Dear Shaded Viewers,
As Paris prepares for the inaugural Prix de la Mode du Monde Arabe this October, a new constellation of Arab fashion talent steps into the limelight. Hosted at the storied Institut du Monde Arabe, the awards reflect the region’s astonishing cultural vitality—an antidote to cliché, celebrating designers who challenge expectations by weaving memory, activism, and avant-garde vision into each seam.
More than 125 applications, spanning ten countries, were scrutinized by an impressive selection committee, yielding a finalist pool as diverse as it is dazzling. The organizing team, faced with the brilliant onslaught of ideas and artistry, inaugurated a third category to spotlight Accessories, reading in these proposals signs of a new design language as much as a showcase of crafts.
Presiding over the jury are reference names: from Pascal Morand of haute couture renown to visionaries like Rabih Kayrouz, Pascale Mussard, and Olivier Saillard, their collective eye promises both rigor and recognition for work that reimagines Arab identity on the global runway.
The Emerging Talent category spotlights revelation after revelation: Ahmed Hassan (KML) whose architectural gaze brings new dimension to Saudi design, Alaa Alaradi channeling her journey between the Middle East and Switzerland into sculptural silhouettes, and Sylwia Nazzal, blending Palestinian memory and activism for a radically honest approach to style. These personal narratives—exile, resilience, creative kinship—are not subplots but central motifs, embroidered directly into the collections.
For Innovation, the jury cast its net wide—from the sculptural romance of Moroccan couturier Mohamed Benchellal, whose global sensibility is as sharp as his craftsmanship, to Sudanese label OMER ASIM’s minimalist, monastic tailoring and conceptual intellect, and the psychedelic textile wonders of Tara Babylon, based in New York but forever anchored in her British-Iraqi heritage.
Accessories, finally, are redefined as both object and totem: Jihane Boumediane’s jYANN is less label than social movement, reviving ancestral Moroccan wool craft and building bridges between artisans and academia, while KINAMANIA creates riotous shoes built for women in motion, and Sheika Safran’s Safran World stitches together couture, ecology, and poetic memory.
At stake on the night of October 8—which will see winners receive tailored mentorships at the Institut Français de la Mode, alongside the rare chance for a runway show at the IMA—is not only visibility, but validation. These designers are not simply “Arab” voices, but creators at the frontier of contemporary fashion, making statements against erasure and uniformity.
As the Arab world’s creative horizon expands, the Prix de la Mode du Monde Arabe emerges not as a mere prize, but as a landmark—a beginning. We witness not only the crowning of laureates, but the dawn of a truly global Arab fashion vanguard.
Later,
Diane
