approach to design as well as contemporary language made of clear lines and bold patterns along with the unique talent she has for revisiting traditional ancestral crafts in a non-conformist and rebellious way,” Saint-Laurent says. Debs’s latest “rebellious” collaboration takes inspiration from the blend of ideas and cultures characterizing the Buddhist statuary of the ancient kingdom of Gandhara in modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Gandhara Carapace Collection came out of a chance invitation from a traditional stone inlay business in Peshawar, Pakistan, Studio Gallery vignette, Galerie BSL, Paris, from left: Coming To Life Side Table #2 and Coffee Table, 2022. Solid walnut and mother of pearl marquetry. Gandhara Carapace Table, 2022. Amazonite, onyx, and marble marquetry. Stitched Horizons Pebble Chairs in orange, pink, and yellow velvet with embroidery on straw.