If you have made it to this page, you are not here for wallpaper content. We did not pick Beirut because it is a neat backdrop. We ended up there because that is where the story kept pointing.
Our December cover sits on the shoulders of Carla Chamoun, a Lebanese artist whose voice moves easily between Arabic, English, and French and carries all three without losing itself. She has that rare thing: a vocal identity that can live inside modern Arabic arrangements, jazz phrasing, and full orchestral work—and still sound like the same woman every time.
You might know her from “Ajmal Chi” with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, or from The World of Hans Zimmer tour, where her voice moves through huge arrangements and still feels close. For us, having her close out the year felt less like casting and more like a mirror. She is rooted in Beirut, fluent in elsewhere. Gazetta has been trying to do the same thing all year.
The shoot itself was very Gazetta. No safety net, no excess. A focused team in Beirut, a tight call sheet, and a day that could have gone wrong fifty different ways but chose not to.
Behind the lens, Michel Araye brought exactly what we needed: a precise eye and a real sensitivity to who Carla is. He watched, gave her space, and then caught the moments where she was not performing for the camera—just present in front of it. The looks around her were mapped out in advance by our International Features Editor and creative director for this cover, Ivan Allegranti, then brought to life on set by stylist Jony Matta. Makeup by Yvonne Hatem and hair by Fadia El Mendelek stayed in conversation with Carla rather than sitting on top of her. Nothing felt forced.
The rails did not appear by magic either. Stephen PR backed this shoot in a very concrete way, sending one of their team members from Dubai to Beirut with a lineup of looks from the brands they represent—from Antonio Riva and Azza Fahmy to Peserico, Kismet by Milka, and Concrete. Suitcases, planning, trust. That kind of support is the quiet foundation under a cover like this.
Production was held by Lou Salloum and ONE:SIXTEEN PRODUCTION, in their own studio. Lou knows how to build a space where people can actually work. The set felt calm, serious, warm. You can see that ease in the final images.
And behind the whole thing, again, there is Ivan.
Our International Features Editor, Ivan Allegranti, has been building this bridge since August—reaching out to designers in Italy, Dubai, and Germany, locking in dates, keeping the idea alive when schedules shifted. We were meant to shoot earlier in the year, in August, and when that could not happen he carried it forward, reset for October, and made sure nothing was lost in the delay. When the day finally came, it moved smoothly. No drama—just work that felt ready. On top of the creative direction, Ivan sat down with Carla for the cover feature, which means the story you read is shaped by someone who has been inside this process from the first message to the last edit.
If I strip this year down to its bones, what stays is not numbers or reach. It is the way the team showed up. Editors who fought for angles that were not the obvious ones. Writers who sent in pieces that sounded like themselves, not like the Internet. Photographers, stylists, makeup artists, and hair artists who treated every shoot—big or small—like it had a right to be taken seriously. Designers who kept moving pieces around until the page finally felt like the story.
We made mistakes. We tried things that did not land. We learned. At no point did this magazine feel like it was coasting. That matters to me more than any polished recap.
Closing the last issue of the year is a strange feeling. There is no single neat sentence that can hold everything we did or everything we tried to do. What I do have is a very real mix of fatigue and gratitude. I am proud of this team. Proud of the covers, of the risks, of the long conversations behind them, of the way we kept choosing the harder route when the easy version was right there.
To the Gazetta crew, wherever you are reading this from, thank you—for the late nights, the early calls, the honesty, the loyalty, and the stubborn belief that this publication can be something different in a very crowded space.
To our readers: you let us into your day. You read long pieces on small screens. You followed us from issue to issue, city to city. You shared, you questioned, you cared. That is not something I ever take lightly.
So we end 2025 in Beirut, with an artist whose voice has been carrying across stages from Prague to the Arab world, and with a team that has carried this magazine through a full year of work and change. Gazetta feels closer to the thing we imagined, and more sure of the lane it wants to hold.
Thank you for walking this year with us.
Turn the page. We are not done.
Dina Yassin
