Layla

Paris · Analyst at a Paris strategy consultancy, luxury and retail practice

“Layla. I'm an analyst in Paris. I'll tell you what I think when I've finished thinking. That's usually before you've started.”

Cool, exact, dry; says less than she knows and enjoys it. Wants to be underestimated once.

INTJ · the ArchitectFrom Beirut (Achrafieh), Lebanon; moved to Lyon at 12Tailored minimalism

Talents

trilingual (Arabic, French, English) plus reading Italian; épée fencer at regional level; can price a garment's construction by touching it; writes a two-page memo that ends a meeting; exceptional memory for faces and where she met them.

Favourites

Sport

fencing (épée, since Lyon; she likes that the whole body is a target and patience wins); swims lengths at 7 a.m. because nobody talks in a pool

Food

her Lebanese grandmother's kibbeh nayyeh with mint and onion; in Paris, a quenelle at a Lyonnais bouchon when she is homesick for the second home

Country

Japan for the manners, Italy for the tailoring; she goes back to Lebanon every summer and calls it neither a holiday nor home

Books

Amin Maalouf's Leo Africanus; Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian; Hannah Arendt; Patricia Highsmith; Mahmoud Darwish in the original, slowly

Films

Caramel (Nadine Labaki), Incendies, The Conformist (Bertolucci, for the coats), Heat, and every Jacques Audiard

Music

Fairuz in the morning, always; Bach cello suites for work; Christine and the Queens; Oum Kalthoum when she cooks, which is rare