Marvels, made to measure

Expensive tastes are exclusive ones — why spend thousands on an identikit interior when your home can be one-of-a-kind? But beyond the diamond-encrusted couches and Arabic-embroidered rugs hand-woven to order by Nepalese craftsmen, the trend for tailor-made interiors opens up exciting possibilities in design and enterprise. Executive takes a tour of some of Beirut’s creative companies in the business of fulfilling dreams clients didn’t even know they had. “I don’t like the word creativity,” says architect and designer Karim Bekdache, sounding at odds with the sun-filled furniture showroom behind him, crammed with mesmerizing concoctions in wood, glass and steel. “I think [design] should answer a real need, and then it can be completely wild and you can call it creative, or it can be completely invisible — but for me, creating something completely invisible or completely wild is the same.” Trained in France and working mostly in Lebanon and Europe,