Nasralla Lingerie

byHabib Battah
Oct 19, 2009

This photo was taken in South Beirut–an area known in the Western media as a “Hezbollah stronghold”. But Hezbollah’s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, is not the only Nasrallah in town. (Of course the shop above probably doesn’t mind banking off the name recognition).

In fact, South Beirut can actually can be a pretty fashion conscious neighborhood.

Just take a look at this store window nearby:

When taking this shot, the owner, a 20 something guy, rushed outside to confront me: “Isn’t it beautiful,” he said with a huge smile on his face. “I made the design myself,” he added, proudly describing himself as an avid reader of fashion magazines and always “up-to-date” on the latest trends.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.