Women behind the lens: ‘My grandma dressed like a celebrity, even matching the colour of her cigarettes to her outfits’

Egyptian photographer and curator Farida Mahdy was inspired to document her grandmother’s style after finding a collection of her photos

This image is a portrait of me and my grandmother, Ehsan Ouf, in her flat in Cairo. It is part of a project Grandma and the Fur Coat that I started in 2024. I lived with her for four years, while I was studying photography, and we spent a lot of time chatting and watching TV on that couch.

The dress I’m wearing is her engagement dress from 1971 – one of the very few items she wore as a young woman that she still has – and the fur coat she’s wearing was a gift from my late grandfather. I persuaded her not to sell it – and that is partly why I decided to start this project: to document how stylish she was. In the 70s and 80s she dressed like a celebrity, wearing brands such as Chanel and Dior. She had a collection of wigs, and even matched the colour of her cigarettes to her outfits.