DUBAI’S SHEIKH ZAYED ROAD, 1990
The Middle East, with Dubai as its fashion hub, is undergoing a renaissance of sorts: the emergence of the Dubai Design District (d3), the Dubai Design and Fashion Council, and the Style.com/Arabia-DDFC Fashion Prize, not to mention the growing number of boutiques opening across the region, amidst an already multi-billion-dollar consumer market. Here, Caterina Minthe speaks with Fashion Forward founder, Bong Guerrero, to reminisce on Dubai’s fashion origins.
“I arrived in Dubai in 1990, and if you can believe it, there was only one shopping mall at the time: Al Ghurair. I would drive down Sheikh Zayed Road and there wouldn’t be more than 25 cars for as far as my eye could see. There was Deira, the Dubai World Trade Centre…and that was it.
—Bong Guerrero
INDIANA JONES
Wilfredo Garcia Delfiero Guerrero, who has affectionately been referred to as “Bong” all his life, was born in 1966 in Manila to an upper middle class family and a brood of five brothers and sisters. His parents were in the trading business and owned farmland, where they grew sugar, mango, and coconut crops. Guerrero spoke English at home and attended a prestigious, all-boys Jesuit school where he excelled and entertained an interest in theater. At 17, he left Manila to study abroad in California, where he attended the College of Notre Dame, a small, private Catholic college. There, Guerrero befriended the international crowd, and, in particular, the Middle Eastern students. “I remember there was a Saudi prince and Khaleejis,” recounts Guerrero. “Of course, at the time, my knowledge of the Arab world was absolutely nil, but it all sounded very exotic.”
Following a month-long stay in Italy after graduation, Guerrero decided to pack his belongings and move to Dubai. “I was supposed to go back home and help with the family business, but at the time, there was a lot of political turmoil and many families were choosing to migrate elsewhere. My parents had divorced, and I just didn’t want to go home. I had also come to realize that I liked small communities and America was just too big.”
Guerrero landed in the United Arab Emirates in 1990 and was billeted in a hotel in Deira. He got a temp job as a brand manager at a trading company and after a few months, opened a small luxury perfume shop in Satwa on Al Diyafa Road; “At the time,” Guerrero states, “Al Diyafa was considered the Champs Elysées of Dubai.”
Back home, Guerrero’s move to Dubai was considered unorthodox. “Not to sound elitist, but in those days, no one from my background came to the Middle East. If you were looking for greener pastures, you went to the United States.” I ask Guerrero what drove him, a young man in his early twenties, to want to travel to Dubai when there was little to experience.“I didn’t think that I was building roots,” he explains, “It was simply my Indiana Jones phase. In my mind, I was going back to the States or the Philippines.”
