“Dressing modestly is a challenge and clothes that are reserved—but still look awesome and reflect your personality—represent a niche market,” explained Iraqi designers Maryam Solati and Noor Salih to me. The childhood friends, relatives (Maryam’s sister married Noor’s brother), and now business partners and emerging designers have just returned from a weekend in Kuwait after hosting the launch of their second capsule collection in the Boutikee multi-brand boutique, along with brand ambassador Ascia Al-Faraj, also known as the super blogger Ascia AKF who runs the blog, The Hybrids.
The event, in line with the brand, highlighted design details with invitation cards hand beaded with marbles, food served on marble trays, and each piece of the collection hung from a thread decorated with a 15cm diameter marble bead to reflect the marble embellishments on the clothes.
Featuring loose silhouettes made with 100% cotton, which is bio-washed after production (in Dubai) to ensure a soft touch and then decorated with statement accoutrements, Lili.Aiya has been a quick hit with customers, bloggers, and the likes of MBC TV host Muna AbuSulayman since its inception a mere capsule collection ago.
A d3 company, the designers have been certain to include a measure of corporate social responsibility within their brand. For their debut collection, they dedicated a month’s worth of sales of one of the brand’s shirt-dresses to orphans in need and now for this second collection, they aim to help set up long-term assistance for women in Iraq by gifting them a sewing machine, fabrics, training, and mentorship. “Okay, we’re a small company and we won’t make a huge difference but we hope that we can help some women and maybe even inspire others. Ours may be a fashion label, but we want women to understand that we’re very lucky to be thinking about what new look we’ll buy when other women are thinking about what next meal they will eat.”
See the full second capsule collection from Lili.Aiya in the gallery above. Shop the collection at Kuwait’s Boutique E and online on www.liliaiyastudio.com, starting today.
—Caterina Minthe
