Elisabetta Franchi – she is a woman who can stir emotions and be touched by them. She is a woman that has rocked the female universe with her style and creativity; her success rests on her unlimited passion, painstaking care for product design, sheer devotion to her job and a good share of pragmatic sense.
Elisabetta Franchi always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer and her hard work has paid off, leading to the foundation of her self-titled label in 1996. Built on a high-level of quality, Italian craftsmanship, and femininity, her collections offer sophisticated and unique choices for consumers.
-“I am a rare bird in the fashion system. It is a really hard job, where you need a lot of hard work and devotion, but I know that there is no other way to achieve success in this business”
The story began in Bologna, the city where Elisabetta was born in 1968, the third of five children of a humble family lead by a mother who struggled very hard to raise her children on her own: years later Elisabetta remembered how the lack of a father and the family hardships, mixed with her passion and determination to turn her life around brought her to follow her dream with great obstinacy, without giving up before the struggles of life. She made her debut in fashion during her studies at Bologna’s Instituto Aldrovandi Rubbiani. Meanwhile, she made a living doing several temporary jobs.
From a professional standpoint, Elisabetta Franchi learned her trade moving from one boutique to another, until she opened her first workshop, Le Complici,in 1996. There, she began to give shape to her ideas and fashion her first creations, following her instinct and with only 5 people to help her. Now they are over 150.
This is where she put the craft – which she had learned to master in her boutique years – to good use: she studied people, kept an eye out on street trends, and focused her creativity on the product. Thanks to the outstanding skill to personalize and customize products, the workshop began to grow: in 1998 she founded Betty Blue S.p.a to fashion the CELYN b collection, a name that resonates with the unmistakable Paris style and where the letter b stands for “Betta”, short for the designer’s name. The style is quite clear and stands out for its extremely feminine urban chic mood, with curvy fits and impeccable silhouettes. These two features are the brand’s strong suit till today.
She is the creator of a perfect Made in Italy prêt a porter that owes its success to her style and the particular production strategy based on quality, excellence, and care for detail. In a little over a decade, the dream of a creative person with a strong pragmatic sense turned into the latest fashion sensation.
We caught up with the designer during her first-ever visit to Dubai. She spoke to us about style and what’s to come.
“I found all of the women in Dubai to be extremely beautiful, classy, and dedicated to every little aspect and detail of their look and their image in general. I really think we have a lot to learn from them and I found them very inspirational for my future collections,” – Elisabetta Franchi. The Italian fashion and accessories designer, who is based in Milan, made her first trip to the Middle East in October, stopping in Beirut and Dubai to re-open her eponymous label’s The Dubai Mall boutique.
ELISABETTA FRANCHI Purple 2021
2021 /DESIGN/ D&F Magazine
Design & Fashion Magazine 