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“Where has 2024 gone?” I’m sure this is a phrase you’ve heard multiple times from many friends, colleagues, loved ones and so on. It’s the same every year, you feel like you blink and we’re right back at the mad hustle that comes as the close of a year happens.
Everything and everyone is in a whirlwind. Deadlines. Forward-planning.End-of-year celebrations. Tying up loose ends. Personal obligations. Finalising projects. The list really is endless.
Admittedly, for us all, it’s difficult to find the calm among the chaos.
But we’re putting this final edition of GRAZIA Middle East to bed for the year with the apt theme of ‘Bon Voyage’ – two simple words with but a world of meaning. Of course, it’s means a polite farewell, a wish for safe travels, but it also evokes a sense of nostalgia and reflection, fittingly so as we complete another journey around the sun.
Wracking my brains, looking back over the last 12 months, certainly a lot has happened, but when you try to pinpoint key moments it all becomes one huge blur. I suppose it’s partly down to the world we live in now. Constant connection. Constant hustle. Constant looking to the next. I don’t know about you, but I more often than not forget to really live in the moment and, as clichéd as it sounds, stop to smell the roses.
So, while among the pages of this issue we explore horizons far and wide across different cultures and landscapes, encouraging new beginnings and to embrace the adventure, it’s not lost on me that we also need to find beauty in the journey and take a moment to reflect.
This is exactly what Emirati researcher Maryam Almarri teaches us in an exclusive photo diary for GRAZIA under her ‘Goodbye Old Jumeirah’ project on page 14. It’s a growing Instagram account you may have come across, documenting the old sites of Jumeirah as an ode to what once was. As she explains, “The photos I take are to be beautifully preserved in time… It is important to enjoy the beauty of Old Jumeirah as it is now.” A true homage.
Speaking of an homage, Cartier closes out a spectacular centennial year for its iconic Trinity collection. Saying farewell to a high-flying year of celebration, Pierre Rainero, the Maison’s Image, Style and Heritage Director, reflects on a century of an iconic emblem and a collection symbolic of eternal beauty on page 28. “This is a very modern idea that defines Cartier… and the 100 years [of the Trinity] show the enduring strength of a design,” he says.
For GRAZIA’s 12th edition, Kuwaiti-Palestinian star Rawan Bin Hussain graces the cover. Over the past decade, she’s had a meteoric rise to fame, from a simple blog to over seven million social-media followers. It’s been quite a journey for Rawan, which she admits in our raw and unfiltered sit-down with her on page 202, but the crux of it all, in a time of filters and edits, is that she continues to encourage an age of authenticity. “We have to be real,” she quips in our chat, adding, “I don’t believe in a picture-perfect life.”
Of course, GRAZIA also travels far and wide this issue, particularly in the form of scent, where Beauty Editor Frankie Jabarkhyl takes us on a journey around the world in fragrance on page 96. The team’s storytelling also takes us to different parts of the world, from Sicily to India to Saudi Arabia to New York and more, bringing many different landscapes and cultures together, capturing the beauty in the fleeting conversations, strangers you meet along the way, navigating some known and some uncharted territories.
But, as we bid 2024 a farewell – or bon voyage, if you will – it is a stark reminder to savour every step of the journey and be present.
Take some time to stop and smell the roses, you’ll be glad you did.
ORDER YOUR COPY of grazia middle east’s 12th edition HERE.
