Fadila El Gadi

Fadila El Gadi founded the association “Conservatoire des arts de la broderie de Salé”(Conservatory of Embroidery Arts of Salé), made to welcome men and women from the working class neighborhoods to teach them the craft of traditional Moroccan embroidery, the art that has been in decline for several years.

Fadila El Gadi’s talent blossomed in the city of Sale. She moved to Rabat to embarked on fashion, against all odds. Far from the classical path for most of the international Moroccan women designers, Fadila’s talent has been discovered in Napels, the former capital of the Spanish-Italian kingdom, in the eyes of the Italian intelligentsia, from there she impressed the Rome and her creations have become highly desired in both the ancient imperial city of Marrakesh and Paris.

It is in the Moroccan capital where all Fadila’s inspirations from her travels, the ultimate destination of the Silk Road, via Tokyo, the Cashmere Road through New Delhi, Smara leather, Istanbul golden thread and Cairo cotton, converge today. In New York, London, Moscow and Washington, the women of the world dress in Fadila’s timeless models, combining the millenary craftsmanship of Moroccan embroidery with the finest materials from all over the world, brought together by the designer’s intuition and skill. Clothing is certainly not Fadila’s last frontier, her talent and creativity are also applied to leather work, jewelry, perfume and even the design of her boutiques.

From a Sahraoui father and a Slaouie mother, and sibling to ten brothers and sisters, Fadila could have followed the path of social success through mass production, but she chose this delicate path, between art and crafts, creation and handmade work, difficult and precarious, devoting her life to the concrete implementation of her inspiration born in her readings, museums, galleries, markets, craftsman’s workshops and the fusion of her passions, while keeping a humble and accessible personality, that of an independent woman who owes her success only to herself.