Saudi fashion desgigners Razan Alazzouni and Fahad Aljomiah spoke about challenges and opportunities at the WWD Global Fashion Summit in Riyadh.
“People are falling in love with Saudi culture again,” Mimi Fraser, managing director and board member of premium activewear brand Kayanee, told the WWD Global Fashion Summit in Riyadh. “This is a country that has a massive creative backbone — not just from the creative point of view, from a cultural point of view.
What it does have, the three concurred, is a monarchy intent on building a complete ecosystem to support a homegrown fashion industry in line with the kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan. “That puts us in a different position that 100 percent of start-ups all over the world,” Fraser marveled. “We looked at how we could design a business that would become a catalyst for this.”Instead, Kayanee’s team is striving to make the brand “culturally relevant,” steeped in such local values as generosity, hospitality, graciousness and femininity, and also designed for the specific needs of the Saudi clientele. The latter includes basing the garment sizing on a large sample of local women.
“We’re lucky enough not to have the legacy constraints of some brands, so we can make these good decisions from the beginning,” Fraser said, alluding to existing systems, processes and equipment which are not easily adaptable to the sustainability ambitions of today. Alazzouni said her designs center on “eveningwear that suits our lifestyle” and “our cultural occasions,” with nods to Eastern and Western cultures. Indeed, she has already collaborated with a number of Western brands, including Coca-Cola, Disney and most recently Piaget.
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