emirateswoman.com
A MOTIVATE PUBLICATION
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SEPTEMBER 2026
FASHION’S NEW POINT OF VIEW
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Obaid Humaid Al Tayer MANAGING PARTNER AND GROUP EDITOR Ian Fairservice CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER Anthony Milne GROUP CONTENT DIRECTOR Thomas Woodgate SENIOR EDITOR Jessica Michault jessica.michault@motivate.ae SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Olga Petroff SENIOR REPORTER Aminath Ifasa DESIGNER Vibha Monteiro FASHION AND EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Riya Kumar GENERAL MANAGER PRODUCTION Sunil Kumar PRODUCTION MANAGER Binu Purandaran ASSISTANT PRODUCTION MANAGER Venita Pinto GROUP SALES MANAGER Chaitali Khimji chaitali.khimji@motivate.ae SALES MANAGER Sarah Farhat sarah.farhat@motivate.ae WEB DEVELOPER Firoz Kaladi CONTRIBUTORS Devinder Bains, Gemma White, Mark Mathew, Marie Meyer, Maryanne Peacock, Morin Oluwole, Sitara Mulchandani
HEAD OFFICE Media One Tower, Dubai Media City, PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE, Tel: (+971) 4 4273000, Fax: (+971) 4 4282261, E-mail: motivate@motivate.ae DUBAI MEDIA CITY SD 2-94, 2nd Floor, Building 2, Dubai, UAE, Tel: (+971) 4 390 3550, Fax: (+971) 4 390 4845 ABU DHABI PO Box 43072, UAE, Tel: (+971) 2 677 2005, Fax: (+971) 2 677 0124, E-mail: motivate-adh@motivate.ae SAUDI ARABIA Regus Offices No. 455 - 456, 4th Floor, Hamad Tower, King Fahad Road, Al Olaya, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Tel: (+966) 11 834 3595 / (+966) 11 834 3596, E-mail: motivate@motivate.ae LONDON Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London NW1 3ER, UK, E-mail: motivateuk@motivate.ae
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IT ALL MAKES SENSE
Georgia Oakley’s new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility arrives this month, but filling Elinor Dashwood’s shoes – played so beautifully by Emma Thompson in the 1995 film – is no small ask. We will soon see if this generation’s undisputed queen of the literary swoon, Daisy EdgarJones, can also do Austen.
EDITOR’S LETTER
You’ve Got The Look
F
ashion is my happy place. My entire career has been shaped by the creativity and ingenuity of the people and brands that shape how we dress and present ourselves to the world. Having spent over 20 years sitting in the front rows of ready-to-wear, haute couture and menswear shows around the globe, I have seen first-hand how fashion can shift, in the space of a 10-minute runway presentation, the cultural conversation. So it should come as no surprise that the team leaned into this month’s theme, The Sartorial Issue, with gusto. We fully embraced the colour of the season with our fiery cover shoot, which shows off the best red looks each brand had burning bright in their collections, Woman On Fire (page 36). And we have a number of features on women who are shaping different aspects of the fashion landscape in the region from the premium luxury space, Shop Girl (page 32) to the showrooms, Bi-coastal Brilliance (page 50) and an oral history of the building of the region’s first model agency Bareface, Picture Perfect (page 82), not to mention highlighting the one-to-watch Saudi brand Rebirth, Dream Weaver (page 28). We also celebrate the news that Emirati Women’s Day has now been, rightfully,
expanded to a month-long celebration with an interview with Her Highness Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi and five other leading Emirati women, Six Women, One Legacy (page 70). As well as a profile, The Ties That Bind (page 78), of Her Excellency Reem Bin Karam, the director general of Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council. Finally, I want to encourage all of our readers to go to the Emirates Woman website and cast their vote for this year’s Emirates Woman Awards. We are celebrating our 45th anniversary – yes, you read that right – and with that in mind we have changed the awards to reflect more closely the accomplishments of the women we feature in our pages. Rather than linking the awards to a month, we have created new categories that better embody the different areas of excellence the female leaders of the region are making their mark. Happy voting and enjoy the issue,
Senior Editor jessica.michault@motivate.ae
READY FOR HIS CLOSE-UP
John Green has created love stories that leave you wrecked in the best possible way – think The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska. Now comes his adult fiction debut, Hollywood, Ending, where he turns that same unsettling emotional precision on Tinseltown. Brace accordingly.
NO LONGER TORN
Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 hit Torn was the defining ballad of the ’90s. Now the singer is back with Algorithm, her first album in five years. Imbruglia has created a sophisticated, disco-laced offering that will have everyone heading to the dance floor.
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CONTENTS September 2026
CURATE 14 Monitor News Sartorial Meets Sun: season’s biggest names bring couturelevel craft to resort living
15 Social Listings A curated guide of Instagram accounts to #follow this month
16 The Runway Report FW26 28 Dream Weaver Rebirth founder Tala Abukhaled on reshaping Saudi fashion, ahead of her AlUla-inspired collection debuting next month
Outfit and Jewellery: Versace
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CONTENTS September 2026
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Top left: Full look Miu Miu; Top right: N.01 The Shine & Care HairBrush The Universal Saffron Yellow, La bonne brosse; Shade Plump, Saint Laurent; Brow & Lash Boosting Serum, Date Setter, AÏZA; Voyeur Waterproof Gel Eyeliner, Hourglass; Saint-Pierre Card Wallet, Goyard; Valiant Draped Scarf Top, Zimmermann
MODE 32 Shop Girl Rema Nelson, the General Manager, fashion MENA, on taking premium luxury brands to new heights
36 Woman on Fire Entrepreneur Liubov Seredkina is proving herself to be a force of nature by welcoming her first child and launching a new design studio
50 Bi-costal Brilliance
64 Culture Club London based fashion pop-up 3EIB, founded by Dania Arafeh talks about buiding a thriving community
VISION 70 Six Women, One Legacy
Her Excellency Reem BinKaram, Director General of Sharjah’s Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council, on cherishing the region’s rich artisanal heritage
82 Picture Perfect Bareface the leading model and talent agency celebrates 25 years and recount how they shaped beauty in the region
Her Highness Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi and Inanna Reborn united six Emirati pioneer to celebrate Emirati Women’s Day
85 Pay It Forward
52 Rue De Rigueur
74 The Rise of Anti-Algorithm Dressing
86 Power Dressing
The new season sharpens it tailoring, shifts its proportions and pairs its fabrics against type
As style becomes more uniform, fashion’s gatekeeping debate intensifies
Founders Lisseth Villalobos-Azab and Shahad Boraji turns Create Twenty Two consultancy into showroom for region’s designers
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78 The Ties That Bind
MENA initiative, See It Be It Connects aims to shape the future of creative leadership in the region
Morin Oluwole, CEO and Co-Founder of Le Vitruve and the former Global Luxury Director at Meta unpacks the sartorial codes of the C-suite
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YEARS
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CONTENTS September 2026
88 Get a Grip From morning matchas to career ambitions, the modern woman’s greatest skill may just be her ability to balance it all
98 The New Jewellery Insiders
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The rise of the private advisor and why the Gulf’s most discerning collectors won’t buy a piece without one
On the cover: T-shirt, leggings, bag, and shoes, all Gucci; Jewellery, Boucheron Talent: Liubov Seredkina Senior Editor: Jessica Michault Photographer: Amer Mohamad Fashion Stylist: Vasil Bozhilov Hair and makeup: Ekaterina Karakulova Videographer: John Melencion Stylist Assistant: Nashwa Mohammed Editorial Assistant: Riya Kumar
GLOW 104 Hot New Buys An edit of all the latest lauches curated for your beauty cabinet
106 Rhapsody In Blue Delphine Jelk, Guerlain’s perfume creation director and perfumer talks about her blue mood board as L’Heure Bleue debuts
108 More Than Matte
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Dior’s Creative and Image Director Peter Philips talks us through why his new Rouge Dior On Stage range is built to blur
110 The Beauty Shelf Laetitia Martins takes us through her must-have beauty staples
111 Scents & Stitches Fragrances that take cues from runway fashion to find their perfect notes
112 Crushworthy Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer-creator updates brand’s iconic fragrance with the launch of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu
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116 AM to PM Beauty Model Ameni Esseibi shares her morning to evening beauty routine
ABODE 120 The Architecture of Emotion Opaal Interiors founder Noor Al Muhaideb, builds women powered studio and evoking Emirati identity
122 Haute Hideaway L’Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay offers an elegant way to reconnect, with family, with nature and with oneself
126 Slow Burn In Montenegro, the One&Only Portonovi resort is quietly compelling
MOST WANTED 130 The Empress Updated Chaumet’s new Joséphine Aigrette earrings brings bold, graphic florish to textured pavé diamonds on white gold
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THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF
Cat STevens
READ HIS BESTSELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHY THAT’S MAKING WAVES AROUND THE WORLD AvA i l A b l e At A l l m A j o r b o o k s t o r e s A n d o n b o o k s A r A b i A . c o m
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MOTIVATEBOOKS
MOTIVATE_BOOKS
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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
CURATE
Ishara Art Foundation’s latest exhibition asks a question: what if the landscape remembers everything we’ve tried to erase? Running through December at Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue, the show brings together three artists – Shahana Rajani, Rohini Devasher, and Sarker Protick – whose practices collectively map the places where ecological damage, displaced memory, and human violence leave their mark. Rajani traces submerged villages along the Indus through murals painted from memory. Devasher suspends monumental silk panels alive with solar phenomena. Protick documents a single square mile of Dhaka disappearing beneath concrete. Three artists, three countries, but together they make one quietly devastating argument – that the earth has been keeping score all along.
Try something new on for size and… – Explore how fashion’s sphere of influence continues to grow – Discover the latest fashion trends of the season – Be reborn as a sartorial tastemaker
Sartorial Meets Sun
THE HERO BUYS
High fashion trades the runway for the shoreline this issue, as the season’s biggest names bring couture-level craft to resort living WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
ZIGZAGS IN THE SAND Missoni leaves its imprint on Egyptian shores, opening its first ever Resort Club in Africa at Villa Coconut Hotel within LMD’s Zoya Ghazala Bay on Egypt’s North Coast. Sunbeds, umbrellas, and cushions all arrive dressed in the house’s signature emerald, lime, turquoise and yellow, turning the shoreline into a fully immersive Missoni fantasy rather than a simple beach day. It is a serious style flex for Zoya Ghazala Bay, and a very sunny first step onto African soil for the Italian house.
Medium Artiste Tote Bag in Raffia Dhs7,550 Aquazzura
Cropped Appliquéd Crocheted Cotton Top Dhs2,770 Chloé
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The Capri Sunglasses Dhs2,160 Jacquemus
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Libre Santal Couture Eau de Parfum Dhs580 YSL Beauty
Silk-Blend Wide-Leg Pants Dhs7,940 Chloé
Kinto Suede Sandals Dhs585 A.EMERY
IMAGES: SUPPLIED
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Augustine crystalembellished seashell earrings Dhs1,935 Jennifer Behr
THREE TO OWN
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@abbayedesvauxdecernay_ hotel
@hindhilal
@irthicouncil
A historic 12th-century hotel.
A Palestinian clothing studio with a material-first approach to garment-making.
An art foundation empowering women whilst preserving the UAE’s heritage.
@bodouralqasimi
@inanna.reborn
@rebirth.sa
From the Al Qasimi ruling family of Sharjah, entrepreneur and author amongst more.
H.H. Sheikha Bodour Alqasimi's label reviving the legacies of Arabian queens.
A Saudi-born luxury brand adopting a slow-fashion narrative.
@nobordersshop
@opaalinteriors
@studio.vandart
A Mumbai-founded multidisciplinary platform celebrating art and ancient crafts.
An Emirati-founded interior design studio that blends tradition and modernity.
Dubai and Beirut-born label with a conceptual take on everyday dressing.
Social Listings
A curated guide of Instagram accounts to #follow this month C O M P I L E D B Y: A M I N AT H I FA S A
C U R AT E
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THE RUNWAY REPORT FW26 C O M P I L E D BY: R I YA K U M A R
BOTTEGA VENETA
T H E R U N WAY R E P O R T F W 2 6
CELINE
Leather? In autumn. Groundbreaking. But hear us out. This season’s leather looks have a new commanding presence, as power shoulders, sculpted silhouettes, and clever uses of contrasting fabric have transformed the classic material into one of the season’s defining statements – making it the perfect moment to invest in a new take on the tried-andtrue wardrobe staple.
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CO
VALENTINO
T H E R U N WAY R E P O R T F W 2 6
RALPH LAUREN GIVENCHY
MAGDA BUTRYM
FERRAGAMO
TAILORED LEATHER
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DIESEL
ISSEY MIYAKE
T H E R U N WAY R E P O R T F W 2 6
BOTTEGA VENETA
BALMAIN
CO
LOUIS VUITTON
SCULPTED VOLUMES
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DIOR
While runway silhouettes often push proportions to the extreme, this season the trend translates into more wearable (if no less striking) ready-to-wear pieces. Brands refine volume, length, and proportions for everyday dressing while keeping the defining statuesque character intact.
C U R AT E
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ALTUZARRA
LOUIS VUITTON
GRID PATTERNS
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ETRO
CHLOÉ
CHANEL
RABANNE
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BURBERRY
Appearing on hundreds of looks this season, the beloved cool-weather motifs of plaid, tartan, and checks dominated the fashion narrative across the four fashion capitals. Chloé, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry rework these heritage patterns through rich textures, bold volumes, and unexpected scale clashes that created just the right amount of sartorial dissonance to keep this classic style cool.
C U R AT E
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LACOSTE
LOEWE
DIOR
ALAÏA
CAROLINA HERRERA
COLOUR MAXXING
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CHANEL
HERMÈS
ISSEY MIYAKE
Though the colour of the season is unquestionably red, other strong shades had stand-out moments on the catwalk. Wearing a high-octane hue from head to toe is quite the sartorial statement, and it points to a selfassured woman who knows she is the main character.
TOM FORD
PRADA
C U R AT E
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LOUIS VUITTON
MAGDA BUTRYM
T H E R U N WAY R E P O R T F W 2 6
BALENCIAGA
CELINE
FENDI
VALENTINO
VAILLANT
OVERSIZED EYEWEAR
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ZIMMERMANN
After a few seasons of slim shades dominating profiles, it looks like XXL sunglasses are back with a vengeance. Houses like Balenciaga, Celine, and Valentino are all showcasing enormous, visage-effacing eyewear, while outsized updates on the classic aviator style get extra attitude thanks to the addition of strong colourways and cool dégradés.
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T H E VA N G U A R D
Tala Abukhaled
DREAM WEAVER
Rebirth founder Tala Abukhaled opens up about the raffia and palm-fibre pieces she is using to reshape Saudi fashion, ahead of her AlUla-inspired collection debuting next month
T
WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
ala Abukhaled tells me her ideas rarely start with a sketchpad. Most begin on her couch in Riyadh with the window open. She waits for whatever detail happens to catch her attention that day, the shadow a tree throws across the wall, or a shape she has walked past for years without ever really looking at it. “A lot of the time you have so much around you, but because it’s familiar to you, you don’t see the potential in it,” she explains. “When you take a moment to actually notice what’s around you, you see all the potential that it has.” It is a slower, quieter way of arriving at a collection than most young labels admit to, and it goes some way toward explaining why Rebirth, only four years into its existence, already reads like the work of someone who has been looking closely at her own country for far longer than that. Abukhaled founded her brand at the end of 2021, not long after moving back to Saudi Arabia from Dubai, where she had trained in fashion design and pattern making at Esmod. Her graduation collection there became the first version of Rebirth, one she now
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describes as almost unrecognisable next to what the label has become, an early run of streetwear pieces, hoodies and sweatpants, in a category she quickly realised was already crowded. The shift came during a Ramadan pop-up, where she introduced macrame for the first time and watched her small capsule collection sell out in a way none of her streetwear had. “I really found something that was missing in the market,” she shares. “People wanted to see something original.” That instinct for craft over mass filters through everything the designer makes now – most visibly in her use of raffia, the fibre stripped from palm fronds that she works into skirts, neckpieces and fringe with the kind of attention usually reserved for embroidery. The material is not incidental. Abukhaled’s own name means small palm tree, and she describes a long fascination with the trees themselves. There was an inherent desire to take a plant everyone in Saudi Arabia grows up around and prove there is more to bring to life than just hats and floor mats. Production runs between Saudi Arabia and Italy, with raffia work and embroidery sourced
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through a partner factory in India, and nothing in the collections is made ahead of demand. The name Rebirth also carries a specific meaning Abukhaled is careful to underline. “It’s not about creating something new,” she explains. “It’s about creating something out of something that has been overlooked, a material, a silhouette, and using it to its fullest potential in a way that’s relevant to us today.” The designer traces the whole ethos of her brand back to a single afternoon in a shopping mall as she looked over racks and racks of identical fast fashion pieces she knew would end up in landfill within a season. “It just gave me such an overwhelming feeling,” she recalls. “I never want to do this to our community, or to Earth.” The Rebirth woman she designs for now is one who dresses in direct
opposition to that feeling. She is freespirited, drawn to materials with some history to them, and unwilling to wear what everyone else already owns. Rebirth has since grown past clothing into Rebirth Studio, a quieter art offshoot that has already placed 84 pieces inside a hotel on the Red Sea, several of them wearable garments framed and hung as artworks in their own right, a commission that arrived after a buyer saw her Red Sea Fashion Week show and asked what else she could make. Her next collection, debuting at Riyadh Fashion Week in October, grew out of a residency spent partly in France and partly in AlUla, merging palm weaves and materials native to the region with silhouettes she refined in Paris. When Abukhaled talks about the next five years of her label, she speaks in terms that go well past clothing to touch on everything from homeware to artwork. An artisanal 360-degree vision built around the spirit embodied in the brand’s name rather than a single product. Listening to her describe it, calm and certain of every detail, it is hard to imagine the ambition outpacing the resourceful woman who is weaving it into being.
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STEP AND REPEAT
The fashion scene is heating up so… – Why not expand your definition of luxury – Try to find your favourite shade of red – Align yourself with those in the pursuit of hidden gems – Take your fashion to the streets – It’s time to see what club calls to you
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREA RAFFIN / SHUTTERSTOCK
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The red carpet has always been fashion’s most unforgiving runway – where just minutes in front of the paps will determine if months of sartorial choices either come together or collapse. Camilla Morton understands this with the precision of someone who has spent a career watching both outcomes impact careers for years to come. Her new book, Red Carpet Legends, traces the full arc of how that strip of scarlet fabric became a cultural institution, from Hollywood’s gilded origins through to the era of calculated spectacle we inhabit now. With Donatella Versace writing the foreword and a supporting lineup that reads like a masterclass roll call – Manolo Blahnik, Suzy Menkes, Charlotte Tilbury among them – Morton has created a coffee table book that makes a serious argument for why getting dressed, done right, still matters enormously.
SHOP GI R L Rema Nelson, the General Manager, Fashion MENA at Al-Futtaim, is taking premium luxury brands like Sandro and Maje to new heights W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
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ema Nelson wanted to be a journalist. It’s probably the first thing she shares with me as we sit down for a chat over a hot cup of tea. I tell her that bit of information is music to my ears, and we both laugh – because the woman who now oversees Maje, Sandro, KIABI, Ted Baker and Aape across the Middle East for Al-Futtaim was, at eighteen, filling in forms for a degree she never ended up taking. But she clearly still learned how to tell a story, just from a different perspective. What derailed her career as a journalist before it even began was a Saturday job working at the fashion label Karen Millen in the UK, and a manager at the time who floated a tempting offer. “Rema, we have a summer vacancy. We have a supervisor role. Can you take it for the summer if you want extra cash?,” Nelson says about the fateful encounter, and then shrugs at the memory. “I thought to myself okay, why not?” Then the summer happened and undid all her journalistic plans. “I just loved it. I loved how the team relied on me,” she recalls, grinning from ear to ear. “I felt like, oh, okay, I get to tell everyone what to do and they must listen to me, even at such a young age.” She went home and told her family of her brand new career path. “Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to do this permanently now.” She still sounds amazed that she had to make such a dramatic life choice shift. “It was just like a 180.” What follows sounds like something of a whirlwind with Nelson moving up through the ranks at Millen, first in the UK and across Europe then with a stint in America, working as the brand’s Retail Operations Manager out of Los Angeles. Then her brother, already based in Dubai, told her she needed to visit, and quietly sent her CV to Chalhoub Group. That was 16 years ago: 10 with Chalhoub, where she built the multi-brand and luxury fashion division; then Saint Laurent; and now she has banked almost two years at Al-Futtaim. One thing has stayed constant across every role and become a guiding principle for Nelson: her commitment to the shop floor.
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“I’ve never left the shop floor. I’ve always stayed connected to our customers on the shop floor,” she affirms. And this is no figure of speech, she means it literally, and confesses that in a recent assessment from Al-Futtaim, they noted that she wasn’t often in the office. It’s a bit of feedback she takes as a compliment, and an indication that she is doing her job right. “No, I’m not going to be in the office. I’m with my team,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. This “boots on the ground” habit came from an early manager, an Italian woman named Serena. Nelson describes her as both fantastic and fierce. But also someone who asked for Nelson’s opinion and then listened to it. “That impression always stayed with me because I felt like, oh, she really wanted to hear our voices.” Today Nelson has followed in her meteor’s footsteps and asks her own teams the same unglamorous questions – who are your customers, is the collection connecting with people, what are the gaps. “Communicating back even if we don’t get the win, is always good – to kind of keep them in the know. At the end of the day, they’re the first one interfacing with our clients,” says Nelson. When she first arrived in Dubai Nelson admits that it “humbled me a bit.” But she sees this as a compliment to the market rather than a complaint. Over the years she has seen many others make the same wrong assumptions she once did. They come to the region from Europe or Asia with the preconceived notion that what worked in their market would also resonate with the MENA consumer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sixteen years on, the biggest shift she has witnessed is a reversal of who talks and who listens in the premium and luxury retail space. “When I first came here, I thought we knew – and we’re going to tell the Middle Eastern customers what they wanted. Now, we’re actually telling the West what’s working, this is what we want and need, and they are finally listening.” Her evidence is commercial rather than sentimental: “the brands who are winning are the ones who are listening to the customers in the region.”
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When I ask for proof of this change in perception she offers quite a striking anecdotal example. Currently the best-selling item at Sandro regionally is a mini skirt. “We have these private events where it’s all women, and they feel very comfortable in clothing that might be surprising to some.” This story perfectly illustrates the often lazy assumption the rest of the world has about what women here buy. But truly knowing a customer base can only happen when you have somebody on the shop floor to notice. This naturally brings us to the topic of the current sluggish state of the luxury market. Luxury, Nelson argues, has priced itself out of its own aspirational customer. “Everyone wants to have the Gucci, the Louis Vuitton, the Chanel, but the price points just keep increasing without a clear increase in quality or value.” Her verdict is blunt: customers have lost confidence in the brands they once coveted. But they haven’t stopped shopping, they have just focused that retail therapy energy elsewhere. “That aspirational client is moving now to premium, and this is where premium has a big opportunity.” Nelson’s strategy for Al-Futtaim brands is to deliver “the luxury service at a premium price point.” And the stakes, in her telling, couldn’t be higher. “Whoever wins at this, it’s going to win big,” she affirms. Sandro is where she is proving this shift. The problem, as she diagnosed it, was a service gap her own customers were crossing daily. “I go into a Saint Laurent store and I’m in this grand environment, and the service is exceptional. Then I come into a Sandro and I’m expected to help myself,” she explains. So Nelson decided it was time to make some noise Rema Nelson for Sandro that felt in keeping with what clientele usually come to expect from luxury brands. She put together a dinner in partnership with a luxury fashion magazine at a private Abu Dhabi museum that had never hosted such an event before. And, for the first time in the brand’s history here, VIP clients were flown in from Saudi, Qatar and Kuwait for the event. There was even a pianist brought over from Paris especially for the occasion. It worked. “The brand is flying,” Nelson says, noting that return visits of customers are now more frequent and average basket spends are up. “We’re the top two across the world,” she adds regarding how her brands perform compared to other markets. “Sandro is number one, and Maje is number two.” “You’re moving a mindset that is very transactional and operational to a mindset that is very relationship building,” she explains about the shift she is trying to make for her brands. She wants sales associates who will say “love your shoes” to a customer when they walk into one of her stores. But she admits this was hard even in luxury, where “the product almost sold itself.” So she runs frontliner coffee mornings with her sales staff and actions what comes out of
them. For example, a highly successful clienteling app is now being used so associates hold their own client relationships rather than firing generic CRM messages into the void, and she is also pushing toward two days off for those who are still working six-day weeks. Nelson’s current inclusive and expansive leadership philosophy was arrived at the hard way. She began as a human-centred leader, “where the business suffered because I was too empathetic,” she recalls. Then she overcorrected into something “very assertive, or maybe very aggressive, where it’s like, no, business comes first.” Neither method worked in the extreme, but one thing that Nelson is very clear on is that success in retail comes down to making those first organic connections with customers as they walk in the door. “People are the ones who bring the performance, and that balance is really hard to find,” she says. When I ask her about a teachable moment when she learned from failure Nelson throws her head back. “Oh my God, so many!” The one she picks involves arriving at a brand, whose name she will not share, convinced she already had all the answers. “I did absolutely everything on my own because I felt that was what was needed.” In the end, no surprise here, she didn’t have all the answers and could have benefited immensely from asking for help, and perhaps a bit of guidance. The lesson she learned from that experience has become her advice to anyone coming up behind her. “It’s ok to fail and learn from your failures, as long as it’s not repeated.” And treat vulnerability as an asset: “People see that as a weakness, but I generally see that as a strength,” she says. Especially with the ones who are not the loudest in the room. “If you listen to connect with people, everything else follows.” Then there is Nelson’s other passion that comes to light when I ask what she likes to do when she wants to switch off. Unsurprisingly, instead of listing off a bunch of fun extracurricular activities she admits that she is spending all of her free time at Your Vibe. And what is Your Vibe, you might ask? It’s the salon she opened two years ago in Dubai Marina; and she is currently in negotiations for a second location. “Ever since I was little, I always wanted a salon, and I think this is the Lebanese in me,” she says. Beaming as she shares how her mother would take the children for blow-dries when she was a kid. “That feeling just lasted with me and I finally decided it’s now or never.” For Nelson, besides it being a lifelong dream to own and run a salon, her decision to launch the company also comes from a desire to give back, in some small way, to a country and a city that has done so much for her over the years. “You know what people used to think about America years ago? That anything was possible there. I feel this is what we have here. The UAE gives you that opportunity.”
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FA S H I O N ST Y L I ST: VA S I L B OZ H I LOV PHOTOGRAPHER: AMER MOHAMAD W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
W O M A N Between welcoming her first child and the imminent launch of her new design studio, entrepreneur Liubov Seredkina is proving herself to be a force of nature
Jumpsuit, belt, and shoes, all Celine; Earrings, Atelier Nawbar
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hen Liubov Seredkina walked into the studio to shoot the cover story for this issue, it was clear we had the right woman for the job. Her striking beauty was undeniable, from her bright hazel-green eyes and alabaster skin to her bee-stung lips and Jessica Rabbit-esque curves – Seredkina is without a doubt a head turner. But it was her flaming red locks that initially sparked the inspiration for our all-red shoot – the colour of the season. And it was a concept she leaned into with bravado. When she stepped onto the set – drenched, floor to ceiling, in every register of red we could find – she took the whole thing in, and immediately went to work. Using her dance background to strike dramatic poses that matched the fiery energy of the chosen hue. Instantly adding another layer of dynamism to the shoot. It quickly became clear that this is a woman who knows how to read a room. Which makes sense when you consider that she has spent her life reading spaces and the people who move through them. It is this natural ability that is also at the centre of Seredkina budding interior design business in Dubai. Born in Omsk in 1998, Seredkina was raised in a military family where discipline and drive were encouraged. Her formative years were filled with learning to figure skate and training to be a ballerina while simultaneously studying to play the piano and violin. Four demanding practices at once, in a childhood that appears to have contained very little idling. She is clear-eyed about what that upbringing gave her, and it is not what you might expect – not perfectionism, not stamina (although it certainly did that) but also something more practical. “I think those disciplines taught me two things that are incredibly valuable in my work today: multitasking and the ability to learn by doing,” she shares. “I was used to balancing several disciplines at once, while constantly learning and immediately applying what I had learned in practice.” That perseverance mindset has also served her well in business as she prepares to open her design studio, ORDO, in Jumeirah. “In my opinion, these disciplines complement each other, just like interior design elements. Without good athletic posture, it’s impossible to play the violin beautifully. Just as no decor is possible without the right walls around it.” When a spine injury ended her nascent career as a ballet dancer Seredkina naturally pivoted to modeling, becoming something of a muse for the renowned Russian fashion designer Yudashkin, opening his show in the Kremlin. And over the years she shot for magazines like Vogue, Glamour, and Grazia. But the entrepreneur had bigger dreams. She found herself wanting to create spaces where people felt welcome, surroundings that – through the way they were designed – organically encouraged conversations and a sense of wellbeing. “I think it’s a certain type of person, like me, for whom it’s important to see that others find something beautiful to look at. It’s important to me to see that it
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“NOW LIFE IS TEACHING ME TO SHARE. TO SHARE LOVE, TO SHARE EXPERIENCE, TO SHARE EVERYTHING”
captivates, engages a person, and perhaps makes them think. That’s all art,” reflects Seredkina about her choice to start an interior design business. And what better place than Dubai, arguably the building capital of the world, when it comes to the art of turning houses into homes. Here she has found a place where she feels comfortable and safe enough to follow her calling and launch ORDO. Even the name of her design studio is couched in meaning. Besides the visual balance of the letters and the attractive sound it makes as it rolls off the tongue, ORDO has other hidden depths. “Family names are embedded in the letters,” shares Seredkina. And in Roman law, ordo denotes “a structured and orderly reality – the cosmic and natural order, the social structure, and the hierarchy of beings,” she goes on to explain. She notes that “all order begins with order in the home.” For her the entrance point into the world of design came through the exploration of textiles. Their impact might not be as instantly apparent as the choice of furniture or art, but they have just as powerful a role to play in how a space can make someone feel. “It is the framing of your window that will determine your state inside the room,” explains Seredkina. “Velvet will help you ground yourself and feel ‘at home’. Touching a silk pillowcase on a hot summer day will give you a sense of relaxed coolness. It is the delicate web of tulle that will disperse the sunset beam in such a way as to beautifully diffuse all the light throughout the dining room.” Seredkina’s goal is to create environments for her clients that feel like they have always existed. That the space instantly feels lived in, in all the right ways. In fact, when she is working with a client, she rarely focuses on the architecture of a venue. For her success comes from being able to hone in on who the client is at their core, and what they need around them to be the best version of themselves. Seredkina pays attention to “their temperament, their manner of speaking, their way of
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dressing,” she says. “I want to know everything about a person that can be gleaned from looking at them. I don’t need a long questionnaire, I just need to feel the person in the space.” The importance of home has taken on an even deeper meaning for Seredkina since the birth of her first child, Alexandra, in February of this year. Alexandra accompanied her mother to the cover shoot, her bright smile charming the entire crew, while her mother watched over her with an unmistakable look of pride on her face. “Motherhood has strengthened me mentally,” she says. “For me, my work was that centre. I sincerely consider it my calling. And now life is teaching me to share. To share love, to share experience, to share everything. I think that with the arrival of my little girl, life has taught me to give and not expect anything in return. Now I feel invulnerable.” Invulnerable. Not exhausted, not stretched – invulnerable. Though she is realistic about the demands of motherhood, she knows that creating a real home for her daughter is such an important part of her future sense of wellbeing. “Of course, it’s impossible to ‘hold all the horses’ at once,” affirms Seredkina. “But right now, for me, the interior is a place of life. A place for peace and celebration, a place for joyful events, and a place for solitude.” Motherhood has also made Seredkina more laser-focused on what matters to her and what no longer adds value to her life. She is just as driven and disciplined as she ever was, moving between shooting a cover to taking care of her daughter, to dealing with interior design clients and overseeing the final touches of her new ORDO design studio location. “Fortunately, I have the opportunity to bring all my creative ideas to life, thanks to the support and encouragement of my family,” she says. “It is within the family that I learned to cope with any days, both good and bad. It’s very important when you’re going home to know that no matter what happened today, your home is there, and you are loved there.”
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Top and pants, Bouguessa; Necklace and earrings, Rabanne Hair and makeup: Ekaterina Karakulova Videographer: John Melencion Stylist Assistant: Nashwa Mohammed Editorial Assistant: Riya Kumar
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Lisseth Villalobos-Azab and Shahad Boraji
BI-COASTAL BRILLIANCE From Los Angeles to Jeddah, Lisseth Villalobos-Azab and Shahad Boraji have turned Create Twenty Two consultancy into the go-to showrooms for some of the region’s most exciting designers W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
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en years ago, Lisseth VillalobosAzab, the founder and managing director of Create Twenty Two consultancy, flew to Los Angeles with a dream – and her luggage filled with fashion from Middle Eastern designers. She knew in her bones that if Tinseltown was able to access the talented MENA designers she represented they wouldn’t be able to resist them. How right she was. She ended up getting looks from three out of the five designers worn by celebrities in her first foray into the fast-paced world of red carpet dressing. Now – a decade, two showrooms and countless “step and repeat” and celebrity moments later – she and Shahad Boraji, the company’s creative director, have built a bridge between Hollywood, Saudi Arabia and the MENA region that has stylists from around the world clamouring to cross. The duo have been instrumental in bringing international awareness to regional brands in a way that organically celebrates their unique sartorial perspectives. When I finally jump on a call with Villalobos-Azab and Boraji one evening, the conversation kicks off with a discussion about the struggle of managing two showrooms, one in Los Angeles and the other in Jeddah, at almost diametrically opposite ends of the world. They both laugh with the wry knowing laughter of women who understand how to work on “two hours of sleep”. It’s clearly a joke, but also very plausible. The origin story of the company really begins with a void that Villalobos-Azab wanted to fill. Ten years ago she was producing events across the GCC and paying attention to the pain points she was spotting along the way. “I noticed that there was a gap where we weren’t seeing some of these really talented MENA designers internationally,” she recalls. Asked why, the women were unanimous: “They didn’t really have a landing place, and they didn’t have a representation that truly knew the culture or the region.” Villalobos-Azab started small, with that first trip to Los Angeles. But it was an incredibly fruitful trip. Out of the regional brand placements, one placement led, eventually, to that designer dressing Beyoncé; the other landed on an album cover. Not bad for a market everyone had warned her would be closed. “We did think that there was going to be some difficulty,” she admits. “But in the creative space that we work in, people are just looking for genuine good quality pieces. And if the piece fits the project and the aesthetic and the celebrity, then it’s just a nice merger.” Ask her to name the tipping point for Middle Eastern fashion on the
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American red carpet and she points to the moment that Céline Dion decided to wear an Ashi Studio design for the first time. But as for her own company she has a harder time homing in on a precise instance. “I don’t know if there’s a specific moment, because the relationships that we’ve built over the years with the creatives internationally, obviously specifically in Hollywood, have always welcomed it openly.” It’s those relationships that they have carefully nurtured over the years that are the real assets for the pair. Recognising that the gatekeepers aren’t the stars but the stylists beside them, Create Twenty Two made an unusual structural call. “We say we have two clients,” Villalobos-Azab explains. “On one side it’s the brand and the designers, and the other is the creatives and the stylists.” Both groups get looked after. What the stylists get from the consultancy
is discretion, and access to ensembles that nobody else can hand them. “The stylists know that with us they can get something that is going to be unique, and it’s going to be good quality, and no one else is going to have it in the market,” affirms Boraji. Then three years ago, with the Red Sea Film Festival and the Joy Awards seeing a growing number of A-list Hollywood stars in attendance and the widening popularity of the Saudi Cup, the pair decided it was finally time to open a showroom in the Kingdom. “What took me maybe five years in LA has taken us one year in the Saudi showroom, because we are the only Saudi PR fashion showroom right now in the Kingdom,” Boraji explains. “When there are these big events, all of the celebrities, all of the stylists love to come and try things on. Sometimes we can’t get them to leave,” adds Villalobos-Azab. In the beginning, the duo admit that there was a bit of an education to do first with the locals. “A lot of people thought that we were a boutique, or one particular brand versus representing multiples,” says Villalobos-Azab. The stylists on the other hand needed no briefing whatsoever. “The stylists just flocked. They got it instantly,” says Boraji. The proof of concept for the second showroom came at last year’s Red Sea Film Festival, and Villalobos-Azab still sounds stunned by the tally. “I counted – I think we did 22 placements on the red carpet, which is insane,” she recalls. It was also when they let themselves stop and finally take a moment to enjoy the success that had come from all their hard work. “After that one, we definitely took a step back and said, ‘wow, we really
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did it’. And now we’re fully functioning in both locations,” remembers Boraji. Two showrooms, over 10,000 kilometres apart, have produced what Boraji calls the real pivot – running opposite to the direction everyone predicted. “Now we’re seeing a reverse effect, where the designers, the talent from here in Saudi, are actually going to the LA showroom,” she says. “And the international talent, the stylists, are flying all the way here to go to the Saudi showroom. It’s becoming like a revolving door of different kinds of talents from all around the world.” The traffic runs both ways commercially, too. “We are open to introducing international brands to the GCC market,” shares Villalobos-Azab, who reads the appetite as a consequence of Vision 2030. “Dubai has been around forever, but Saudi has amplified that even more. And obviously numbers don’t lie.” Boraji, who handles strategy and positioning for Create Twenty Two, is firm that a red carpet is not an endpoint. “For me it will always be the structuring of the brand,” she says, citing labels the company has helped to grow from barely breaking even to hitting six figures a month. Her pitch to any designer, anywhere: “When you come to Create, we will help you create that full ecosystem – and not just give you that instant wow moment.” The duo already have a strong five-year plan mapped out, though neither will say to what: more services, in gaps they can see and won’t yet name, plus a teaching project close to Villalobos-Azab’s heart. “It’s great that we can provide the service, but how do we take it to the masses?” she posits. But if there’s one thing she wants on the record at the ten-year mark of her business, it is that the underlying principle of Create Twenty Two is to be open and available to any creatives that feel they have a story to tell. “Even if we don’t work with you right off the bat, we’re still here to provide some sort of support for creatives. Not to be shy to approach us, no matter how small or how big your goal is,” she says. As we close out our conversation, I have to ask, why the name Create Twenty Two? The answer shows just how heartfelt the foundation of this business is. “I got married on the 22nd,” reveals Villalobos-Azab, “and both of my children were born on the 22nd.” The company might have started with a lucky number, but these two women have clearly made their own luck.
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R U E DE RIGUEUR The new season sharpens its tailoring, shifts its proportions, and pairs its fabrics against type. Paris, as ever, wears the argument well S E N I O R E D I TO R : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
P H OTO G R A P H E R : T H I E R Y L E B R A LY
ST Y L I ST: C H R I ST I N E L E R C H E
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Full look Loewe
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Hair & Makeup: Flavio Nunes at Airport Agency Casting: Josephine Little at Good Work Paris Model: Sophia P at New Madison Stylist’s Assistants: Angelo Liso & Alice Peralta Photographer’s Assistant: Alain Hoa
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London-based fashion pop-up 3EIB is championing SWANA creatives and building a thriving community. Ahead of plans for a UAE event, founder Dania Arafeh tells Emirates Woman about the inspiration behind her stylish venture and reveals the SWANA brands to add to your shopping list, right now
CULTURE CLUB WORDS: DEVINDER BAINS
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alling a brand ‘effortlessly cool’ might be a well-worn cliché, but it perfectly sums up the raw, authentic energy of London-based fashion pop-up 3EIB. The community-driven platform highlights SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) fashion and culture through regular events around the English capital, inviting emerging – and sometimes more established – designers of SWANA heritage from across the globe to showcase their wares. The word 3EIB might mean ‘shame’ in Arabic but there’s nothing of the sort to be found amongst the clever tailoring, stylish streetwear, joyous regional beats, and radical artwork and self-expression which form the bones of these pop-ups. “The plan was always to reclaim the word,” says Dania Arafeh, the founder of 3EIB, who set up the platform after seeing the lack of Arab creative representation on major art and fashion e-commerce sites, including those she’d worked at herself. “I realised that you can’t rely on the existing structures,” says Arafeh who was a senior account manager at Artsy. “If you want to support your people and build a niche market, you kind of have to do it on your own.” Arafeh, 32, chose to focus on fashion rather than art because “it had a broader reach and was easier logistically,”
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she explains. The decision was also fuelled by a lifelong passion: “For me, fashion and identity go hand in hand,” she says. “It was a big part of navigating my teenage years; be it experimenting with clashing colours and patterns, or making jewellery out of trinkets I’d find around the house.” After leaving her full-time job in November of 2022, Arafeh, who is of Palestinian heritage, visited her homeland to cultivate relationships with artisans and creatives over a three-month period. “I had connections in other SWANA markets, the UAE in particular, through my work and also my interest in Arab designers but there was a gap that needed filling with Palestine.” Almost a year later, in autumn 2023, Arafeh launched 3EIB during London Fashion Week. “At this point, it was primarily a fashion e-commerce site and an in-person pop-up event showcasing the
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SWANA designs and their designers,” she explains. “It was important to fly designers in to participate at the pop-up to help build a global community that transcended the borders that have been put in place.” Brands from Dubai, Tunisia, Palestine, Morocco, and more, many showing their work to a western market for the first time, joined designers from the diaspora – from cities such as Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, as well as from the UK. The launch was a huge success but global events in Gaza meant the structure was short-lived. “Fashion seemed less important at that point,” remembers Arafeh, who paused the online shop and instead used 3EIB to organise events to help raise funds and educate people on Palestinian solidarity. The brand returned to fashion nine months later, but the halt in ecommerce was made permanent to focus on
in-person events, utilising the community and connections the brand had built up over the previous few months. Since then, 3EIB has partnered with a variety of organisations and individuals, from the V&A Museum, Southbank Centre and Shubbak Festival to British-Yemeni designer Kazna Asker, artists Nada Elkalaawy and Malak Mattar, and illustrator and journalist Mona Chalabi. 3EIB’s events have received praise from across the SWANA community and garnered press acclaim in high-fashion titles in both the UK and UAE, and not just for selling incredible fashion but for showcasing the breadth and beauty of SWANA cultures. Next, Arafeh has her heart set on a UAE event, which would be the brand’s first pop-up outside of the UK. “I’ve been visiting the UAE sporadically since I was a kid because I have family who live in both Dubai and Qatar, but since my
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ARAFEH’S ARTISTS VANDART
Dania Arafeh
This is a new Lebanese/UAE brand that recently launched their first collection, and it was part of our pop-up in June 2026. Tania, the founder of, Vandart has spent a career working in fashion and designing collections for lots of famous brands, so there’s a lot of expertise behind this inaugural collection. I love how the pieces are classic with an artistic twist, designed for the modern woman and very well produced. I’ve got this washed denim skirt from the brand, and I love how it hugs my body – the shape and colour reminds me of a mermaid’s tail.
BENZENE grandparents moved to Dubai a few years ago, I’ve been visiting every year,” she says before explaining the importance of a UAE pop-up for the brand. “Our mission is a global one, 3EIB is bridging the gap between those in the homeland and those in the diaspora, and we want to have a united conversation, so that means hosting it beyond London.” While no date is set for 3EIB’s first regional pop-up, Arafeh is hoping to announce more details later in the year. Until then, we asked her to share some of her favourite SWANA brands for our readers to get excited about.
No Borders
Another new brand that was part of our June 2026 pop-up is Benzene, which launched this year. It’s a Palestinian brand that is based in Berlin. I love their branding and social campaigns; lots of thirst trap content which is just what you want for a hot summer launch. All the founders are Palestinian, and they do a lot to support those on the ground. For example, they’re currently fundraising to build and renovate a school in Tal al-Hawa in Gaza for 1,000 children. And they’ll often donate profits to their causes. I’ve got their stunning bikini set and towel bag, and I bought my partner the swim trunks.
SHABAB INTERNATIONAL When asked about my favourite UAE brand, I have to mention Shabab (brainchild of Iraqi-Canadian creative Cheb Moha) because they’re probably the first Arab brand I ever knew about. They’re the OGs; I think they’ve been going for over 10 years. We’ve never collaborated together but we know each other and I’ve got this great tie-dye jumper from the brand – I love how colourful and fun it is. My partner, Ahmed, is the real fan, he’s probably got over 10 pieces from them.
HIND HILAL Hind Hilal, a Bethlehem-based brand I’ve long admired, was part of our very first 3EIB pop-up and I’ve built a special connection with the designer, Hind. From our first call we connected and our values
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and sentiments feel very much aligned. What I love most is the combination of simple and sculptural. Hind has a background in architecture, and you can see how much she pays attention to the shapes and angles. There is also close attention to the material, not just how it feels, but ensuring it’s ethically and organically produced. I have a beige button vest shirt that has a tie detail on one of the shoulders and I’ve worn it to quite a few special occasions.
TRASHY CLOTHING This Ramallah-based brand literally rocked my world when I first discovered them in my early 20s. At the time, I was naive and still struggling with my identity and found so much power and freedom in their work. I’m lucky to have worked with Trashy Clothing a lot, they’ve taken part in many of the pop-ups, and we even collaborated with them on a fashion show we produced for Shubbak Festival at The Southbank Centre – where we dressed inspiring individuals (creatives and activists) who have contributed to collective liberation. I’ve got lots of pieces from them, my favourite is probably a curtain-style wrap skirt that shows scenes of Palestine and has thick, gold tassels.
NO BORDERS Although No Borders are a South Asian brand, I think they deserve an honorary mention because they’re a real inspiration for 3EIB. They create everything with local artisans and also collaborate with SWANA brands on their website. They do a lot for the community and have also showcased in Dubai at Sole DXB. I’ve grown very close to the founder Kanika – it’s rare in this industry to find people who have unshakable values and want to support people they believe in without expecting anything in return, so she’s become a mentor and friend this past year, and I’m so grateful for everything she does. We collaborated together at our June 2026 pop-up, they curated the garden space and brought the best vibes. It was beautiful to see our communities come together. I’m obsessed with their in-house collection and want so many pieces from it, I definitely need to get my hands on one of their embroidered, cropped shirts.
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CREATURE COMFORTS
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Cartier’s new Into the Wild collection once again puts the animal kingdom centre stage, but this time the bejewelled menagerie includes some striking, unexpected creatures. One highlight is the line up of animal head rings – tiger, parrot, carp, crocodile and rhinoceros – they are the luxury jewellery house’s new spirit animals. A crocodile’s jaw on your finger. A parrot’s beak at your knuckle. Each head is the result of jewellers, lapidaries and gem-setters working in close collaboration, to push gold, stone and lacquer to behave like living things. The sculptural volume of these spectacular cocktail rings instantly demands – and deserves – attention. Subtle, this is not. But then, Cartier at its most wild never is.
When we remember where we came from… – Our heritage can show us the way – We bristle at homogeneity – What is passed down can be a superpower – Evolution can be intentional – How we present in the world speaks volumes – We discover how much we are able to carry – Asking for help can come in handy
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T SI X WOMEN, ON E LEGACY WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
Inside the Emirates Woman shoot where Her Highness Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi and Inanna Reborn brought together six Emirati women to mark the most significant Emirati Women’s Day ever
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here is a sense of power and purpose in the room as we gather beneath the main dome at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization, where Emirates Woman has gathered six Emirati women to mark Emirati Women’s Day. Dressed in outfits and jewellery from Her Highness Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi’s brand Inanna Reborn, the women proudly stand shoulder to shoulder as striking embodiments of both their shared heritage and how far Emirati women have come. Sheikha Bodour, who founded the label as an extension of her own research into the region’s forgotten queens, notes that “when a woman puts on these pieces, I want her to feel the weight of her own history. I want her to remember that her power is generational, that it lies deep inside her soul, and that it’s ready to be awakened, because ultimately this is luxury shaped by memory, not trend.” This year, for the first time since Emirati Women’s Day was established in 2015, Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, Chairwoman of the General Women’s Union, President of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood and Supreme Chairwoman of the Family Development Foundation, decided that one day to celebrate the many accomplishments of Emirati women was not enough. She announced that the celebration would be extended to a full month, running from 28 August through 28 September, under the theme We Emerge Stronger and Better. Sheikha Fatima explained that her decision to broaden the initiative was a natural progression. “As the horizon of ambition expands with you and through you, our celebration this year will not be limited to a single day,” she said in a statement. She called the theme a reflection of “a spirit that does not stop at achievement and is not satisfied with what has been accomplished, but looks to tomorrow with ambition and responsibility.” The golden-domed building hosting the shoot carries its own history, having reopened as the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization in 2008 under the direction of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah and Sheikha Bodour’s father. It now holds more than 5,000 artefacts spanning 14 centuries of Islamic civilisation. It is here that Sheikha Bodour wanted to gather to reflect on the decade behind Emirati Women’s Day, saying “when I look back over the past 10 years, three major shifts stand out to me, the first is confidence – the young Emirati women that I meet today speak about their ambitions with this incredible self-assurance, they know they belong in rooms they walk into, whether that room is a government cabinet or a laboratory or a space mission.” The second shift, she says, is presence, “our women are now visible across every sector, when I travel, people around the world know our doctors, our diplomats, our scientists, and our creatives, and it’s completely shifted the global understanding of what an Arab woman can achieve.” What moves her most, though, is the third, “the concept of inheritance,” the belief that “our achievements today are not the starting line, they are the continuation, carried forward
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Nujoom Alghanem
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by women who have always been the resilient, resourceful, backbone of their communities.” That same sense of continuity, she says, is what draws her back to the museum itself, which she calls “a living, breathing portrait of a civilization that once led the world in science, in scholarship, in art,” a place where she wants every Emirati woman to feel “that they carry an inheritance that is far richer and far older than the world often tells them.” Ahlam Bolooki, CEO of the Emirates Literature Foundation, says “the Emirati woman has always had a powerful role in our society, but the thing that Emirati Women’s Day has really shown us is the diversity of her roles and everything that she contributes to society in all fields.” She traces her own love of storytelling back to a region that, “being nomads, haven’t been able to carry heavy archives or loads and loads of books and libraries with us from place to place.” Relying instead on oral tales passed from one generation to the next. She says what draws her to literature is “the same thing that museums carry, it’s the artifacts that represent our everyday lives.” Bolooki wants that work to stay in Emirati hands and describes the modern Emirati woman as grounded in who she is, fearless, and always evolving.
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Mera Al Qassim, the writer, poet and visual artist, says “heritage is part of my identity” and that her drawing and writing serve as “an extension of this heritage, which I can make expressive and complementary, and an extension of my country’s heritage.” She describes the museum itself as “characterised by preserving architectural heritage, calligraphy, and similar Arab arts,” adding that “heritage is not only preserved, but it is an extended living memory passed down from generation to generation.” That same idea runs
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jewellery, reflects the richness and sophistications of Islamic civilization.” In terms of how her work is empowering Emirati women she sees it as an avenue women can use “to be seen and heard in their full complexity, beyond story types, and through their own voices, experiences, and realities.” Chef Mariam Al Mansoori, the culinary artist among the group, says “Emirati Women’s Day has become a symbol of progress and opportunity, it celebrates the achievement of women across every sector while inspiring the future generation to dream bigger.” She expresses her own heritage through food “because it speaks a universal language,” adding that “every traditional dish reflects our history, hospitality, and the way of life,” and says visiting the museum “reminded me of a depth and richness of our heritage” that “highlighted creativity and tradition that shaped our nation.” By the time all six women gather for the final group shot beneath the dome, dressed in Inanna Reborn pieces Sheikha Bodour hand selected for each woman to wear, the day has been one filled with rich conversations about literature, film, food, fashion and the power of the written works. All the while the central message of Emirati Woman’s Day remained the throughline. That what these
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK MATHEW
Nahla Al Fahad
through her own practice, where writing and visual art have let her connect the past with the present, embodying heritage in some way, whether through traditional dress or through colors, work she calls “an extended and continuous narrative that does not end.” Nahla Al Fahad, the film director, calls Emirati Women’s Day “a powerful platform that celebrates Emirati women’s achievements, inspires future generations, and showcases our stories to the world through filmmaking, sharing authentic Emirati stories that reflect our values, culture, and identity.” Visiting the museum, she says, reminded her “of how rich our heritage is, and how every artifact carries a story that continues to shape who we are today,” and her own work, she adds, “has given me the opportunity to lead with purpose, inspire others, and bring meaningful stories to life.” Nujoom Alghanem, film director, poet and artist, says “over the past decade, Emirati Women’s Day has strengthened the visibility and recognition of Emirati women’s achievements, inspiring broader regional conversations on women’s leadership, and at the same time presenting the UAE’s model of empowerment to the world.” She describes her own favourite way of expressing Emirati heritage as “storytelling, using film, poetry, and visual art to share the people and landscapes and memories, and perhaps the values that have shaped who we are.” She notes that every visit to the museum leaves her reassured “that everything on display, from manuscripts and scientific instruments to textiles, ceramics, and
Mariam Al Mansoori
women do in their diverse fields carries something older forward rather than departing from it. It is a fitting note on which to end a celebration that, this year, finally refuses to be confined to a single day. and Sheikha Bodour puts it best when she reflects on what the day has come to mean beyond the UAE’s own borders. “Our story has resonated as a beautiful blueprint for how a nation can support its women. So today, we honor how far we’ve come, and we lay the stories for the next generation to dream even bigger.”
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THE RISE OF
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IS THE TREND FOR STYLE GATEKEEPING A JUSTIFIED REACTION TO AN INCREASINGLY HOMOGENISED TREND LANDSCAPE, OR A CALCULATED AND EXCLUSIONARY FASHION TACTIC?
WORDS: GEMMA WHITE
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uxury is undergoing a seismic shift. Luxury has long been defined by the conspicuous consumption of expensive goods and alignment with high-end brands to signal wealth and social status. But younger generations have rendered the concept almost unrecognisable in the traditional sense – the flashy logo, the must-have It-bag – a change that has accelerated to viral speeds over the past couple of years. Millennials were the driving force behind the move to value experiences over ownership of physical goods. The pursuit of wellness, sustainability, time and personal authenticity over a designer bag or outfit is a concept that’s been fervently embraced by Gens Z and Alpha, much to the chagrin of a luxury market that has been slow to react to changes in consumer mores. While conspicuous consumption and sheeplike trend-following are out, replaced by conscious consumption and hyper-personalisation, three aspects of luxury remain: exclusivity, personalisation and timelessness. And it’s here at this intersection where the individual meets the mainstream that we encounter the latest sartorial talking point: gatekeeping. “Gatekeeping is often an attempt to protect psychological value,” says Shakaila Forbes-Bell, fashion psychologist, author and consultant. “Social Identity Theory suggests that we partly define ourselves through the groups we belong to, and those identities can feel more meaningful when there is a distinction between the in-group and out-group. Scarcity research also shows that we tend to assign greater value to things that feel rare or difficult to access. So, when a once-niche brand, aesthetic or piece becomes widely available, people may gatekeep to protect its perceived exclusivity and, most importantly, its role in their identity.” Fashion was once a seasonal-driven top-down industry in which a handful of revered magazine editors and influential department store buyers took on the role of style arbiters (read: gatekeepers), telling us what and when to buy and how to wear it. Then the internet
did what the internet does, striding in without so much as a nod to the old guard to create an algorithm-driven fashion cycle through which trends move at unprecedented speeds thanks to influencer culture, integrated social platforms and the instant gratification of click-and-buy shopping. Micro-trends replaced seasonal shopping, add-to-cart took on mall trawls, haul videos offered real-timegratification over monthly editorials, and influencers with their GRWM videos and affiliate links ousted the gatekeepers. Originated by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1947 to define how information is filtered and controlled, the term “gatekeeping” entered the mainstream at the top of the 2010s as platforms like Tumblr and Reddit, on which sharing was the de facto, exploded. To be otherwise, that is to be labelled a dreaded gatekeeper, was to be snobbish and anti-social, a Scrooge-like hoarder of cultural cachet who refused to share the provenance of anything from a T-shirt to a niche to a niche, underground garage band. Back then, this was against the unwritten rules of a more naïve and community-minded internet. Fast forward 15 years and the relentless march of algorithm-driven dressing has flipped the script. Today’s gatekeepers argue that their stance is not about being exclusionary or clout-chasing, but rather a bid to hold onto their individuality in a flattening style landscape. “I think people are gravitating towards style gatekeeping because this trend of overconsumption and the hyper trend cycle is exhausting, not to mention draining people’s bank accounts,” says fashion writer Kish Lal. “Before it became commonplace to list out your outfit details in a post or risk being slammed in the comments for ‘gatekeeping’. It’s no secret that culturally, we are yearning for a time before social media, before technology bled into every facet of our lives. Wanting to keep something for yourself, even if it’s the fact that your top is from the sales bin of an H&M, isn’t inherently selfish. I think it’s kind of weird that we’re expected to divulge every detail about ourselves when we live in a world with so little privacy.”
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suddenly becoming cagey about the source of their latest purchase can be seen as a betrayal or a breaking of the unwritten contract between creator and audience. “For some people, sharing everything is absolutely the right strategy,” says personal brand strategist Kelly Lundberg. “The shopping links, the full outfit breakdowns, the ‘this is exactly where I got it’ transparency; if that’s part of how you’ve built your world, if it drives brand deals, if it feeds a funnel that works for your business, that’s a completely legitimate choice. There’s real value in being the person your audience trusts to find the things they love. But the narrative that you have to share, that withholding is somehow selfish or unkind, that’s where I’d push back.” She adds: “Social media
Kelly Lundberg Shakaila Forbes-Bell
Trend-drivers such as Instagram and TikTok have been joined by affiliate sales platforms like ShopMy, Collective Voice and Like To Know (LTK), offering a direct-toconsumer mode of marketing that allows consumers to not only connect with influencers whose style they admire but to then drill down into the minutiae of recreating their looks, from budget to dress size to vibe check. “Over the past decade, social media and recommendation algorithms have made personal style increasingly homogeneous,” says Joshua Oliver, luxury advisor and founder of Joshua Oliver Concierge. “Everyone was seeing the same influencers, the same ‘must-have’ pieces and the same luxury brands being promoted repeatedly. As a result, people weren’t necessarily buying because something reflected their personality; they were buying because they had been shown it enough times to believe they wanted it.” He adds: “Among my clients, I’ve noticed a real shift away from algorithm-led shopping. They’re becoming much more intentional about what they buy and are asking deeper questions: ‘Does this actually suit my lifestyle? Will I still love it in five years? Does it feel like me?’” Gatekeeping becomes an even thornier and contentious issue when it appears selective. Influencers who have built their brand on sharing every aspect of their life and style as a way of cultivating and engaging followers
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created this expectation that visibility equals generosity. That if you have something people want to know about, keeping it to yourself is almost a betrayal of your audience. But that framing ignores something important: your taste, your curation, your aesthetic, that’s intellectual property. You built it and I don’t feel you have to be obligated to open source it.” Lundberg raises an important question around how the internet has changed identity in relation to consumption. With online users effectively being advertised to 24/7, lingering murkiness around #ads, #sponcon and #collabs has blurred the lines around style that is personal and style that is paid-for. Those who make their money shilling sartorially may freely share paid links but gatekeep their personal looks creating a disconnect with followers and opening themselves up to allegations of hypocrisy. Jeanna Krichel “It’s made it so easy to consume to a worrying effect,” says creative director and stylist Kate Hazell, who has worked with the likes of Chanel, Celine, Dior, Florence Welch and Naomi Campbell. “I love that buying clothes has become so democratic compliment. It means it resonated, it excited a lot of people. That’s and easily available, but as a result I think a lot of thought and a beautiful, positive response. Here’s the thing though, no matter meaning has been lost; with the ease has come overconsumption. I what style you copy or who you draw inspiration from, you can don’t mind it – people are entitled to not share or tag what they’re never actually imitate someone.” she adds: “What matters more, wearing, although I do find it a little counterintuitive. I think what’s actually stronger, is the person wearing it. The presence. there’s a misconception that everyone is wearing the same thing, How confident you are. How you feel in your body. How you move, especially if you’re being guided by your own algorithm. In reality, your energy. All of it comes together. The energy behind how you and from walking around in the wild, I find style a lot more diverse wear something matters more than the piece itself.” and unique than you’d be led to believe.” The ongoing backlash around overconsumption and market saturation has been a key component to gatekeeping. Those eschewing fast fashion for vintage and one-off pieces might baulk at sharing details on something they spent months looking for because in this case, the effort is the style. And if said piece was found 32 pages deep on an hours-long eBay scroll on a bored Monday night, what’s there to share, anyway? For every proponent of gatekeeping, there are counter-voices advocating for the idea that sharing style information with peers is a form of female empowerment. Model-turned-stylist Jeanna Krichel, who has written extensively about gatekeeping on her Substack, is one such champion: “Sharing matters,” she says, “to me it’s everything.” “Style gatekeeping makes zero sense to me,” Krichel continues. “If you have your own style, your own personality and you show that visually through character, through clothing and it becomes a trend and people start copying you or it, I see that as a massive
“AMONG MY CLIENTS, I’VE NOTICED A REAL SHIFT AWAY FROM ALGORITHM-LED SHOPPING. THEY’RE BECOMING MUCH MORE INTENTIONAL ABOUT WHAT THEY BUY”
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THE TIES THAT BIND
W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
Her Excellency Reem BinKaram, Director General of the Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council in Sharjah, has spent years proving that the region’s artisanal heritage isn’t something you put behind glass. It’s a working economy – one that deserves to be cherished, and to prosper
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Her Excellency Reem BinKaram
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ometimes it all comes down to a change in perspective. While chatting with Her Excellency Reem BinKaram, director general of the Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council, she tells a poignant story about how a simple decision she and her team made – to modify how the Irthi artisans sat while presenting their crafts – had a transformational impact. It was a move that instantly recast how both the public and the artisans formed an impression of the women and their work. The organisation simply decided that at Irthi’s exhibitions, the artisans would no longer sit on the floor. “I think this is a very psychological approach to it,” BinKaram explains. “Because when an artisan is sitting on the floor and you have someone passing by, they actually bend towards the artisan and the artisan has to look up.” It is a posture anyone who has wandered a regional craft fair will recognise, but one that nobody seems to have interrogated until now. “It’s fine to be reaching down but not looking down,” she elaborates on the nuanced difference in approach. So Irthi raised the seating, and the change was not merely cosmetic. “They sat with their backs straighter and they were very proud,” she recalls of her artisans’ reaction to the change, “and when they’re explaining to anyone who’s curious, they look at them.” An artisan at eye level is no longer some picturesque tableau to snap a photo of and move on from. She is an expert ready and waiting to be consulted, and to share her wisdom. This, in a snapshot, is the whole essence of the Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council. The organisation’s mission is to
support Emirati women and female artisans so that they achieve much more than the noble act of preservation alone. Instead, it’s about building a cultural baseline of dignity and heritage pride and, just as importantly, a path forward to economic independence. It is also a way of weaving centuries-old crafts into modern life, so that these skill sets are sustained into the future. BinKaram’s own entry point into her ancestral artisanal roots was domestic. “Craft has always been part of our lives as Emiratis,” she says. “Growing up as a nation, we got to see our grandmothers practise this craft.” Her own grandmother did talli, the fine braided embroidery edging a traditional dress, finding time for it between raising ten children and running a household. “We would patiently sit next to her and be mesmerised by how quick her hands would go through the threads.” What BinKaram shares about that period is more interesting than nostalgia. The pride, she insists, never went anywhere. But what happened was that the UAE got busy. The boom arrived and protecting these crafts became something of an afterthought as the country focused its attention on building a dynamic, cutting-edge future. Those craft techniques that were once handed down from one generation to the next were not abandoned per se, but they were no longer a priority. Until organisations like Irthi began to turn things around. With Irthi’s mission firmly in place, BinKaram spotted a second problem. A written record of Emirati craft does exist, compiled in the fifties, sixties and seventies – but it was created by outsiders. “They were documented by the British people who lived here, by
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expats who came here,” she shares. For her it was fundamental that Emiratis be the ones to narrate their artistic heritage in their own way, “rather than reading it from someone else’s perspective.” Irthi’s origin story has the quality of a parable, and BinKaram tells it with the affection of someone who knows it’s a good one. Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi – wife of the Ruler of Sharjah and chairperson of the Sharjah Family and Community Council – was visiting a rural area of the UAE when an elderly woman presented her with a gift. Asked where it came from, the woman answered that she had made it herself, to pass the time. “Look into this,” Her Highness told the Sharjah Business Women Council. “Let’s see what comes out of it.” What came out of it began as the Bidwa programme, which known now as Irthi skill development Centres, with a single artisan. Then, through word of mouth, it grew to include thirty-eight more. An Emiri decree in 2015 made it an institution. BinKaram is candid that the organic growth left them uncharted: they were building “a pilot project for an organisation that you cannot benchmark against.” Today the Irthi method of artisanal heritage restoration is patience coupled with quiet determination, building up one craft at a time, with each taking roughly two years. If a craft can be revived, they revive it. If it cannot, they document it – text, audio, film – so a future generation has something to work from. The results are remarkable. The UAE had around twelve registered talli techniques; Irthi has since created another forty-eight. “So we have sixty in total now, and these designs are purely Irthi,” explains BinKaram. They came from putting Emirati artisans in a room with macramé specialists, with bobbin lace makers from Brazil, with anyone whose knowledge might collide
productively with theirs. The consequences ran beyond the craft: in 2019 Sharjah joined UNESCO’s Creative Cities network as a City of Crafts and Folk Art, with talli cited in the designation. Then there is the palm, approached with the thoroughness of a laboratory. “We took the entire palm, dissected it from head to toe. We searched every single part of the palm from the root to the tip,” recalls BinKaram. One question leads to another: change the colour and you are training artisans in natural dyeing; keep going and you are asking which parts of the tree are edible. The director general sounds delighted by the rabbit holes she and her team found themselves going down. “It’s a new project every day, a new discovery.” But the underlying mission in all of this for Irthi is to empower the women who hold this artisanal knowledge in their fingertips. “We’ve been created to help build an artisanal economy. We’re not in it for financial gain,” she states with feeling. And BinKaram notes that Irthi has not accepted some opportunities in the past because they didn’t align with the Council’s foundational philosophy. “There are a lot of times where we turn down projects because we realise that the partners may not be as ethical as we are, or not on the same wavelength.” What is very clear is that raising women up is what Irthi is all about – as is evident in another story BinKaram shares with me, that of an artisan whose husband had walked out on her. Shortly after she started working with Irthi, he turned up, apologised and asked to come back. “She turned around and said no. I’m not interested anymore. I have a life, I have a commitment today,” recounts BinKaram, who goes on to add that what the woman told her next still holds a profound place in her heart. “She said, ‘For the first time, I felt I’m worth something,’” she remembers. For all the reverence involved in documenting and keeping these artisanal craft techniques alive, Irthi is not precious. The technique is sacred; everything else is negotiable. “The actual base technique is what we are preserving,” she explains. What surrounds it can move – materials, form, designer, context. The director general’s ambition is disarmingly modest but also completely radical: “I want every product of Irthi to sit in anyone’s home and fit in rather than stand out.” This is why the collaborations Irthi has done over the past decade read a bit like a map of the world’s endangered crafts: a young Mexican designer working in dying woodcraft and volcanic rock, fused
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with Emirati palm weaving; a Pakistani marble studio whose beads are strung on rope woven by Irthi’s artisans; a capsule with Cartier. The Council now works with more than five hundred women from the UAE and North Africa to Central Asia and Southeast Asia. And Irthi shows at Milan Design Week, the London Design Fair and Maison d’Exceptions at Première Vision, not to mention Downtown Design Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art. Originally, BinKaram came to the work via her father’s construction company, where she and her sisters hung around the design rooms as children, and then the American University of Sharjah, where she was in the first graduating class in interior design. She is scrupulous about not claiming Irthi as her own. “I cannot take the credit for Irthi today. The credit I give to all the team.” Her role she frames as that of a conduit: “I am here to translate Her Highness’s vision.” Now all she asks of the team is that they build their own redundancy – “they need to clone themselves,” she says with a laugh – so that the projects they work on outlast the people running them. That instinct runs right down to the children the Council is teaching. Hirfati, launched in 2018, brings six- to eighteen-yearolds to craft through workshops and competitions mixing digital platforms with traditional technique, so that the skills their greatgrandmothers had do not skip another generation. All of this hard work will finally have a more permanent home in 2029, when Irthi’s museum opens in Sharjah’s creative quarter. It will house the research, the experimentation, the documentation and the artisans in one place. “People will finally get to see everything that we have been working on in-house for years,” she says with a note of anticipation in her voice. BinKaram’s closing thought is for anyone with a grandmother and a half-remembered skill. “Experiment, try everything. Knowledge is power,” she says. Find the elder in your family who still knows how to do something, she encourages, and learn it, keep it, build on it. “Nothing stays the same. Everything changes,” she notes. And Irthi plans to be here to make sure that evolution is documented, studied and passed on, so that future generations will always be grounded in the exceptional past of their creative heritage.
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W O R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
PICTURE
PERFECT
Bareface, the oldest leading model and talent agency in Dubai, is celebrating 25 years in the business. Here the women who have led the company, from its founders to the brand’s current GM, recount how they shaped what beauty looks like in the region for a quarter century
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wenty-five years ago, Bareface consisted of a fax machine humming in a Dubai kitchen, a handful of photographs of an empty coastline, and two women, Justine Kirby and Venetia Maunsell, betting that the city could hold more than a stopover for London’s fashion crowd. What they built has been run, since 2020, by Vera Nur, who joined as an intern with no real idea what the job involved and never left. As Bareface marks its quarter century milestone, the three women tell its story in their own words.
1997 KIRBY: Back in 1997, I came to Dubai with
my husband because he got a great job opportunity. I’d been a model in London for ten years with a pretty leading agency, so I had a lot of experience, but I’d really come to the end of my modelling career. Within two or three months I realised that Dubai had massive potential as a shoot location. It was before the Burj Al Arab, before Jumeirah Beach Hotel. It was just large, expansive beaches. So I was in my kitchen, and I sent a few faxes to my clients in London. I went down and physically took some photographs, stuck them on a sheet, sent them by fax, and they said, great, well, if you can organise it. So that’s how it started. I was like a fixer and producer. I contacted airlines, hotels and locations, some would agree to barter deals – it meant I could fly crews out for less expense in return for credits in publications. It just snowballed from there.
1999 KIRBY: I met Venetia Maunsell because she
was working for my husband at the time. Venetia was very much the finance and
Justine Kirby and Venetia Maunsell
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business brain. I was probably more the model management, the location-finding, people-oriented side. So, she was perfect, and we got on really well. We became partners in 1999, just doing production on shoots.
2001 KIRBY: It was during that time we were
constantly being asked to cast models, find models, and there wasn’t really any real professionalism here, and there wasn’t a proper agency how I’d know it. So, we created Bareface in 2001, and took on our first staff.
Early 2000s MAUNSELL: I was 23, maybe 24, and I
just wanted to figure it all out. I taught myself the operations and processes side, the licensing, dealing with clients. Justine onboarded the models, found new faces, did the scouting. We taught ourselves, and I think that’s part of why Bareface is where it is – we didn’t have to do it the way a big corporate would. We could decide how we wanted to treat people. People started asking us for more than models – stylists, makeup artists, photographers – and over the next five years we developed all of those divisions. As Jumeirah grew, we worked closely with them as a preferred supplier facilitating their shoots. KIRBY: I would go back to London every summer for two months and go around all the production companies and say, come and shoot in Dubai. And they’d say, we’re
not going to go and shoot in Dubai, women can’t do anything, no one can drive cars. I had to educate them and show them what it was actually like. MAUNSELL: They were very worried about sending models to Dubai – there’d been bad reviews of what happened to people here. When they met us, they were like, okay, we can trust them, our models will be looked after well. Then they’d start sending them, and we’d have them stay for two or three months. KIRBY: I think Dubai did a brilliant job itself of marketing the country for tourism, alongside what we were doing. We were kind of right place, right time, as it grew together. And with us personally flying to these countries, meeting these agencies – two women – trusting us and knowing we’d look after their models, that was all based on feeling safe with us. Also from the early 2000s, Bareface’s talent began appearing in Emirates Woman shoots and covers, the start of a relationship between the two that has continued in the decades since.
Emirates Woman, April 2016
Vera Nur
2006 MAUNSELL: I had my first child in 2006,
and at that time I decided to put a general manager in place, so I would work in the background. We’ve had different teams since, but all with the same values – that we’re people first, it’s about giving opportunities. Each general manager has their own style within that.
2009 KIRBY: I left in 2009, because of personal
reasons, my children. Venetia Maunsell continued running things independently from there. To have fresh people coming in and running the agency over the years since – it’s only ever been a positive, exciting thing.
2014 NUR: The whole process for me was so
exciting, and even the story of how I joined is a little bit ridiculous. I was interning for Grazia while finishing my last year
Emirates Woman, April 2016
Emirates Woman, April 2016 VISION
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Emirates Woman, March 2024
her? They were so excited. We brought her in immediately, direct match, and she was in the campaign. We had another campaign with a local influencer and athlete who has Down syndrome, her name’s Clary – a beautiful Audrey Hepburn-inspired eyeliner shoot, one we’re really proud of. Then a few more with brands like Reebok. That’s something we took away from Covid – the inclusivity factor. That’s something that sets us apart, putting people first.
2023 Bareface partnered with the global inclusivity organisation Purple Tuesday and took part in Purple Tuesday’s Dubai event that November. In December, the agency launched Bareface Socials, a second Instagram account built around behind-thescenes content and its people-first culture.
Emirates Woman, July 2024
2024
of studies, and I met their booker, Sarah Allen. I was so amazed by what she did for work, I was like, I want to be her. I barely knew what booking involved, but I asked her who she worked for, and she said Bareface. I decided, I’m going to work for Bareface, without having done any research. What struck me on their Instagram was how personable they were – birthdays in the office, farewells, funny moments. A business where you can see the people behind it. I started calling and hounding them and emailing them. I got an interview, showed up in flip-flops, and people were like, what are you doing, going to an interview with your toes out? I said, I will get this job, just leave me alone. They said there was no promise of a job, just an internship. I joined at Middle East Fashion Week, four days back-to-back of twelve to sixteen hours. I was thrown into the deep end, and I loved it. And then they ended up hiring me, which – I don’t think they had a choice, because I wasn’t leaving.
2020 NUR: I became general manager in 2020,
and I’ve been leading it ever since. Once I joined, I saw the market opening up a lot more to different ethnicities, different looks, different body types. We started bringing in a lot of Latin American models, especially Brazilian, and at the same time we were
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heavily scouting locally too – Emiratis, expat Arabs, South Asians – because there was this perception that modelling meant a bikini and a runway. There’s so much more to it. You could model for Emirates fully covered. We represent people from babies to people in their seventies. Especially during Covid, I think we all had a chance to step back and think about what we wanted to leave behind, which direction we wanted to take.
2021 NUR: We decided to launch a project called
TODAA – Talent of Determination and Alternative Appearance. The inspiration partly came from how the government here adapted the language, so you don’t say somebody’s handicapped, you say a person of determination. We saw this happening in Europe, and thought, nothing’s happening here, let’s push it and see how the market reacts. We had a casting for Huda Beauty, who were looking for one of their lightest shades, called Milkshake. We had a casting for four days and couldn’t find anyone to match it. Then one of our bookers pointed out that we had a girl with albinism in the applicant pool – we hadn’t accepted her yet, because we were hesitating, thinking about what we could actually put her forward for. We don’t want to just take people on for the sake of it. But I said, are we open to casting
In February, Bareface’s TODAA division won the Special Project category at the Le Book Connect Dubai Creative Awards. Its long-running collaboration with Emirates Woman continued through the year with cover shoots in February and June and further editorial work that November.
2025
Another Emirates Woman editorial followed in January, the latest chapter in a relationship between the two that stretches back to the early 2000s, and has included shoots with brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior Beauty and Armani Exchange along the way.
25 years on MAUNSELL: It’s difficult to know if there’s an
actual pivot point. It’s not really. It’s almost like you do your thing every day, and as long as you stick to the values of it, you find you’re talking twenty-five years on, and you’ve still got people who love what they’re doing. NUR: We haven’t had one pivotal moment, but it’s been a gradual build – new people coming in, new trends, new opportunities, and we adjust. We have longevity within the team, too. Our head of agency, Abid, has been here eleven years. I’ve been here twelve. Especially in Dubai, where that kind of longevity isn’t that common, we’re super proud. We’re women founded, women run, a very supportive community, a very supportive working environment. It’s truly a place where people come first, whether professionally or personally.
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PAY IT FORWARD Next month the See It Be It Connects: MENA initiative aims to shape the future of creative leadership in the region
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ehind every successful career is a network of mentors, advocates that help turn potential into progress. As MENA’s creative landscape grows, building more opportunities for women has never been more important. Progress is being made, but there is still work to do to ensure the industry's future reflects the breadth of talent shaping it today. The creative industries thrive on diverse perspectives, yet women remain underrepresented in many senior creative roles. Closing that gap isn’t simply about recognising talent; it’s about building confidence, creating connections and fostering a community to help women take the next step in their career journey. It’s this thinking that sits behind See It Be It Connects: MENA, a leadership initiative developed by Dubai Lynx, in partnership with Middle East Communications Network (MCN). Inspired by the globally recognised Cannes Lions See It Be It programme, this regional edition,
taking place in October, has been designed to accelerate the careers of women across creative, media and marketing at a pivotal stage in their professional journey. Since launching in 2014, the Cannes Lions See It Be It programme has supported more than 150 women globally, many of whom have gone on to lead agencies, create award-winning work and influence the future of the creative industry. While the programme has delivered measurable impact, with 75% of participants promoted within a year and 63% now operating at Creative Director level or above, its true legacy lies in the community and lasting networks it creates. Building on that success, See It Be It Connects: MENA’s agenda has been carefully curated to reflect the realities of leadership today. Sessions will explore everything from ambition and career progression to burnout, confidence and resilience, while encouraging honest conversations around inclusive leadership, cultural intelligence and allyship. “At its heart, See It Be It Connects: MENA is about more than a single day of learning. It is about creating a community of women who will continue to support one another, challenge convention and help shape a more representative, resilient and creatively ambitious future for the region,” says Kamille Marchant, the director of Dubai Lynx, about the upcoming programme. Talent rarely arrives fully formed. More often, it requires someone who can recognise its potential, champion its growth and inspire the confidence to take the next step. Commenting on the partnership, Ricarda Ruecker, Chief Talent Officer, MCN MENAT said: “Our partnership with Dubai Lynx through the See It Be It Connects: MENA initiative reflects a commitment that goes far beyond representation, it is about truly caring and creating real pathways for women to lead, particularly in the creative industry. Too often, exceptional talent simply needs someone to recognise it, encourage it, and instil the confidence to take that next step. When women see others like themselves leading, they believe they belong there too. That’s why it is so important that we actively champion, mentor and invest in female talent. Supporting one another, opening doors, and fostering the next generation of women leaders isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s how we build a stronger, more innovative and more inclusive industry for everyone. At MCN we are fully committed to that.”
“Exceptional talent simply needs someone to recognise it, encourage it, and instil the confidence to take that next step”
Participants from the See It Be It MENA event from 2017
See It Be It Connects: MENA will take place on Wednesday 7 October and forms part of Dubai Lynx Creativity Week, a two-day programme celebrating creativity in the region. To learn more about Dubai Lynx Creativity Week and this year’s talent initiatives, visit www.dubailynx.com.
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VIEW POINT
POWER DRESSING
Morin Oluwole, CEO and Co-Founder of Le Vitruve, is an international luxury business leader who serves on the boards of Breitling, Rituals and Biologique Recherche, and Product Council of Kempinski Hotels. The former Global Luxury Director at Meta unpacks the sartorial codes of the C-suite
F
or decades, women entering the C-suite were given an unspoken dress code for power. The message was rarely explicit, but it was clear: if you wanted to be taken seriously, you needed to look serious. The sharp suit. The structured jacket. The restrained palette. The minimal jewellery. The heels that meant business. In many corporate environments, women learned to dress not simply for the role they held, but for the expectations attached to power. And, in many ways, this was understandable. Women entering rooms that had historically been dominated by men were navigating systems they did not design. Clothing became a form of armour – a visual shorthand for authority, competence and belonging. But I believe we are entering a different era. The question for women today is no longer: How should I dress to look like a leader? Instead, it’s: What does leadership look like when I no longer need to dress like someone else’s idea of one? This distinction matters. The C-suite has changed, and so has the meaning of authority. Leadership today is less about hierarchy and more about influence; less about having all the answers and more about creating clarity; less about commanding attention and more about earning trust.
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That does not mean that appearance is irrelevant. It would be naïve to suggest otherwise. We live in a visual culture, and I’ve always believed that what we wear communicates something before we have spoken a word. When I walked through the halls of Facebook’s offices in Silicon Valley in heels and bright dresses amidst grey T-shirt and flip-flopclad colleagues, I had this notion in mind. The most powerful sartorial choice a woman can make is not necessarily the most fashionable one. It is intentionality. The right question is not, “Does this make me look powerful?” It is, “Does this allow me to show up as myself, in this particular room, with confidence?” For one woman, that may mean a beautifully cut suit. For another, it may be a dress, a bold colour, a statement piece of jewellery or a silhouette that feels distinctly feminine. For someone else, it may be sneakers with tailoring, or traditional dress that reflects her culture and identity. None of these choices makes a woman more or less authoritative. I’ve spent much of my career working at the intersection of technology, luxury and global business, and one of the most interesting shifts I have witnessed is the movement away from conformity towards distinctiveness. The same is happening in leadership. The strongest leaders I encounter are rarely trying to look like everyone else in the room. They’ve developed a
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point of view about their business, their industry, their values and themselves. Their appearance becomes an extension of that point of view rather than a disguise. There are a number of women who come to mind when I think about this. Barbara Muckermann, CEO of Kempinski Hotels, has mastered the art of the complete look, thoughtfully coordinating colours and textures from head to toe while, perhaps most importantly, always looking completely comfortable and at ease. Faiza Bouguessa, founder of the Bouguessa fashion brand, represents another expression of modern leadership dressing: an effortless balance of ease, elegance and modest, minimalist chic. Their approaches are different, but both demonstrate the same principle: personal
style does not need to compete with authority. It can become part of it. This is particularly relevant for women in the C-suite because visibility comes with its own contradictions. We’re still scrutinised for how we look, but increasingly expected to use our personal presence as part of our leadership. We’re asked to be authentic, visible and relatable while simultaneously navigating expectations around professionalism, age, femininity and authority. Women should not have to choose between being feminine and being formidable. A woman can wear colour and negotiate a difficult deal. She can care deeply about people and make unpopular decisions. She can be glamorous and operationally rigorous. She can be soft-spoken and enormously influential. She can wear a dress and still be the most powerful person in the room. The real evolution is therefore not from “power dressing” to dressing down. It is from dressing for approval to dressing with intention. For younger women entering leadership, my advice is simple: don’t build a wardrobe around the question of what a “powerful woman” is supposed to look like. Build one around understanding who you are becoming as a leader. Invest in pieces that make you feel composed rather than constrained. Develop a signature rather than following every trend. Understand the codes of the environment you are entering, but don’t allow those codes to erase your identity. And remember that confidence is not something a jacket gives you. Clothing can amplify presence, but ultimately, authority comes from somewhere deeper: the quality of our thinking, the courage of our decisions, the consistency of our actions and the trust we build with others. Perhaps the most powerful sartorial statement a woman can make today is therefore not a particular suit, heel or silhouette. It is the confidence to walk into the room without needing to look like anyone else in order to belong there. That, to me, is what modern power dressing looks like.
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GET A GRIP
FROM MORNING MATCHAS TO CAREER AMBITIONS, THE MODERN WOMAN’S GREATEST SKILL MAY JUST BE HER ABILITY TO BALANCE IT ALL
S E N I O R E D I TO R : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT PHOTOGRAPHER: SHEENA GOLANI
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Panthère de Cartier ring in white gold with onyx, tsavorite garnets, Panthère de Cartier ring in white gold with onyx, tsavorite garnets and black lacquer, Panthère de Cartier watch in steel with diamonds, Panthère de Cartier bracelet in white gold with emeralds, onyx, and diamonds; All Cartier; Beoplay H100 Headphones, Bang & Olufsen
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This page:Jumbo Scrunchie, Slip; Kering Eyewear FW26, Gucci; RAINMAKER overnight miracle mask, Asteri; Hydro grip 12-Hour Hydrating Gel Stick Concealer, Milk; Hydro-star® + salicylic acid patches, Starface; Coffee, Saddle; Right page:Vintage Alhambra bracelet, 5 Motifs, yellow gold, pink enamel; Sweet Alhambra watch, 18K yellow gold case, 18K yellow gold bezel, guilloché 18K yellow gold dial interchangeable glossy VCA pink alligator strap; All Van Cleef & Arpels; Lipstick Case, Dries van Noten; Sunlit Vanilla Eau de Parfum, Summer Fridays; Lip butter balm, Summer Fridays; Basil & Hinoki Hand Cream, Dries van Noten; Moisturising Body & Hair Fragrance Mist - Vanilla Velvet, touchland; Top, Zimmermann
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Left page: Glasses, Bottega Veneta; Lip butter balm, Summer Fridays; Ren Necklace Brushed Brass, Cult Gaia; Valoria Sandal Tangelo, Cult Gaia; This page: Chanel Fall 2026 Eyewear collection; La Crème Main; Coco Mademoiselle Eau de Parfum Purse Spray; Rouge Coco Lipstick - Coco Mademoiselle collection 2026; Première Édition Originale watch in steel and yellow gold; Coco Crush bracelets and rings in white, beige and yellow gold with diamonds, Chanel Fine Jewellery; All Chanel
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Left page: Aire Sutileza Elixir Eau de Parfum, Loewe; Pure silk skinny scrunchie, Slip; The Customisable Ultra-Care Lipstick, Guerlain; Lipstick case, Celine; M TOTE PM, Moynat; S3 Dots rectangular sunglasses, Celine; This page: Perlée sweet clovers bracelet, rhodium-plated 18K white gold, round diamonds, Perlée clovers ring, rhodium-plated 18K white gold, round diamonds, Perlée watch 23 mm rhodium-plated 18K white gold case, round diamonds, all Van Cleef & Arpels; Veggie Collection sunglasses, Gentle Monster; Matcha, FLTR; Bal d’Afrique Hand Cream, 30ml, Byredo; KissKiss Bee Glow Plump, Guerlain
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Personal Cup AB503, BORK; Jumbo scrunchie, Slip; Vinosun SPF50+ Fluid, Caudalie; Make Waves Mascara, Tower 28; Water Blush, REFY; Brow Sculpt, REFY Models: Florencia at FP Models and Klau Duran Editorial Assistant: Riya Kumar
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Panthère de Cartier ring in rose gold with tsavorite garnets and onyx, Panthère de Cartier ring in yellow gold with tsavorite garnets and onyx, Panthère de Cartier ring in rose gold with onyx, emeralds and diamonds, Panthère de Cartier bracelet in yellow gold with onyx, tsavorite garnets, Panthère de Cartier bracelet in yellow gold with onyx, emeralds and diamonds; All Cartier; Beoplay Eleven Wireless Earbuds, Copper Tone, Bang & Olufsen; Kisskiss HoneyInfused Intense, Guerlain
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WO R D S : S I TA R A M U LC H A N DA N I
THE NEW
JEWELLERY
The rise of the private advisor – and why the Gulf’s most discerning collectors won’t buy a piece without one
T
he most important person in a jewellery purchase may no longer be the jeweller. There was a time when collecting fine jewellery began inside a boutique. Today, it often begins with a phone call. Increasingly, Gulf collectors are turning to private jewellery advisors to source everything from exceptional coloured gemstones to vintage masterpieces and auction-bound rarities, quietly reshaping how the region buys jewellery. Much like a personal shopper, a private jewellery advisor sources exceptional pieces from auction houses, heritage maisons and independent designers to find you the perfect addition to your collection. Why, many would ask, is this necessary when jewellery has become so accessible with the help of social media? Because, unlike clothing and accessories brands, the world of fine jewellery operates predominantly on relationships, with many extraordinary pieces never publicly advertised. And, even if you do find a piece you love, how do you know you can trust the source? Enter the Jewellery Advisor: your very own part-gemmologist, partstrategist and part-trusted confidant to help you navigate the opaque jewellery landscape.
“The biggest change over the last decade has been the evolution of the collector,” says Paul Redmayne, Senior Vice President for Luxury Private Sales at Sotheby’s. “We’re seeing a younger, globally connected generation of collectors who are incredibly knowledgeable and confident in their own taste, who are buying with far greater individuality.” Explaining that while collectors once gravitated almost exclusively towards heritage maisons, today’s buyers are equally interested in contemporary designers, vintage creations with storied histories and exceptional rarities. “They’re looking for rarity, provenance and pieces that offer both excitement and individuality,” adds Redmayne. Dubai-based gemmologist and designer Pritam Mukhi believes the Gulf’s changing attitude towards jewellery has been instrumental in driving demand for advisors. “Of late, a focus on provenance has proven an interesting impetus to invest, particularly in pieces with properly documented history and older gemstone cuts. ‘Old mine’ Colombian emeralds and old European-cut diamonds are two primary examples that have attracted massive interest in the last few years,” he shares. Sotheby’s has witnessed the same shift. “Collectors aren’t
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This page: Necklace set with two D IF round diamonds totaling 5.16 carats, paved with diamonds in white gold. Designed for multi-wear, from Boucheron’s Histoire de Style 2026 High Jewellery collection; Left page: Rare gemstones curated for Cartier’s Le Chœur des Pierres, its flagship High Jewellery collection for 2026
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Right: High jewellery diamond and sapphire bridal necklace and chandelier earrings from La Marquise Bridal Jewellery Collection
An old mine-cut diamond brooch or pendant, once owned by Emperor Napoleon I, circa 1810. Estimate: $150,000–$250,000, Sotheby’s Geneva, November 2025
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“COLLECTORS AR EN’T SIMPLY BUYING GEMSTONES OR PR ECIOUS METALS – THEY’R E BUYING HISTORY, CULTUR E AND SOMETHING THAT CAN NEVER BE R EPLICATED” simply buying gemstones or precious metals – they’re buying history, culture and something that can never be replicated,” affirms Redmayne. Mukhi, however, is quick to point out that provenance alone is not enough. “Owning an item that belonged to a famous person does not automatically make it beautiful.” For Mumbai-based Arundhati De-Sheth, founder of The Jewellery Confluence, the role extends well beyond sourcing exceptional pieces. “On the one hand, I tend to jump into the shoes of the prospective client by engaging in lengthy conversations which are focused on life, lifestyle, family and social dynamics of the person. This immediately gives me an insight into how and why they wear their fine jewels,” she explains. Alongside sourcing and curating, she also advises on bespoke commissions because, as she puts it, “No two clients are the same, and neither are a lot of the jewels in our offer.” Other established regional advisors like Abdulrahman Al Zayani, founder of A2Z Advisory, have seen that evolution has fundamentally changed the role they play, shifting from one-toone sessions to curating exhibitions with Sotheby’s and Christie’s Dubai, built specifically for Gulf collectors and featuring storied jewellers such as JAR, Bhagat, SABBA, and Theodoros. It reflects a broader shift in how collectors want to discover exceptional jew-
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The Gyan Jewels lattice bracelet, crafted in 18-karat rose gold with black onyx and emeralds, inspired by 19th-century stone jaali. Arundhati De-Sheth, The Jewellery Confluence, DECODENT 2026
Left: Fancy Pink Diamond, sold for $1.483m, Sotheby’s Geneva, May 2026
IMAGES: SUPPLIED
Katerina Perez
ellery. As Redmayne explains, “Private selling exhibitions are a very natural fit here because clients value discretion, personal relationships and the opportunity to view exceptional pieces in an intimate, non-boutique and most importantly, curated setting.” It’s a sentiment that is being echoed globally, as an increasing number of jewellery collectors are turning to professionals for advice and guidance. “The knowledge an advisor brings comes from years of experience, education and constant exposure to the market. For example, two emeralds may appear similar at first glance, yet one may be worth £20,000 and another £200,000. Understanding what drives that difference in value, including quality, origin, treatment, rarity and overall desirability, is not something most buyers can be expected to know. An advisor ensures clients understand exactly what they are buying and that they are paying a fair price,” explains Katerina Perez, a high jewellery and precious gems specialist and founder and editor of her eponymous jewellery website. It’s a shift that even auction houses like Sotheby’s have had to make, today becoming a part of the advisory ecosystem rather than just facilitating. “Building a serious jewellery collection is not a one-year or five-year project, and clients understand this. They want objective advice on building collections over decades, understanding market trends, sourcing exceptional pieces and offering
market advice on when it may be the right time to sell, and we’re that onestop shop,” says Redmayne. Ultimately, the rise of the private jewellery advisor says less about the jewellery itself than it does about the changing nature of collecting. “There are so many beautiful pieces on the market, but building a serious collection is not about simply acquiring what is popular or what you feel you should own. Your jewellery collection should reflect your personality, complement your style and work harmoniously with the pieces you already have,” says Perez. As Mukhi puts it, “Desirability is an emotional choice. Investment requires a more disciplined eye.” And, in a market where access has become easier, discernment has become the ultimate must-have.
“DESIR ABILITY IS AN EMOTIONAL CHOICE. INVESTMENT R EQUIR ES A MOR E DISCIPLINED EYE”
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ON THE LOOSE
GLOW
Loose powder has always had an image problem. Too chalky, too heavy, too prone to that particular horror of flashback in photographs. Charlotte Tilbury, who has rebuilt more beauty categories than you can shake a stick at, decided enough was enough. Her new Airbrush Flawless Blur Loose Powder is micro-milled to near-invisibility. It’s the kind of formula that does considerable work while feeling, well, lighter than air. Skin looks blurred, pores recede, makeup stays put for up to 24 hours. A new blush line in 11 carefully considered shades follows the same soft-focus logic, bringing the Airbrush effect to colour for the first time. It all makes for a clever, considered and genuinely wearable new staple for any woman’s makeup bag.
It’s time for an update which means… – Why not embrace the twilight hour – Go to the matte with a new lipstick – Let fashion influence your fragrance – Reimagining the past is a good thing – Remember to always keep a fresh perspective
Hot New Buys WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
The latest launches we love, from overnight skin treatments to layered fragrances, curated for your beauty cabinet
SHINE SQUAD Mirsalehi honey and an eight-oil blend team up in this lightweight, fastabsorbing formula, delivering the kind of glossy, bouncy hair that makes it a must-have. Honey Gloss Collagen Drops Hair Oil Dhs105 Gisou
Limited Edition
Designed by Lisa Zordan for the brand’s Spark Excitement gift collection, this sunscreen is the ultimate two-in-one, protecting skin while letting the benefits of red light filter through and soften fine lines over time. Glow UV Protective Cream Limited Edition Dhs494 Clé de Peau Beauté
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Vanilla orchid, a salty ozonic accord and dark cocoa swirl together in this deeper, longer-lasting take on the original Flora, and the gold-capped bottle wrapped in Gucci’s signature bloom motif makes it just as covetable on a vanity as it is on the skin. Flora Gorgeous Orchid Eau de Parfum Intense 100ml Dhs750 Gucci
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LAYER IT ON This silky, pocket-sized balm in pear and lotus blossom is perfect for scent layering, melting into skin alone or over Rare Beginnings Eau de Parfum for a fragrance that lasts up to 12 hours. Fragrance Layering Balm Dhs105 Rare Beauty
Vanilla, Elevated Pink pepper and sugar settle into rich cashmere before landing on a warm base of vanilla and sandalwood, making this the gourmand fragrance for anyone who wants sensual over sweet. Vanilla Canyon Eau de Parfum Dhs385 Phlur
BUILDABLE BLUSH This whipped, weightless mousse is perfect for anyone who wants soft matte colour that builds up beautifully and stays comfortable on the skin all day long. Liquid Matte Mousse Dhs125 Huda Beauty
Overnight Magic 15 years of research on Black Bee honeys went into this Guerlain treatment, and the payoff shows by morning as a patented taping technology and beeswax-rich texture work together to visibly lift the skin overnight. Abeille Royale Night-Taping Treatment Dhs798 Guerlain
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POMEGRANATE POLISH Pomegranate enzymes and almond powder team up in this pastry-cream textured scrub, sweeping away buildup and leaving skin glowing without ever stripping the barrier. Rumman Rush Exfoliating Face Scrub Dhs175 AÏZA
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RHAPSODY IN BLUE Three years to chase the scent of the sky, then 18 months of silence. As L’Heure Bleue debuts, Delphine Jelk, Guerlain’s perfume creation director and perfumer, talks sillage, tenderness, and why she wanted to create a perfume that doesn’t shout W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
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he first thing that catches my eye when Delphine Jelk clicks onto my screen is not Delphine Jelk. It’s the wall behind her: a collision of cobalt, ink and powder, of skies and fabrics and a glossy swipe of blue eyeshadow. “Ah yes, this is my blue mood board,” Jelk says, when I confess I’ve been staring past her. “I need images, I need words, I need textures to build my fragrance. So it’s a story that I tell on the mood board and in the bottle at the same time.” The story Jelk is trying to tell with the launch of her new L’Heure Bleue fragrance for Guerlain isn’t so much about the perfume itself as it is the modern retelling of a moment. In 1912, Jacques Guerlain famously crossed the PontNeuf one summer evening, was ambushed by the beauty of the Seine and the sky dissolving into one another at twilight, and went home to compose the iconic original fragrance L’Heure Bleue for his wife, Lili. Jelk has put her name on its successor. No pressure. “It was important for me to keep what I call the soul of L’Heure Bleue 1912,” she affirms. That soul, in her reading, is a triangle of scents – iris, orange flower, vanilla – and she’s generous about the man who assembled it. “I think I would have done the same as what he did. I totally understand why he used those ingredients, and the fact that he expressed L’Heure Bleue with so much tenderness, softness, roundness, powderiness.” Then she says Delphine Jelk the thing that makes my eyebrows shoot up. “This blend, this accord, is for me almost like a very chic marshmallow. And I find that funny, because in 1912 I’m sure he didn’t have that in mind – but it’s what I smell.” For her modern reimagining, Jelk gave herself quite the challenge. “Perfumers create with what they have at their disposal,” she says. “Jacques Guerlain did with what he had at the time, and unfortunately, he didn’t have the ingredients to create the scent of the sky. And that’s what I wanted to do.” Her key entry point into the pursuit of the sky was Cascalone, a refined descendant of the marine note that soaked the 1980s. “It’s like Calone, but less salty, less oyster-like. Less from the sea. It’s more from the sky.” She wanted altitude, not coastline. “You have this freshness that you can sometimes feel in the mountains, when the air is very pure. So it’s a mix between a sensation and a scent,”
she says with the sort of poetic explanation that only the best perfumers can pull off. Jelk goes on to confess that she was also trying to chase another sensation –a shiver. “For me L’Heure Bleue, it’s the moment of the day when the sun goes down. You have a little chill because it’s getting colder – so you have this physical thrill. And at the same time it’s also an emotional thrill, because at the end of the day, the night is coming, and everything is possible.” When the available scent ingredients are not enough to perfectly capture the moment Jelk is trying to crystallize into fragrance form, she has the backing of a house that has the wherewithal to make it. “I have this amazing chance at Guerlain to create my own ingredient,” she confirms. The house’s Madagascan vanilla tincture is the famous case; here Jelk wanted the same for iris, Jacques Guerlain’s own anchor and the flower at the heart of the Guerlinade accord. Not the petals but the rhizome, sourced in Italy, then macerated through trials at Guerlain’s Orphin workshop just outside of Paris – a process Jelk calls “crazydelicious,” but entirely worth it. “But so delicious.” “I took three years to create the perfume and I took three years to create the tincture,” shares Jelk, who worked on both in parallel. The result behaves unlike standard iris butter. “It gives a top note,” says Jelk. “So with this Cascalone blue sky note that I have in the top, the iris is already there.” Beneath it sit Ambroxan, Helvetolide musk and a vanilla she insists is no dessert. “It’s almost a bit leathery, spicy,” she explains. And while it is currently a trend in perfume circles for fragrances to be unisex, that is not the intention Jelk has for her L’Heure Bleue. “We love to say today that perfumes are not gendered. This one is gendered. I definitely thought about women when I created it,” she says with feeling. What interests her is that this places her somewhere Jacques Guerlain could never inhabit: what it means to be a woman in the world. “When I talk about true femininity, authenticity, this is not a femininity that you need to scream or shout. That’s what we see a lot today, in perfumery and everywhere. And I didn’t want that, because it’s not L’Heure Bleue, and I think we don’t need it. So we can be strong and free, being soft and tender, and yeah – just us.” Hence her L’Heure Bleu is a bit of a rebuttal. “When you go into perfumery today, you have the pink line for women and the blue line for men,” comments Jelk. “But I love this idea of blue for women. And I choose the blue shirt, like the boyfriend blue shirt, because I find it very sexy, of course. But at the same time, I find it so authentic to who we are.” Jelk’s precise about the space she wants her L’Heure Bleu to take up in the world. “I didn’t want to modernise it, I didn’t want to reinterpret it. It’s really a tribute. And at the same time it really deserved a following, because right now L’Heure Bleue 1912 is forgotten.” As of now, it’s not anymore.
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“I DIDN’T WANT TO MODERNISE IT, I DIDN’T WANT TO REINTERPRET IT. IT’S REALLY A TRIBUTE”
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Dior’s Creative and Image Director Peter Philips talks us through why his new Rouge Dior On Stage range is built to blur WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
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eter Philips spends the first few minutes of our interview video call cleaning a lipstick wand before he shows it in front of his camera, wiping away a smear of colour until the tiny, engraved Dior logo along its side catches the light properly. It’s in that unhurried, meticulous attention to a single object that his approach to his new lines of makeup, Rouge Dior On Stage Matte and Rouge Dior On Stage Ink Blur, starts to come into focus. On this group call, which has brought together a chorus of writers logging in from the four corners of the world, Philips wants to establish one important fact before a single question can be asked: that neither line should be seen as a classic approach to matte – not by the definition most of us grew up with. “I avoid using the word matte too much, because when you say matte, sometimes people think of it like a dry, strongly pigmented colour,” he says. Adding “I prefer to use like blur, soft blur, or a blurry matte,” as he explains the two-phase technology Dior is using to anchor pigment onto the lip before a second veil of perfecting powders settles over it. At face value that distinction could sound like semantics. But having tested the On Stage Matte lipstick in the days following our conversation, I can say the word blur earns its place. The formula applies with a texture closer to a whipped mousse than a traditional bullet, cushioned and pliant under the fingertip, and it sets into something closer to suede, soft to the touch and warm against the lip rather than the tight, cakey finish older mattes tend to leave. There is none of the tightening or drying I have come to expect from a 24hour wear claim, and the colour holds through a coffee and a lip balm test without the faint grey cast that notransfer formulas sometimes develop by hour six. Philips traces the finish back to time spent working across Korea and Japan, where he describes a beauty culture built on ritual rather than the quick, efficient application he grew up with in Europe. “They build up its soft layers, and they really, almost like an artist, analyze their face, their shapes,” he says of the makeup artists he has watched at work in Seoul and Tokyo. He credits that patient, layered approach with shaping the philosophy behind the new range. The blurring finish, in his words, behaves like a second skin rather than a cosmetic result sitting on top of it, and the ambition was to carry that same instinct for softness into a Western lip product built for speed. That sensibility is equally evident in the shade range itself, which Philips defends against the obvious accusation that ten muted nudes and rosewoods play it safe. “If I would have done shocking pinks and bright corals, it becomes more niche in a way, and it will draw away the attention from the benefits of the formula,” he shares, comparing the decision to a woman who chooses stilettos and accepts that her feet might ache by the end of the night. He wants the colour to trade on the formula’s comfort rather than compete with it, which is why the boldest gesture in the launch is a single red, 999, rather than anything more experimental. The liquid Ink Blur, the second half of the launch, works on a similar promise but with a flocked
applicator that catches just enough product for one clean stroke, buildable from a soft stain into something closer to a saturated red with each additional pass. Philips demonstrates on the back of his hand, dabbing a small amount along his skin and blending it toward the edge, all the while talking through how the same motion applied to a bottom lip and massaged in translates into a wash of colour that intensifies on demand, which in practice makes it forgiving for anyone still working out where their lip line sits. With these two new ranges Philips underlines how he isn’t trying to keep pace with a beauty landscape now shaped as much by TikTok
as any runway makeup, and he’s candid about not trying to predict trends at all. “My responsibility is to make sure that the products we launch have a quality, a desirability, and they’re just great,” he affirms, pointing to Dior’s Liquid Oil, which sat on counters for years before a single video turned it into a phenomenon overnight. Whatever Rouge Dior On Stage becomes, the softness of that finish, more than any campaign, is what he is betting will make it last.
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The Beauty Shelf
Founder of Womanly wellness studio, Laetitia Martins takes us through her must-have beauty staples
Parisian Musc Eau de Parfum Dhs1,162 Matière Première I’ve always loved perfume, especially niche and powdery scents, and this has become my latest addiction. It feels soft, intimate and elegant, the kind of scent that stays close to the skin but still leaves a beautiful impression. Sunforgettable Total Protection Face Shield FLEX SPF 50 Dhs298 Colorescience SPF is non-negotiable. I love this one because it gives high protection with a soft tint, so my skin looks even and polished without needing foundation every day. N° 3N - Prisme Libre Glow Serum Foundation Dhs272 Givenchy This is my going-out base when I want more coverage but still want my skin to feel hydrated. It gives a luminous finish without making the skin look heavy. Rouge Allure Velvet Dhs255 Chanel This is my effortless night look: almost no makeup, just a red lipstick. It feels very Parisian: feminine, bold and timeless without needing anything else. Joues Contraste Dhs255 Chanel I love how easy this blush is to apply. It gives that instant healthy glow, brings life back to the face, and is small enough to carry with me even in a tiny bag. Limitless Lash Lengthening Clean Mascara Dhs110 ILIA I like mascara that defines the eyes without feeling heavy.
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This one gives a clean, natural lift and still feels comfortable enough for everyday wear. Hair & Scalp Oil - Nourish & Boost Dhs205 Gaudia I love treating the scalp the same way we treat the skin. This feels like a beautiful weekly ritual to
nourish the roots, support the scalp and bring more intention into hair care, especially in Dubai, where heat and water can be quite harsh on the hair. Sakarun Organic Body Wash Dhs110 Caeli I’m very sensitive to scent, and this turns a simple shower into a real ritual. I love body care that feels beautiful, clean and sensorial – it’s such an easy way to reconnect with yourself before the day begins or before going to bed. Tonic Treatment Oil Dhs329 Clarins I discovered this during pregnancy, and it has stayed with me as a summer body ritual. I apply it after the shower on
slightly damp skin, and it gives the most beautiful hydrated glow while keeping the skin soft and comfortable. Sebiaclear Serum Global Corrector Dhs102 SVR This is one of my go-to products when my skin feels congested or uneven. I love how it helps refine texture and bring clarity back to the skin, without making my routine feel too aggressive. Touche Éclat All-Over Brightening Pen Dhs210 YSL Beauty A forever classic. I use it when I want to instantly bring light back to the face, especially around the eyes and the sides of the nose. It gives that fresh, awake effect without looking like makeup.
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C O M P I L E D B Y: A M I N AT H I FA S A
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Scents & Stitches
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Fragrances that take cues from runway fashion to find their perfect notes
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his season the runway and the perfume counter are speaking the same language, with the maisons that shape ready-to-wear also turning their attention to scents, using notes the way they’d once used fabric, layering citrus over amber the way a tailor might pair silk over wool. Bvlgari pushes its tiger’s eye signature into richer, more concentrated territory, Dior traces its founder’s own Provençal orchards through bitter almond and tonka, Loewe maps the rose gardens of Retiro Park onto skin, and Dolce & Gabbana extends its Devotion story into a warmer, more indulgent chapter, while Chanel keeps things close to home with a scent named plainly after its own city; Fendi builds a fragrance around a family memory rather than a mood, and YSL, Jean Paul Gaultier, Versace and Prada each translate a piece of their own design language, corsetry, gemstone-cut precision, singular ingredients, into liquid form.
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CRUSH WORTH Y W O R D S : J E S S I C A M I C H A U LT
Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer-creator, reveals how he updated one of the brand’s iconic fragrances with the launch of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu
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Gracie Abrams, the new face of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu fragrance
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ambery notes, are so specific that at the end, if you think about all the DNA of the brand, it was close enough.” But Polge admits that one ingredient did become the foundational building block for Crush Absolu. “I was thinking about vanilla, and this is really how I started,” he recalls. “Sometimes there are little moments when you see that there is something obvious, and usually it’s a strong idea.” What that translates to in terms of an olfactory profile is a fragrance that more fully embraces the profound aspects of the original, creating deeper woods, richer ambers, and something that feels lush – a sensual scent evolution. “I was thinking about creating a scent that would express a similar feeling with a new scent,” explains Polge, “and from a woody, warm perfume, I went much further into ambery perfume.” The thread back is material rather than sentimental: “I wanted to add some of those patchouli ingredients that obviously create this link with the original formula.” Officially, Crush Absolu belongs to the intense ambery family: grapefruit and lychee opening with a brightness bordering on impertinence, rose and jasmine at its heart, patchouli anchoring the base, threaded with vanilla and vetiver. The bottle is a departure too – the familiar architecture given a contrasting label and a faceted cap that catches light like cut stone. And with the launch of any major new fragrance, a fresh-faced muse is also a must. Chanel smartly tapped the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams to be its ambassador. Her youthful unfussed candour is an ideal fit for a scent that is all about revealing (as one does when
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here is a painting on the wall behind Olivier Polge, and it is abstract. I notice it twenty minutes into my conversation with Chanel’s renowned nose, at the precise moment we seem to have run out of vocabulary for how a perfume can have a deep effect on a person. He notices me noticing. “It’s abstract art,” he says, with the pleasure of a man who has found the analogy he was hunting for, “and I think that perfume is very abstract in a certain sense as well.” This seems to be the way Polge thinks: obliquely, with layers of nuances and meaning, and almost an intention to never let anything resolve too neatly. It’s a characteristic that perhaps is what distinguishes him as such a successful and prolific perfumer-creator, having created iconic scents like Chanel No. 5 L’Eau, Boy and Misia for Chanel in the past, as well as other global perfume phenomena such as Flowerbomb and La Vie est Belle. Undoubtedly it’s what makes him the ideal person to take up the challenge of reimagining Coco Mademoiselle, one of Chanel’s most beloved scents for a quarter of a century. It would be easy to imagine that the brief to reimagine this fragrance would be a daunting one for almost anyone. There are women who have worn Coco Mademoiselle since Jacques Polge – Olivier’s father – first composed it in 2001, and a generation arriving now who have never owned a bottle. Polge began by refusing to split the difference. “I started off really thinking about a whole new formula.” Then the DNA asserted itself. “The spirit of Coco Mademoiselle, certain aspects of the formula, the woods, the
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they write a song) rather than pleasing. Polge, who has spent his career having to answer the same generic questions about the composition of each scent he has created over the years, admits that it’s true there are some who just want the facts and seem to not be interested in the more nuanced aspects of the scent story he is trying to tell. “There are certain people, they want to always fall into the same type of description: top, middle, bottom.” But for this perfumer-creator the real interest in any fragrance comes from the appealing friction that can be found when notes come together, particularly in Crush Absolu. “The contrast, to make it simple, is between the fruits that are really very powerful and jump at you, very fresh, and the depth of the amber, and I think that’s what makes it interesting.” When I suggest what he really enjoys is creating an olfactory push and pull with this perfume, he agrees immediately: “There is a tension that I like.” This idea of finding pleasure inside contrasts seems to be something of a cornerstone in the impressive career Polge has built over the years. It surfaces again when I ask which ingredient he cannot quit. “I clearly have a very dear taste for iris,” he confesses. Days before we spoke, he shared that he had pulled the iris out of a formula he was working on, purely to see what would happen. Why iris? He struggles, then arrives somewhere lovely. “It doesn’t jump at your nose, but as you wear it, it brings a darker shade to a perfume that makes it interesting. A texture that is soft, that I think embellishes every perfume.” A little darkness, I offer. “There always has to be a little contrast,” he replies. For Polge, fragrance has been a way of life long before it became his calling. After all,
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he grew up watching his father create one award-winning scent after another while he served as the nose for Chanel for 37 years, until he retired in 2015. Polge recalls an old interview in which his father sorted the house’s output with astute simplicity – the florals on one side, No. 5 among them, and the baroque perfumes on the other, led by the original Coco. “In this second category, I thought there was something new to do, something more vanilla, more enveloping, that was missing,” says Polge about how he came to the idea of reframing Coco Mademoiselle. As to how he thinks his new fragrance will be received in the Middle East, Polge is excited to hear the feedback from a place that is so steeped in the heritage of scents. For him the Gulf is “one of the few regions in the world that has its own taste for perfumes,” and he relishes the perfume maximalism that is found here: “I love that people will end up putting a fragrance on their clothes, on their skin, on their hair. So there is a richness, there is a tradition, there is their own taste,” he says.
“A FASHION DESIGNER W ILL NEV ER K NOW HOW PEOPLE W ILL MIX A ND M ATCH. A ND AT THE END OF THE DAY, I DON’T K NOW EITHER . YOU CA NNOT ASK EV ERYONE TO FR AGR A NCE THEMSELV ES THE SA ME WAY.” Polge suspects Crush Absolu will find success here because of its base – “you are just one step away from certain spices, certain woods” – but he isn’t interested in catering to the olfactory preferences of one part of the world. “I consider that Chanel is a French brand, with European tradition, and we have to stay grounded in that.” How anyone layers the result is none of his business, and he seems delighted about how women will experiment with this new scent. “A fashion designer will never know how people will mix and match. And at the end of the day, I don’t know either. You cannot ask everyone to fragrance themselves the same way.” I ask what he wants the women who discover Crush Absolu for the first time to take away from that experience and he offers a confession. “Speaking about scents, describing scents, I always feel powerless,” he admits. But what he wants most is not comprehension but collision: “I would love people to strike something in their sensibilities, and that’s the strength of perfume,” he says with an elegant turn of phrase that only a Frenchman can pull off. Which emotion, exactly? He won’t be pinned down. “I don’t know which emotion, but at least I hope it will procure emotion.”
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WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
AM TO PM BEAUTY Model Ameni Esseibi shares her morning to evening beauty routine Talk us through your morning routine. The first thing I do when I wake up is probably what everyone else does –I check my phone. Then I wash my face, do my morning skincare, and spend a few minutes in front of the mirror giving myself a little pep talk. I always try to hype myself up for the day, especially if I have a busy schedule ahead, because I’m definitely not a morning person. Mornings don’t come naturally to me, so that little moment really helps. I’m also not someone who can eat a big breakfast. I genuinely don’t know how people do it! I usually keep it light with coconut water or a smoothie. I’m a huge smoothie person. Then I’m ready to get on with my day.
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How does your evening routine differ? My evening routine is completely different from my mornings. It’s actually my favorite part of the day because it’s when I get to slow down and reconnect with myself. A big part of my evenings is always horseback riding. Horses are such a huge part of my life, so spending time at the stable, riding, and being around them is my way of switching off and escaping from the craziness of the day. After I finish work and get back home, I love creating little self-care moments for myself. I’ll usually do a sheet mask, put on my LED mask, make myself a peppermint tea, and relax while watching my Turkish
series. I love those quiet moments where I can just unwind, take care of myself, and enjoy my evening. What are your go-to skincare products? My everyday go-tos are the Caudalie Vinoperfect Serum and Vinopure Toner, along with the Sunday Riley Good Genes Serum and Auto Correct Eye Cream for that extra glow and hydration. I also love the SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic Serum, La Roche-Posay Cicaplast SPF 50 for protecting and soothing my skin, and little essentials like Cure Beauty Pimple Patches and the Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask. I’m also obsessed with the luxurious feel of the Guerlain Abeille Royale Sérum.
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Clockwise from top left:
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Delina Exclusif Eau De Parfum Dhs1,615 Parfums de Marly; Exagger-Eyes Volume Mascara Dhs155 Charlotte Tilbury; Vinoperfect Brightening Dark Spot Serum Dhs243 Caudalie; Oudgasm Tobacco Oud 04 Eau de Parfum Intense Dhs555 Kayali; Unreal Lips Healthy Glow Nectar Oil Dhs145 Charlotte Tilbury; Good Genes All-In-One Lactic Acid Treatment 50ml Dhs475 Sunday Riley
Are you a fan of masks? I love the Caudalie Detox Mask and Peeling Mask, but I’m also always reaching for sheet masks like Biodance, Dr. Jart+, Medicube, and Torriden. How would you describe your approach to makeup? My approach to makeup is honestly just about enhancing what’s already there. I love playing with makeup, but I’m not trying to change who I am or create a completely different version of myself. What can always be found in your makeup bag? For skincare, I prep my skin with Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Serum Crystal Elixir, Magic Cream, and Magic Eye Rescue. For complexion, I start with their Hollywood Flawless Filter. I also
never travel without my Make Up For Ever HD Skin Face Essentials Palette because it literally does everything. Mascara is another category I switch up a lot. I love NARS Climax Mascara and Fenty Beauty Hella Thicc Volumizing Mascara. I always have Charlotte Tilbury Unreal Lips Healthy Glow Nectar Oil, Fenty Beauty Gloss Bomb, Huda Beauty glosses, MAC glosses, and Asteri Beauty glosses in my bag. Which fragrances are your current favourites? When it comes to fragrances, I’m definitely someone who believes that a scent can become part of your identity. My current favourites are a mix of sweet, sensual, and more mysterious fragrances
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depending on my mood. I’m obsessed with Jean Paul Gaultier La Belle Le Parfum and Scandal Eau de Parfum because they have that confident, feminine energy that I love. I also love Kayali Tobacco Oud and Déjà Vu for their unique and addictive notes, along with the elegance of Guerlain Santal Royal and the beautiful richness of Parfums de Marly Delina Exclusif. I love fragrances that feel memorable, luxurious, and leave a little bit of mystery behind. What is the most unusual item in your makeup bag? I always have multiple mini perfumes because I feel like your fragrance depends on your mood, your outfit, and your energy that day.
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LIGHT AS A FEATHER
ABODE
A feather caught in light is one of nature’s more quietly poetic tricks. And the Venezuelan-born designer Jorge Suárez-Kilzi has spent considerable time paying attention to the graceful beauty of this combination. The son of a Spanish father and a Syrian mother – for whom he named his KILZI studio, in tribute to her heritage – makes pieces he describes as anchors. Objects with enough soul to ground a person, wherever home happens to be. His Feather Lamp design is a perfect example of this principle. Each petal of the lamp is hand-cut individually from Japanese paper and uses a proprietary fibreglass technique to create a final surface that disperses the light in a glow that feels organic, with just a touch of whimsy.
Venture beyond the familiar to… – See Emirati heritage through a modern prism – Explore the profound beauty in a monument to reverence – Bask in the majesty of Montenegro
The Feather Lamp by Kilzi at ABASK
THE ARCHITECTURE OF EMOTION Opaal Interiors founder Noor Al Muhaideb on 22 years in the industry, building a studio powered by women, and telegraphing Emirati heritage as a feeling rather than a motif WO R D S : A M I N AT H I FA S A
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t says something about Noor Al Muhaideb that so much of her inherent warmth can be felt just through the steady and soothing sound of her voice on our call. We had barely exchanged names before discovering that we had both studied at the American University of Sharjah. She walked its halls in its second year of existence, while I attended closer to two decades later. That small overlap set the tone for the hour that followed, less an interview than a conversation between two people who share a connection. Al Muhaideb graduated from the school in 2003 and immediately landed a position at Emaar, where she stayed for 15years working across projects in the UAE, India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Then in 2016 she decided to go out on her own, launching Opaal Interiors. In the beginning the studio consisted of her and one other person. Today it has grown into a team of more than 30. But even with all that impressive progress, when it comes to the concept of aesthetics the designer still holds fast to a founding idea that has been something of a North Star since the start of her career. “Design really is about the feeling that it gives you when you step into any home,” she affirms. “I realised early on that design is not decor, it’s emotion.” Leaving Emaar took what she calls a leap of faith, made harder rather than easier by how much the company had stretched her. “The pace was extremely fast, the projects were large, and I was always challenged,” she says of her time there, pushing back gently on the idea that she was leaving a com-
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fort zone, although she admits that the first two years at Opaal meant relearning her own industry from the opposite side of the table, adjusting to life as a studio rather than a client, though she credits her years at Emaar with giving her an instinct for what a developer needs before they have finished asking for it. Nowhere did that instinct matter more than on Mansory Residences, Opaal’s debut project and the first time her company took on a brand with such a distinctive identity. “We understood from day one the responsibility that came with this trust,” she recalls, describing the challenge less as a matter of
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the next person to walk through it,” she shares. It’s a line delivered with none of the caution that so often creeps into these conversations. A clear indication that this is a woman with a profound insight into her own standing in her field, is comfortable with her accomplishments and has an expansive perspective when it comes to uplifting other women to join her in telling their own design stories. In fact, Al Muhaideb talks about the young Emirati designers now coming up behind her with an encouragement that never tips into condescension. “I’ve seen a lot of young UAE designers and artists, and they work with passion,” she says, noting that the quality of what they are producing already stands shoulder to shoulder with the best being proposed internationally, not because of where they are from but because of the high calibre work they are
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matching a look and more as translating a name into somewhere people would actually want to live. Incorporating regional heritage elements into her designs, in her telling, works the same way. She resists any reading of her work as an obvious nod to Emirati identity, insisting the influence sits in behaviour and feeling rather than ornament. For Al Muhaideb this means it can be found in the muted hues and unshowy materials she gravitates toward regardless of budget. “That’s always something I’m attached to, the calm tones,” she confirms. “Something that does not scream in your face.” She is equally direct about what she wants for the women in her studio, where the team is mostly female and where she describes giving people responsibility as one of the more rewarding parts of her work. “If a woman is successful, the door needs to be open for
“DESIGN R E A LLY IS A BOUT THE FEELING TH AT IT GI V ES YOU W HEN YOU STEP INTO A N Y HOME” executing. “Dubai right now is a city of design,” she says. “People come here to experience the hospitality, the architecture, and the design. It’s one of the world’s most iconic cities.” By the time our conversation ended, it was easy to understand why Al Muhaideb has become known as something of a design whisperer. She has an innate ability to tap into the interior design desires of her clients. Even when they can’t find the words to describe exactly how they want a space to look or feel, she, to put it simply, just knows how to read a room.
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H AU T E L’Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay offers an elegant way to reconnect, with family, with nature and with oneself
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he moon fits perfectly between the vaulted arches of l’Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, as though it were built for this purpose. The Cistercian monks who raised these walls in 1118 understood light as a theological matter: where it fell, at what angle and through which opening. They spent their lives exploiting the powerful relationship between stone and sky, and designed accordingly. Nine centuries later, standing in the courtyard on a clear night watching the moon settle into exactly the gap the monks left for it, one grasps something about this place that the brochure cannot quite convey: that what looks like a hotel now is, in fact, a generations-long conversation between architecture and time. It’s a conversation that is still ongoing, and the people who keep that conversation alive are, in the end, the whole reason it works. For many years the Abbey functioned as a self-sufficient community of prayer and labour until the 1789 French Revolution. An era later, Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild rebuilt it as a home for her loved ones. A fervent devotee of the arts, she turned entire rooms into backdrops to the works of musicians, sculptors, and painters – with many regal portraits still hanging in the corridors today. Her spirit has not left the hotel – and can be felt in everything from the bars named after her family to her early editions of Dumas
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and Voltaire found lined up on the library’s shelves. The domaine inevitably raised investors’ interest and the Paris Society group, arriving with the ambition to make this a hotel in 2023, had the wisdom to realise that the Baroness had already written the ideal brief for a welcoming hideaway. What remained was to find the people equal to honouring it. Arriving by car, train, or – when the occasion calls for it – helicopter, the estate reveals itself slowly. The main building rises out of the treeline, the stone worn to that particular grey that only age, weather, and moss can produce when they all work together. Walking in for the first time, the unique energy of the hotel is unmistakable with the gothic romantic decor emanating secrets and tasteful renovations. The rooms in Le Pavillon des Chasses, the most storied address on the property and the one housed within the abbey’s original corpus, carry decades of history without making a performance of them. Original woodwork is preserved where it counts, and the antique, custom-designed furniture was chosen by Cordélia de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Maison and Dior Baby. The 145 bedrooms and suites in the hotel are each so distinct that committing to just one feels almost like a missed opportunity. Beyond the main building, the estate continues to reveal itself at its own rhythm. The lakeside pavilion offers the seclusion that honeymoons are made of.
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Lakeside view of the historic Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay hotel
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The former horse stables, now home to the spa, will suit anyone whose plans are purely restorative. The farm buildings, warm and unhurried, are exactly right for families whose children need room to run in directions nobody curated. Each address has its own answer to the question of what a stay here is actually for. The property shows a different face depending on how it’s approached. A bike ride exploration of the 185 acres of land will have visitors discovering trails that wind through the forest, linking every part of the grounds – the round pool, the floating padel court, the cinema and arcade – before circling back to where they began. It’s a lively journey punctuated now and then by the animals that claim the route as their own, like the alpacas that stand watch at the gates and the geese that trail cyclists along the lake’s edge, hissing as they go. There, barques and pedal boats are offered for guests to use as they please, while dragonflies and butterflies patrol the water with territorial assurance. Inside, the property holds onto a handful of things no hotel strictly requires,
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though it’s hard to imagine it without them: a billiards room and an arcade living above a stone-walled chamber that once served a far graver purpose – somehow the mismatch comes across as right rather than odd. The farm, meanwhile, swallows
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up any children on site for far longer than their parents expect: goats, rabbits, the low hum of small chaos seeming to hold their attention more than the lake, the karaoke, or anything else proposed. And the spa, designed in partnership with Tata
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Left page (from top): James’ Bar; Les Chasses menu showcases the best seasonal produce in traditional French cuisine; Outdoor pool; Above: The floating padel courts on Lac de l’Abbaye
Harper, makes its case entirely through stillness. Nothing here is trying to impress. Most of it does regardless. What builds up, over the duration of a stay, is a slow unclenching of whatever weeks of excess had lodged in the body, mostly thanks to the gentle attention of the unobtrusive staff. A door held open just before it’s needed. A path cleared without any sign of who cleared it. A short word with a driver near the gate. Small gestures, costing nothing, that mean everything. The same attentiveness runs through to the service of the restaurants. Le Réfectoire des Moines ranks among the most extraordinary rooms to eat in. A vaulted ceiling lined with candles floats above the morning light that filters just enough through the ancient windows. Working on a buffet-and-order logic, the staff let guests enjoy the delicacies at their own pace, whether tucked into the alcoves or settled on the terrace – dressed in pink cushions and white parasols and offering the whole estate in one sweeping view. The afternoon goûter is served here too: macarons, fresh fruit, infused waters, and the ice creams of the Emki Pop brand. La Trattoria del Bambini, a kilometre away through the forest, is even more
relaxed in its proposition. Sun-warmed and unbothered, in keeping with the trail that leads there, the wide stone vaulted room is decorated with wicker baskets, turned chandeliers and elongated wood tables. Chloé, the restaurant’s manager, is as solicitous as it gets – making perfect recommendations after just a few words exchanged on preferences, and ensuring everything is as cosy as it can possibly be. Every address on the property has found its own register, but the cumulative effect isn’t of departments within one hotel so much as facets of a single personality. It is at Les Chasses, though, that one can appreciate exactly how rich that personality is. The flagship restaurant of the Abbaye offers the finest seasonal French products, handled with respect and creativity – the simplest definition of good cooking. Served on a sun-kissed terrace where a faint trace of citronella keeps the insects at a diplomatic distance, it is the team that transforms dinner into an experience. The chasseurs, named in keeping with the house’s own vocabulary, are attentive in the rarest way. Thomas, chef de rang, embodies the quality expected: present without hovering, a step ahead of the question before it’s fully asked,
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possessed of the singular gift of making any table feel like the only one in the room. Pressed on what distinguishes this dining room from others he could be working in, he doesn’t reach for the obvious answer about scenery. He talks instead about the guests – about the relationship that forms with them, about having the time to actually watch and listen to people, to sense what they want before they’ve had to say it. A service that only cares about the rhythm of courses, he says in his own way, misses the point of a house like this one – it is a different discipline, less about speed and more about perceptiveness to people, one that, to his own surprise, became the thing he values most about the job. What holds constant across every register – the measured precision of the front desk, the warmth of Les Chasses, the languid ease of the Trattoria – is the greeting. Every member of staff acknowledges every guest who crosses their path. It creates an odd, rather lovely effect: the sense of belonging briefly to an enormous, extremely well-mannered family, without ever losing the respectful distance that keeps a luxury hotel from accidentally becoming someone’s actual living room. It is a difficult line to walk. Here it looks effortless, which is usually the surest sign that it isn’t. For the length of a stay, everyone is treated as the only guest in the house. It’s what happens when the people around you respect and understand that it matters. On the last night, the moon finds its gap in the arches again, exactly where the monks left room for it nine hundred years ago. They never met the people who’d be standing here to see it centuries later. They built it anyway, on faith that someone eventually would, and would care enough to look up at the right moment and feel a profound connection to this place. The Paris Society group didn’t have to keep that promise when they turned this magical place into a hotel, but they did regardless, in stone and in staff alike. And while the moon might forever remain indifferent, those who have the privilege to stay at this hotel will leave it feeling anything but.
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SLOW BURN
In Montenegro, the One&Only Portonovi resort is quietly compelling WO R D S: M A RYA N N E P E AC O C K
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here exists a particular segment of luxury hotel properties that have been designed to reveal themselves slowly to their guests: One&Only Portonovi belongs firmly in that category. Set at the entrance of Boka Bay, where the Dinaric Alps descend so dramatically toward the water that the landscape feels almost theatrical in its beauty, this is a resort that discloses its true character not upon arrival, but gradually, across long lunches, golden evenings and the kind of unhurried moments that stay with you long after the bags are unpacked back home. Montenegro remains one of Europe’s more discreetly captivating destinations – still possessing a certain undiscovered quality that its more trafficked Adriatic neighbours surrendered long ago. Mornings spent swimming in crystalline water give way to afternoons wandering the battlements of medieval towns, and evenings arrive with exceptional seafood against a mountain backdrop that holds its own against the Amalfi Coast, the Scottish Highlands or the Swiss Alps. The country is, in short, a destination of considerable substance – and One&Only Portonovi is a property equal to it. I travelled with my family on this trip, which is always the true test of any luxury hotel. It’s very easy to create somewhere beautiful for adults. It’s much harder to build a destination that works equally well for children without compromising the atmosphere for everyone else. This hotel managed both effortlessly. It carries all of One&Only’s signature architectural confidence – palm-lined walkways, immaculate gardens, buildings of real presence, without tipping into ostentation. Luxurious, certainly, but worn with ease rather than effort. The grounds sprawl in the most considered way: pools tucked between gardens, suites and courtyards, each one offering a sense of private
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discovery rather than crowded resort life. The main pool is genuinely spectacular, stretching out toward the bay, but be ready to embrace the chill if you are coming for a world of heated pools, as the hotel’s outdoor piscines are designed to let Mother Nature do all the warming, which in the cooler season means they are often admired rather than occupied. The resort’s answer to this fact is a vast heated indoor pool within the Chenot Espace, which proves more than adequate compensation. Pool service, it should be noted, operates at precisely the level luxury promises but does not always keep: warm, present and entirely unobtrusive. The private sandy beach (no small thing in a country where pebbles and stones dominate the coastline) is swimmable and meticulously maintained, with views that stretch uninterrupted across the bay. The hotel accommodation isexcellent by any measure. Spacious and elegant with a design that strikes that difficult balance between
luxury and comfort. The bathrooms deserve particular praise. Vast marble spaces with freestanding tubs, oversized vanities and, somewhat unexpectedly, one of my personal favourite hotel details in recent memory: a chaise longue built into the bathroom. It felt wonderfully indulgent and slightly unnecessary in the best possible way. The bathtubs themselves were sensational too, although I will admit it took me a deeply embarrassing amount of time to figure out how the bath plug worked. Luxury travel humbles us all eventually. Accommodation ranges from guest rooms and suites overlooking the marina, mountains or bay, through to enormous private villas and homes for guests wanting a more residential experience. The villas are spectacular – private gardens, pools, hydrotherapy areas and dedicated butler service – but even the entry-level rooms feel generous and thoughtfully designed. There are also nine private homes within the resort, each with their own beach access and Venetian-style courtyards, which very quickly make you start questioning your entire life plan. Food is often where family resorts become compromised. One&Only Sabia Restaurant Portonovi absolutely does not. Every restaurant felt polished and genuinely destination-worthy rather than simply convenient. Tapasake became our obsession. Contemporary Japanese food served beside the pool with DJs building the atmosphere as the day rolls on into evening. The beef tartare on crispy rice was one of the best things I ate during the trip – so good I ordered it twice in one meal, which I stand by entirely. Sabia, meanwhile, completely stole my heart for the atmosphere. The setting at sunset is extraordinary, overlooking the beach as the light turns gold across the bay. The menu offered something for both adults and kids – delicious pizza and pasta dishes sit alongside tasty beef tartare.
Chenot Espace
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And then there’s the spa. The Chenot Espace is not simply a spa in the traditional luxury-hotel sense. It’s a full medical wellness destination – one of the major reasons many guests visit the resort. Based on the famous Chenot Method, the approach combines advanced diagnostics, medical consultations, detoxification programmes, nutrition and deeply therapeutic treatments designed around longevity and wellbeing. There are doctors, specialists, tailored wellness programmes, hydrotherapy circuits, cryotherapy facilities, saunas, steam rooms and treatment spaces that feel closer to a private members’ wellness club than a hotel spa. But what impressed me most was that it never felt clinical or intimidating. You can commit fully to a structured wellness programme, or simply dip in for exceptional treatments and use of the facilities. The children’s offering deserves enormous praise too. I have honestly never experienced a kids’ club team so attentive, warm and genuinely engaged with children. The staff knew the children by name almost instantly, remembered their interests and somehow maintained endless enthusiasm for arts, crafts and activities. Our children asked to go constantly, which is probably the strongest review possible from a child. One of the highlights of the trip was the Little Explorers experience we took part in – a brilliantly curated family excursion introducing children to Montenegro beyond the resort. Beginning
with horse riding near Žvinje village ranch, followed by traditional local food tasting and a guided walk through Herceg Novi’s Old Town, it felt immersive without becoming exhausting for younger children. Even the adults came away feeling like we’d seen a more authentic side of Montenegro beyond the polished marina front. And speaking of Portonovi itself – this is another huge advantage of staying here. The hotel sits within the wider marina development, which means you’re only a five-minute stroll from lovely restaurants, cafés, boutiques and the waterfront promenade. Accessibility is another reason Montenegro works so well for families. You can fly into either Tivat or Dubrovnik airport. For Dubrovnik, it’s important to leave plenty of time for the border crossing into Montenegro – in peak periods it can take up to two hours, and it is absolutely not a journey you want to underestimate with tired children. What One&Only Portonovi does particularly well is create a version of luxury that feels genuinely liveable. It’s polished, yes. Beautiful, unquestionably. But it also feels warm, relaxed and deeply easy to settle into. You can have world-class wellness treatments in the morning, spend the afternoon at the beach with children covered in sand, then dress up for sunset cocktails overlooking the Adriatic. And somehow, none of it feels forced. That, in the end, is the hardest kind of luxury to create – and the only one that truly endures.
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