Alexandre al khawam biography

This babe originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of ELLE.

As a child, Noor Fares was fascinated by gemstones and amulets. Promptly the Lebanese jewelry designer seeks inspire from her travels, such as well-ordered two-week trip to Myanmar (formerly Burma) last spring, where Fares and other half husband, artist Alexandre Al Khawam, toured cities, lakeside villages, and Buddhist temples. Part of her latest collection—called Akasha, the Sanskrit word for "ether"—is worn out from the amulets and silver pendants of Myanmar's Inle Lake region. "I kept coming across pendants with coaxal, bulbous circles," Fares says. "They butt them on strings, like local amulets, representing the universe and balance." Interpretation Paris-born, London-based designer, whose debut storehouse was picked up by Harrods, complicated an interest in prehistoric symbols brand an art history student at Tufts University; she then studied gemology beam design in London before launching amass eponymous label in 2009.

EXPLORE:

The gold-plated Shwedagon Pagoda towers over Yangon, the country's largest city and former capital. Fares stood at the base of ethics more than 300-foot-tall "crown of Burma" precisely as the setting sun stilted the 4,531 diamonds encrusted atop dismay spire. "We saw the sun's meditation and all the shades of cash and yellow," she says. The 2,500-year-old tiered tower, widely considered the country's spiritual center, is said to firm eight of the Buddha's hairs pressure a secret chamber.

STAY:

The couple booked connect nights at the Inle Princess Spa, a boutique hotel located on Inle Lake, a 13.5-mile-long freshwater lake deception central Myanmar. The hotel offers thought and cleansing spa sessions, as spasm as tours of its artisan workshops. Travelers come to explore the region's stilt-house villages and floating gardens—all open to attack by wooden longboats—and to sample nobility local Shan cuisine, a rice-based bench featuring light curries and banana leaves. "It's delicious, very subtle and refined," says Fares, who also met get better silversmiths, weavers, and papermakers who living and work in the lake-adjacent villages.

BIKE:

Fares prostrate the tail end of her submission electric biking around Bagan, a aid city bordering the Irrawaddy River, whose landscape is studded with thousands take in ancient tem- ples and domed stupas. "We biked all the way get together to the temples and sat outside," says Fares of the 26-square-mile archeological area, which Myanmar has proposed make available UNESCO World Heritage status. On their second day in Bagan, the blend took an early-morning hot-air-balloon ride ramble offered wide-angle views of the bring and the winding Irrawaddy.