At 37, Galia Lahav, today one of the hottest fashion designers in the world, was still teaching arts and crafts at a school in Ashdod. She was married to Natan Lahav, CEO of Yehuda Reshatot (Yehuda Welded Mesh), and raising two children.
“I was a happy woman, satisfied with what I had,” she says. “Natan and I got married very, very young. I was 20 and he was 21, and we had just completed our military service. By then our children were already growing up, and we felt it was time to slow down at work and finally start enjoying life.
Galia Lahav
(Photo: Oz Moalem)
“But one day I suddenly got it into my head that I wanted a third child. I told Natan, ‘Osnat is already 17 and will soon enlist in the IDF, Rani will enlist after her, and then what? You and I will be left alone in this big empty house.’ I said, ‘Let’s have another child.’ I wasn’t sure he’d be thrilled.”
Why?
“Because getting pregnant at 40 wasn’t common then. It was even considered dangerous. But Natan answered, ‘Another child? As far as I’m concerned, let’s have two more.’ That’s how Idan was born.
“During maternity leave I sat at home with him, I had time to think, and then another idea entered my head. I told Natan, ‘We’re already established, we don’t lack anything in life, so this is the time for me to fulfill the dream I’ve had since childhood.’ I told him I wasn’t going back to teaching arts and crafts and wished instead to open a fashion house.”
Four decades later, Lahav, 78, is ranked second on a global list of five leading bridal couture designers, behind American designer Vera Wang, who recently sold her brand, and ahead of Monique Lhuillier.
“All the biggest names are on that list, and among them is little Galia from Ashdod, the first and only Israeli,” she says. “Every now and then I have to say it out loud just to remind myself that this is real. Sometimes even I can’t believe how far I’ve come. I dreamed of designing in my own style, selling my work and succeeding, but I never imagined the brand would grow to this scale.”
Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Sydney Sweeney, Christina Aguilera and Gal Gadot have worn her evening gowns onstage, in photo shoots and on red carpets. Paris Hilton, Millie Bobby Brown and Simone Biles chose Lahav for their weddings, as did Israeli celebrities including Eden Fines, Yuval Caspit, Naya Federman and former hostage Sapir Cohen.
Lahav herself will not volunteer the names of Israeli celebrities who spend weeks or months sitting face-to-face with her as fittings evolve into intimate conversations. Discretion, she says, is part of the job. Not every local star bothers to credit her. “It’s a shame. A compliment costs nothing,” she says.
But perhaps the name is no longer necessary because the dresses themselves have become recognizable. When Israeli singer Netta Barzilai released the video for “Nana Banana,” for example, it seemed obvious who could have put her in a short, pink ruffled tulle dress.
Sydney Sweeney in a dress designed by Galia Lahav
(Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
“Every time I receive a photo of a bride wearing one of my dresses, it moves me,” Lahav says. “I don’t want to sound sentimental, but there really is a piece of me in every dress. Seeing the finished look fills me with pride and joy, and that’s what keeps driving me to move forward, stay ahead and create what comes next.”
The interview takes place at Lahav’s fashion house, four floors of luxury tucked among the garages of south Tel Aviv. The building has an elevator, naturally, but Lahav races up and down the stairs in heels. That is her daily workout.
During a trip to Kyoto, Japan, for the opening of another store, she slipped in the rain and broke her leg. She was flown back to Israel on an emergency flight. Five days later she was back at work, using the elevator to reach her small office in a wheelchair.
Four decades after reinventing herself from arts-and-crafts teacher to fashion designer, Galia Lahav has grown from a one-woman operation into a family empire.
Two of Lahav’s children, Osnat and Idan, had already built careers of their own in entirely different fields before leaving them to join the family business as co-CEOs. Her husband, who recently retired, also comes in once a week, she says, “bringing new ideas and initiatives.”
Their middle son, Rani, who served in an undercover Israeli military unit, later became religiously observant. “His son from his first marriage, the oldest of my eight grandchildren, has just enlisted in a combat unit,” Lahav says. “We celebrated with a good meal, and I made him the soup he loves. That’s what grandmothers do.”
There is something else many people do not know about Galia Lahav. Her blond hair may occasionally appear at fashion shows, or at a ceremony where President Isaac Herzog presented her with a lifetime achievement award marking 40 years in the fashion industry, but she rarely gives interviews.
Why?
“Because in Israel, people don’t know how to give credit.”
Galina Nimoy was born in Pinsk to Sonia (later Sarah), and Yaakov, young Holocaust survivors who clung to one another and to the hope of building a new life. “A week after they met, my father proposed to my mother. Two and a half years after their eldest son was born, they had twins, my sister Tamara and me.
“My father, who had grown up in HaShomer HaTzair (Jewish socialist-Zionist youth movement), helped Jews leave the Soviet Union and make their way to Israel illegally. Someone informed on him, and when I was a year and a half old, he was sentenced to 24 years in a harsh Siberian prison where visits were not allowed. He simply disappeared from our lives.”
“Until then we had lived in a big house. My father worked as a forest manager and earned good money. When he went to prison, they threw us out of the house and my mother was left alone with three babies, without knowing when she would ever be reunited with her husband.
“Friends urged her to place us in an institution, warning that she would never be able to raise three young children on her own. But my mother was a lioness. She told them, ‘Even if all I can feed these children is potatoes, I’ll be the one to raise them.’ She found work as a bookkeeper at a children’s home, where we were given a room to live in, and she raised us there with love.”
“We grew up poor, never knowing whether our father would come back, and surrounded by the vicious antisemitism of the postwar years. On the way to school, people would hurl slurs at us and say, ‘Why are you Jews still here? Why didn’t the Nazis finish the job?’
“It was brutal. We learned how to survive. My mother, who was incredibly strong, would always tell us, ‘One day your father will come home, and we’ll move to Palestine.’ But year after year passed, and eventually I stopped believing that miracle would ever happen.”
“When I was eight and a half, my mother received a telegram from Siberia. After Stalin’s death, some political prisoners were released, and my father was among those chosen to go free. Years later, he told us that when they informed him, he fainted. He simply collapsed from the shock.”
The reunited family then made their way to Israel. “My father arrived already fluent in Hebrew and trained as a wood engineer, a profession that was well developed in the Soviet Union because timber was widely used in construction. My mother learned Hebrew quickly and found work in bookkeeping. Compared with many new immigrants, we settled in relatively well.
“During our first year, my parents sent us to live with my father’s sister in Petah Tikva so we could improve our Hebrew. At school, a teacher asked whether I wanted to replace Galina with a more Israeli name. I told him it depended on what he had in mind. My twin sister Tamara became Tamar, which was an obvious choice. When the teacher suggested Galia for me, I thought it sounded nice.”
When her father took a senior position at a plywood factory in Ashkelon, the family moved south. “Ashkelon was very good to us. It took me about two years to fully understand what was going on in class, but we loved Israel, grew up alongside kids who had been born here and settled in well.
“After finishing high school in Ashkelon, I received a deferment from military service to attend a teacher-training college in Givatayim, where I studied arts and crafts. By the time I graduated, Natan had finished his army service and said, ‘Let’s get married.’
“It wasn’t that I was in any rush to get married at 20. And contrary to what people whispered behind my back, I wasn’t pregnant either.”
Then give me one good reason to get married at 20.
“We’d already been together for four years. Natan was my first boyfriend. When I was 16 he saw me at a party in Ashkelon and didn’t leave my side for a minute. That same evening, when he told me, ‘You’re going to be my wife,’ I replied, ‘Wait until I even agree to go out with you.’
“He began his military service in a pilot training course and had to Hebraize his last name, Lindner. As his girlfriend I told him, ‘Natan Lahav is an amazing name,’ without even imagining that it would one day be my surname too.”
Lahav began her career as a designer in the basement of the family home in Ashdod, but soon realized she needed to move closer to the Tel Aviv area. “We were looking for a house in Ramat Ef’al, near a childhood friend of mine. Then Natan took me to see a plot of land nearby, in Kiryat Krinitzi, and I pinched him hard to signal that he should put down a deposit.
“A year later, the house was ready and the basement became my kingdom. I didn’t start the business just to make money. That was never the dream. I wanted to create something of my own and enter a completely different world. If money is the only reason you work, eventually the work itself stops exciting you.”
She learned the foundations of the profession from her mother. “She was an excellent seamstress, and that was what she did to supplement the family income. By 12 I was already sewing beside my mother, and sometimes instead of her, and I was exempted from sewing classes at college.
“I always had nerve. I saw that my hand could leave a unique signature on fabric, and I knew what kind of fashion I wanted to create. I never dreamed small. My first designs were oversized sweaters, which were fashionable at the time, with fur, leather and bead appliqués. I marketed them to stores in the area that were willing to take a risk and sell something unlike anything people had seen in Israel.
“After about a year, I moved into evening gowns with appliqués, which became part of my signature style. With the help of a sales representative, I was soon selling them in about 200 stores across Israel. A few years later, the sewing room in our basement could no longer keep up with demand, so I rented a villa nearby and turned it into a studio where I could work around the clock, including on custom designs.
“That’s where I made my first wedding gown. A longtime client brought in her engaged daughter, who told me, ‘I don’t want just another white dress.’ That sentence stayed with me. At the time, Israel had bridal salons and beauty parlors catering to brides, but there was still no real destination for distinctive, fashion-forward wedding gowns.”
‘I helped introduce American brides to sexier gowns.’ Beyoncé
(Photo: Courtesy of Galia Lahav)
She unveiled her first bridal collection when Idan, her youngest child, was about 10. “I had always loved the polished, tailored French aesthetic, and my first gowns had a very romantic feel. “Then I traveled to Rome and Paris with a friend whose taste I trusted.”
“We visited all the major couture houses, and I came back to Israel obsessed with corsets. Everyone was shocked. A corset on a bride? But I knew it could work.”
When Lahav moved the business to Tel Aviv, opening what she describes as “a huge store on Dizengoff Street,” she committed fully to couture and meticulous hand craftsmanship.
“Every dress was made by hand from start to finish. I had two or three women whose sole job was to embroider pearls, stones and beads onto the gowns. It was painstaking work. Sometimes the embroidery alone took more than two weeks, but that was what set me apart, and I loved it.
“Fashion journalists at the time didn’t understand what I was doing. They told me no sane woman would wear a voluminous princess-style wedding gown with petticoats and a corset. On the rare occasions they came to the boutique, they would say, ‘That isn’t the Israeli style. You’ll never sell it here.’ “I took the criticism quietly. I realized they simply couldn’t see the level I was trying to reach.”
What was the most insulting thing anyone said about you?
“Someone said he couldn’t write about me because I didn’t know how to read fashion. Obviously that isn’t pleasant to hear, but I never gave up.
“The vision I had in my head pushed me forward. If there are brides who love my dresses, and there is already a waiting list for upcoming events, why should I be influenced by criticism from small-minded people who don’t know how to give credit?”
Her breakthrough came when she designed evening gowns for Israel’s 2007 beauty pageant. A year later, after dressing contestants on the Israeli version of “Dancing with the Stars,” she was marked as a designer to watch.
“They finally discovered me when I was approaching 60,” she says with a laugh. “I dressed Anna Aronov and Rotem Sela in gowns with sheer looks and exposed backs, and everyone talked about the three cups I had sewn into them, at the bust and crotch.
“I felt appreciated, and even though my heart nearly burst with happiness, I couldn’t help asking myself why they had ignored me for 20 years.
“In the bridal world in France at the time, the princess look was popular. When I brought it to Israel, people laughed at me and asked, ‘What is this?’ They only praised Shenkar graduates. Thank goodness I didn’t let the criticism influence me. I stayed true to myself.”
By then, two of Lahav’s three children had joined her at the fashion house, working alongside her from the fourth floor of the white Tel Aviv building the family calls “headquarters.” Twice a day, FedEx shipments leave from there for clients around the world, a routine that has continued even during wartime.
Model Eden Fines and singer Osher Cohen on their wedding day
(Photo: Anat Mosberg)
“When the business began to take off, I worked day and night. Nothing could slow me down,” Lahav says. “Natan supported me every step of the way and was an incredible father. Our three children grew up with a mother completely consumed by her fashion dream, because when you love what you do, there are no real working hours.
“When you’re doing what you love most, the hard work doesn’t feel like a burden. You don’t get tired of it. Even today, I can sit and sew for 12 hours straight and enjoy every minute.”
Her eldest daughter, attorney Osnat Lahav-Malkin, 56, married with one child, made a career change 20 years ago. “One day Osnat called me and said, ‘Mom, I’m tired of fighting with people. I’m tired of the office.’ So I told her to come by and see what we were doing. I said, ‘Why go work somewhere else when we already have a family business?’
“She came in with no real idea of how the fashion house worked, but quickly found her place on the business and development side. I was thrilled. I’m much more of an artist, while Osnat brought structure to the finances and schedules. We started traveling together to source fabrics, and by then I was already thinking about expanding abroad. I had no idea how to do it or where to begin, but I knew I couldn’t grow the business alone.”
Idan, 41, married with three children, joined the family business 13 years ago, almost by accident. “I definitely wasn’t planning on it,” he says. “I studied computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center and worked at several startups, including Soluto, which was later sold in a deal that also benefited Naftali Bennett. After that I launched my own startup, eventually shut it down, and one Friday afternoon I stopped by my mother’s store on Dizengoff Street just to say Shabbat shalom.
“My father was there and asked me to help him with an email problem. When I opened the inbox, I saw a flood of messages from overseas that no one had answered. I couldn’t understand why. So I replied to a woman in Canada, and suddenly we had sold a $7,000 wedding dress. It was crazy.”
The price of the dress?
“That was part of it. In the startup world, you can work endlessly, raise money from investors and still not generate a single dollar in revenue. Then, almost by accident, we discovered there was real demand for Galia Lahav dresses overseas.
“We started exploring international markets. Australia was our first stop because we were seeing a lot of online traffic from there. Our expectations were far too high, and the trip was a disaster. We didn’t sell a single dress. Then we tried England, and that didn’t go much better. At that point we were ready to give up. We thought, ‘Maybe this just isn’t going to work abroad. It’s disappointing, but it’s not the end of the world.’ Then we decided to give it one last try and went to New York. That’s where everything changed.”
Jennifer Lopez
(Photo: Galia Lahav website)
All four of them went to NY. “My father was part of it too,” Osnat says. “We knew there was demand because we could see the online traffic and customers were finding us through Facebook and Instagram. We were also studying the competition. The United States was the biggest market, but much of what was available there felt fairly conventional. We were bringing something genuinely different.”
What do you mean by conventional?
“A classic gown, white or cream, weighed down by layers of petticoats. In a word, boring,” Lahav says. “Then I came in with sexy wedding dresses, open backs, halter necklines and fitted silhouettes that emphasized the body, all of them handmade.
“It took me time to understand that weddings are shaped by culture too. An American wedding might mean a reception and some dancing, something relatively short. An Israeli wedding can go on for hours, often with an after-party, so the bride needs a second, more comfortable dress for dancing, and sometimes even a third. I like to think I helped introduce American brides to sexier, lighter gowns they could actually move in.”
Ten years ago, Idan also helped take his mother’s designs to the Paris couture stage. “One day he asked me, ‘Mom, can you see yourself showing in Paris?’ I told him, ‘I’m not sure they’ll accept me. No Israeli designer has ever shown there.’
“He began corresponding with the couture federation, and we put together the fashion house’s credentials. I flew to Paris for an interview with Sharon Sever, 55, the designer I work with, who speaks French. Years earlier, he had actually been my student in elementary-school art class, and when we met again after his military service, I encouraged him to study fashion in Paris.
“A month after the interview, we got the answer: We were in. We opened champagne at the office, and for nights afterward I could barely sleep from excitement. I felt as if I had reached the very top, stepping onto the same stage as the giants. Dior, Chanel, Valentino and me. The first and only Israeli.”
Lahav prepared a spectacular collection and was greeted with applause when she stepped onto the stage at the end of the show, held at the Grand Palais, which she describes as something out of a fairy tale. “We continued flying to Paris Fashion Week every year until COVID ended the tradition.”
As social media gained power, celebrity stylists began approaching the fashion house. The stars generated valuable exposure by tagging the brand and helped elevate Lahav’s international profile. But the queen of couture herself remains surprisingly removed from the glamour.
She has never met Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez. She did meet Simone Biles, “the tiny gymnast,” who ordered two wedding gowns. “I was in New York when Simone Biles came for a fitting, so obviously I went over and we hugged,” Lahav says. “I don’t remember whether we took a selfie.”
One celebrity with whom Lahav did form a more personal connection is Sydney Sweeney. “A few years ago, I designed a white dress for her for an event,” Lahav says. “The event was canceled before the dress was finished, but she still paid for it and kept it.
“More recently, she contacted me directly and asked for two dresses for the premiere of ‘The Housemaid.’ For one of them, I went for a timeless Marilyn Monroe look, with a sculpted bust and a pleated skirt that emphasized her waist. Everyone went crazy for that dress. Honestly, I had a feeling it would get that kind of reaction.
“I also designed a little black dress for her, but that one didn’t attract the same attention. There’s just something about Marilyn Monroe.”
Millie Bobby Brown in a Galia Lahav design
(Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
The international reaction still excites Lahav. “At shows around the world, the audience treats me like a star,” she says. “Brides cry with excitement. People ask to shake my hand as if I were Oscar de la Renta.
“Israel is a young country that doesn’t have heritage brands like Mercedes, Lego and IKEA,” Osnat adds. “Our strength used to be almost entirely in high-tech, and suddenly there is a startup here made out of fabric. That is anything but obvious.”
So you became your mother’s bosses?
Osnat laughs. “Does it look like it?”
Idan adds: “Mom is the boss of everyone. She’s the real deal.”
Unlike his sister, Idan eased into the family business gradually. At first, he was drawn to the technology side, introducing new software systems and building up the company’s in-house development capabilities. “We have our own development team. Everything is done in-house,” he says.
Over time, he also came to enjoy the travel and the opportunity to meet people from around the world. But what ultimately convinced him to stay was something simpler: hearing from a satisfied customer. “There’s nothing better than getting feedback from a client,” he says. “When I read the words, ‘You made me happy,’ I realized that beyond creating beautiful dresses, we were also doing something meaningful.”
Under Idan’s leadership, five Galia Lahav flagship stores opened in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, North Carolina and London. Each store covers about 1,000 square meters and includes a bar as part of the hospitality experience.
The online system he developed supplies merchandise to about 100 stores around the world, and he is now expanding the company’s European sewing operations as it looks for ways to produce outside Israel as well.
“The world is big and Israel is small,” Galia explains. “In the 1990s, immigration from Russia brought couture seamstresses to Israel, and those who came to work with us continue sewing, sometimes even after retirement age.
“Today I search everywhere for high-end seamstresses, and there are none, just as there are hardly any shoemakers or farmers left. All the young people go into high-tech. A couture seamstress is a respected profession, and she can earn as much as an engineer.”
Today, about 90% of the company’s work is destined for customers abroad, and roughly once every two months Lahav flies to a fashion show or the opening of a new store. “I, at my age, with my terrible English, fly to Japan and China and Moscow because the distributors want to meet me,” she says.
“We were the first to identify the potential of the East. We also have our own method of working. We don’t mass-produce and we don’t have rows and rows of dresses hanging on racks. There are several samples, and we manufacture remotely according to each order.
“Every bride in the world orders according to her body measurements, in the design she imagines, and receives exactly what she pictured. We recently made a wedding dress for Millie Bobby Brown, who ordered it and had her fittings in New York.
“If a bride imagines a dress that doesn’t appear in the catalog, we’ll offer her a custom design. And if necessary, we’ll fly anywhere in the world to dress her. ‘We’ means either Sharon, our designer, or me. Couture dresses demand couture service.”
And the price?
“Overseas, we have two lines. Galia Lahav Couture dresses range from $12,000 to $20,000, while dresses from the Galia Lahav line are priced between $5,000 and $10,000. It’s the more accessible of the two, but both perform well internationally. A dress from the regular line requires at least a week of work, while a couture gown can take two weeks to complete.”
Twenty thousand dollars for a wedding dress is…
“It isn’t cheap, but there are plenty of affluent brides around the world who want a lavish wedding and are willing to spend accordingly. Many of them also want something distinctive rather than a conventional wedding gown. They often keep the dress afterward, sometimes with the idea of passing it down to their daughters. Paris Hilton, for example, kept hers.”
And what does a Galia Lahav wedding gown cost in Israel?
“Israel is the only place where my wedding gowns are available for rent. I won’t quote a price because it depends on so many factors, but renting makes it possible for many Israeli brides to have an additional dress for dancing.
“The price goes up if a bride wants a custom design that isn’t in the collection. Put it this way: When I design for an Israeli client, I’m not doing it for the money. It’s part of the prestige of the brand. I’ve largely stopped designing evening gowns because I simply don’t have the time, but I can’t turn down a longtime client who has been coming to me for years. My Israeli brides let me into their world, into their love stories, and that brings me enormous happiness.”
What does the name Eden Fines mean to you?
“Eden has a provocative image, so everyone expected her to choose something very revealing. That was exactly why she came to me wanting a classic, more traditional and modest gown for the ceremony. She wanted that to be the surprise.
“We created a dramatic princess gown in silk taffeta, with a handmade overlay of flowers and leaves. I think she helped bring classic bridal styles back into fashion.
“After the ceremony, she changed into a cream-colored feathered gown with a swan-like look. It was sheer, with real feathers placed over the body, and she looked incredible. Later she changed again, this time into a completely sheer jumpsuit for dancing. To me, that was the look that best matched her personality.”
There is nearly a 50-year age gap between you and Eden. Did you find common ground?
“Before our first meeting, I wasn’t sure she was really our kind of client. But after seeing the sketches and after meeting with several other designers, she chose us. Why? I think she felt that we understood her vision and could make it a reality.”
And Yuval Kaspit?
“She came to me and said, ‘Galia, I want to be a bohemian bride.’ I paused. Bohemian isn’t really our style. Eventually I told her, ‘I’ll go with it, because I went through a bohemian phase myself once.’ Sharon and I traveled to a trade show in Paris, found some unusual fabrics and sent her photos. Once she approved them, we brought them back. She walked to the Chupa barefoot.”
Galia Lahav
(Photo: Oz Moalem)
For a designer whose business is overwhelmingly international, the impact of the war that began with the October 7 attack is an unavoidable subject. Lahav, however, says the business has largely carried on as before.
“There’s no connection between a wedding dress and a war,” she says. “When a bride falls in love with a particular dress, nothing is going to stop her. My name is displayed prominently in all five of our flagship stores, and anyone who looks me up online can see that I’m Israeli. There may be women who don’t want to buy from Israelis, but I wouldn’t know, because they simply don’t come to us.
“In the first year of the war, when flights were severely disrupted, our shipments got stuck. Somehow, we found ways to get them out of Israel so that no bride would miss her wedding day. As far as I could tell, the pace of business never really slowed.”
Osnat agrees. “If someone looks into the brand, discovers that we’re Israeli and has a problem with Israel, she probably won’t buy a wedding dress from us. But thankfully, we have enough stores and retailers around the world that we haven’t felt much of an impact.”
Lahav and her husband, who have already passed their golden wedding anniversary, live in a penthouse in Tel Aviv’s Kokhav HaTzafon neighborhood. On Saturday mornings, the grandchildren, “except the ultra-Orthodox one,” arrive with friends to use the rooftop pool.
Today, Lahav says she cannot imagine having built her life anywhere but Israel. “We had opportunities to move to the United States. When the children were young, Natan was offered a very good job managing a factory there and flew over to consider it. When he came back, he said, ‘We’re not leaving Israel.’
“I can’t see myself living anywhere else. And how could I have built the business into what it is today without my children beside me? I’ve seen colleagues with major businesses forced to shut them down because there was no next generation to take over.”
Osnat says the family’s decision to remain in Israel is deeply rooted. “My grandfather was a Prisoner of Zion. We are a Zionist family. We came here to settle the country and build industries here. That is what my parents did for years, each in their own field, and we are continuing what they started. Right now the situation isn’t amazing, and obviously we could earn more somewhere else, but money isn’t what drives us.”
Idan agrees. “Galia Lahav never went into fashion for the money. She wasn’t thinking about how much she could earn. That was never what drove her. What she had then, and still has today, is a genuine passion for designing wedding dresses. When you love what you do and can also build a successful business from it, that’s the perfect combination.”
After 30 years in bridal couture, is there still anything left to invent?
“Of course,” Lahav says. “My mind never stops working. Sometimes I dream about a completely new dress at night, and by morning I’m in the studio telling everyone, ‘This is the next collection.’
“One night I dreamed of a completely sheer dress with tiny shorts and structured cups, and I said, ‘This has to open the show in New York. We’ll put a dramatic coat over it, and at the end of the runway the model will open it.’ I had never heard a reaction like that. People were shouting ‘wow.’
“Then I started dreaming about princess gowns again. I felt fashion was circling back, so I created a collection with volume and crinolines, and it was a huge success. We also began playing with color beneath traditional white gowns, using linings in powder pink, blush and lilac. Our Chinese clients especially loved the pale blue.
“This year we introduced burgundy, with a burgundy corset and matching floral details. And I already have another surprise in the works. That one will be revealed soon. Every morning I wake up with an open mind and look for ways to speak to the next generation, to get into the heart of Gen Z.”
How?
“How did I miss Taylor Swift?” Lahav says with a laugh. “She didn’t come to me for her wedding dress, and I would love the chance to dress her someday. I may not know all her songs, but there’s no question she has a huge influence on what younger generations wear.”F