The Wow Factor: A Letter From Our Editor | Harper’s Bazaar Arabia Winter 2024/2025
Bazaar Arabia’s Editor in Chief, Olivia Phillips encourages us all to enter 2025 with childlike wonder
My partner – also an Editor – just wrote about how our one-year-old daughter’s first word was “wow”. It’s a new development, and one that has brought both of us as much joy as it has her. It’s wide-eyed, usually bird-related, and accompanied by a fat little finger pointing in the direction of whatever has impressed her. He, quite rightly, wondered when the last time most of us were awed enough to say “wow” about anything, making the point (as a proud mum, I’m reading between the lines here) that our genius child’s precociously sage outlook is one we should all mimic. To wit; being jaded is so 2024.
For me, however, I’ve been more excited by the fact that she’s found her voice. For now, its full-pelt volume is charming (that’ll be the Greco-Italian genes), but truth be told, I hope it’s always just as loud, just as bold, and just as shameless. I hope she always speaks up and out, and whatever fearlessness was ever lacking in me, I pray she gets in droves, inspired by the many loud, bold, shameless women that we’re lucky enough to see shaping our world today. This year has seen many of them cut through the noise. Nadia Murad. Gisèle Pelicot. Imane Khelif. Elaha Soroor. Ada Limón… the latter of which penned a poem that was engraved onto Europa, the NASA spacecraft set for Jupiter in October.
Titled In Praise of Mystery, Ada wrote, “We are creatures of constant awe.” Something my daughter knows all too well. “Curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow… We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.” We instinctively know this as children. As we head into 2025, let’s all be reminded.
Lead image credits: 150th Anniversary Essence of Extraleganza Collection: Terrae Necklace with Tourmaline, Round Lion, Tiger Eye and Quartz; Terrae Bracelet with Tourmaline, Tiger Eye and Quartz, POA, both Piaget High Jewellery Cape, Dhs14,000, Alaa Sarkis at Designers & Us. Dress, POA, Nour Al Dhahri. Shoes, POA, Dolce & Gabbana. All available on request in Abu Dhabi
Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Creative Direction: Marne Schwartz. Photographer: Paolo Zambaldi. Stylist: Laura Jane Brown. Make-Up: Manuel Losada. Hair: Jean-Luc Amarin. Senior Producer: Steff Hawker. Make-Up Assistant: Jana Korkomaz. Styling Assistants: Lucy Semaan & Maanoshri Ganguly. Photography Assistant: Stefano Zarpellon. Digital Technician: Thenns Chinnatambi. Special thanks to ERTH Abu Dhabi
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s Winter 2024/2025 issue.
