Photo: Amina Zaher
One of the things I have loved the most about being the sustainability editor-at-large of Vogue Arabia for the past three years is having the opportunity to adjust my compass, deepen my knowledge, expand my curiosity, and witness the beginning of powerful collaborations. And so many times these are driven by incredible women.
Tania Fares
One of them is my friend Tania Fares, who is behind Fashion Trust Arabia – a powerful initiative dedicated to discovering, funding, and nurturing young design talent in the area, with the aim of helping them build their label into a thriving global brand. Tania successfully drove the UK edition for years (and this year also launched the US edition) but her Lebanese origins and her heart really lies in the Arabian fashionscapes, which she has seen change so much. “I have noticed recently that more international media, editors, and brands are focusing on the region’s designers, as well as international stylists choosing regional designers when they are dressing celebrities,” she tells me. “Most of the designers in the region are sustainable in themselves: they implement handmade techniques and don’t mass produce. They are influenced by craftsmanship as it’s all about individuality and unique pieces. After all, the Mena region is known for working with artisans that master old and traditional methods in their work.” When you look at the designers who won the first round of funding, craftsmanship is all over their creations. “I am so proud of them!” Tania exclaims. “Salim Azzam, Artsi Ifrach, Yousef Akbar, Benchellal, Abdel Gader El Tayeb, and Zaid Affas, among many others.”
HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser with Mohamed Benchellal at the FTA award gala in 2021
More formidable women are behind another exciting initiative that launched this year. AlUla Creates is a platform designed to nurture creativity and empower future generations in film, the arts, and fashion. A few days after our Green Carpet Fashion Awards in Los Angeles, Eva Herzigová and Helena Christensen attended the Vanity Fair Oscar party in bespoke sustainable looks by Saudi designers Arwa Al Ammari of ArAm and Abeer Oraif of Atelier Hekayat, as part of a groundbreaking partnership with the British Fashion Council. It will allow exciting new female creatives to collaborate and access development funds to craft and share their stories set against the majestic landscapes of AlUla.
Maskarada by Artsi Ifrach
Emilia Wickstead, who participated in the collaboration by hosting the creation of the looks in her London atelier, says, “I was honored to be asked to work with three incredible Saudi fashion designers as part of the AlUla Creates initiative. Being given the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from international talent, while also championing and empowering other female creatives, was an invaluable experience.” At Emilia’s atelier, the designs were brought to life using a range of pure silks and repurposed materials, including reengineered crinoline and refashioned fabric from Abeer’s Saudi atelier. Arwa described the experience with a big smile on her face. “Getting inspired by the magical place that is AlUla to design a dress for Eva Herzigová that tells part of our story, reflecting on heritage, and showing it to the world is a milestone in my career,” she shares. The Arab cultural heritage is a fundamental part of the collaboration, as Abeer and her sister Alia point out. “We believe in art and stories,” they tell me. “An art that comes from a combination of identities, moods, and cultural settings. Being part of the AlUla Creates program and designing a dress for Helena Christensen has been a beautiful expression of this vision.”
Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council, is driving this new partnership forward with excitement. “Fashion plays such a huge role in cinema and having a partner like AlUla so rooted in film and creativity, but also wanting to support female entrepreneurs, spoke to me on a personal level,” she says. “When I went to AlUla earlier this year, I discovered not only a beautiful place, but so much potential for a deep, meaningful cultural exchange. The area is in huge ferment now, with the Saudi Fashion Council, and design driven by our friend and former Parsons School of Design director Burak Cakmak. The opportunities are endless! I look forward to seeing what we bring to London in September during fashion week.”
I remember a beautiful passage in Rob Hopkins’ book From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, where he argues that there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and that cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly for the better. “We do have the capacity to effect dramatic change, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination,” he writes. “Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most.” We do need to become better storytellers – and this is where fashion has endless opportunities to create and deepen the stories of cultural appreciation and intersectional change.
Originally published in the June 2023 issue of Vogue Arabia
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