Ebaa Alawaji Shows Us Her Upper East Side Closet

Raiding the closets of Saudi Arabian royalty? It's not exactly our first Marant-clad rodeo, if you'd believe it. Also not our first time rolling our eyes at how completely ridiculous that sounds as we write it. But, like, it's true: here. And save for our recent trip to Moscow (stay tuned!), there's pretty much no one who does our kind of excess quite like 'em. Exhibit A: The Gantry NYC founder Ebaa Alawaji, whose name is usually preceded with the very casual title of Princess, and who, after spending time everywhere from her native Saudi Arabia to Paris and Los Angeles, invited us inside her UES apartment to further solidify our theory.

Turns out, Alawaji's whole insanely-over-the-top-glamorous thing has pretty much been in the cards since childhood. While we were most likely eating sand and hacking off our doll's hair, Ebaa was swathing herself in hand-me-down fur coats. "As a five year old wearing my mother's fur coat in Egypt, I felt like I was the shit," she laughed. "I also used to wake my mother up at 4 A.M. when I was in pre-school asking her, 'what am I going to wear to school today'. Thank god my children wear uniforms!"

Considering the sartorial trajectory Alawaji found herself on at the ripe ol' age of five, you can probably imagine the caliber of her present-day closet. There was Dries, Ghesquiere-era Balenciaga, Lanvin, glittery Givenchy... yeah, it was pretty much like browsing through Paris fashion week's greatest hits of the past five years or so. Fitting that Alawaji's Gantry aims to bring her knack for zeroing in on the best of the best of the very, very best to the marketplace: "The idea is to offer support, services, and champion young brands; giving them a platform to be exposed to different markets. I choose brands that can be translated globally, brands that can speak to women all over the world." And that goes for brands from her native SA. "We also have lot of talented young artists in the Middle East who are not properly represented. I want to find a way to help them reach broader audiences," Alawaji explained of her venture.

Oh, and just for the record: racks on racks of every dream outfit that's ever made our Pinterest boards aside, Ebaa's whole beauty game is rife for surveilling, too: "I have a tube of Homeoplasmine in every bag. I use it for anything and on everything. It's the only product I would need if I get stuck on a deserted island!" Another one of her die-hard beauty obsessions? Eyelash extensions. "I try to get eyelash extensions by CK. He’s been doing them for me since 2007. I think no one needs make up once you have them!" Yup, making our appointment riiiiight about now.