Some designers find their muse in Paris. Some in Milan. Ezra Santos found his in Dubai — and he has never left.
The Filipino couturier arrived in the emirate in 1993, three decades before the word “luxury” became synonymous with the city’s skyline. He watched Dubai grow from the ground up, and in many ways, the city watched him do the same. “Dubai has been a safe haven eversince — a place of growth and development,” he says. “My gratitude to Dubai has always been the words that always come out of my heart.”
By 2004, after nearly a decade working in the industry, Santos established Ezra Couture — a label that would go on to dress Arab royalty, Hollywood A-listers, and beauty queens from across the globe. Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Scherzinger — the names read like a red carpet roll call. But for Santos, the city that made it all possible remains the real story. “The opportunity to open a business, the support and respect of its citizens — that will always be part of why I chose to stay in the land of opportunity,” he says. “I will always be forever grateful to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.”
The glamour that never gets old
Ask Santos where his design sensibility comes from, and he takes you somewhere unexpected — back to a small screen in Manila, after school, in the 1970s.
Growing up in Pasay City, he would come home at 3 p.m. and lose himself in black-and-white films from the 1940s and 1950s. The leading ladies. The way the fabric moved. The silhouettes that made women look both powerful and effortless. Those images never left him. “The glamour and fashion of the ’40s and ’50s will always be part of my design aesthetics,” he says. “It is always a fashion inspiration to many.”
That cinematic foundation is visible in every Ezra Couture piece — the structured elegance, the attention to how a gown falls on a woman’s frame, the insistence on timelessness over trend. In an industry that pivots with the seasons, Santos has built a career on the opposite instinct: make something that lasts.
Pride stitched into every seam
One of the most defining hallmarks of Ezra Couture is something that sets it apart in the competitive Gulf fashion scene — its unapologetic Filipinoness.
Santos has long made it a point to weave indigenous Philippine materials and design traditions into his international collections. Abaca, piña, traditional weaves — fabrics that many global designers would overlook, Santos places at the center. “I always love to incorporate materials from the Philippines because I’m so proud of what we have,” he says. “I want to show these indigenous designs and that we have beautiful creations.”
It is a quiet but powerful act — presenting Filipino craftsmanship on the same stage as Swarovski crystals and European couture, refusing to treat one as lesser than the other.
That philosophy reached a defining moment in 2023, when Santos was commissioned to design the wedding dress of Sheikha Mahra, daughter of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai — completing the heavily embroidered, crystal-encrusted Grecian gown in just seven days. For Santos, the memory isn’t about the impossible timeline. It’s about something more personal. “When Her Highness asked you to create a dress for her wedding, of course you will do your best,” he says. “The most important part was the trust she gave to fulfill the task. The compliments after — that was the best experience.”
Thirty years in Dubai. One label. Countless gowns. And still, the same reverence for the craft that started with a boy watching old movies after school.
