From Lebanon and Palestine to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and beyond, Fashion Trust Arabia announces 21 finalists ahead of its 2026 awards ceremony in Doha.

Fashion Trust Arabia has unveiled the finalists for its 2026 edition, bringing together a new generation of designers from across the Middle East and North Africa, alongside emerging talent from this year's guest country, Mexico.

Selected by the FTA Advisory Board, 18 regional designers will compete across six categories, including Ready-to-Wear, Evening Wear, Accessories, Jewelry, Franca Sozzani Debut Talent and Fashion Tech. Three additional designers from Mexico will compete for the Guest Country Award, bringing the total number of finalists to 21.

Among the names to watch are Sara Mannei Boruc of THE MANNEI, representing Jordan in the Ready-to-Wear category, alongside Algeria's Rayana Heemskerk and Saudi designer Ahmed Hassan of Kml. In Evening Wear, Lebanese designers Cindy Abi Chala of CIN and Haidar Krayem of Oscar Kraye join Palestinian designer Dana Riad, while the Accessories category features Alia Zaki of L’alingi, Qatar's Maryam Al-Malki and Tunisia's Safa Boudokhane of BALGA DESIGN.

Jewelry is equally well represented, with Egypt's Varouj Vartan Kazandjian of Harry V, Kuwait's Layal AlSultan of ELURA and Lebanon's Joelle Kharrat competing for the award. Meanwhile, the Franca Sozzani Debut Talent category introduces Layla Al Tawaya, Youssef Zogheib and Zeina Issa, representing Palestine/Jordan, Lebanon and Syria respectively.

Reflecting the growing intersection between fashion and innovation, the Fashion Tech category brings together Egyptian duo Shaimaa and Fatma El-Alawy of Mesh--Mesh, Lebanon's Sirine Kobeissi of GIRLE and Tunisia's Emna Hussein.

Lebanon has a particularly strong presence in this year's selection, with designers represented across five of the six regional categories. More broadly, the shortlist reflects the expanding geography of Arab fashion, highlighting creative voices from across the region rather than concentrating solely on its established fashion capitals.

For 2026, Fashion Trust Arabia also turns its attention to Mexico, welcoming the country as its international guest. Supported by Vogue Mexico and Latin America, the collaboration introduces designers Patricio Campillo of Campillo, Neithan and Anga Ruiz of NEITHAN HERBERT, and Camila Banzo of Banzo, all competing for a dedicated seventh award.

Beyond the recognition, Fashion Trust Arabia continues to offer tangible support to emerging designers looking to develop their businesses internationally. Winners will receive financial grants ranging from $100,000 to $200,000, depending on the size of their businesses, while the Franca Sozzani Debut Talent winner will receive $50,000.

Winning designers in the Ready-to-Wear, Evening Wear, Accessories and Jewelry categories will also see their collections stocked for one season at Harrods and Ounass, providing an opportunity to reach international customers. All winners will additionally benefit from a year-long bespoke mentorship with Brand x Society and a two-day programme in London developed alongside The Bicester Collection and the British Fashion Council.

Founded in 2018 under the patronage of HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, with HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani and Tania Fares as co-chairs, Fashion Trust Arabia has established itself as a significant platform for emerging designers in the region, offering not only visibility but also the financial and industry support necessary to turn creative talent into sustainable fashion businesses.

The 21 finalists will present their work to the FTA Jury in Doha on November 28, 2026, with the seven winners announced during the evening's awards ceremony.

As the region's fashion industry continues to evolve, this year's shortlist offers an exciting look at the designers shaping its next chapter.

More on FashionTrustArabia.com

The Lebanese hospitality group's latest opening brings European brasserie dining, leisurely aperitivos and a distinctly social approach to eating out to Dubai.

A long lunch that turns into afternoon drinks, followed by dinner and the inevitable “just one more”? That's exactly the kind of day Cyrano Maison Sociale has in mind.The Beirut-born concept has officially opened its doors at City Walk, Dubai, marking the first Dubai opening from Lebanese hospitality group Butlers & Co. Inspired by the European social house, Cyrano brings together a brasserie, bar and dining room in a setting designed to be enjoyed at practically any hour.

And if there's one thing Lebanese hospitality knows how to do particularly well, it's making people feel comfortable enough to stay a little longer than they originally planned (we might be slightly biased but hey... ain't it true?)

Cyrano Maison Sociale takes its inspiration from the kind of European establishments where people gather as much for the atmosphere as they do for the food. The interiors have been designed to resemble a characterful, well-lived-in European home, with layered textures, warm details and an atmosphere that changes throughout the day.

During daylight hours, the space lends itself to leisurely lunches, coffee and conversation. As evening approaches, the lighting softens, the records start playing and the bar becomes a bigger part of the experience. It's an appealing proposition for Dubai, where dining concepts often revolve around a particular occasion. Cyrano is aiming for something more flexible: somewhere you can return to throughout the week, whether you're meeting a friend for lunch or settling in for an evening with a group.

For Elie Khoury, founder of Butlers & Co, bringing Cyrano to Dubai felt like a natural next step. “Dubai was the natural evolution of the brand,” he explains. “The city has spent years proving it is where brands bloom. Its metropolitan lifestyle and its demographics draw exactly the crowd a social house is built for. Cyrano was always going to end up here, and Dubai is where its next chapter belongs.”

What's on the Menu?

The food follows a similarly relaxed approach, borrowing from French brasserie traditions, Mediterranean cooking and Spanish-style sharing plates.

You might begin with a Truffle Pizzette, Padrón Peppers or Harissa Feta, before moving on to smaller plates such as Beef Carpaccio, Tuna Tartare, Chorizo Croquettes or a warm Lobster Roll. For something more substantial, the menu includes Lobster Linguine, Mushroom Rigatoni, Tenderloin Beef Fillet and Fish and Chips.

We love these menus that allows a table to order a little bit of everything, with enough familiar dishes to please a mixed group of friends. The drinks offering is equally important to the concept, with a wine list, classic cocktails and house signatures designed to accompany everything from afternoon catch-ups to late evenings. Our favourite part? The aperitivo (blame our italian origins.)

A central part of Cyrano's identity, the late-afternoon ritual sees drinks and sharing plates served as the restaurant transitions into evening. A traditional guéridon, or tableside service trolley, also makes its way around the room. For anyone who appreciates the European habit of making an occasion out of a pre-dinner drink, this might be one of the most interesting reasons to visit.

Although Cyrano has its roots in Beirut, the team has been careful not to simply reproduce the original experience. According to Marc Jazra, Managing Partner at Cyrano Maison Sociale, the Dubai opening has been adapted to reflect the city's particular dining culture. “We didn’t lift the Beirut house and set it down in City Walk,” he says. “After having spent years working in this market, we know how Dubai eats, drinks and gathers, so we kept what makes Cyrano itself and adapted the rest to the city, from the menu to the pace of service to the rhythm of the room.”

It's an important consideration for a hospitality group entering a market as competitive as Dubai's. Founded in 2010, Butlers & Co has spent more than a decade developing restaurants, bars and lifestyle concepts in Lebanon, including Cyrano, Cyrano Brasserie, Butlers Beach Club and CLUBROOM. The opening at City Walk represents the group's expansion beyond its home market, while maintaining the emphasis on hospitality and community that has shaped its existing concepts.

Beyond the restaurant itself, Cyrano is also planning a calendar of recurring weekly experiences and cultural and community-focused events. Specific details have yet to be announced, but the intention is to establish the venue as somewhere people gather regularly, rather than somewhere they visit only for a particular meal.

Cyrano Maison Sociale is now open at City Walk, Dubai, serving breakfast through to late-night drinks

For our latest guest on The Way She Wears, fashion has always been a creative outlet. From childhood dress-up sessions with her sister to working as a retail stylist while studying engineering, her love for getting dressed developed long before she considered a career in the creative industries. Moving to Dubai three years ago encouraged her to explore that passion more seriously.

Her wardrobe strikes a balance between playful and practical, with Ganni, COS, Uniqlo and Aritzia among her favourites. Think Salomons, oversized totes, trusty white T-shirts and ballet flats, alongside jewellery she hopes to one day pass down.

Her biggest style inspiration? Her mother, whose ability to put together an outfit with confidence and attention to detail left a lasting impression. For our latest edition of The Way She Wears, we discover her wardrobe essentials, favourite regional designers and the sentimental pieces she'll never part with.

The Way She Wears (TWSW) spotlights women whose style feels personal, intuitive and entirely their own. Not trends, not formulas, just a point of view.

Farah Afani, Palestinian, Content Creator & Consultant

When did you know you’d be working in fashion/creative industries?

Looking back, I think I was already finding my way into fashion before I consciously realised it. Growing up, my sister and I were constantly playing dress-up and doing makeovers, and during university I worked in retail as a stylist. At the time, it was just something I loved doing, but I was already learning how clothing can change the way someone feels and how much creativity goes into building a look.

Because I studied Engineering, I initially saw my creative and technical interests as two completely separate sides of me. Moving to Dubai three years ago changed that. I started meeting people with less conventional career paths and saw how possible it was to build something around what you genuinely enjoy. Since then, fashion has become much more than a personal interest, and I’m grateful for every opportunity that has allowed me to explore that side of myself further.

Who are you fashion icons?

I think your earliest fashion influences often come from the people closest to you, long before you start looking to celebrities or designers. For me, that person has always been my mom. Whenever I look through old photos of her, she’s always the person my eye goes to first. She had a very natural way of standing out, not only because of what she wore, but because of how she put everything together. The shoes, the jewellery, the bag and even the smallest details always felt considered.

What I love most is that her style never seemed dictated by what everyone else was wearing. She knew what worked for her and wore it with confidence. I think growing up around that shaped my understanding of personal style long before I was paying attention to fashion more consciously.

What are 3 brands you could wear forever?

Ganni, Uniqlo, Aritzia and COS. Between these four, almost every side of my wardrobe is covered from fun to more structured pieces

Four staples everyone should own?

A pair of Salomons, because they somehow work with way more outfits than you’d expect. 

A trusted white T-shirt. 

An oversized tote that can handle the office, a flight and an entire day out. 

And a pair of Sam Edelman ballet flats, which are genuinely so comfortable. 

What are the regional brands you love right now?

Dima Ayad, By Karen Wazen, Nafsika Skourti and Okhtein (to name a few). Their products are beautiful, but what also really stands out to me is that they’re all built by strong women from the region. Seeing what they’ve created and how far they’ve taken their brands is genuinely inspiring.

Your fashion most special possession? 

Maybe not the coolest answer but definitely my Prada Bonnie bag. It holds a lot of sentimental value to me, so it means far more than just being a beautiful bag. It’s so special and I’m sometimes almost too scared to wear it.

⁠A piece worth investing in? ‍

For me, it’s jewellery. A good watch, striking pair of earrings, bracelets or rings can be worn for years and still feel current, even as your style changes. And I love that over time, those pieces become personal to you and can eventually be passed down. 

Your current favourite song, book or tv show?

I’ve been re-entering my electronic and dance music phase because I find it’s mostly what I’ve been listening to recently. “ESCAPE” by Kx5, deadmau5 and Kaskade featuring Hayla, and “Please Babe” by Kaytranada have been on repeat. They’re very different tracks, but both have the kind of energy that immediately puts me in a better mood.

Discover more about Farah's universe, here

From independent jewellery labels and contemporary modestwear to Pilates studios changing how women approach fitness, we spotlight ten brands exploring what femininity looks like today.

A diamond ring doesn't have to be reserved for a special occasion. Activewear doesn't have to stay at the gym. And taking an hour out of your day for yourself shouldn't feel like a luxury. Across the UAE, a growing number of brands are responding to the way women actually live, creating products and experiences that reflect changing attitudes towards personal style, wellbeing and individuality.

Some are revisiting traditional craftsmanship, others are challenging established ideas of luxury, while a new generation of wellness entrepreneurs is making movement as much about community as physical performance.

What connects them is an understanding that femininity is personal. It can be understated or expressive, traditional or experimental, and often several things at once. For our edit of The Many Expressions of Modern Femininity, we look at ten names across jewellery, fashion and wellness, each offering a different perspective on how women choose to dress, move and express themselves.

Jewellery: A More Personal Kind of Luxury

Jewellery has always been closely associated with femininity, but the reasons women wear it are evolving. For some, it's a connection to family history. For others, it's an everyday indulgence, a reflection of personality or simply something beautiful they bought for themselves.

These six labels are approaching the category from distinctly different directions.

Le Paris Diamonds: Jewellery With a Story to Tell

Established in 1998, Emirati jewellery house, Le Paris Diamond has built its identity around exceptional gemstones, craftsmanship and the emotional value of jewellery.

Its creations are designed to carry meaning beyond their appearance, drawing on memory, heritage and the idea that a piece of jewellery can become part of someone's personal history. One particularly lovely detail is the maison's signature hidden ruby, incorporated as a discreet symbol of the value found in things that aren't immediately visible.

In an industry often preoccupied with making the biggest statement possible, there's something appealing about a detail intended primarily for the person wearing it.

HALFHOUR: Fine Jewellery Without the Formalities

Dubai-based HALFHOUR takes a more architectural approach to jewellery, working with 18-karat gold and lab-grown diamonds to create pieces designed for everyday wear.

Its aesthetic is bold and contemporary, with an emphasis on form rather than conventional notions of preciousness. The use of lab-grown diamonds also reflects the increasing variety of choices available to jewellery customers, particularly those interested in exploring alternatives to traditionally mined stones.

HALFHOUR belongs to a generation of labels making fine jewellery feel less formal and more closely connected to personal style. The idea is to wear what you love, whenever you feel like it.

Escape Privé: Luxury on Her Own Terms

Escape Privé approaches jewellery through the lifestyle of a woman who values independence, travel and the freedom to make her own choices.

Its philosophy centres on luxury as something personal rather than prescribed, with elegance understood as one aspect of femininity rather than its defining characteristic.

There's a growing appeal to this kind of positioning, particularly as women become increasingly selective about the brands they invite into their wardrobes. For Escape Privé, the emphasis is on jewellery that accompanies a woman's life rather than dictates how she should present herself.

TRYYST: For Women Who Don't Follow the Rules

Not every piece of fine jewellery needs to be discreet, delicate or conventionally romantic.

TRYYST embraces a more playful attitude, combining natural diamonds with unconventional designs and traditional jewellery-making techniques.

The brand's rebellious streak is part of its appeal. Its creations are intended to reflect the personality of the wearer, with room for experimentation and a little irreverence. It's a refreshing reminder that fine jewellery can be fun, and that investing in something precious doesn't necessarily mean choosing something predictable.

Baguette Design: Strength in the Details

Founded by Emirati designer Fatma Al Bannai, Baguette Design brings storytelling into the world of fine jewellery.

Working with 18-karat gold, diamonds and precious stones, the label develops collections around narratives that explore individuality, strength and personal identity.

The approach gives each design a context beyond its materials, inviting the wearer to connect with the ideas behind the piece. For Al Bannai, femininity and strength aren't competing qualities. Her jewellery brings the two together through considered designs that can be both expressive and elegant.

Kayaa Jewels: Making Everyday Luxury More Accessible

Kayaa Jewels is part of a wider movement towards jewellery that fits into everyday life rather than waiting for a particular milestone.

With contemporary designs featuring lab-grown diamonds, the brand offers an alternative approach to fine jewellery, combining personal style with more accessible options.

The appeal lies in its versatility. Jewellery can mark an important occasion, of course, but it can also become something you reach for on an ordinary Tuesday. We think that might be one of the more interesting changes happening in the category: women increasingly deciding for themselves what deserves to be celebrated.

Fashion: Dressing for Yourself

The relationship between fashion and femininity has always been complicated, particularly when expectations around how women should dress vary so widely. For the next two brands, the focus is on creating clothes that accommodate different lifestyles and personal preferences, without asking women to compromise on comfort or identity.

All By Kai: Activewear for Life Beyond the Gym

Founded by Nujoud AlEisaei, All By Kai approaches activewear as an extension of a woman's everyday wardrobe.

The brand combines contemporary silhouettes with comfort and functionality, creating pieces that transition between workouts, errands and the rest of a busy day.

It's an approach that reflects how the boundaries between sportswear and casual dressing have become increasingly fluid. For All By Kai, confidence begins with feeling comfortable in what you're wearing, whether you're exercising or heading out for coffee afterwards.

Effa: Modestwear With a Contemporary Perspective

Dubai-based Effa works at the intersection of Middle Eastern heritage and contemporary fashion.

Its approach to modestwear focuses on refined craftsmanship, considered silhouettes and an understated aesthetic that allows personal style to take priority.

The brand is particularly interesting within a regional fashion landscape where designers are increasingly exploring how traditional dress can evolve alongside changing tastes and lifestyles. Effa's designs suggest that modesty and modernity have never needed to be opposing ideas. For many women, they are simply part of the same wardrobe.

Wellness: Strength, Movement and Making Time for Yourself

Wellness has become an increasingly important part of the conversation around modern femininity, although the industry hasn't always made it easy for women to develop a healthy relationship with fitness.

Between unrealistic body standards, relentless workout trends and the pressure to optimise every aspect of daily life, the idea of wellbeing can sometimes become another thing to worry about. Two women-focused studios in Dubai are taking a more considered approach, putting movement, confidence and community at the centre of their offering.

Curve Club: A Different Relationship With Movement

At Curve Club, fitness is approached through a combination of strength, balance and body awareness.

The women-focused studio offers Pilates and its signature Curveformer experiences, encouraging members to develop a deeper connection with movement.

Rather than treating exercise solely as a way to change physical appearance, the studio places value on how women feel throughout the process. The community aspect is equally important. Having a space where women can move comfortably, challenge themselves and build confidence offers something beyond the workout itself.

Gigi: Where Fitness Meets Community

Founded by Emirati entrepreneur Ghaliya Ahli, Gigi Dubai brings together the high-intensity, low-impact Lagree Method and a broader lifestyle-led approach to wellness.

Alongside its fitness offering, the studio focuses on creating experiences that encourage connection and a sense of community (we actually organised an event there last August - see it here.)

It's an approach that recognises how much the social side of movement can influence our relationship with exercise. For many women, finding a workout they genuinely enjoy, in an environment where they feel comfortable, is far more sustainable than following the latest fitness trend. Gigi makes a case for wellness as something that can be challenging, social and enjoyable at the same time.

Looking across these ten brands, what's interesting isn't that they all share one particular idea of femininity; it's that they don't.

Le Paris Diamonds finds meaning in heritage and personal memory, while TRYYST makes room for spontaneity and experimentation. Effa explores contemporary modest dressing, while All By Kai prioritises freedom of movement. And in the wellness space, Curve Club and Gigi are building environments where women can focus on their own definitions of strength and wellbeing.

Their approaches differ, as do the women they're designing for. That makes the conversation around modern femininity worth having: there isn't a particular aesthetic, lifestyle or set of choices that can adequately define it.

Sometimes it looks like a beautiful piece of jeweller, sometimes it's an outfit that makes you feel completely yourself. And sometimes it's simply taking an hour out of the day to do something that feels good. The choice, ultimately, belongs to the woman.

For its 15th anniversary, the Istanbul-based label has turned Türkiye's extraordinary landscape into a fashion spectacle of hot-air balloons, bold colours and Anatolian heritage. JDEED speaks exclusively to Syrian-American visual artist Sarah Khorbtli about the project, creative freedom and why technology will never replace the human experience.

At sunrise in Cappadocia's Rose Valley, three enormous hot-air balloons in neon green, yellow and pink float above the region's otherworldly rock formations. Below, models prepare for a fashion show that looks considerably different from the usual runway presentation. This is From Earth to Sky, the latest project by Les Benjamins, celebrating 15 years of the Istanbul-based brand founded by Bünyamin Aydın.

Part fashion show, part visual experiment, the project brings together Anatolian heritage, contemporary design and technology, with Apple's iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro playing an important role in its development. The final film, directed by French filmmaker Neels Castillon, was shot on iPhone 18 Pro Max.

The setting is spectacular, but it wasn't chosen simply for its photogenic qualities. Cappadocia's distinctive landscape, native flowers and colours informed the collection itself, from its silhouettes to the three custom-built balloons hovering above the valley.

For Sarah Khorbtli, the Syrian-American visual artist and storyteller who was involved in the project, the experience offered something she hadn't encountered before.

“I love seeing moulds break. I'd never seen anything like this: a fashion show in such a natural setting, in such vivid colours, with a story that ties it all together.”

Speaking exclusively to JDEED, Khorbtli reflects on the creative process behind From Earth to Sky, the importance of cultural identity and the possibilities that technology has opened up for artists.

From the Landscape to the Collection

The idea for From Earth to Sky began taking shape during a research trip to Cappadocia in early 2026. Aydın spent time documenting the region using iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, capturing photographs and 4K video of its unusual terrain.

Among the details that caught his attention were three native flowers: the spiky green Echinops, delicate pink trumpet-shaped flowers and wild yellow tulips. Their colours and forms became the foundation for 10 looks and the three custom hot-air balloons that would eventually appear in the show. The result is an unusually direct relationship between landscape and clothing. Rather than treating Cappadocia as a dramatic location in which to present an unrelated collection, Aydın made the environment part of the design process.

For Khorbtli, it was precisely this relationship between place and creative expression that made the project so interesting: “The place itself is what made it all feel surreal. Those vivid colours and psychedelic shapes would have looked cool anywhere else, but not surreal.”

She adds: “And when surrealism meets beauty, it instantly sparks ideas I've never had before, and the motivation to make something new.” It's easy to understand the appeal. Cappadocia already looks like an exercise in experimental set design, with its sculptural rock formations, extraordinary colours and balloons drifting across the sky. Here, those familiar elements become part of a contemporary fashion narrative.

For Aydın, cultural identity has always been central to Les Benjamins.

Born in Germany and raised between different cultural influences, the designer describes his upbringing as a combination of “German discipline and Turkish heart.” It's a duality that continues to shape the brand's approach to fashion, combining contemporary silhouettes with Turkish textiles, Anatolian references and influences drawn from the historic Silk Road.

“The canvas is the West; the paint is the East,” Aydın says of his design philosophy.

In From Earth to Sky, those influences appear through a distinctly futuristic visual language, where traditional references coexist with unconventional presentation techniques and experimental technology.

Khorbtli understands that balancing act particularly well. As a Syrian-American creative working in the region, she has developed a visual practice that draws on different cultures without feeling the need to explain every reference.

“It's so beautiful, and in a way it reminds me of myself,” she says of the Les Benjamins project. “I live and work in a very modern world, but I still love bringing heritage from my roots into my work, even when it shows up in a modern way.”

For her, representing cultural identity doesn't necessarily mean relying on immediately recognisable motifs: “I'm not afraid of using symbolism that isn't obvious, or of it not being understood or recognised right away.”

Her approach is informed by close observation and an interest in the details that often escape attention.

“I'm a very observant person and I dive deep into details, so I notice things most people walk past. I grew up between different places and cultures, and that gave me a perspective of my own.”

It's an interesting point, particularly in an industry where cultural storytelling can sometimes become overly dependent on familiar visual references.

Khorbtli's perspective suggests that identity can be expressed through much more personal choices, even when those references aren't immediately apparent to everyone: “Most of my audience are artists too, and they appreciate seeing things from a different angle.”

How the iPad Became Part of the Creative Process

Technology played a significant role in bringing From Earth to Sky together.

Throughout the project's development, Aydın used the M5-powered iPad Pro as a portable creative workspace, assembling photographs, fabric references and sketches in Apple's Freeform app. Rather than keeping the research and design process separate, the digital workspace allowed ideas to evolve together and be shared with collaborators as the collection progressed: “Freeform allowed me to bring my team into my creative journey instead of simply giving them finished ideas,” Aydın explains.

The iPad's multitasking capabilities also enabled him to move between sketches in Procreate, photographs from Cappadocia and research in Safari, while files were exported for the wider team.

For a designer who rarely works from a conventional desk, portability became a significant advantage. “It's the ultimate workstation on the go,” Aydın says. “That gives me freedom.”

Khorbtli has experienced a similar shift in her own practice. Working across illustration, animation and visual storytelling, she remembers a time when the technology available to her often dictated what she could create. “It changed a lot. At university I made almost everything by hand. Later I learned animation on my old laptop, but it was very limiting, and I used to find ways around the software just to make high-resolution or detailed work.”

Today, she sees technology as a way of removing some of those practical limitations: “Today these powerful tools work in my favour, and that has changed my game completely. I can focus on the idea and the craft instead of worrying about storage or what the device can handle.”

The ability to work wherever inspiration strikes has become particularly important: “I have everything with me wherever I go, and that's what made this project in Cappadocia possible.”

For creatives whose work moves between physical environments, digital tools and different collaborators, that flexibility can fundamentally change the way a project develops.

When Everyone Can Make Beautiful Images, What Makes an Artist Original?

With artificial intelligence and increasingly sophisticated creative tools making high-quality visual production more accessible, it's difficult to ignore the questions surrounding originality. For Khorbtli, the answer has less to do with the technology itself and more to do with the person using it: “Impressive visuals are easy to make now, so what will truly stand out is the person behind them: their process, their story and their personal experience.”

It's a perspective that feels particularly relevant to a project like From Earth to Sky, where the final images are undeniably striking, but much of their meaning comes from the research, cultural references and decisions that shaped them. “Right now it's not about the result, it's all about the process,” Khorbtli continues.

And while she's enthusiastic about the creative possibilities offered by new technologies, she doesn't believe they can replace the experiences that inspire the work in the first place. “The one thing technology can't replace is living the experience yourself. Being in the room, feeling inspired and deciding what matters to you.”

She concludes: “The tools help me get there faster, but the reason to make the work has to come from me.”

Aydın's research in Cappadocia began with the physical experience of a place: its landscape, colours, flowers and cultural history. Technology helped him document, develop and communicate those ideas, eventually translating them into an ambitious fashion presentation. For Khorbtli, the experience reinforced something that remains central to her own creative practice: personal perspective matters.

Fifteen years after launching Les Benjamins, Aydın has found a new way to bring his cultural influences into conversation with contemporary fashion; and with three brightly coloured balloons floating above Cappadocia, he has certainly found a memorable way to celebrate.

'From Earth to Sky'; is a Les Benjamins project created with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro and filmed on iPhone 18 Pro Max by Neels Castillon.

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The French luxury house teams up with two of the creative minds behind Bad Bunny's distinctive style for Hotel Moynat, a playful collection inspired by vintage luggage, hotel stickers and the golden age of travel. JDEED caught up with the duo during Paris Fashion Week. See the video, here.

We do really love the feel of vintage luggage covered in hotel stickers. Before Instagram geotags and endless airport selfies, a well-travelled suitcase told its owner's story through the places it had been. A dusty blue suitcase in my parents’ home is living proof. Guilty as charged, it proudly wears stickers from all four corners of the world.

That idea is at the centre of Hotel Moynat, a new collaboration between historic French leather goods house Moynat and Los Angeles-based creatives Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas. Unveiled in October 2026, the limited-edition collection revisits Moynat's trunk-making heritage, reinterpreting the visual souvenirs of travel through a contemporary lens.

Meet the Duo Behind the Collaboration

If you've followed Bad Bunny's fashion evolution, chances are you've already encountered the work of Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas, even if you didn't know their names.

Pablo is a stylist whose approach to fashion has helped shape the Puerto Rican superstar's distinctive image, combining bold silhouettes, cultural references and an unapologetic sense of individuality. Douglas, meanwhile, is a fine jewellery designer and founder of his namesake label, with a background that includes Tiffany & Co. and Dover Street Market. His work explores Latin heritage, identity and personal storytelling through jewellery, and he has created custom pieces for Bad Bunny across his last six world tours.

Both have built careers around making fashion feel personal, often working behind the scenes to create some of contemporary pop culture's most memorable visual moments. Their collaboration with Moynat brings that creative perspective into the world of luxury leather goods.

During Paris Fashion Week, JDEED caught up with Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas to discuss the collaboration, their creative universe and what happens when two contemporary voices reinterpret the archives of one of France's historic luxury houses.

You can watch our conversation with the duo in the exclusive reel on JDEED's Instagram.

A Love Letter to the Golden Age of Travel

Founded in 1849, Moynat has a long history of producing trunks and travel accessories, making its archives a natural starting point for the collaboration.

The first chapter of Hotel Moynat takes inspiration from the colourful hotel stickers that once accumulated on travellers' trunks, turning luggage into a visual record of journeys taken. For the new collection, these vintage-inspired stickers have been reimagined as leather patches, individually stitched onto Moynat's signature Monogram M canvas.

The result is a series of bags and accessories that feel nostalgic without being overly precious about the past. There are classic Hobo bags, totes, 48-hour duffles, pouches, passport holders and charms, alongside silk scarves, a new travel Mignon and exclusive Limousine trunks.

The collection has a slightly irreverent quality that makes it particularly appealing. Moynat's familiar silhouettes become canvases for colourful graphics and travel references, giving the pieces a more expressive personality. It's easy to imagine one of these bags accompanying its owner through several cities, collecting memories along the way, even if the stickers are already part of the design.

When Heritage Meets a New Generation

Luxury collaborations are hardly unusual, but Hotel Moynat is interesting for its choice of creative partners. Rather than turning to a conventional fashion designer or celebrity ambassador, the house has invited two figures whose influence comes largely from their work behind the scenes.

Pablo and Douglas have helped shape the visual identity of one of the world's most recognisable musicians, bringing their understanding of contemporary culture, individuality and storytelling to a heritage brand. For the duo, discovering Moynat's archives was an important part of the experience.

“Witnessing Moynat’s legacy of innovation and seeing that pieces that have withstood so much time and have gone through so many eras in human history can be cool and relevant today was inspiring to us, we want to give props to Moynat for paying attention to the people behind the scenes,” they shared in a joint statement.

It's a sentiment that says quite a lot about the collaboration. Both Pablo and Douglas have built their careers by developing a visual language that feels rooted in personal and cultural identity, rather than simply following fashion's established codes.

At Moynat, they've been given the opportunity to apply that perspective to objects whose original purpose was practical, but whose appeal has always extended into the realm of personal expression.

And There's More to Come

Hotel Moynat is being released in two chapters. The first, featuring the hotel-sticker designs, became available in Moynat boutiques worldwide on 15 October 2026.

A second chapter, scheduled for November 2026, will introduce crystal studs applied to the house's signature Monogram M canvas. The embellishments take inspiration from the protective hardware found on vintage trunks, transforming a functional detail into something decorative.

It's another example of how the collection plays with Moynat's history, borrowing familiar elements from traditional luggage and giving them a new purpose. Between the graphic leather patches and the forthcoming crystal-studded pieces, Hotel Moynat offers two interpretations of the same idea: that the objects we travel with can say something about who we are.

And with Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas involved, a little extra personality was always going to be part of the journey.

Watch JDEED's exclusive conversation with Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas, filmed during Paris Fashion Week, on our Instagram.

Hotel Moynat's first chapter is available in Moynat boutiques worldwide. The second chapter launches in selected boutiques in November 2026.

More on Moynat.com

The Milanese jewellery house brought its signature Iconica collection to Isola Space, alongside a selection of works by five women-led design studios from the region, curated in collaboration with Turkish actress and brand ambassador Hande Erçel.

What do a sculptural gold ring, a handwoven rug and a table made from palm fronds have in common? Quite a lot, according to Pomellato. On 22 October, the Milanese jewellery house brought The Art of Iconic Craftsmanship to Dubai's Isola Space, an evening exploring the relationship between jewellery, contemporary design and the people who make them.

Presented in partnership with Ahmed Seddiqi, the event placed Pomellato's signature Iconica collection alongside works by five women-led design studios, selected in collaboration with Turkish actress and brand ambassador Hande Erçel.

The choice of venue was particularly fitting. Located at The Lana Promenade in Marasi Bay, Isola Space is the Dubai outpost of Milan's Isola Design Group, a platform known for championing independent designers and experimental approaches to making. For Pomellato, which was founded in Milan in 1967, the connection to the city's design community comes naturally. But what made this presentation particularly interesting was its decision to look beyond jewellery and towards the creative practices emerging from the region.

Hande Erçel's Take on Contemporary Craftsmanship

Created in 2017 to celebrate Pomellato's 50th anniversary, Iconica has become one of the house's most recognisable collections. Its appeal lies in the simplicity of its design language: generous volumes, rounded silhouettes and polished gold surfaces that feel almost architectural. There is little unnecessary decoration, with the emphasis placed instead on proportion, material and the skill required to shape it.

For the Dubai presentation, Erçel worked with Pomellato to identify designers whose work shares a similar approach. The actress, who is currently studying carpet weaving at university, has a particular interest in traditional techniques and their place within contemporary design. “What I love about Iconica is its honesty: gold, volume, curves, nothing more. Together with Pomellato, we wanted to bring together creative voices that speak the same language. Different materials, different stories, the same confidence,” she explains.

The resulting selection brings together five studios working across furniture, textiles, ceramics and objects, each approaching craftsmanship from a different perspective.

Five Studios, Five Approaches to Design

Among the featured names is High Sense, the Dubai-based studio founded by Nourhan Rabah, whose work combines digital design, sculptural forms and sustainable technologies. Its Interfered Circles tables feature fluid, 3D-printed bases beneath glass surfaces, creating shapes reminiscent of moving water. The studio also presented Metric Assembly, a coffee table composed of mirrored cubic elements that can be rearranged into different configurations.

The pieces offer an interesting contrast to traditional goldsmithing, showing how contemporary technology can produce objects with a similarly strong emphasis on form and material.

One Third Studio, founded by Duna Ajlan and Dania Ajlan, approaches design through Emirati heritage.

In 2024, the studio became the first Emirati design practice to introduce Khoos marquetry, a technique using locally sourced palm fronds and natural staining. At Isola Space, the studio presented Telad and Al Thara, pieces made by pressing, dyeing and carefully arranging palm fronds by hand.

The results give a familiar material an entirely different presence, translating a traditional craft into contemporary objects without losing the character of the original technique.

Lebanese designer Lamiss Akar, meanwhile, draws inspiration from nature and the forms that often go unnoticed within it. Her Unseen Murmurs collection takes its cues from miniature ecosystems, enlarging their shapes into fluid, sculptural objects with luminous surfaces and vibrant colours.

The connection to Iconica is visible in the curves and the way light interacts with each surface, although Akar's work has a more organic, almost otherworldly quality.

Then there's Doodle and the Gang, founded in 2022 by sisters Mentalla and Asmaa Said. Working across handcrafted rugs, furniture and ceramics, the studio explores nostalgia, regional identity and the emotional connections people develop with everyday objects.

Their designs have a playful quality, combining familiar references with unexpected forms and proportions. It's the kind of work that encourages you to look twice, particularly when a recognisable material or object takes on an entirely new personality.

Completing the selection is Studio Paola Sakr, based between Beirut and Dubai. Known for experimenting with materials and their potential uses, the studio presented silverware from Earth to Paola, its tableware and hosting label.

Made from silver-plated brass, the pieces combine polished and matte finishes and are designed to be mixed, layered and used rather than reserved for special occasions. It's an approach that feels particularly relevant to Pomellato's own philosophy, where fine jewellery is intended to be worn freely, stacked and incorporated into everyday life.

Alongside the five studios, Pomellato presented pieces from its High Jewellery collections, including Iconica High Jewellery, where the collection's familiar gold forms are elevated through diamond pavé and meticulous hand-finishing. Produced by the master goldsmiths at Casa Pomellato in Milan, the pieces demonstrate the technical precision behind designs that appear deceptively simple.

The juxtaposition with the regional designers' work also reveals something interesting about contemporary craftsmanship.

A 3D-printed table, a palm-frond surface and a hand-polished gold bracelet may have little in common aesthetically, but each reflects a considered relationship between the maker, the material and the finished object. And while heritage techniques remain central to many of the featured studios, their work is firmly contemporary, shaped by experimentation and an interest in finding new applications for familiar materials.

The event also offered a welcome opportunity to place women designers from the region alongside an established international luxury house, giving their work a platform that extends beyond the conventional boundaries of furniture and product design.

For Pomellato, the evening marked another expression of its longstanding relationship with women and creative independence.

For the designers involved, it was an opportunity to show how varied the region's contemporary design scene has become, from the revival of Emirati palm-weaving traditions to digitally fabricated furniture and experimental objects. And for those of us who appreciate beautiful things, it offered a compelling reason to look beyond the jewellery box.

More on Pomellato.com

Using olive oil salvaged from Gaza, a new initiative brings together Palestinian craftsmanship, cultural heritage and a campaign to help farmers reclaim their livelihoods.

A few drops of olive oil, preserved inside a hand-blown glass vessel. Beneath them, a piece of burnt olive wood. It's a small object, but the story behind it is anything but. This is The Last Harvest, a new initiative by Palestinian olive oil brand Jenin, in collaboration with The Big Heart Foundation, which hopes to help restore olive cultivation in Gaza through art, storytelling and fundraising.

For generations, olive farming has been an essential part of Palestinian life. Beyond its economic importance, the olive tree occupies a particular place in the country's cultural identity, connecting families to their land through traditions passed down over centuries.

The destruction of Gaza's agricultural landscape has put much of that heritage at risk. According to figures shared by the campaign, more than 1.8 million olive trees have been destroyed, while olive oil production has fallen by 87.5%. For the families who depend on these trees, the consequences extend well beyond the loss of a harvest.

The project began with a small quantity of olive oil pressed by a family in Gaza.

Many of the trees from which the olives had been harvested were subsequently destroyed. What remained was a little oil, which the family chose to share in the hope that their story would reach people beyond Gaza. Rather than simply displaying the oil, the campaign invited Palestinian artist Lameice Abu Aker to create a vessel that would give it a permanent home.

Hand-blown by local artisans, the resulting glass pieces draw inspiration from the traditional oil bottles found on Palestinian dining tables. Their design incorporates small, seed-shaped vials holding the preserved oil, positioned above a base of burnt olive wood. It's a considered combination of materials. The glass protects something precious and increasingly scarce, while the charred wood refers directly to the destruction of the trees. The seed-shaped containers introduce another element: the possibility of planting again.

The vessels are beautiful in their own right, but their significance comes from what they contain and the circumstances in which that oil was produced.

By turning the remnants of a harvest into an object of contemporary craftsmanship, Abu Aker's design gives physical form to a story that might otherwise be reduced to another statistic.

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Olive trees are among the most recognisable symbols of Palestinian identity, and their cultivation is closely connected to the rhythms of family and community life.

Harvesting is traditionally a collective activity, bringing generations together to pick olives, press oil and prepare for the months ahead. Many trees have been cared for by the same families over generations.

Their destruction therefore represents the loss of both an agricultural resource and a living connection to the land.

The Last Harvest places that relationship at the centre of its campaign. Its aim is to support the restoration of olive farming in Gaza, helping farmers rebuild their livelihoods while protecting the practices and knowledge associated with olive cultivation.

The project also demonstrates how design can contribute to humanitarian efforts without losing sight of the people and communities involved. In this case, the object is a way of drawing attention to the farmers, the land and the work needed to make future harvests possible.

The campaign offers several ways for the public to contribute. The specially designed glass vessels containing the preserved olive oil will be offered through an online auction, while Jenin has also introduced The Fallaheen Reserve, a limited-edition olive oil bottle from which 100% of profits will be donated to support farmers.

Direct contributions can be made through The Big Heart Foundation and the campaign's YallaGive page.

According to the organisers, AED 35 is enough to plant one olive tree in Gaza, offering a tangible way for supporters to participate in the restoration effort. All campaign proceeds will go to the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) towards programme implementation.

There is a particular relevance to using olive oil itself as the centrepiece of this initiative. It is both the product of the agricultural tradition the campaign hopes to protect and a reminder of what farmers have already lost.

The preserved oil may never be used for cooking or shared around a family table, but the funds it helps raise could contribute to future harvests.

And for a project called The Last Harvest, that is precisely the point: ensuring the name never becomes a reality.

To discover more about The Last Harvest, participate in the auction or support the restoration of Gaza's olive trees, visit Jenin's official channels and The Big Heart Foundation.

From a major exhibition of pioneering women artists to five decades of work by Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, here's what to expect from Dubai's Alserkal Art Week this November.

This November, Alserkal Art Week turns its attention to a group of artists whose contribution to Arab modernism deserves a much bigger place in art history. At Concrete, a major exhibition presented in partnership with the Barjeel Art Foundation brings together works by pioneering women artists including Fahrelnissa Zeid, Samia Halaby, Inji Aflatoun and Etel Adnan.

Curated by Suheyla Takesh and Rémi Homs, the exhibition looks at how these women helped shape the region's artistic landscape throughout the 20th century, responding to political change, shifting social structures and new possibilities in art.

It's the centrepiece of a programme running from 15 to 22 November, which also includes five decades of work by Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, 17 new gallery exhibitions, conversations curated by Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr and a moving-image takeover by the Chanel Culture Fund. The theme this year is Smouldering, a reference to the persistence of memory, cultural resistance and ideas that continue to resonate long after their original moment.

The Women Who Helped Shape Arab Modernism

The exhibition at Concrete is arguably one of the most interesting reasons to visit Alserkal Art Week this year. Bringing together works from the Barjeel Art Foundation's collection, it examines the contributions of women artists working across the Arab world during a period of considerable social, political and cultural transformation.

Among the featured artists is Fahrelnissa Zeid, whose large-scale abstract compositions challenged conventional approaches to painting; Samia Halaby, a pioneer of abstraction whose work has consistently explored the relationship between art, perception and political consciousness; Inji Aflatoun, whose paintings reflected her engagement with Egyptian society and political life; and Etel Adnan, whose practice moved between painting, poetry and writing.

Their approaches were markedly different, shaped by their respective experiences and the environments in which they worked. What connects them is the role they played in developing new artistic languages at a time when questions of identity, independence and modernity were being actively negotiated across the region. The exhibition also addresses the ways these artists incorporated vernacular materials and local methods of making into their practices, challenging the idea that modernism in the Arab world simply followed developments in Europe.

For Suheyla Takesh, Director of the Barjeel Art Foundation, the exhibition offers an opportunity to revisit a history in which women's contributions have not always received the recognition they deserve: “While often sidelined by art history, these artists were active participants in the region’s cultural life, developing new visual languages and engaging with the social and political transformations of their time,” she expresses

It's a distinction worth making; these women weere actively shaping the margins of Arab modernism.

The exhibition opens on 15 November and remains on view until 22 November.

Five Decades of Sliman Mansour's Work

Another highlight comes from Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, whose work has become closely associated with the visual history of Palestine.

Presented by George Al Ama and Fann À Porter, Promises and Scars brings together works produced between the 1970s and the 2020s, offering visitors a look at five decades of the artist's practice. Mansour is widely recognised for his depictions of Palestinian life, landscapes and cultural identity. His work has frequently addressed the relationship between people and land, as well as the experiences of displacement, occupation and collective memory.

The exhibition offers an opportunity to see how these subjects have developed throughout his career, and how his artistic language has evolved alongside the political and social realities of Palestine. At a time when Palestinian cultural heritage remains at the centre of urgent conversations about preservation and identity, a presentation of this scope feels particularly relevant.

Promises and Scars will be on view in Warehouse 46 until 22 November.

Moataz Nasr Brings a Different Format to Majlis Talks

For this edition of Majlis Talks, Alserkal has invited Egyptian painter and sculptor Moataz Nasr, who is also curator of the Alexandria Biennial, to develop a programme titled Sharing the Sensitive.

Taking place on 15 November in The Yard, the event will bring together Simon Njami, Julie Banatre and Jenny Mbaye in conversation with Nasr. Rather than following a conventional panel discussion, the programme will take the form of a cross-conversational round table, allowing the speakers to exchange perspectives on the relationship between art, resistance, memory and community.

The discussion will also question some of the established assumptions through which contemporary art is presented and interpreted, particularly the dominance of Western perspectives within international art discourse. With speakers whose work engages different cultural contexts and approaches to artistic practice, Sharing the Sensitive promises a conversation that extends beyond exhibitions and institutions to consider the role art plays in everyday life.

Chanel Culture Fund Takes Over The Yard Screens

Visitors to Alserkal Avenue will also encounter a series of moving-image works presented by the Chanel Culture Fund as part of Fracture: The Window.

Running from 9 to 29 November, the project takes over The Yard's screens with a selection of works exploring identity, memory and the increasingly blurred boundaries between physical and digital experience. The presentation forms part of the Fund's ongoing public digital art initiative and introduces contemporary moving-image practices into the shared spaces of the Avenue.

It's an interesting addition to the programme, particularly in the way it moves digital art beyond the gallery and into an environment where visitors might encounter it unexpectedly, whether they're attending an exhibition, meeting friends or simply passing through.

The works consider how our understanding of identity and experience is changing within increasingly mediated environments, an area that continues to occupy a growing number of contemporary artists.

Seventeen New Exhibitions and an International Guest Programme

Beyond the headline presentations, Alserkal Art Week will see 17 new exhibitions open across the Avenue's contemporary art galleries.

The wider programme also includes projects from Alserkal's international network, introducing artists and institutions whose practices bring different geographical and cultural perspectives to Dubai.

Among them is The Temple Manuscripts – Selected Works by Russell Watson, presented by the Barbados Museum to mark the country's 60th anniversary of independence.

Organised in partnership with the Embassy of Barbados in the UAE and hosted by the Alserkal Arts Foundation, the presentation adds another dimension to the week's conversations around cultural memory and identity.

Elsewhere, The Art Circle (TAC) will present works by shortlisted artists for this year's Art Circle Award, supported by Alserkal. The exhibition will be on view in Warehouse 50B from 11 to 22 November.

Together, these projects reflect the international scope of Alserkal's programming, while maintaining the Avenue's role as a meeting point for artistic practices from the region and beyond.

For those looking to spend more time exploring the Avenue, the closing weekend on 21 and 22 November will include film screenings by Cinema Akil, slow art walks and gallery tours designed for children.

The slower-paced activities are a welcome addition, particularly for visitors who prefer taking their time with exhibitions rather than moving quickly between openings.

With so much happening across the district, the programme offers several ways to engage, whether you're interested in modern art history, contemporary Palestinian art, digital practices or the conversations taking place around them.

But the exhibition at Concrete remains the standout.

Bringing together women whose work helped define modern art across the Arab world, it offers a valuable opportunity to see these artists in conversation with one another and to consider their place within a wider artistic history.

For anyone interested in the region's cultural history, it's an exhibition worth making time for.

Cover: Asmahan Elfergani Born 1946, Benghazi, Libya

The Libyan Woman, 1972 Oil on canvas, 65×65 cm Collection of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah

Alserkal Art Week 2026

When: 15–22 November 2026
Where: Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai

Key dates:

• 15–22 November: Women Modernists exhibition at Concrete
• 15 November: Sharing the Sensitive, Majlis Talks curated by Moataz Nasr
• Until 22 November: Sliman Mansour, Promises and Scars, Warehouse 46
• 9–29 November: Chanel Culture Fund, Fracture: The Window
• 21–22 November: Cinema Akil screenings, slow art walks and family gallery tours

For the full programme and updates, visit alserkal.online or follow @alserkalavenue.

With her debut album REINA, the Jordanian singer is embracing every version of herself: the confident artist, the devoted mother, the woman who sometimes needs reassurance. In an exclusive conversation with JDEED, she opens up about motherhood, making music without a filter and learning that having it all doesn't necessarily mean doing it all.

The pressure that comes with being a woman who wants more than one thing out of life is, let's be honest, pretty real. You want to be ambitious, but present. Independent, but available. A good mother, a loving partner, a devoted daughter, a successful professional. And preferably, you'd like to do all of it without looking remotely overwhelmed.

It's an impossible balancing act, although that doesn't seem to stop us from trying. For Jordanian singer Reina Khoury, these contradictions have become the very material of her music.

After taking a two-year hiatus and embracing motherhood, the artist has returned with her debut album, REINA, a self-titled project that explores the different identities she inhabits and the emotions that accompany them. It's a particularly personal chapter for an artist who has been steadily building her place in the Arabic pop scene since releasing her first single in 2020.

Born and raised in Jordan, Khoury's sound brings together contemporary pop production and Arabic musical influences, with expressive vocals and lyrics that increasingly favour emotional honesty over poetic disguise. Her journey has already taken her from opening for Cairokee in Egypt and Jordan to performing in Dubai and at Jordan's Jerash Festival. But with REINA, she's less interested in proving what she can do than in showing who she actually is.

And that includes the parts of herself she once might have kept private.

Motherhood has a way of changing your understanding of yourself. Sometimes, it makes you feel invincible. Other times, it leaves you questioning everything.

Khoury knows both feelings intimately. Her singles Bi Alami and Ulli Inno Mafi Minni explore these opposing emotional states, offering two very different perspectives on the same life-changing experience. “Motherhood sits at the heart of both the songs in very different ways,” she tells JDEED.

“‘Bi Alami’ portrays how powerful, confident, and strong motherhood has made me feel. Becoming a mother has given me the belief that I can do anything I want to do if I just set my heart and mind to it which is a very freeing feeling,” she continues.

But that newfound confidence came with another, less comfortable emotion. “On the other hand, there is an aspect of self-doubt about whether I can achieve those things or not, which is a stage that hit me after that very confident stage.”

It's precisely why she wanted both songs to introduce the album. “It was important for me to show that motherhood can bring so many different feelings and that seeking validation from the people who matter most to you is a valid emotion to have as well.”

It's a refreshing admission in a culture that often expects mothers to describe the experience in extremes: either endlessly fulfilling or impossibly difficult. Khoury is interested in everything that exists between those two narratives.

There's something almost disarmingly intimate about Ulli Inno Mafi Minni. At its heart is a desire most of us recognise but don't always feel comfortable admitting: wanting someone we love to tell us we're special.

For Khoury, writing about that need was anything but easy. “‘Ulli Inno Mafi Minni’ is definitely the most vulnerable song on the album,” she says.

“The album is kind of split into two distinctive worlds, one that is very confident and strong and one that is more vulnerable and needs reassurance.”

It's a contrast that reflects her own experience of motherhood. “Motherhood really comes with both these aspects, it can make you feel like the strongest and most confident woman ever, but it can also bring doubts and can make you question if what you are doing is enough.”

Rather than attempting to soften those insecurities, she chose to confront them directly. “It definitely wasn’t an easy song to write at all, I put really honest and genuine feelings into it and didn’t want to put a filter on my writing which is a very scary thing to do, especially in a world where vulnerability is often sugar coated.”

Interestingly, it was also the first song she wrote for the album.

“I have made peace with myself and accepted that I cannot do everything perfectly"

“It’s the first song of the album that I wrote and it turned out into one of the most special ones.” Perhaps there's something to be said for starting with the thing you're most afraid to admit.

The emotional honesty running through REINA isn't accidental. Khoury has always been drawn to songwriting that says what it means, but becoming a mother pushed her to take that instinct further. “All of this has definitely led me to write more honestly,” she explains.

“I’ve always valued honest writing and connected more to music which says things exactly as they are, which I think is more common in Western writing.”

For an artist whose sound moves between Arabic musical heritage and contemporary pop, this directness has become an important part of her creative identity.

“I find myself really relating to songs in English which don’t use any metaphors, and experiencing motherhood definitely pushed me to write more honestly and to say things exactly as they are.”

It's an interesting approach to Arabic pop, where elaborate imagery and poetic expressions of love have long been part of the musical tradition.

Khoury isn't turning her back on that heritage. She's finding her own way of expressing emotions within it, allowing the words to feel as immediate as the feelings themselves. And sometimes, the most powerful thing a song can do is say something you've been struggling to put into words.

If motherhood has made Khoury more confident in some ways, it has also forced her to reconsider the expectations she places on herself. Because while the idea of having it all sounds wonderful in theory, the reality is often considerably more complicated.

“I have made peace with myself and accepted that I cannot do everything perfectly,” she admits.

“I have to constantly remind myself of this, and I have grown to believe that life is made of different phases and in every phase you have different priorities and that’s ok.”

It's the kind of perspective that sounds simple until you're the one trying to live by it. “I believe everything happens for a reason and everyone moves at their own pace.”

And while she has learned to be kinder to herself, she doesn't pretend that the pressure has disappeared. “I’m not going to lie, some days it’s harder to remind myself of this than others, and I think social media is part of the problem here.”

Like so many women, she recognises how easily scrolling through someone else's seemingly perfect life can make her question her own progress.

“Social media can quickly make you feel like you’re always lacking something or that someone is doing better than you are, which is why it’s important to put yourself in check and to focus on your own priorities.”

For Khoury, that means accepting that not every version of herself can receive equal attention at every moment. Some days, motherhood comes first. On others, it's music. And neither choice needs to be accompanied by guilt.

The Woman Behind REINA

It's rather bold to name your debut album after yourself. For Khoury, REINA is more than a collection of songs. It's a declaration of identity, shaped by two years of writing, motherhood, creative challenges and personal growth.

When we ask what she discovered about herself during the process, she doesn't hesitate to acknowledge how demanding it has been. “Because making this album took me two years, it has really taken me on a journey full of ups and downs which I learnt a lot from.”

But the experience also revealed a resilience she hadn't fully recognised. “It has allowed me to discover how resilient I am when it comes to really believing in my vision and trusting that this is exactly what I want to be doing now and to give it my 100% to make it come true.”

Building a career in music is rarely straightforward. Doing so while navigating the responsibilities of motherhood has brought an entirely new set of challenges.

“As an artist, making music and building a career is hard to navigate, but being a mom while being an artist is even tougher.”

Still, she has come away from the experience with a stronger sense of what she wants. “I learnt that I can balance things the ways I want to and create the life and career I want.”

And if there was ever any doubt about whether music was truly her calling, the album has put that question to rest. “It has also reinforced my love for music and how passionate I am about it. I always knew this is what I wanted to do but now I’m fully convinced this is the only thing I want to do in my life.”

A Little Bit of Reina in Every Song

So what does Khoury hope people take away from REINA? Not necessarily a particular message or a definitive understanding of who she is.

First and foremost, she wants them to feel something.

“I would love for them to have felt something strongly and for something to have moved them, maybe it helped them describe a certain emotion they couldn’t find the words for.”

And by the time the final song ends, she hopes listeners will have encountered the different sides of the woman behind the music.

“I hope by the final song they would have a picture painted of the woman and the stories I am describing on the album through the realities of motherhood, Jordanian culture, and the purity and vulnerability of emotions that come with love and partnership.”

Perhaps that's what makes this chapter of her career so compelling. REINA doesn't attempt to present a perfectly polished version of its creator. Instead, it makes room for the contradictions: confidence and insecurity, ambition and tenderness, strength and the occasional need to hear that you're doing enough.

And in a world that seems increasingly obsessed with appearing to have everything figured out, there's something rather powerful about a woman willing to admit that she doesn't. Reina Khoury isn't trying to be just one version of herself anymore....she's making music for all of them.

Keep up with Reina Khoury on Instagram, here

As the Australian fitness entrepreneur becomes one of SIRO's newest global ambassadors, JDEED sits down with her to talk about the changing meaning of fitness, the importance of recovery, and why women need to stop chasing perfection.

When did wellness become so exhausting? Between tracking our steps, squeezing in workouts, monitoring our sleep, worrying about protein intake and trying to maintain a morning routine worthy of Instagram, looking after ourselves has somehow turned into another full-time job.

And if there's anyone who understands how much the fitness conversation has changed over the years, it's Kayla Itsines.

The Australian fitness entrepreneur, founder of Sweat and one of the most recognisable names in women's fitness has spent more than a decade encouraging women around the world to get moving. But these days, her approach to wellbeing looks a little different.

Itsines has joined Team SIRO as a global brand ambassador, becoming part of the fitness and wellness-focused hospitality brand's growing community of athletes and experts. Alongside Major League Baseball player Jason Heyward, she is helping champion an approach to wellbeing that goes beyond the gym, bringing together fitness, sleep, recovery, nutrition and mindfulness.

For Itsines, the partnership feels like a natural next chapter: “Helping women feel strong and confident has always been at the centre of what I do. But as my own life has changed, my understanding of fitness has grown, too,” she tells JDEED.

“As a mother and business owner, I want my training to support my life. I want to have energy for my kids, feel strong and look after my health for the long term. The workout is still important, but so is how I feel for the rest of the day.”

It's a perspective that sits at the centre of SIRO's philosophy: performance isn't simply about how hard you train, but how well you look after yourself between workouts: “That's one of the reasons I connected with SIRO. Their approach brings training, sleep, nutrition and recovery together. It reflects the way I think about fitness now: looking at all the things that help you feel well, rather than just what happens in the gym.”

"I want women to feel comfortable making those choices without feeling guilty or thinking they haven't done enough.”

A New Chapter With SIRO

Part of Kerzner International, SIRO Hotels, Homes and Fitness Labs is built around five pillars: fitness, nutrition, sleep, recovery and mindfulness.

With destinations in Dubai and Porto Montenegro, and further openings planned in cities including Miami, Riyadh, Tokyo and Los Cabos, the brand is approaching hospitality through the lens of wellbeing, with spaces and experiences designed to help people maintain their routines while travelling. Itsines' new role will see her collaborate with SIRO on exclusive wellness experiences and content, with a particular focus on women's strength, recovery, longevity and sustainable healthy habits.

But what makes the partnership interesting is the conversation it opens up about the future of fitness. For years, we've been told to push harder, train longer and squeeze more into our days. Now, one of the industry's most influential voices is encouraging women to rethink that mentality.

Why Doing More Isn't Always Doing Better

“It can be easy to think that if a workout is good for you, doing more must be better. But you also need to give your body time to recover,” Itsines explains.

It's something she's come to understand more deeply as her own relationship with fitness has evolved: “You can train really hard, but if you're not sleeping enough or you're feeling exhausted, adding another session isn't always the most helpful thing.”

For anyone who has ever felt guilty about skipping a workout, her next point is worth remembering: “I see recovery as part of your training. Taking a rest day, going for a walk or getting an earlier night can all support your progress. I want women to feel comfortable making those choices without feeling guilty or thinking they haven't done enough.”

It's also where her personal philosophy and SIRO's approach come together. Rather than treating recovery as something reserved for professional athletes, the brand places it alongside training, nutrition and sleep as an essential part of everyday wellbeing.

As a matter of fact, being fit shouldn't mean being permanently exhausted.

The Fitness Industry Has Been Getting Women Wrong

When we ask Itsines what the fitness industry has misunderstood about women, she doesn't hesitate: “That we don't all have the same goals, needs or lives. What works for one woman might not work for another, and what works for you now might change in a few years.”

It's a simple observation, but one that challenges the endless stream of universal fitness advice we're confronted with daily. The perfect workout. The perfect routine. The perfect body.

As if everyone has the same schedule, the same responsibilities or even the same definition of feeling good. “That's something we really focus on at Sweat: helping women build strength, confidence and consistency through movement, no matter where they are in their fitness journey.”

And the conversation extends beyond exercise: “I'm passionate about ensuring women feel supported through every stage of life, women deserve training options that recognise the stage they're in and meet their needs accordingly.”

Through her collaboration with SIRO, Itsines hopes to bring greater attention to women's changing needs, particularly when it comes to training, recovery and long-term health: “I want women to feel that there's an option for them, rather than feeling they have to keep up with someone else's routine. There isn't one way to train or one definition of being fit.”

She adds: “That also connects with what I appreciate about SIRO. Their approach considers what happens beyond your workout, including sleep, nutrition and recovery. Those things matter when we're talking about supporting women's health.”

“I'd also remind women that having a difficult week doesn't mean they've failed. You can adjust your routine and keep going(...)”

Of course, the irony of the wellness industry is that something designed to make us feel better can occasionally leave us feeling considerably worse. Especially when social media makes everyone else's routine look so effortless.

We ask Itsines what she'd say to women who feel like they're constantly falling short of their wellness goals. Her answer? “Start smaller. You don't need to change your whole life at once or follow someone else's morning routine to look after yourself.”

A welcome reminder, particularly when our feeds are filled with people who seem to have completed an entire day's worth of activities before we've had our first coffee.

“Social media can make it feel like everyone is doing everything perfectly. But you're only seeing a small part of someone's day. You don't know what support they have or what else is happening in their life.”

Her advice? Forget the elaborate routines and start with something that actually fits into your life. “Look at what's realistic for you right now. That might be a short workout, a walk or making more time for sleep. Choose something you can build on, rather than setting yourself a routine that feels impossible to maintain.”

And if life gets in the way? “I'd also remind women that having a difficult week doesn't mean they've failed. You can adjust your routine and keep going. Looking after your health should help you feel better, rather than become another source of pressure.” We couldn't agree more.

Do We Really Need to Track Everything?

From smartwatches to sleep scores and recovery metrics, we've never had access to so much information about our bodies.vBut when does useful information turn into another obsession?

“Tracking can be really useful when it helps you understand yourself better. Wearables can give you a clearer picture of your activity, sleep and recovery, and help you notice patterns you might otherwise miss,” Itsines explains.

The important thing, she believes, is not to let the numbers take over. “If you're tired, that matters. If tracking starts making you anxious or you feel like you have to hit every number every day, it's worth stepping back and thinking about what's helpful for you.”

In other words, your smartwatch doesn't always get the final say. “You don't need to measure everything to make progress. Moving regularly, eating well, getting enough sleep and allowing time for recovery are still the foundations.”

And while SIRO's philosophy brings together different elements of performance and wellbeing, Itsines is clear that the goal shouldn't be to make taking care of ourselves more complicated. “For me, technology is most useful when it helps you make decisions and build habits that work for your life,” she adds.

Before ending our conversation, we ask Itsines one final question. If women could stop obsessing over one thing and start prioritising something else, what would she choose?

Her answer is refreshingly straightforward. “I'd say stop chasing perfection and prioritise consistency.”

Not the perfect workout or perfect morning routine or the perfect version of ourselves. Just consistency.

“You don't need the perfect workout or an uninterrupted hour to make training worthwhile. A shorter session that fits into your day can be much easier to keep coming back to.”

It's an idea that also shapes her work with Sweat and her new chapter with SIRO: creating approaches to wellbeing that can adapt to real life, rather than expecting people to organise their entire lives around fitness.

“What I like about SIRO's approach is that it recognises the role of sleep, nutrition and recovery alongside movement. Looking after yourself involves more than fitting in a workout.”

And  that's one very interesting thing about Itsines' latest move; after years of helping women find their strength through exercise, she's now helping broaden the conversation around what it means to feel strong in the first place. Because, as she puts it: “Consistency doesn't mean doing exactly the same thing every day. It means finding ways to keep looking after yourself, and being willing to adjust when life changes.”

Now that's a philosophy we can certainly get behind.

More on KaylaItsines.com and Sirohotels.com

Sometimes, the best weekend plans involve doing absolutely nothing. Or at least, nothing that requires checking your phone every five minutes.

It's not always easy to know what to do on the weekend. The choices are endless, yet somehow, they can become a little monotonous. We hit the gym, go for brunch, wander around the mall doing some window shopping and inevitably end up grabbing our third coffee of the day.

Sounds familiar? A few weeks ago, we wanted to switch things up a little and decided to head to one of our favourite places: Abu Dhabi. There's something about the capital that instantly puts us at ease. The slower pace, the beautiful waterfront, the feeling that everyone is in slightly less of a hurry. It's a kind of calm we find ourselves craving at least once a month.

But this time, we had something different in mind. We already knew and loved The Abu Dhabi EDITION, having stayed there in the past. But when it came to its Market restaurant and spa, we had somehow never experienced either.

Needless to say, it was about time.

First Stop: Lunch at Market

Blame age, blame stress, blame terrible posture, blame it all, but I was in desperate need of someone to massage my back that day. Before requesting the firmest pressure humanly possible, however, we had a lunch date.

Our first stop was Market at EDITION, and the space immediately set the tone for the afternoon. Elegant yet casual, incredibly bright, with soaring ceilings, an open kitchen and an all-day breakfast menu (our favourite three words, possibly ever). Basically, everything we love.

There's something particularly appealing about a restaurant that feels stylish without making you feel like you need to dress up for it. Market has that easy, relaxed atmosphere that makes you want to settle in, take your time and forget about whatever else you had planned.

Which, on this particular afternoon, was exactly the point. And while we could have happily lingered a little longer, there was a massage waiting for us upstairs.

Not just any massage, either.

The Spa Experience We Desperately Needed

Now, we've had massages before. But for some reason, we'd never thought of booking a couples massage as an actual weekend activity.

Consider that mistake officially corrected. From the moment we arrived at The Spa at The Abu Dhabi EDITION, the experience felt like a proper escape from the outside world. We were welcomed into a private couples suite, complete with our own little living room corner overlooking the pool and marina. And honestly? That little detail changed everything.

Rather than feeling like we were simply showing up for an appointment, we had our own intimate space to enjoy. Somewhere to sit, unwind, take in the views and properly switch off.

We caught ourselves wondering why you don't do this more often.

Then came the massage itself. I'd been dreaming about someone sorting out my back all week, and let's just say my expectations were high.

Thankfully, the treatment delivered. The pressure was exactly what I needed, the atmosphere was wonderfully peaceful and the entire experience felt incredibly relaxing from start to finish.

No rushing or distractions, just the rare pleasure of doing absolutely nothing and enjoying every second of it.

Of course, sharing the experience made it even better. There's something lovely about a couples massage that has nothing to do with grand romantic gestures. It's simply about carving out time together, away from your usual routines, and giving yourselves permission to slow down, which frankly rarely ever happens - sigh. But if you live in Dubai you understand that the city's pace leaves little room to relaxation.

By the time we left, we felt like we'd been away for much longer than an afternoon.

We hadn't booked a flight, planned an elaborate itinerary or tried to squeeze ten different activities into one day. We'd simply driven to Abu Dhabi, enjoyed a lovely lunch and spent some time being thoroughly spoiled, which truly, is sometimes more than enough.

The Abu Dhabi EDITION has always been one of those places we love returning to, but discovering Market and the spa gave us two very good reasons to visit again.

And as for our usual weekend routine? The gym, the mall and that third coffee can wait. We have a feeling couples massages might become a regular thing.

Returning to Expo City Dubai on November 28, WASLA brings together some of the region's most compelling musical voices for an evening dedicated to culture, connection and solidarity with displaced communities.

There are few voices in Arab music that carry quite the emotional weight of Marcel Khalife's. For generations, the Lebanese composer, singer and oud virtuoso has given musical expression to questions of belonging, exile and freedom, most memorably through his interpretations of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's work.

This November, Khalife will take the stage at Expo City Dubai as the headliner of WASLA Festival 2026, joining Palestinian oud trio Le Trio Joubran, Syrian duo TootArd and Abu Dhabi-based artist Fatima for a night that places the region's musical heritage and contemporary sounds in conversation.

Taking place on Saturday, November 28, 2026, the festival returns with a renewed focus. Produced by BRAG in collaboration with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, this year's edition aims to raise awareness and generate support for families displaced by conflict and persecution across the region. It's a fitting direction for a festival whose name, wasla, translates to connection in Arabic.

Marcel Khalife and the Enduring Power of Music

For anyone familiar with Marcel Khalife's music, his presence on the WASLA lineup feels particularly significant.

Across a career spanning decades, Khalife has established himself as one of the Arab world's most influential musicians, bringing together classical Arabic composition, poetry and political consciousness. His musical interpretations of Mahmoud Darwish's verses have become deeply embedded in the region's collective cultural memory. Recognised as a UNESCO Artist for Peace, Khalife has long approached music as a means of expressing shared experiences that extend beyond geographical borders.

At WASLA, his performance will form part of a programme built around artists whose work engages with questions of heritage, identity and humanity.

Le Trio Joubran, TootArd and a New Generation of Arab Sounds

Joining Khalife are Le Trio Joubran, the Palestinian brothers Samir, Wissam and Adnan, whose extraordinary command of the oud has introduced a new generation of listeners to the instrument's expressive possibilities.

Descended from four generations of oud makers and musicians, the trio have developed a distinctive musical language through the interplay of three ouds. Their compositions draw on Palestinian cultural heritage while creating something unmistakably their own.

The evening will also feature TootArd, the Syrian musical project founded by brothers Hasan and Rami Nakhleh.

Known for a genre-fluid sound that moves between Arabic melodies, disco, funk and contemporary electronic influences, TootArd represent another dimension of the region's evolving musical landscape. Their music draws from the cultural exchanges of Southwest Asia, North Africa and beyond, creating an infectious sound that is as suited to the dance floor as it is to attentive listening.

Completing the lineup is Fatima, the Abu Dhabi-based singer formerly known as FAFA, whose sound blends R&B, soul and Arabian jazz influences. Drawing on her UAE and Honduran heritage, Fatima brings a different musical sensibility to the festival, with songs exploring self-empowerment, reflection and inner peace.

Together, the four acts offer a snapshot of Arab music's extraordinary range, from the poetic traditions of the oud to contemporary experiments with rhythm and genre.

A Music Festival With a Humanitarian Purpose

This year's WASLA arrives at a time when displacement remains one of the world's most urgent humanitarian challenges.

According to figures cited by UNHCR in the festival announcement, 117.8 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced, equivalent to approximately one in every 70 people. Through its collaboration with UNHCR, WASLA intends to use the reach of live music to bring attention to displaced families and encourage meaningful support.

“Music has the ability to bring people together around our shared humanity,” says Roula Ghalayini, WASLA's Festival Creative Director. “Through WASLA, we hope to create a space that not only celebrates culture and expression but also stands in solidarity with families who have been forced to flee their homes,” he continues.

For UNHCR, the collaboration represents an opportunity to reach audiences through a shared cultural experience.

“WASLA offers a powerful platform to bring the refugee cause to new audiences and turn awareness into meaningful support,” says Raefah Makki, Regional Manager for Private Sector Partnerships – MENA at UNHCR.

The partnership gives the festival an additional dimension, although the organisers have not specified what proportion of ticket sales, if any, will be donated to UNHCR.

Since its inception, WASLA has created a space for Arabic music and culture in the UAE, bringing together artists and audiences connected by a shared interest in the region's creative expression.

We're particularly excited about the line-up: Khalife's compositions, Le Trio Joubran's deeply rooted Palestinian musical language, TootArd's cross-cultural experimentation and Fatima's contemporary perspective each offer different ways of thinking about identity and belonging.

In a region where music has so often accompanied moments of celebration, resistance, migration and collective memory, WASLA's decision to connect its programme to the experiences of displaced communities feels especially resonant. For one evening in Dubai, these musical voices will come together around an idea that has always been central to the festival: connection.

WASLA Festival 2026: Date, Location and Tickets

Date: Saturday, November 28, 2026
Location: Expo City Dubai, UAE
Lineup: Marcel Khalife, Le Trio Joubran, TootArd and Fatima
Tickets: From AED 350, available hereInstagram: @waslafestival

Through fashion, photography and the intimate spaces of a traditional Uzbek home, creative directors Kamí Akhmed, Francisco Narciso and César Augusto offer a portrait of a country whose identity refuses to fit into a single image.

What does it mean to look Uzbek? It's a question that becomes increasingly difficult to answer the longer you spend with US BEKS, a photographic editorial conceived by Tashkent-based creative director Kamí Akhmed alongside photographer and creative director Francisco Narciso and fellow creative director César Augusto.

Across a series of richly composed photographs, young people share space with older generations. Contemporary fashion appears against ornate carpets, faded walls and brightly painted ceilings. A woman in a colourful dress stands inside a modest kitchen, surrounded by watermelons, traditional bread and the objects of everyday domestic life. Elsewhere, two young men occupy a weathered architectural space, while another figure moves through a narrow, vividly blue corridor. The images are full of contrasts, although they never feel forced. There is something cinematic about them, a sense that we have arrived in the middle of stories already unfolding.

At the centre of it all is a simple proposition: there is no single way to be Uzbek.

A Different Way of Seeing Uzbekistan

The project began with Narciso's curiosity about creative communities beyond the places and cultural circles he already knew.

That curiosity eventually led him to Uzbekistan, where he discovered Kami through social media. Their initial conversation developed into a collaboration, with Augusto joining to help shape the project's narrative. Crucially, US BEKS was developed with a local creative team and informed by conversations in Tashkent about identity, language, tradition and the country's layered history.

For Kami, whose practice explores contemporary Uzbek identity through fashion and visual storytelling, the project offered an opportunity to consider how Uzbekistan might represent itself today. The country's cultural identity has been shaped by centuries of movement, exchange and political change, from its Silk Road history through the Soviet period to independence and contemporary life.

Those histories are present in the photographs, sometimes through unmistakable cultural references, sometimes through details that might initially escape notice. The visual concept takes inspiration from kurok, the traditional Uzbek practice of joining pieces of fabric to form a larger composition.

It's an apt reference for a country whose identity has been shaped by people of different backgrounds, ethnicities and histories. The editorial applies that principle to photography. Each person, garment, room and object becomes a fragment of a larger portrait. An old Uzbek house provides the setting. Its patterned carpets, decorative ceilings, curtains and worn furniture create an environment where traces of different generations coexist.

In one photograph, a young woman stands between two doorways, with large bundles of cotton occupying the space behind her. Cotton has played a significant role in Uzbekistan's economic and social history, and its placement between two younger figures suggests the inheritance of a complicated past. Another image unfolds around an eyvan, a covered, open-sided space traditionally connecting a house with its courtyard. Its turquoise-painted surfaces and hand-painted decorative scenes become as visually compelling as the people occupying it. These interiors are integral to the storytelling; their architecture and objects carry histories of their own.

Some of the editorial's most compelling images explore the relationship between generations. In a small kitchen, a younger woman stands inside while an older woman remains beyond the doorway. Traditional non bread, watermelon and domestic utensils fill the room. The composition draws attention to the role historically assigned to young brides within the household, while the younger woman's expression introduces a suggestion of resistance or changing expectations.

Elsewhere, a woman stands in a doorway while a man lies on a bed, absorbed in his phone. The room belongs visually to another era, yet the familiar gesture of scrolling immediately places the scene in the present. There is humour and tension in these moments, as well as a recognition that cultural change rarely happens neatly.

A further image shows a young man seated on the floor beside a traditional board game, with an older woman standing nearby and another young figure looking towards the light outside. The photograph allows different generations to occupy the same space while suggesting that their ideas of the future may not be identical.

Kami's styling moves between contemporary silhouettes, patterned fabrics, casual clothing and more expressive fashion pieces. Rather than separating fashion from its surroundings, the editorial allows garments to interact with the colours, textures and architecture of the house.

A grey dress stands against intricate red carpets, a bright printed dress punctuates the blue walls of a kitchen, a young man in a white vest is photographed against magenta fabric trimmed with gold fringe; these combinations give the images their distinctive visual rhythm.

The approach also challenges a familiar expectation placed on fashion imagery from countries with strong craft traditions: that cultural identity must always be expressed through recognisable heritage garments. Here, identity is present in the entire image. It lives in the architecture, the gestures, the domestic objects and the relationships between the people photographed.

Perhaps the editorial's clearest statement comes through two portraits presented together. One shows a dark-haired young man against a richly coloured textile backdrop. The other features a red-haired young woman photographed in front of a traditional carpet. Their appearances suggest different backgrounds, yet both are Uzbek.

The juxtaposition addresses the central question of US BEKS: who gets to decide what a national identity should look like?

The title itself separates the sound of “Uzbeks” into “US” and “BEKS”, emphasising the idea of different individuals belonging to a shared culture. That idea runs through the entire project, from the youngest subjects to an older man photographed beneath a crescent moon, his portrait carrying references to age, experience and cultural memory.

For Narciso, whose wider photographic practice focuses on understanding communities through the people who inhabit them, the project also reflects the value of collaboration across cultural perspectives. For Akhmed, it contributes to an evolving visual language for contemporary Uzbekistan, one that can acknowledge inherited traditions while making space for new expressions of identity.

The photographs leave room for contradiction, individuality and change. And perhaps that is what makes US BEKS feel so contemporary: it allows a country to be seen through the many people who call it home.

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Creative Directors: Kami Akhmed / @meningismimkamilla, Francisco Narciso / @franarciso, and César Augusto

Executive Producer: Zarina Tuydjanova / @ztuydjanova

Talents:Aleksandr Lebedenko / @minialex_sb , Madina Rashidova / @tua_madre_ma, Ravshan Ibragimov / @oga_2880, Safina Atadjanova / @athenascuriosity, Saidkhon Sobirjonov / @saidxon__s

MUAH: Elmira Haydarova / @kambek_makeup

Stylist Assistant: Mariyam Sakhobova / @mariyam.sakh

Camera Technician: Igor Mazurkiewicz / @imazurkiewicz

Gaffer: Aziz Rustamov / @azizframes

Sparks: Asxat Zulfikqarov / @askhatzulfikharov, Burxan Quttibayev / @burxan_quttibayev

Location Manager: Vohid Mirzamatov / @vohid_mahmudjonivich

There's something about the way Muzi Sufi gets dressed that makes even the simplest pieces feel like a statement. Sharp shoulders, exaggerated proportions, beautifully tailored trousers and an almost instinctive understanding of how to make a silhouette interesting.

Her wardrobe is largely built around a restrained palette of blacks, browns, greys and whites, but there's nothing predictable about it.

A Pakistani photographer, visual storyteller and content creator based in Dubai, Muzi has developed an aesthetic that feels as considered behind the camera as it does in front of it. Her eye for composition, shape and detail naturally extends to the way she dresses, where masculine tailoring meets feminine touches, and familiar wardrobe staples are constantly reimagined. In January 2025, that vision took on a new dimension with The Urban Muse, a six-piece capsule collection created in collaboration with Wear That. Inspired by the architecture of city landscapes, the collection translated her love of sculptural shoulders, geometric lines and understated colours into pieces designed for everyday wear.

For Muzi, personal style is also something deeply rooted in memory. She has spoken about growing up watching her mother get dressed with care, even for the most ordinary occasions, an early lesson in the quiet confidence that comes from feeling put together.

For our latest edition of The Way She Wears, we step inside Muzi's world to discover the pieces, influences and instincts behind her distinctive approach to getting dressed.

The Way She Wears (TWSW) is our way of spotlighting women whose style feels personal, intuitive and entirely their own. Not trends, not formulas, just a point of view.

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‍Muzi’s ID”: name, origin, profession

Muzi is a nickname my best friend from 6th grade gave me, and it just sort of stuck. I’m a Pakistani photographer and I love to artistically depict pretty much everything, especially fashion or interior related things.

When did you know you’d be working in fashion/ the creative industry?

I started as a photographer in Lahore and fell in love with the space it gave me to express myself. I’d always been drawn to fashion, but getting to shoot so many beautiful clothes up close was really something else. As a photographer, it’s almost like getting a very detailed education on what works on a model and why. We have the most exquisite fabrics and artisans in Pakistan, and I think it inspired me to just continue being in the creative space forever.

Who are you fashion icons?

Christine Centenera

The Olsen Twins

Rosie Huntington Whitley

What are 3 brands you could wear forever?

Saint Laurent

Wardrobe NYC

Toteme

Four staples everyone should own?

1. Commando Butter Tank Bodysuit in Coffee - blends in with the body and it's not suffocatingly tight. It's an incredible piece to layer underneath to make something less transparent. I even love wearing it under a blazer so that the fabric shows without distracting from the outfit, giving the look of a low neckline suit but it's still modest.

2. A black everyday long sleeved top. Be careful that it's something that won't lose its shape or start pilling. I think getting something really good quality will ensure you can wear it multiple times a week forever. I have an incredible one from Khaite that's ruched all over with fitted long sleeves, but you can find similar options on revolve.

3. A power blazer. I think it's important that it doesn't step too far into the relaxed work-blazer look. I think a good amount of padded shoulder helps to keep it cool, especially with a bit of a crop. I think The Mannei has done this exceptionally.

4. Jeanssss. But I really do think it's worth investing in that perfect shape. My favourite ones are still the Alaia round denim I got a few years ago. They look so beautiful and the jeans are the whole outfit. I also love Citizens of Humanity for a more relaxed look and feel. If in doubt, go for the darker wash; it works beautifully day and night.

What are the regional brands you love right now?

Ilai Sarai - absolutely stunning pieces. I think it’s an easy line to cross when making a sculptural or theatric piece - you only feel like wearing them a few times. But Saina has perfected the art of making something incredibly impressive to look at that also feels very comfortable to wear, if that makes sense.

House Janolo. This is a phenomenal jewellery brand. So statement and you can’t stop looking at the pieces.

Rebirth.sa is also such a beautiful brand. The designer plays with textures so well it’s the most elevated bohemian style I’ve come across.

Your fashion most special possession?

My wedding dress by Bunto Kazmi.

⁠A piece worth investing in?

Watches & Jewellery always. If it’s a piece of clothing, then get the jacket/blazer. It’s a solid piece to wear with many different outfits, the quality will stand the test of time, and many jacket styles can still accommodate a size change. Size up if you want to, there’s no harm. I really do think the jackets/blazers are forever pieces.

Your current favourite song, book or tv show?

I recently watched When Life Gives You Tangerines. It destroyed me in the most beautiful of ways - it makes you reassess everything you know about how much your parents have tried to do for you.

Peter Philips takes inspiration from gingerbread, glazed confections and the magic of 30 Avenue Montaigne for Dior's Cinnamon Glaze holiday collection, fronted by Deva Cassel.

Forget the predictable festive red lip for a moment. This holiday season, Dior is serving something considerably sweeter. Cinnamon-dusted eyelids, caramel browns, frosted blue shimmer and lips that sparkle at the slightest press: welcome to Cinnamon Glaze, Dior Makeup's Holiday 2026 collection.

Dreamed up by Peter Philips, Creative and Image Director for Dior Makeup, the collection takes its inspiration from the maison's legendary 30 Avenue Montaigne address, reimagined as a fantastical gingerbread house for the festive season. And while the inspiration might sound like something straight out of a Christmas fairytale, the makeup itself feels surprisingly wearable. There are two distinct moods at play: warm, gourmand shades that flatter the eyes with golden honey and toasted cinnamon, and cooler, icy metallics for anyone who prefers their holiday glamour with a little more edge.

“For this holiday season's look, you can be festive, delightful and delicious in cool tones or in warm tones, matte, luminous or sparkling!” says Philips. “This collection is a real treat, like a guilty pleasure. Enjoy!”

If there's one product destined to steal the spotlight, it's the Rouge Dior Sequin Liquid Duo.

The double-ended lipstick comes in ten new shades, ranging from 100 Sweet Nude and 729 Biscuit, a soft rosewood, to 973 Sweet Spice, a deep brownish red, and 966 Red Velvet, an intense purple-toned red. But the real attraction is the finish.

One end delivers a highly pigmented, transfer-resistant liquid lipstick that reveals a sparkling effect when the lips are pressed together. The other contains a clear gloss that can be layered over the colour for even more shine.

It's a clever little party trick, particularly for anyone who likes their makeup to make an entrance. Philips describes the new shades as ranging “from delicate nudes to bolder and deeper rosewoods and reds, but all with a spectacular sparkling finish that reveals itself after pinching your lips.”

For a more traditional lipstick, Rouge Dior returns in four limited-edition shades, including 232 Glazed Peach, a pearlescent peach with rose-gold shimmer; 297 Glazed Violet, an iridescent violet with blue reflects; and 833 Cinnamon Kiss, a warm cinnamon nude with a velvet finish.

Even the packaging gets dressed for the occasion, with Dior's signature cannage motif and Médaillon detailing.

The collection's two Diorshow 5 Couleurs palettes offer very different interpretations of festive beauty. 623 Cinnamon Glaze is the obvious choice for lovers of warm-toned makeup. Think biscuit brown, caramelised orange, golden honey and soft nude shades that can be worn as a subtle wash of colour or built into something richer for evening.

Then there's 926 Frosted Delights, which takes the opposite approach. Icy blues, antique gold, satin beige and highly pigmented silver make for a decidedly cooler palette. It's the sort of colour combination that could look particularly striking with barely-there skin and a softly defined lip.

Matching Diorshow Stylo pencils complete both looks, with 979 Pearly Brown offering a glittering chocolate shade and 236 Pearly Blue introducing a shimmering sky-blue accent. And if you've been waiting for an excuse to revisit metallic eye makeup, consider this your invitation.

Holiday makeup wouldn't be complete without a generous helping of glow (at least in our household). The Dior Forever Glow Luminizer arrives in 029 Frozen Médallion, a peach-toned highlighting powder with golden shimmer, while the Dior Backstage Rosy Glow Stick introduces two playful shades.

873 Pink Delight is a vibrant pink, while 172 Frosted Blue looks decidedly unconventional in the stick but transforms into a pink-toned finish on the cheeks, thanks to the formula's pH-responsive colour technology. The result is a collection that encourages a little experimentation without abandoning the polished complexion Dior is known for.

The gourmand theme extends all the way to the fingertips. Dior Vernis appears in two limited-edition shades: 713 Frosted Gold, a spiced golden glitter, and 767 Golden Cinnamon, a cooler frosted gold.

Both are designed to complement the collection's eye palettes, making the case for coordinating makeup without looking overly matched.

Deva Cassel Brings Dior's Holiday Fantasy to Life

Fronting the campaign is Deva Cassel, who embodies the collection's two contrasting beauty looks. Warm Glaze pairs cinnamon-toned eyes and nails with sparkling nude-beige lips, while Frosted Glaze takes a more dramatic direction with metallic blue and silver eyes, glittering brick-red lips and golden nails.

Set against the fantasy of Dior's transformed 30 Avenue Montaigne, the campaign leans fully into the pleasure of festive dressing up.

See more on Dior.com

The British lifestyle brand turns to cashmere, tactile textiles and atmospheric lighting for its autumn 2026 collection, exploring how subtle changes in material and texture can make contemporary interiors feel warmer and more inviting.

As autumn approaches, the focus of interior design shifts towards warmer materials, layered textiles and softer lighting. For British lifestyle brand The White Company, this seasonal transition is explored through The Art of Cocooning, a collection of home accessories, fragrances and relaxed wardrobe essentials centred on domestic comfort. The collection draws on the brand's signature palette of white, cream and muted neutrals, introducing contrast through natural fibres, textured surfaces and the interplay of light and shadow.

This time around, The White Company takes a more restrained approach to autumn home decor, using individual objects to introduce warmth and character into existing spaces.

Cashmere and Sheepskin Bring Texture to Minimalist Interiors

Texture forms the foundation of The White Company's autumn collection, with cashmere and sheepskin introducing contrasting finishes into neutral interiors.

The Pure Cashmere Throw, priced at AED 2,135, is woven from a combination of recycled and virgin cashmere sourced in Italy. Lightweight and softly structured, the textile can be draped over a sofa or layered across the foot of a bed, adding depth to otherwise minimal furnishings.

Alongside it, the Tibetan Sheepskin Cushion introduces a more expressive material quality. Priced at AED 438, the cushion features naturally long, curly wool sourced from the Tibetan highlands, paired with a faux-suede reverse.

Its irregular texture provides a counterpoint to smooth upholstery, timber furniture and clean architectural lines.

Within contemporary interior design, where colour palettes are often deliberately limited, variations in material can become an important part of a room's composition. The combination of cashmere and sheepskin demonstrates how tactile surfaces can soften a space without compromising its simplicity.

Lighting is another central element of the collection's approach to cocooning.The Naunton Lantern, priced at AED 355, is made from hand-soldered steel and features a detailed roof and mirrored base that reflects candlelight.

Its traditional silhouette introduces a decorative contrast to the collection's otherwise pared-back aesthetic. Positioned beside an armchair, on a side table or within an entranceway, the lantern creates a smaller, more intimate pool of light.

The White Company also revisits its signature Winter fragrance, originally developed by founder Chrissie Rucker more than two decades ago. Combining cinnamon, clove and orange, the fragrance is available as a home spray, diffuser and large four-wick candle.

The Winter Indulgence Candle, priced at AED 760, is poured and hand-finished in the UK and presented in a glass vessel. The Winter Diffuser is priced at AED 165, while the Winter Home Spray retails for AED 100.

Together, these pieces explore how light and scent contribute to the atmosphere of a room, extending the idea of interior design beyond furniture and decoration.

The Art of Cocooning Extends Beyond Home Decor

The White Company's interpretation of cocooning also includes clothing and accessories designed for time spent at home.

The Stripe Detail Hoodie with Cashmere, made from a wool blend with cashmere, features a relaxed silhouette and subtle colour-block detailing around the hood, cuffs and hem. Coordinating joggers continue the understated palette, while bouclé Snuggle Socks incorporating recycled fibres introduce another tactile element.

The collection also includes Birkenstock Boston Shearling Mules, which pair a moulded footbed with a shearling lining. By incorporating clothing alongside textiles, lighting and fragrance, the collection considers the domestic environment as a space shaped by everyday routines as much as by its physical design.

The renewed interest in cocooning interiors reflects a preference for spaces that feel comfortable and personal, particularly during the cooler months.

Within The White Company's autumn 2026 collection, this is expressed through a relatively limited vocabulary of materials: cashmere, sheepskin, steel, glass and soft wool blends. The restrained colour palette allows these textures to take precedence, while candlelight and fragrance introduce additional sensory qualities.

The result is an approach to seasonal decorating that relies on layering rather than replacing, suggesting that small adjustments to textiles, lighting and accessories can alter how an interior is experienced.

For those looking to introduce warmth into minimalist spaces, The Art of Cocooning offers a study in how material contrasts and considered details can transform the atmosphere of a home.

The White Company's autumn collection is available at The Dubai Mall through its partnership with Al Tayer. Discover more on TheWhiteCompany.com

From glow-boosting facials to three-hour body rituals and treatments designed for a better night's rest, Raffles Spa Dubai is putting the pleasure back into slowing down.

In this day and age, there are few things more luxurious these days than being completely unreachable. No emails, no WhatsApp notifications, no compulsive Instagram scrolling; just an hour or two in which nobody needs anything from you. At Raffles Spa Dubai, leaving your phone outside is part of the experience. And for anyone whose calendar is permanently overflowing, that alone sounds rather appealing.

This October, the spa at Raffles Dubai is introducing a collection of beauty and wellness experiences that make a compelling case for slowing down. Think sculpting facial massages, nourishing botanical treatments, sleep-inspired body rituals and a particularly indulgent three-hour escape.

The Facials Your Tired Skin Has Been Waiting For

If your skin is looking a little worse for wear after too many late nights, flights or hours spent in air conditioning, Queen Skin Therapy is designed with exactly that in mind.

The 75-minute facial uses nourishing actives to replenish moisture, improve the appearance of skin texture and leave the complexion looking fresh and dewy. At AED 520, it's a tempting option for anyone craving a little extra hydration.

For those whose stress tends to settle somewhere between their shoulders and their jawline, there's Tension Reset. This 75-minute treatment combines a targeted massage focusing on the back, neck and shoulders with the spa's Skin HIIT Facial, which incorporates energising and lifting facial massage techniques.

It's an appealing combination: a little attention for your perpetually tense upper body, followed by some much-needed TLC for your complexion.

Then there's the Pink October Women's Wellness Journey, which might just be the most indulgent appointment on the spa's October menu.

The 180-minute experience begins with a full-body exfoliation before moving into a grounding massage featuring focused abdominal work. A personalised facial enriched with nutrient-rich botanicals rounds things off. It's the kind of treatment best enjoyed without anything scheduled afterwards.

At AED 990, the three-hour ritual offers a head-to-toe approach to beauty and relaxation, with enough time to properly settle into the experience.

Of course, no amount of skincare can make up for the feeling of being permanently exhausted. For those in need of a little downtime, Herbal Sleep Cocoon brings together a lavender body scrub, herbal wrap and scalp massage in a 60-minute ritual designed around relaxation.

Meanwhile, Mindful Dreams combines a Balinese-style massage with guided meditation and breathwork over 90 minutes.

There's also Essence of Arabia, a 90-minute treatment incorporating massage, sound healing and elements inspired by Arabian wellness traditions, while Aroma Touch uses essential oils and massage for an aromatherapy-focused experience.

And if your idea of relaxation involves extending your appointment for as long as possible, Raffles Spa also has a sauna, steam room, whirlpool and outdoor swimming pool.

Perhaps the real luxury isn't the promise of a transformed complexion or a perfectly sculpted face. It's having the time to enjoy the experience without immediately rushing back into the world.

And in Dubai, that might be the most desirable beauty treatment of all.

Raffles Spa Dubai — The Details

Located at Raffles Dubai, Sheikh Rashid Road, Wafi.

October treatment highlights include Queen Skin Therapy (75 minutes, AED 520), Tension Reset (75 minutes, AED 500) and Pink October Women's Wellness Journey (180 minutes, AED 990).

For bookings, visit www.raffles.com/dubai or call +971 4 324 8888.

In September 2026, Ramallah hosted the first-ever Palestine Design Week. We spoke to director Shadi Abou Baker and curator Doreen Toutikian about the years it took to make it happen, the extraordinary knowledge behind Palestinian design, and why the theme ‘Without Permission’ feels particularly significant.

There is something rather powerful about calling a design week Without Permission, especially in Palestine. For ten days, from September 15 to 24, 2026, Ramallah became the setting for the inaugural Palestine Design Week, bringing together Palestinian designers, architects, craftspeople, artists and researchers through exhibitions, installations, workshops and conversations.

The first edition was a long time coming. And while the event marked an important milestone for Palestine's creative community, its theme raised questions that extended well beyond design: Who gets to create? Who decides what deserves recognition? And why should an entire culture of making have to wait for permission to be seen?

For director Shadi Abou Baker and curator Doreen Toutikian, those questions were central to the project.

Palestine Design Week: An Idea Eight Years in the Making

Although Palestine Design Week made its debut in September 2026, the idea had been taking shape for years.

“The idea of having a Palestine Design Week first emerged in 2018,” explains Shadi Abou Baker, the event's director. “It was an idea that stayed with us, but its development was interrupted first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by the war and wider crisis in Gaza.”

It wasn't until 2024 that the possibility of bringing the event to life became more concrete. But why did Palestine need a design week in the first place?

“The idea was therefore less about creating another ‘design event’ and more about identifying a gap,” Shadi tells JDEED. “Palestine already had strong art institutions, film festivals, architecture programmes and cultural festivals, but there was no national platform bringing together designers, architects, craftspeople, artists, researchers and the wider public around design as a cultural practice.”

That opportunity eventually came through Mishkal, an EU-supported programme implemented by the Goethe-Institut and British Council in Palestine.

“The idea had been there since 2018. What changed was that the Mishkal project made it possible to finally turn that idea into reality.” The result was Palestine's first national platform dedicated to design, with the ambition of creating connections between disciplines, generations and creative practices that had previously lacked a shared space.

Why ‘Without Permission’ Became the Theme of Palestine Design Week 2026

For curator Doreen Toutikian, the theme was born from conversations with her Palestinian colleagues Izz, Asma and Ahmad, as well as the submissions received through the event's open call. Rather than arriving with a predetermined concept, she found herself listening to what the work was already saying. “There is an intelligent form of resilience and resistance in their work, throughout every step of the process,” she explains.

What struck her most was that these practices were already taking place, long before Palestine Design Week existed. “The soapmaker in Nablus was not waiting to be discovered. The architect prototyping demountable homes for Gaza had not paused for the right funding cycle. The student recording oral histories on battery-powered equipment was doing it because the work needed doing, regardless of the conditions.”

There is something especially poignant about that observation. While a design week might give these practices a larger audience, the creativity itself has never depended on the existence of a festival, an institution or international recognition. “I remember saying to my colleagues that my job was not to invent any new idea here, but to synthesize from all their input,” Doreen continues. “We were describing something that had been true for generations and simply had not been named.”

And so, Without Permission became the title.

“It is a description of how Palestinian design knowledge has actually been produced and transmitted, across occupation, across fragmentation, across the absence of the institutions that elsewhere would have housed and funded and legitimised it.”

The name also established an attitude for the new platform itself. “A first edition sets the terms for everything that follows. I did not want this platform to be asking permission to enter an existing conversation. The work does not need that, and neither does the platform.”

Palestinian creativity is frequently discussed internationally through the lens of conflict, resistance and survival. These realities are impossible to ignore. But Doreen believes that this framing can also obscure the extraordinary depth of Palestinian design knowledge.

“When I first started working on PDW, I was struck by how much the international frame flattens the diversity and creativity of work produced in Palestine,” she says.

“Palestinian cultural production arrives abroad already classified as testimony. The maker becomes a witness, the object becomes evidence, and the knowledge inside the work disappears entirely.”

It is a particularly striking observation, and one that challenges the way cultural work from Palestine is often presented to international audiences.

Because behind the objects themselves lie generations of experimentation, technique and accumulated expertise. “Palestinian soapmaking carries centuries of accumulated technical knowledge. Embroidery encodes region, status, and origin with extraordinary precision, a visual language with its own grammar and regional dialects.”

Doreen points to ceramics, tilework, vernacular architecture and metalwork as further examples of the knowledge embedded in Palestinian craft traditions.

“What I hope people encounter here is design knowledge with its own methods and its own standards,” she explains. “It developed largely outside the institutions and publications that define the discipline internationally, and I have come to see that as a comment on those institutions more than on the work.”

It's an important shift in perspective. Palestinian design doesn't need to be validated through an international institution to be considered sophisticated or relevant.

And in many ways, its practices are remarkably contemporary. “Contemporary design is preoccupied right now with scarcity, repair, local production, and making outside extractive supply chains. Palestinian practitioners have been working on exactly these questions out of necessity for decades (...) There is genuine expertise here, and the exchange should run both ways,” she explains.

How Do You Talk About Design Under Occupation Without Romanticising Hardship?

One of the most difficult questions surrounding Without Permission is how to acknowledge the restrictions Palestinian designers face without turning those restrictions into a romantic story about creativity flourishing through adversity. Doreen is especially thoughtful on this point.

“This was a very important point that came from my Palestinian colleagues, and the one we returned to most often. I would say we hold a position rather than having resolved it.”

She explains how easily narratives about resilience can become problematic. “Constraint gets reframed as a kind of gift, hardship becomes an aesthetic, and somewhere in that movement the people and policies producing the constraint vanish.”

What remains, she suggests, is admiration for the work without sufficient attention to the conditions shaping it. “Our position is that these conditions are imposed, deliberate, and maintained,” she says.

‍“Restrictions on movement, legal prohibition on using certain natural resources, destroyed infrastructure, the pressure of global markets on local production. These are structures, not circumstances, and naming them precisely is part of the curatorial work.”

It's a distinction that changes how we understand the work on display. A designer finding an alternative way to work with restricted materials has developed genuine technical knowledge. But that achievement doesn't make the restriction itself any less unjust.

“When a designer develops a method for working with materials that are legally restricted, that method is real design knowledge. Its value does not depend on the restriction, and the restriction is not redeemed by what it produced.”

Perhaps Doreen's most memorable observation comes from a conversation with her colleagues about the difference between two words that are often used interchangeably.

“Resilience describes absorbing something. Agency describes deciding (...) What we saw in the submissions, consistently, was the latter.”

And that feels like one of the most important messages to emerge from Palestine Design Week. These designers are making choices, developing methods, preserving knowledge and imagining new possibilities. They are active participants in shaping their creative landscape, even when the conditions around them attempt to limit it.

What Happened at the First Palestine Design Week in Ramallah?

Under the theme Without Permission, the inaugural Palestine Design Week brought together a ten-day programme of exhibitions, installations, workshops, performances, talks and tours across cultural and creative spaces in Ramallah. The programme explored design as something deeply connected to everyday life, encompassing craft, architecture, materials, production, cultural memory and contemporary experimentation.

It also opened up conversations between practitioners whose work is not always grouped together under the same definition of design. This broader understanding of the discipline was central to the event's purpose.

For Shadi, Palestine Design Week was conceived as a platform that could connect different forms of creative knowledge and give designers, craftspeople, architects and researchers opportunities to exchange ideas. For Doreen, the curatorial challenge was to make visible the richness of those practices without imposing an outside narrative upon them.

And together, those ambitions gave Without Permission its distinctive character: an invitation to encounter Palestinian design on its own terms.

What's Next for Palestine Design Week?

With the first edition now behind them, the question becomes what Palestine Design Week could look like in the years ahead. Shadi is clear that growth isn't simply a matter of attracting more visitors or producing a larger event.

“For the next editions, I think the ambition is not simply to make Palestine Design Week bigger, but to make it deeper, more connected and more sustainable.”

He hopes future editions will reach more communities and create stronger relationships across different creative disciplines.

“We want to expand the geographical reach of the programme, strengthen connections between different design disciplines and practices, and create more opportunities for designers, craftspeople, architects, artists, researchers and communities to work together.”

There is also a desire to move beyond exhibitions as the primary way of presenting design.

“We also want to give greater space to research, experimentation, production and critical discussion, rather than treating design only as an exhibition or a presentation of finished work.”

Ultimately, the goal is to establish something lasting, with its own identity and a meaningful role in Palestine's cultural landscape. “Most importantly, I think Palestine Design Week should continue to develop its own identity. It should respond to the Palestinian context and to the questions that matter here, while remaining connected to wider regional and international conversations around design (...) The ambition is for it to become a recurring platform that not only presents Palestinian design, but actively contributes to how design is understood, practiced and discussed in Palestine.”

That is maybe the most exciting part of this first edition. Palestine Design Week has created a new space for conversations that were already happening, practices that were already evolving and knowledge that has been passed down for generations.

Without Permission was an introduction and what comes next could be even more interesting.

Every October, the UAE turns a little pink. Restaurants introduce special menus, hotels dress up their afternoon teas and cocktails suddenly come in every imaginable shade of rose.But beyond the pretty drinks and pink decorations, we wanted to know something more important: where is the money actually going?

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2026, we've rounded up initiatives across Dubai and Abu Dhabi that are raising funds, supporting survivors or helping keep conversations around breast cancer awareness going.

Because there's a difference between a pink-themed experience and one that makes a financial contribution to a cause, we've made that distinction clear throughout.

Where Your Money Goes: Pink October Fundraisers

carine: Together for More

Emirates Golf Club, Dubai

There's something especially meaningful about a restaurant using its platform to bring people together for a cause, and this October, carine is doing exactly that. Through its Together for More initiative, the French-Mediterranean restaurant is joining the Breast Cancer Awareness Month conversation with a charitable contribution that goes directly towards supporting breast cancer-related work.

The give-back: AED 100 from the initiative is donated in full to Al Jalila Foundation.

Above Eleven: An Evening That Gives Back

Dubai

If you're looking for a Pink October event that combines a night out with a tangible contribution, Above Eleven has one worth putting in the diary.The restaurant is hosting a special experience on October 28, with a portion of the ticket price dedicated to breast cancer awareness and support through Al Jalila Foundation.

The details: October 28. AED 299 per person.

The give-back: AED 149 from each ticket goes to Al Jalila Foundation. That's almost half the ticket price, with a clearly stated charitable contribution.

Banyan Tree Dubai: Wellness With a Purpose

Bluewaters Island, Dubai

A little time to yourself can go a long way, particularly when it supports something bigger. Banyan Tree Dubai is making self-care a little more meaningful with two initiatives supporting Al Jalila Foundation. On October 24, the hotel is hosting a women-only Charity Wellbeing Retreat featuring Kundalini yoga, breathwork and meditation, followed by a breast cancer awareness talk with Maison Santé and breakfast at Tocha.

Can't make it? Throughout October, the hotel's Pink Package offers a 90-minute spa treatment with a charitable contribution.

The details: October 24 retreat, 8:30am, AED 270 per person. Pink Package available October 1–31.

The give-back: 100% of retreat proceeds and 10% of the net spa treatment price go to Al Jalila Foundation.

SUSHISAMBA Abu Dhabi: Pink Treats for a Cause

Abu Dhabi

SUSHISAMBA is getting involved in Pink October with a few specially created additions to its menu, proving that even a dessert or mocktail can make a difference.

Throughout the month, guests can choose the restaurant's pink-themed dessert and mocktail, or enjoy its Taste of Samba menu, with a fixed contribution from each qualifying purchase going towards Emirates Cancer Society.

The give-back: AED 30 from every participating pink dessert or mocktail and AED 5 from each Taste of Samba menu go to Emirates Cancer Society.

Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som: Pinktober, the Mindful Way

Qatar

A little wellness with a lot of purpose. This October, Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som is hosting A Journey of Prevention, Nourishment & Wellbeing, a half-day event dedicated to breast cancer awareness and women's health, in partnership with Doha Women Forum and Qatar Cancer Society.

Expect conversations with medical experts and a breast cancer survivor on prevention, early detection, nutrition and hormonal health, alongside guided breathwork, sound healing and a nourishing, TAIM-inspired lunch at the resort's Acacia restaurant.

The details: Saturday, October 24, 10am–2pm. Open to the public, with limited places and advance booking required. WhatsApp: +974 4477 6555.

The give-back: An awareness and education initiative supporting women's health conversations.

The St. Regis Abu Dhabi: Afternoon Tea With a Little More Meaning

Nation Towers, Abu Dhabi

Afternoon tea is already a rather lovely way to spend an afternoon, but this October, The St. Regis Abu Dhabi is giving the ritual an additional purpose.

The hotel is offering a special Breast Cancer Awareness Month afternoon tea, with a contribution from each experience supporting Al Jalila Foundation.

The details: October 19–31. AED 300 per afternoon tea experience.

The give-back: AED 20 from each afternoon tea sale goes to Al Jalila Foundation.

Also at St. Regis Abu Dhabi, Nation Riviera Beach Club has A Pink Riviera Day Out. For those who would rather spend their October weekends by the water, Nation Riviera Beach Club is hosting Pink Riviera, a ladies-only cabana daycation with a charitable element.

The experience includes lunch, pink beverages, fresh fruit and water, making it an easy excuse to gather your friends for a day in the sun.

The details: Fridays to Sundays throughout October. AED 500 for a single cabana package or AED 850 for two.

The give-back: A portion of proceeds supports Breast Cancer Awareness Month initiatives.

INTENDED Café: A Pink Matcha With a Purpose

Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi

A pink cloud on your matcha? Yes, please. This October, INTENDED Café is introducing two limited-edition treats for Breast Cancer Awareness Month: the Pink Cloud Matcha, made with ceremonial-grade matcha, raspberry-coconut foam and a touch of agave, and a Double Chocolate Raspberry Cookie. Both are made without refined sugar, and the cookie is gluten-free.

The details: Available throughout October. Pink Cloud Matcha AED 43; Double Chocolate Raspberry Cookie AED 20.

The give-back: AED 3 from every Pink Cloud Matcha sold will be donated in support of breast cancer awareness.

The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai: From Pink Afternoon Tea to Fitness and Floating Meditation

JBR, Dubai

The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai is offering two rather different ways to mark Pinktober. Throughout October, The Lobby Lounge is serving a special pink-themed afternoon tea, while October 28 brings Fit & Float, an evening combining a 45-minute Barry's workout, 45 minutes of floating sound meditation with Beyond Wellness and dinner at Caña Beach.

A little indulgence or a little movement? Either way, there's a charitable element.

The details: Afternoon tea available daily until October 31, from AED 220 per person. Fit & Float takes place October 28, 7–9pm, AED 329 per person.

The give-back: A percentage of proceeds from both experiences will support Al Jalila Foundation's breast cancer research and treatment initiatives. The exact percentage hasn't been specified.

Bookings: +971 4 318 6150 for afternoon tea, or The Ritz-Carlton Dubai.

W Abu Dhabi, Yas Island: Brunch for a Cause

Yas Island, Abu Dhabi

If your weekends usually involve a long lunch and a little music, W Abu Dhabi's Garage Brunch is adding a charitable element to its October Saturdays. The hotel's popular brunch experience is taking part in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, with a portion of proceeds supporting Al Jalila Foundation.

The details: Every Saturday throughout October, from 1pm to 4pm. Packages priced at AED 390, AED 475 and AED 590.

The give-back: A portion of brunch proceeds goes to Al Jalila Foundation.

The Abu Dhabi EDITION: A Pink Ribbon Worth Wearing

Al Bateen Marina, Abu Dhabi

Sometimes, the smallest gesture can have the clearest impact. Throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month, The Abu Dhabi EDITION is offering a special Pink Ribbon Pin, with proceeds supporting Al Jalila Foundation. The hotel is also introducing pink-themed food and beverage offerings as part of its October initiative, giving guests a few different ways to participate.

The give-back: 100% of proceeds from the Pink Ribbon Pin go to Al Jalila Foundation. A portion of proceeds from selected pink menu items is also donated, although the percentage hasn't been specified.

Pierre's TT: A Little Pink, a Lot of Heart

Dubai Festival City, Dubai

A pink cocktail with a purpose? We're listening.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Pierre's TT is introducing the Velours Rose, a blush-coloured creation combining fresh strawberries, lemon and vanilla, finished with a silky foam. A mocktail option is also part of the Pink October offering. But there's something more meaningful behind the pretty presentation. Revenue from the special drink will help fund an event honouring breast cancer survivors, organised in collaboration with Brest Friends.

It's a thoughtful reminder that Pink October is also about celebrating the women who have lived through breast cancer and creating spaces where their experiences are recognised.

The details: Available throughout October. Velours Rose cocktail priced at AED 75. Pierre's TT opens Tuesday to Saturday from 6:30pm. Reservations: +971 56 511 3356

The give-back: Revenue from the drink supports a breast cancer survivor appreciation event in collaboration with Brest Friends. This is event funding rather than a stated direct donation to the organisation.

There's no shortage of ways to participate in Pink October, whether that means booking a special dinner, treating yourself to an afternoon tea or supporting a fundraising event. But we think it's equally important to know what our participation actually supports.

Some initiatives donate every dirham of proceeds, others contribute a fixed amount or percentage, and some are primarily about raising awareness. All have different roles to play, but transparency matters.

So this October, enjoy the pink cocktails, bring your friends and make the reservations. Just remember to look beyond the colour and ask where your money is going.

Because awareness is important. And when it comes with meaningful action, it's even better.

If you grew up in Lebanon in the 2000s, chances are Fadi El Khatib needs little introduction. Nicknamed “The Lebanese Tiger,” he was the kind of basketball player who could make an entire country stop what it was doing to watch a game.

Three FIBA World Cups, three Asian Championship silver medals and, of course, that unforgettable victory against France at the 2006 World Cup. For a generation of Lebanese sports fans, El Khatib was practically a household name.

These days, however, he's making moves of a different kind. The former professional basketball player turned entrepreneur is preparing to open Club 15, an ambitious new sports and lifestyle destination in Dubai's Al Quoz neighbourhood. Spanning an impressive 15,000 square metres, the project is expected to open in October 2026, bringing together everything from basketball and padel to Pilates, recovery treatments, cafés and family activities.

And while Dubai certainly isn't short of impressive fitness facilities, El Khatib has something slightly different in mind. It's more than just a gym: “I didn't want to build another gym. I wanted to build a home for sport,” El Khatib explains. Somewhere people can train, compete, recover, bring their children, meet friends or simply enjoy a coffee.

It's a concept that feels particularly relevant in a city where fitness has increasingly become part of a wider lifestyle. After all, for many people, the gym is already somewhere to socialise, work remotely or spend a few hours between meetings.

Club 15 takes that idea considerably further. At its centre is a 5,700-square-metre gym spread across two floors, with dedicated areas for strength training, cardio, boxing, HIIT and functional fitness. There's also Reformer Pilates, yoga and an open-air rooftop training space overlooking Al Quoz. For those who prefer a little competition, the club will feature seven professional indoor padel courts and three basketball courts, with facilities designed to accommodate everything from casual games to youth academies and organised leagues.

And because even the most enthusiastic gym-goers need a break, there's an extensive wellness offering too. Think a heated 25-metre swimming pool, ice baths, infrared saunas, hydrotherapy facilities and a dedicated physiotherapy clinic. The idea is to make recovery just as much a part of the experience as the workout itself.

And it's a place for the whole family: One of the more interesting aspects of Club 15 is its approach to family life.

Rather than designing a space exclusively for adults, El Khatib has imagined somewhere different generations can spend time together without necessarily doing the same thing. While parents attend a Pilates class or play padel, younger visitors can explore dedicated children's facilities, gymnastics, parkour or basketball academies.

The club will also include lounges, a gaming area, a podcast studio and spaces where members can work, meet friends or simply hang out. Adidas, Red Bull and Joe & The Juice are among the brands involved in the project. It's an approach that reflects how our relationship with fitness is changing. Increasingly, people want destinations that fit into their everyday routines, rather than requiring them to organise their lives around a single workout.

Why 15?

For anyone familiar with El Khatib's basketball career, the name is hardly a mystery. Fifteen was his jersey number throughout his professional life, becoming almost synonymous with his identity on the court. Today, his sons, who are also professional basketball players, carry the same number.

It's a personal detail that gives the project an emotional dimension beyond its impressive square footage.

After more than 25 years in professional basketball, El Khatib has spent much of his life surrounded by training facilities, athletes and sporting communities. That experience has shaped his understanding of what makes people return to a place, whether it's the quality of the equipment, the people they meet or simply the feeling of belonging. Club 15 is, in many ways, an attempt to translate that experience into something accessible to a much wider audience.

The former athlete is already familiar with the business side of fitness, having founded Champs Sports & Fitness Club and developed a network of sporting destinations in the UAE. But Club 15 represents a considerably larger vision.

And perhaps that's what makes the project worth watching. Beyond the courts, pools and impressive facilities, there's an idea about the role sport can play in bringing people together.

For someone whose career once brought thousands of Lebanese fans together around a basketball game, it feels like a rather fitting next chapter.

Club 15 is scheduled to open in October 2026 in Al Quoz, Dubai.

Website: club15.ae
Instagram: @club15.ae

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Club 15 Dubai, Fadi El Khatib, Dubai fitness clubs, Al Quoz Dubai, Lebanese basketball legend, Dubai wellness, new gyms in Dubai

There's a lot happening creatively in Saudi Arabia right now, and some of the most interesting voices are the ones doing things entirely their own way.

For its latest regional campaign, Gap Middle East has brought together six Saudi talents across art, music, film, skateboarding and fashion, offering a glimpse into the different creative worlds shaping the Kingdom today. And rather than bringing everyone into a conventional fashion campaign setting, the brand has chosen to meet its protagonists where they feel most at home.

The result is a series of portraits and short films that take us into their everyday environments, creative routines and individual practices, with personal style playing a natural part in each story.

Among the featured talents is multidisciplinary artist Nouf Alhimiary, whose creative practice moves between disciplines, alongside Rakan Ghaith, skateboarder and co-founder of Sandlifers, representing a skateboarding community that has carved out its own space within Saudi youth culture.

Filmmaker Razan Alsoghayer brings cinema into the conversation, while Jeddah-based producer and singer duo Sweam & O.DEE represent the Kingdom's music scene. Completing the lineup is rising model Zahra Hussain, adding another perspective from the world of fashion.

Different backgrounds, different creative languages and, naturally, very different ways of getting dressed

Behind the camera is CHNDY, the multidisciplinary image-maker working across photography, film and creative direction, while styling comes courtesy of Ali Ammar, whose editorial eye brings a fashion dimension to each portrait without losing sight of the individuals themselves.

It's an approach that feels particularly fitting for Gap, a brand whose relationship with denim and everyday dressing has long revolved around the idea of making familiar pieces your own.

The project follows the brand's global Fall 2026 campaign, Denim on Your Own, bringing that same interest in individuality into a distinctly regional context.

What makes the campaign interesting is the range of creative disciplines it brings together. Fashion is only one part of the story. The wider picture is one of young Saudi creatives developing their own visual languages, communities and ways of expressing themselves.

And at a time when Saudi Arabia's cultural scene is attracting increasing international attention, it's refreshing to see a global fashion brand put the focus on the individuals contributing to that creative landscape.

After all, personal style is often most interesting when it tells us something about the person wearing the clothes.

Gap Middle East's Saudi creative series launched on October 2nd and can be discovered through @gapmiddleeast and the brand's regional platforms.

With Gingham Studies, the Lebanese-Australian artist turns the family table into a space for questions about home, masculinity, sexuality, shame and belonging. Now, after anonymously covering Mexico City with his photographs, Mishele is taking the work off the screen and into physical space.

There is a red-and-white gingham tablecloth running through Mishele Doueihy’s Gingham Studies. At first, it feels almost comfortingly familiar. It is the kind of pattern that belongs beneath plates of food, family lunches and the everyday rituals of home. Look a little longer, though, and things start getting stranger.

Made at his parents’ home in Sydney between 2018 and 2019, the five photographs bring together his mother’s cooking, flowers, domestic objects, water, mirrors, a wig and a condom. Humour slips into eroticism, food into sexuality, and the familiarity of the family table becomes a place to examine some much less comfortable questions.

What makes the series particularly interesting today is that Mishele himself no longer sees it in quite the same way he did when he made it: “I understood far less consciously about the work then than I understand today, and I find something beautiful in that,” he tells JDEED.

“Sometimes the work seems to know something before the artist consciously knows it.” Seven years later, Gingham Studies has travelled from that family table in Sydney to the streets of Mexico City, where 150 unsigned posters appeared across three public sites in June 2026. It is now moving towards an independently produced spatial solo exhibition planned for Mexico City Art Week in February 2027. Along the way, the work has also become something of a map of Mishele’s own changing understanding of himself.

When Mishele first began working with gingham, his attraction to it was primarily visual. He liked the grid, its graphic quality and what happened when it was distorted through water and reflection.

Only later did he begin to understand why it may have felt so instinctively right. “Gingham has this extraordinary ability to communicate home while moving across cultures

without a fixed geography,” he explains. “You can place that tablecloth in so many different parts of the world and there is immediately something familiar about it: nourishment, care, intimacy, someone preparing something for someone else, the feeling of sitting down and being received.”

For someone raised between Australia and Lebanon, that familiarity without a fixed geography took on another meaning.“For much of my life there has been this deeper question around belonging and where home actually is. For a long time I looked for home through geography, through cities, relationships, spaces and cultures.”

Looking back, the choice of gingham suddenly made sense. “I had intuitively chosen a visual field that carried the feeling of home while remaining geographically open. The language for that recognition arrived later, but the work was already holding the question.” And wherever the idea of home appears in these photographs, his mother is never very far away; she quite literally made some of what appears in them. The bolognese used in Food Porn was hers. But Mishele now sees her contribution as something much larger than what was placed in front of the camera: “She created the conditions in which I could make the work. She nourished me literally, and she nourished my expression,” he says. “I could be making something completely strange or provocative in my parents’ home and she might laugh or tell me I was crazy, but underneath that there was always a very deep permission to express myself fully.”

Towards the end of her life, his mother also became increasingly insistent on calling him an artist, even when Mishele himself wasn't quite ready to use the word: “I would describe myself through whatever professional role I was occupying at the time and she would correct me: ‘He’s an artist (...) she seemed to recognise something that I took much longer to fully claim for myself.”

Years later, while reprinting Gingham Studies in Mexico City, that memory returned with unexpected force. “I remember holding the prints and suddenly feeling as though I was communicating with the person who had made them years earlier in my parents’ home. I cried,” he says. “There was this strange feeling of looking backwards through the work and thinking: did you have any idea where this would take you?” His mother was there too, despite no longer being physically present: “There was something like a quiet message moving through time: look, Mum, I did it.”

Food isn't the only thing Mishele believes we inherit around a table. “A family table feeds us far more than food,” he says. “It feeds us ideas. It feeds us religion, gender roles, cultural values, definitions of success, definitions of propriety, ideas around the body, desire, right and wrong.”

“We sit at the table and receive all of that, often long before we have the awareness to question what we are ingesting. Then at some point in life, the deeper work becomes deciding what we actually want to digest.”

For Mishele, those questions are inseparable from growing up between Lebanon and Australia and within a Lebanese Christian family. “As a gay Lebanese man raised with Christian values, I inherited particular ideas around what a man should be, how masculinity should look, how sexuality should be expressed, and how desire sits within ideas of family, religion and belonging,” he says. “Much of the deeper work became learning how to distinguish between what felt genuinely mine and what had entered me through the projections and expectations surrounding me.”

The photographs gave him somewhere to work through that tension before he necessarily had the words to articulate it: “I could place a condom there. I could place a synthetic wig over living flowers. I could bend the gingham through water and mirrors. I could replace a meal with an image on a screen (...) there were questions I may have struggled to articulate directly at the family table, but I could ask them through the canvas of the family table, through the still life.”

Food Porn is probably the most provocative example. His mother’s bolognese is placed inside a condom, an image that is funny, uncomfortable and unexpectedly tender depending on how you choose to look at it: “My mother nourished the body through which I came into this life, and desire is part of the life that came through that body,” Mishele says now. “Sexuality belongs to that life. Expression belongs to that life. Nourishment and desire become part of the same living continuum.”

That coexistence is central to Gingham Studies. Mishele doesn't necessarily try to resolve the contradictions. He puts them together and sees what happens.

When Mishele decided to bring Gingham Studies back into the world in 2026, he could have chosen the obvious routes. A gallery. An exhibition announcement. Instagram.

Instead, on June 29, all five photographs appeared as 150 unsigned and untitled posters across three sites in Mexico City. There was no artist's name, no biography, no price, no Instagram handle and no explanation telling passers-by what they were supposed to be looking at.

“For me, the deeper why was questioning access,” he explains. “I was questioning who gets access, how access is created, and why there is such a defined pathway through which art is expected to enter the world: gallery, institution, representation, permission.”

There was also a much more personal question underneath it: “How long was I going to wait for an external structure to confirm something I was finally recognising within myself?”

Mexico City proved particularly important to that process. Mishele describes being struck by the amount of creativity that simply exists in public there: music, graffiti, food stalls, colour, posters, craft and improvisation.

“My mother had spent years telling me, ‘You are an artist,’ and Mexico City seemed to echo that permission in another language: then express.” So he did. The anonymity was intentional: “I deliberately removed my name, the titles, the price, the explanation, the website and the Instagram handle because I wanted the image to arrive before the information surrounding it,” he says. “I became curious about another condition: what happens when the person meets the work first?”

Instead of turning the posters into advertisements for Mishele, he wanted the encounter to belong to whoever happened to walk past: “They could love the work, dislike it, laugh, feel disturbed, become curious, or carry an impression of it somewhere within themselves without ever consciously resolving why.”

Or, as he puts it more simply: “Instead of leading the person towards me, I wanted the work to lead them towards themselves.” Then things got complicated.

During the intervention, Mishele’s collaborator José was arrested. Police later removed the posters, and the pair received the highest fine available under the vandalism classification. Suddenly, a conceptual exercise about permission had become very literal. “If an image is placed on a wall as an act of expression, at what point does it become vandalism? Who determines that distinction?” Mishele asks.

“Why can one image occupy enormous amounts of public space because permission has been purchased, while another image enters a completely different category because it has moved through a different relationship to authority?” Rather than seeing the arrest as something separate from the artwork, he now considers the city's response another chapter in it: “the intervention entered the city carrying one set of intentions, and the city responded with something I could never have scripted. That response enlarged the work (...) the artist initiates something, and then the world becomes a participant.”

There is another form of access Mishele has been reconsidering: Instagram. His issue isn't with the platform itself. It is with what constant availability had started to do to his relationship with his own work: “everything was available,” he says. “Someone could scroll through years of what I had created in a matter of minutes, pause on something for a few seconds, perhaps think, ‘that’s beautiful’ or ‘he’s talented,’ and then continue.”

As he returned to his archive, he began seeing connections he hadn't necessarily recognised when he first made the work: “recurring questions around perception, consciousness, home, masculinity, desire, technology and form.” His response was to remove his Instagram feed.

“Removing my Instagram feed felt like taking back my authorship,” he says. “It created space for me to re-enter a relationship with my own work before asking the outside world to have a relationship with it.”“I had reached a point where the recognition happening inside me carried more weight than the continuous reflection of being seen as creative or talented.”

For an artist preparing to make his work considerably more public, withdrawing it from the most obvious public platform might seem contradictory. For Mishele, it was precisely the point. He wanted to reconsider how, where and under what conditions the work should be encountered.

The next chapter of Gingham Studies will expand beyond photography into sculpture and installation Mishele is developing the project into a spatial solo exhibition for Mexico City Art Week, planned for February 3 to 7, 2027, with the gingham grid beginning to leave the photograph and become sculpture and installation.

“The questions inside the photographs have started exceeding the photograph,” he explains. “The gingham was originally the field that held the image together, and now I am interested in what happens when that field itself becomes form.”

Returning to Mexico City feels less like bringing an exhibition to a city than continuing something that began on its streets.

“Returning feels almost like answering a letter,” Mishele says. “The city communicated something to me, and the exhibition becomes my response: this is what I heard, this is what I learnt, this is what changed within me, and this is the form that has emerged through that exchange.”

Perhaps that is the thread running most clearly through Gingham Studies. Mishele made five photographs years ago without fully understanding everything they contained. He returned to them as a different person and found his mother, his Lebanese and Australian identities, sexuality, masculinity, religion, shame, nourishment and questions of home waiting for him inside.

Now he wants to give everyone else enough room to find something of their own there too. “I want someone to enter the work physically, to experience its scale, material, shadow, repetition and atmosphere, and to notice what happens within their own perception before language settles around the experience,” he says.

“The work has continued doing that to me. I want to give it enough space to do that to someone else.”

Follow Mishele's work on Instagram @mishele.doueihy

Trust Alessandro Michele to begin a Valentino collection with 30,000 books. For Valentino Spring/Summer 2027, Michele found his starting point in Lebanese-born author and thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb, specifically a passage from The Black Swan about the extraordinary personal library of Italian writer Umberto Eco. Taleb, who was born in Lebanon and has spoken extensively about his Lebanese upbringing, uses Eco’s library to introduce an idea he calls the “antilibrary.”

Eco reportedly owned around 30,000 books. Inevitably, visitors would look at the shelves and ask how many he had actually read. For Taleb, they were asking the wrong question. The books Eco hadn't read were arguably the most interesting ones because they represented everything he didn't yet know, all the ideas and discoveries still waiting for him.

Michele read that and thought about clothes. And suddenly, the piles of beautiful things sitting unworn in our wardrobes have a philosophical justification.

Michele's connection between an unread book and an unworn dress is actually quite lovely. Every season, hundreds of garments appear on runway; some will be bought and worn repeatedly while others will exist mainly in photographs. Some will enter collections and wardrobes only to be preserved almost like relics; and plenty of the extraordinary pieces we see during fashion month will never come anywhere near our own closets.    

Does that make them pointless? Michele doesn't think so. He compares them to the unread books in Eco's library: objects whose value isn't entirely dependent on whether we eventually “use” them. A garment can still change how we think about beauty, the body, proportion or identity without ever touching our skin.

For Michele, these clothes form “a joyful reservoir of forms, aesthetic sensibilities, silhouettes, and ways of inhabiting the body.”    

We like that idea, particularly because fashion has become slightly obsessed with proving its usefulness. Everything needs to be an investment, everything should be versatile. We calculate cost per wear and praise pieces that can apparently take us from breakfast to boardroom to dinner. Sometimes, though, you just want the completely impractical dress.

Michele takes Taleb's idea even further by connecting it to the Japanese practice of tsundoku, the habit of buying books and allowing them to accumulate unread.

Instead of treating those books as evidence of procrastination, he sees them as possibilities. Each unopened cover contains a world you haven't entered yet.    

For SS27, the runway becomes the fashion equivalent. Michele describes the show as a “visual antilibrary,” an archive filled with possibilities that don't necessarily need to become reality to have meaning. A silhouette can remain an image. A dress can stay a fantasy. A look can make you imagine a completely different version of yourself for 30 seconds and still have done something worthwhile.    

It feels very Michele. His approach to fashion has always thrived on accumulation, references, memory and the pleasure of putting seemingly distant worlds next to one another. Here, however, all that excess is given a surprisingly emotional argument.

Anyone who really loves fashion knows this feeling: you see a look come down the runway and want it immediately, despite having absolutely nowhere to wear it. You save the photograph anyway. You zoom in, imagine the party, the city, the apartment, perhaps even the personality that would accompany it. The fantasy might last a minute but Michele thinks that minute matters: “Even the garments that we will never wear, no differently than those books sitting unopened on our shelves, still speak to us of the lives we could have lived,” he writes.

And then comes the line that really stays with us: “Not as regrets, but as promises.”    

It is probably the most JDEED way we can think about this collection. Fashion doesn't always need to solve a problem, no. Its entire purpose is to make the world in your head a little bigger - just like when we were kids imagining a whole video clip in our head while listening to Britney Spears.

Valentino didn't leave the literary reference at the level of a show note: guests were asked to bring a book with them, either new or from their own libraries. The books collected around the show will be distributed to selected public libraries in Paris and other cities through Bibliothèques Sans Frontières and Fauvettes City Club.    

And somewhere between a Lebanese author's idea, Umberto Eco's 30,000 books and Alessandro Michele's Valentino, SS27 becomes a reminder of why we fell in love with fashion in the first place: not everything beautiful needs to be practical and not every dress needs an occasion...Sometimes imagining it is already part of the pleasure.

More on Valentino.com

The Marseille festival dedicated to cinema from the Arab world returns for its 13th edition with 52 films, 21 countries and a programme looking at archives, memory and the images that refuse to disappear.

There is a question sitting at the heart of this year's Aflam Festival in Marseille: what can cinema actually do when histories, people and memories are at risk of being erased? From October 10 to 18, Aflam returns for its 13th edition with nine days of screenings, conversations, restored films, workshops and encounters across Marseille. The numbers alone make it a substantial meeting point for Arab cinema: 52 films, 40 guests, 35 events and screenings, 21 countries represented and eight cinemas across the city.  

But the 2026 edition is particularly interested in what happens to cinema after a film has supposedly had its moment. Who preserves it? Who gets to tell its story again? What happens when an archive disappears, is neglected or sits for decades on a shelf somewhere far from the country in which those images were made?

Under the theme “Réparer l’image,” or “Repairing the Image,” Aflam is turning its attention to memory, preservation and the ways filmmakers across the Arab world are returning to archival material to understand the present. The festival also marks five years of Vives archives, Aflam's programme dedicated to Arab cinematic heritage since 2021.    

It feels particularly urgent now. As Aflam's team writes in its editorial, cinema can still “bring people together, break isolation, create encounters between filmmakers and audiences,” offering a space to revisit history and begin repairing memories and images. For anyone who cares about Arab cinema, there is a lot here worth paying attention to.

An Egyptian Film Gets a Second Life

The festival's official opening at Mucem on October 12 will feature the world premiere of the newly restored version of Egyptian filmmaker Khaled El Hagar's Ahlam Saghira (Little Dreams), originally released in 1993.

The film follows Ghareeb, a boy growing up alongside the political and emotional upheavals of Egypt. After losing his father in 1956, he begins to see Gamal Abdel Nasser as a paternal figure. By 1967, convinced that victory is coming, he joins the resistance in Suez, only for war to take his mother, his home and, as the title suggests, his little dreams.    

Produced by Misr International Films, the company founded by Youssef Chahine, El Hagar's first feature has now been digitally restored in 4K through a partnership between Aflam and the Archive Circulation Initiative. The restoration was also tied to a workshop held in Marseille, with restoration teams coming from Beirut to work on the film and share their expertise.  It is exactly the kind of project that makes this year's theme feel tangible; repairing an image isn't simply a metaphor here, it can also mean physically recovering a film so that another generation can actually watch it.

Throughout the programme, archives become less about nostalgia and more about who gets remembered.

Aflam describes archival images as essential traces capable of returning complexity to history. Many of the films being rediscovered have survived because researchers, artists and technicians went looking for them, sometimes pulling material from private cupboards and sometimes retrieving it from Western archival collections.  

One particularly fascinating story comes from Morocco. After a fire at the Bouanani family apartment in Rabat in 2006, a significant part of filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani's archives appeared destined to disappear. His daughter, Touda Bouanani, has spent more than 15 years preserving and bringing that material back into view. At Aflam, she will join film historian Marie Pierre-Bouthier for a conversation around the Archives Bouanani, followed by a screening of the restored version of Ahmed Bouanani's 1979 film Le Mirage.    

There is Lebanese film history here too. Jocelyne Saab's Ghazl Al Banat, a 1985 film set in war-torn West Beirut, will screen in a restored version. The story follows Samar, who retreats into Egyptian cinema while Karim refuses to abandon his neighbourhood, their fragile relationship unfolding against the chaos around them.     Aflam 2026 - dossier de presse

Palestine Is Part of the Conversation

The Palestinian cause runs through several strands of the programme, particularly in a conversation bringing together Iraqi filmmaker Kassem Hawal and Palestinian filmmaker and researcher Mohanad Yaqubi. Hawal began using the camera politically in the 1970s in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, while Yaqubi's work has focused on the archaeology of militant cinema and transnational solidarity with Palestine. His latest project turns towards Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, including the publication Jocelyne Saab, Inventory (1973–1983) and a recently completed film.  

The festival will also give the Palestine Film Platform a carte blanche, presented by Yaqubi, featuring Johan Grimonprez's 1997 documentary Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. Built from television archives, the film examines the history of airplane hijackings between the 1960s and 1990s and the increasingly complicated relationship between political violence, media and spectacle.    

Lebanon, From Tripoli to Maroun Baghdadi

Lebanon has an especially interesting presence in the contemporary selection. In Rania Rafei's Le Jour de la colère: Contes de Tripoli, receiving its French premiere, Tripoli becomes the centre of a story moving between personal memory and collective history. The documentary travels from the student demonstrations of 1943 through the pan-Arab hopes of the 1960s, the trauma of 1967, the Lebanese Civil War and the popular anger that erupted from 2019 onwards. Rafei mixes archives with letters to her late father and images of the present, allowing the city's history to move between hope, disappointment and the continued desire for change.

Then, on October 18, Aflam closes with another deeply personal Lebanese story.

Nicolas Khoury's Souraya mon amour turns its camera towards Souraya Baghdadi, actress, dancer and widow of filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi. Their story began on the set of Petite Guerre in Beirut in 1981. After Cannes, the couple moved to Paris, before Maroun's sudden and mysterious death in 1993 while Souraya was pregnant with their third child.

Thirty years later, the film follows Souraya as she moves through archives, memories and meditations on the man who is no longer there. Khoury combines intimate conversations and period footage to explore an absence that has never entirely become absence. The film will have its French premiere at Aflam, with both Khoury and Souraya Baghdadi attending.    

For all the attention given to archives, Aflam isn't treating Arab cinema as something that belongs to the past. Three programmes of short films will introduce emerging filmmakers, while the contemporary programme moves through Sudan, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and beyond.  

In Suzannah Mirghani's Cotton Queen, a teenage girl in a Sudanese cotton-farming village finds herself caught between her grandmother's stories of anti-colonial resistance and a businessman arriving with genetically modified cotton and a new vision for the community's future.    

Algerian filmmaker Hassen Ferhani's Alea Jacarandas follows a filmmaker and his writer father through Algiers as they trace the city's jacaranda trees, gradually creating a tender portrait of both a city and the transmission between generations. And Egyptian filmmaker Mohamed Rashad's L'Entente – La face cachée d'Alexandrie heads into working-class Alexandria, following two brothers caught between family loyalty, guilt, social violence and the desire for justice after the death of their father.  

There is also Ameer Fakher Eldin's Yunan, described by the festival as a melancholic journey through exile, alongside Nomad Shadow by Eimi Imanishi, which turns towards the often overlooked Western Sahara.    

Aflam has actually been working with Arab cinema in Marseille since 2000, long before this 13th festival edition. The association operates year-round through screenings, film education and WarshatAflam, its short-film screenwriting residency for emerging filmmakers.  

WarshatAflam celebrates its tenth edition this year, selecting four filmmakers annually: two based in Marseille's Région Sud and two from, or part of the diaspora of, one of 22 Arab countries. The filmmakers are accompanied through the development of their short-film scripts and connected with industry professionals.  

That work makes the philosophy behind this year's festival even clearer. Preserving Arab cinema cannot only mean looking backwards, it also means creating the conditions for the next films to exist.

Aflam Festival runs from October 10 to 18, 2026, across Marseille.    

More on Aflam.fr

Em Sherif has spent years taking Lebanese food, hospitality and that unmistakable sense of generosity well beyond Lebanon. Now, the family behind it wants Lebanese art to travel with it.Founded by Chef Mireille Hayek and her brother Dani Chakour, and curated by Sherif Hayek, the Em Sherif Art Foundation is a non-profit initiative created to support Lebanese artists and introduce their work to audiences internationally.

The idea is beautifully straightforward: use Em Sherif’s growing network of restaurants as cultural spaces too, bringing art into the same environment in which people are already gathering around Lebanese food and culture.    The Foundation made its international debut in Paris with Lebanese photographer Ziad Antar, and in September 2026 opened its first Lebanese outpost at Beirut’s Sursock Museum, bringing the project home to one of the city's most important cultural landmarks. The Beirut presentation includes works by Hussein Madi, one of Lebanon’s major modern artists, while the restaurant itself brings together contemporary design and Lebanese craftsmanship, conceived as a living space where food, art and design can coexist.    

For Sherif Hayek, Managing Director of the Foundation, the connection is a personal one. “Art has always been a big part of my life, and I studied contemporary art in London,” he tells JDEED. “As Em Sherif grew internationally, it felt natural to connect these two worlds.”

What emerged was an opportunity to use an existing international audience for something beyond hospitality: “The foundation came from the idea of using Em Sherif’s global platform to support Lebanese artists and give them greater international visibility.”    

Showing art inside a restaurant fundamentally changes the way people encounter it. There is no decision to visit an exhibition, no gallery threshold to cross and no expectation that the person sitting down for dinner already knows anything about contemporary art. For Hayek, that informality is precisely the appeal: “It makes the encounter with art much more spontaneous,” he says. “People come to eat, meet and celebrate, and at the same time they discover Lebanese artists(...) It allows art to live in a social environment and reach audiences beyond the traditional gallery setting.”    

The Foundation describes its mission in similarly international terms: partnering with Em Sherif locations to introduce Lebanese talent to new audiences while contributing to the cultural conversation of each city. The artworks can be viewed while dining, making the exhibition part of the experience rather than a separate cultural appointment.

Food and hospitality have long been among Lebanon's most recognisable cultural exports and Em Sherif is simply making room at the table for another part of that creative identity.

“They Need Visibility, Opportunities and Long-Term Support”

Hayek is equally clear that visibility alone isn't enough. Asked what Lebanese artists need most right now, he doesn't hesitate: “I think they need visibility, opportunities and long-term support (...) Lebanon has incredible creative talent but a fragile cultural infrastructure,” he continues. “The foundation can help by acquiring works, supporting artists financially and presenting their work internationally.”    

That distinction matters: the ambition isn't simply to decorate restaurants with Lebanese artwork or provide artists with a temporary moment of exposure. Hayek sees the Foundation as something capable of creating tangible support through acquisitions and international presentation.

And he doesn't want to prescribe what qualifies as sufficiently “Lebanese” in the process: “The focus is Lebanese art, but I don’t want to define what Lebanese art should look like,” he says; “The work doesn’t necessarily have to speak directly about Lebanon. What matters is the strength of the artist’s practice.”

He is also interested in what happens when different generations are placed in conversation with one another: “I want the foundation to create a dialogue between established and emerging generations.”    

It is an important position for a platform presenting Lebanese creativity internationally. Artists aren't being asked to perform an easily recognisable version of Lebanese identity for an overseas audience; the practice comes first.

From Amine El Bacha in Madrid to Ziad Antar in Paris

That approach is already visible in the artists being presented. “Each city is an opportunity to create a different dialogue,” Hayek explains.

“In Madrid, we are presenting Amine El Bacha, one of the major figures of Lebanese modern art. In Paris, we are showing Ziad Antar, whose work explores place, memory and Lebanon’s changing landscape.”   The choice immediately demonstrates the generational conversation Hayek is interested in creating, moving between Lebanese modernism and contemporary practices rather than establishing a single visual identity for the Foundation.

But it is his final sentence that perhaps captures the project most neatly: “The idea is that as Em Sherif travels, Lebanese art travels with it.”    

The Foundation's model gives that idea unusual reach. Instead of asking an audience to come specifically looking for Lebanese art, the art arrives where the audience already is.

The Restaurants Are Only the Beginning

Hayek is already thinking beyond the walls of Em Sherif: “The restaurants are the starting point, not the limit,” he tells us. “Over time, I see the foundation developing exhibitions, commissions, institutional collaborations and potentially residencies.”

The ultimate ambition is considerably larger: “to build a serious platform for Lebanese art internationally while remaining strongly connected to Lebanon.”    

That last part may prove the most important. International visibility can easily become the end goal when discussing artists from Lebanon and the wider region. Hayek's proposition is more interesting when viewed as a two-way relationship: giving Lebanese artists access to international audiences while ensuring the platform remains rooted in the ecosystem it is supposed to support. For now, though, the restaurants offer an unusually accessible place to begin.

You might arrive knowing the menu by heart and nothing about the artist on the wall. You might discover a work between courses, ask who made it and find yourself looking up an artist you hadn't encountered before. And that spontaneity is exactly what Hayek wants; as he puts it, “People come to eat, meet and celebrate, and at the same time they discover Lebanese artists.”

Sometimes cultural discovery doesn't require walking into a museum, it can also happen over dinner.

More on Emsherif-Art.com

Marie-Louise Sciò knows a thing or two about summer. As CEO and Creative Director of Pellicano Hotels, her working life regularly moves between an office in Rome and the sun-drenched world of Italian hospitality. It is a rhythm that involves hotels, travel, meetings, dinners and the occasional glamorous detour, often without much certainty about where the day will end.

So when Sciò was invited to create Weekend Max Mara’s Spring/Summer 2027 Signature Collection, she started with something she genuinely needed herself: the perfect suitcase.

Titled “A Weekend with Marie-Louise Sciò,” the collection is conceived as a wardrobe capable of moving from work to leisure and from morning to evening without requiring a complete outfit change in between.    

By Cynthia Jreige

“It literally is my dream kind of suitcase,” Sciò told me when we met to discuss the collaboration. “I go from work to the hotels, and then when I’m in the hotels, I go in the morning and I never know what happens during the day and at what time I go home.”

That unpredictability became useful design material: “I wanted to create a really wearable collection that you can wear during the day and you can wear at night, and you just accessorize it to change the mood or tone,” she continued. “You literally throw everything in a suitcase and you’re always put together in a kind of timeless Italian elegance, but no-fuss style.”

The resulting wardrobe feels less concerned with dressing for individual occasions than with making the same clothes work harder. Silhouettes are relaxed but still tailored. There is a kimono jacket worn with matching shorts, while the safari jacket is reconsidered across a jacket, patch-pocket skirt, blouse and playsuit. Dresses are full and fluid, trousers gently flare, and blouses move between structured collars and softer ruching. Fabrics range from crisp and stretch cotton to viscose neoprene, silk-and-cotton blends and washed linen.    

For Sciò, versatility isn't really about practicality for practicality's sake. It reflects the way she already dresses. “Nowadays, sometimes less is more,” I observe during our conversation. “People don’t want to overpack. They just want versatile pieces.” Sciò agreed: “They’re just timeless and not following any trend. It’s something you want in your closet forever.”

That feels particularly relevant at a moment when the constant churn of micro-trends can make getting dressed unnecessarily complicated. Sciò's answer is refreshingly straightforward: fewer pieces, good clothes and enough flexibility to wear them differently depending on where you end up.

What could have felt like a celebrity-adjacent collaboration actually makes considerable sense. Sciò's aesthetic and the codes of Weekend Max Mara already share an appreciation for Italian ease, quality and clothes that don't need to shout to make themselves noticed.

“I think we have a lot of similarities with the DNA of the brand,” she said. “What they do is really timeless quality, and it doesn’t scream and yell. They’re pieces that you keep in your closet forever.” The same philosophy, she explained, informs her work at Pellicano Hotels. “It was really easy to align, because that’s our same philosophy in the hotels, and it’s the same philosophy I have design-wise and style-wise.”

I couldn't resist admitting that Pellicano happens to be one of her dream holiday destinations.

The collection's colour palette makes the packing proposition even easier. Ivory, navy, khaki, chocolate brown, beige and sage green form its foundation, interrupted by saffron yellow and rust orange. Metallic accessories bring the evening element, including the Pasticcino Bag in pleated gold nappa, chunky jewellery, ballerinas and silver and gold mules.    

When I asked which single piece best represented her ideal summer wardrobe, Sciò struggled to pick one. “It’s hard to choose because it’s like choosing between your kids, right?” One contender was a short knit dress. “You can wear this little short knit dress during the day, and then you can wear it at night with a gold sandal and a gold necklace,” she explained.

Then there was the skirt she was wearing during the interview, which could be paired with a shirt or knit and move just as easily between day and evening. “It’s all really versatile. It’s about how you style the pieces together, but they all work together.”

Which is really the point; the collection isn't asking you to pack a separate personality for breakfast, beach, lunch and dinner. The same wardrobe is meant to follow you through all of them.

Sciò has helped turn Pellicano Hotels into something that extends well beyond hospitality. Its particular vision of Italian summer life, sophisticated without feeling stiff, glamorous without trying too hard, translates surprisingly naturally into clothing. Weekend Max Mara's Signature project was created precisely for this kind of exchange, inviting outside creatives to interpret the house's codes through their own point of view.    

With Sciò, the collaboration works because the clothes don't feel disconnected from the woman designing them. She really does travel constantly, she really does move between work and hotels, and she really does want a suitcase in which everything works with everything else.

Towards the end of our conversation, I spotted a shirt in the collection that looked rather similar to the one she was already wearing. “I’m happy I’m already ahead of the trend,” I joked. “With the colour?” Sciò asked.

“Yeah.” “You’re on it,” Sciò replied. “You’re on it.”

I'll take Marie-Louise Sciò's word for it.

More on WeekendMaxMara.com

Opening a café in Beirut is already an exercise in optimism. Opening one during war and instability, with no previous experience in F&B*, after leaving a career in investment banking in London, requires a slightly different level of conviction.

That is exactly what Melissa El Haddad, founder of Rise, decided to do. And we have to admit, we have a soft spot for stories like this at JDEED. We love discovering and supporting women-owned businesses, particularly when there is a woman behind them who has taken an unexpected career turn, backed her own idea and created something she genuinely felt was missing from her city.

Melissa's road to Rise was anything but predictable. She studied Industrial Engineering at AUB before completing a Master's in International Finance at HEC Paris, then moved to London, where she spent more than three years working in investment banking at UBS, focusing on leveraged finance, financing and capital markets across Europe and the US.

But wellness had always existed alongside finance. Melissa completed a holistic health coaching certification and became increasingly interested in how healthier choices could become easier, more enjoyable and, importantly, less obsessive. When she eventually returned to Beirut, she realised that the place she wanted to go to herself didn't really exist. She wanted somewhere she could walk into, order a coffee, smoothie or dessert and feel confident about what was in it without studying every label, asking endless questions or accepting that “healthy” automatically meant less delicious.

So she built it herself. “Sometimes betting on yourself is the boldest decision you can make, especially when everything around you tells you not to.”

Located in Gemmayze, Rise describes itself as Beirut's first refined sugar-free, adaptogen-focused coffee and wellness bar, built around a rather straightforward philosophy: wellness should be exciting, delicious and easy enough to fit into real life.

Specialty coffee sits at the centre of it, but the menu quickly moves beyond your usual flat white. There is matcha, functional smoothies, wellness drinks and shots, desserts, alongside additions including collagen, probiotics, spirulina and protein.

Then come the ingredients you may be slightly less accustomed to ordering with your morning coffee: Lion's Mane, Ashwagandha, Cordyceps, Reishi and Maca.

Customers can personalise their drinks depending on what they feel they need that day, whether that's focus, energy or balance. For Melissa, part of the fun is taking ingredients that can sometimes make wellness culture feel intimidating and introducing them through something as familiar as a daily coffee or smoothie.

“Someone might walk in having never heard of Lion's Mane or Reishi, ask what it is, try it in their coffee or smoothie and leave having discovered something completely new.”

Something we really loved is that everything served at Rise is 100 percent refined sugar-free, with plenty of gluten-free and dairy-free options too. But Melissa is quick to distance Rise from the idea of a “diet café: “Wellness at Rise is not about restriction, calorie counting or perfection,” she tells us.

And we're glad, because we've had quite enough of wellness being presented as another list of things we're apparently doing wrong. Melissa's approach is much more appealing: use good ingredients, be transparent about what's inside, and make something people would actually choose because it tastes good.

The real test might be the chocolate chip cookie. “One of my favorite moments is watching someone take their first bite of our chocolate chip cookie and say: ‘I can't believe this doesn't contain refined sugar.’”

That reaction probably explains Rise better than any wellness terminology could. The idea isn't to order the cookie because it's the “better” option. You're supposed to genuinely want the cookie and then discover that making a different choice doesn't necessarily mean giving up the indulgent part. “To me, wellness should never feel like a punishment. It should feel exciting, delicious and sustainable,” affirms El Haddad.

As a certified holistic health coach, Melissa had long been interested in functional ingredients and their traditional uses. At Rise, adaptogens are offered as additions to drinks, making them considerably less intimidating than encountering them for the first time on the back of a supplement bottle.

They also become conversation starters; someone might walk into Rise knowing exactly what they want. Someone else might simply ask why everyone keeps talking about Lion's Mane. Both are welcome, and that's important to Melissa. Rise isn't designed for people who already know everything about wellness. Part of its purpose is making that world easier to enter without feeling like you need to learn an entirely new language first.

Rise, at the heart of Gemmayze

The physical space follows much the same philosophy. Rise is bright, colourful, warm and energetic rather than clinical or aggressively “healthy.” Melissa wanted it to feel like a small reset in someone's day, which, in a city that rarely seems particularly interested in slowing down, feels especially welcome.

“I often describe Rise as the friend who always makes you feel better after spending time with them,” she says. “It is warm, welcoming, full of energy and genuinely cares about your wellbeing.”

More importantly, Rise is supposed to work around your day rather than asking you to rearrange it. Ten minutes between meetings? Grab something on the go. Two hours and a laptop? Stay. Just finished working out? There's a smoothie. Stressful day? Perhaps an Ashwagandha latte. Need to concentrate? Coffee with Lion's Mane.

And if none of the above applies and you simply want a cookie, please, have the cookie. “You don't have to overthink it.” That might actually be our favourite piece of wellness advice.

Rise Is Just Getting Started

Since opening, Melissa has already started pushing Rise beyond the walls of its Gemmayze café. The product universe is expanding through functional creations including Supercubes, while Rise has collaborated with brands across wellness, beauty, fashion and lifestyle, including Alo Yoga, Kahaw, FaceFit and Matcha Rituals.

The next step is continuing to build the community around Rise, developing new products and experiences and exploring opportunities beyond the first location.

Melissa ultimately doesn't see Rise remaining one coffee shop. “I see the potential for it to become a lifestyle brand built around the same philosophy wherever it goes: making wellness feel exciting, delicious, social and effortless.”

And maybe that's why Rise works. It doesn't require you to suddenly become the person who wakes up at 5 a.m., meditates, journals, hits Pilates and drinks something green before the rest of Beirut has opened its eyes. You can have the Ashwagandha latte, add Lion's Mane to your coffee or order the smoothie....but you can also just have the chocolate chip cookie.

*Food and Beverages

More on Instagram.com/drink.rise

For International Coffee Day, we're sharing the cups, cafés and coffee rituals we keep going back to, from Dubai and Beirut to Cairo and Jeddah.

We take coffee rather seriously at JDEED. Not in the we're going to judge your extraction time kind of way, but in the sense that a good coffee shop can completely change the rhythm of a day. It can be where you answer emails for three hours, meet someone you haven't seen in months, recover from the night before, people-watch, or sit alone with an iced latte and absolutely no desire to speak to anyone.

So, for International Coffee Day on October 1, these are some of the places where we genuinely like having ours.

Dubai: ONA, Cherry House, STIR, Kairos, The Coop House and TRIO

Dubai's coffee scene has become almost impossible to keep up with, which isn't necessarily a bad problem to have.

ONA remains firmly on our list when we're in the mood for coffee where the coffee itself is the point. Cherry House and STIR are also regular favourites, particularly when coffee turns into a whole morning affair. For the afficionados, the first two propose an immense variety of beans and blends, making sipping your long black an almost spiritual experience. As per STIR, their carefully selected beans and even cups (and if you really don't want coffee, matcha) are some of the best in the city.

Then there's Kairos Coffee Assembly in Al Quoz, which feels particularly appropriate for International Coffee Day. On October 1, the café is offering complimentary V60 tastings throughout the day, rotating between coffees from Colombia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The Colombian coffee brings notes of grapes, dark chocolate, raisins and plum; Ethiopia goes floral with candied orange and apricot; and the Kenyan pour has blackcurrant, cherry, honey and tamarind notes.

Kairos is also launching its Kairos Circle that day, with every eleventh cup free alongside early access to events and new menu additions. The Al Quoz space roasts its beans on-site using the UAE's first Bellwether Shop Roaster, which is probably enough information to make the serious coffee people among us head over immediately.

Over at The Coop House in Mirdif City Centre, International Coffee Day is considerably more straightforward: any coffee for AED 10, all day. Espresso, latte, mocha, hot or iced, pick your poison.

And there's a new address to add to the list.

TRIO opens its new Jumeirah café on October 1, transforming what was originally the brand's first drive-through location into a complete café. Founded by Emirati coffee expert Aysha Jamal Bin Huwaireb, the Dubai-born concept takes its coffee seriously while giving just as much attention to architecture, food and the experience of actually spending time there. Coffee drinkers can choose their origin across the espresso menu or head to the V60 bar for single-origin pour-overs, hot or cold. There are signature lattes too, plus TRIO's marble matcha range for the person in your group who insists on coming for coffee and then orders matcha. The new café opens daily from October 1 on 22nd Street in Umm Suqeim 2.

Doha: Savant

In Doha, Savant makes the cut. Savant has that polished Doha café energy that makes sitting down for one cup easily turn into another, earning it a spot among our favourite coffee addresses in the region. We love that it's located in the lovely Mhsreib district, close to M7, which makes it the perfect place to fuel on caffeine before exploring Dowtown doha

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Beirut: SIP, Backburner and Kalei

And Backburner absolutely belongs on the list. It has become one of our go-to addresses when we're after good coffee with the kind of easy atmosphere that makes you want to stick around. The Freddo Cappuccino is our ulitmate favourite - we also love their selection of healthy snacks and its location in charming Saifi Village.

Beirut and coffee have always made sense together, the Lebanese people ranked 3 worldwide as biggest coffee consumers. SIP is one of those places we keep returning to, whether we're actually there for a quick coffee or pretending it will be quick before inevitably staying longer (because it's also the perfect place to have their insane avocado-halloumi toast and get some work done).

And then there's Kalei, another JDEED favourite and one of the names that helped make specialty coffee feel properly at home in Beirut. Coffee, conversation, a laptop somewhere nearby and probably someone you know walking through the door: very Beirut, really. Also, they carry our favourite pea milk, SPROUD and that's a rarity.

Cairo: Holm

In Cairo, we're heading to Holm. There's something we love about cafés that understand the experience around the cup matters almost as much as what's inside it, and Holm is one of those addresses we'd happily build part of the day around. Come for coffee, stay because you've suddenly decided you don't actually need to be anywhere else quite yet. Its location in lovely Zamalek makes it the perfect starting point for a cultural day out.

Jeddah: Goodhood

In Jeddah, Goodhood makes our list.

Saudi Arabia's café culture has become a world of its own, and Jeddah is particularly good at the kind of spaces where coffee, design and community naturally overlap. Goodhood is one of the addresses we'd happily choose when the question is simply: where should we get coffee? The vibes are great, too.

And Sometimes, Our Favourite Café Is Home

We love a beautiful coffee shop, but we're equally attached to the coffee we make at home, particularly when it involves pressing one button and getting back into bed.

For International Coffee Day, Nespresso has given us plenty to work with. The Vertuo Up covers everything from hot coffee to iced and milk-based recipes, while Maple Pecan feels appropriately autumnal (and is absolutely delicious with oat or coconut mylk!). For something colder, there's Yuzu Vanilla Over Ice for Original machines, and the Pumpkin Spice Travel Mug is there for mornings when home coffee has to leave the house with us.

For summer, Louise Trotter is shedding a few layers at Bottega Veneta. The changing seasons in Milan provided the starting point for the house's Summer 2027 collection, specifically that transition from spring into summer when the city, the light and the way people dress begin to shift.

Trotter translated that feeling into clothes that put greater distance between fabric and body, allowing tailoring to relax, leather to become lighter and familiar definitions of masculine and feminine dress to become less rigid.    

It made for a compelling proposition at a house where material and construction carry considerable weight. Rather than abandoning that substance, Trotter appeared interested in seeing just how light she could make it feel.

Leather, naturally, remained central, but was treated with an unexpected delicacy. Tailoring retained its precision while losing some of its formality, and clothes were designed with enough space around the body to move. The idea was freedom rather than exposure, with the collection notes describing the process as a “physical and mental de-robing.”    

Craft remained equally important, particularly when viewed up close. Trotter leaned into the traces of the hand, including its imperfections, while treating the house's signature Intrecciato as more than a technique. Weaving became the wider metaphor of the collection, bringing together materials, disciplines, gestures and collaborators.     That idea carried directly into the show environment.

The space was kept largely neutral and deliberately airy, with guests seated on artist Illya Goldman Gubin's resin-coated Karton Hocker. Each stool began as a cardboard box that the artist physically embraced and crumpled into shape. Its interlocking flaps offered a subtle visual connection to Bottega Veneta's woven leather, turning an everyday material into something individual through touch.  

Even the invitations carried evidence of the hand. Posters depicting the stools were individually held and crinkled by Goldman Gubin or Bottega Veneta employees, making no two exactly alike.    

Sound was another layer of the experience. German artist Florian Hecker created a site-specific work from 20 suspended structures pairing loudspeakers with stainless-steel reflectors, producing a composition designed never to be repeated in exactly the same way. British artist Mark Leckey, meanwhile, created the runway soundtrack by weaving together genres and eras spanning the Sixties through the Nineties.    

Against all that conceptual thinking came one particularly charming detail: a handcrafted leather flower placed on every seat. Tulips, peonies and lilies introduced small bursts of color into the otherwise pared-back setting, another demonstration of the house's ability to make leather behave in ways leather isn't necessarily expected to.    

There is an appealing confidence in Trotter's decision to lighten Bottega Veneta rather than overload it. The house's signatures remain recognizable, but she appears increasingly comfortable allowing them to breathe, and allowing the person wearing them some room as well.

The collection notes put the proposition more succinctly: “to wear less, but feel more.”    For a house built on the pleasures of material, that's an interesting direction to take.

More on BottegaVeneta.com

If your lip products have recently started sounding suspiciously like something you'd order after dinner, you're not imagining it. This autumn, two beauty brands are taking our collective obsession with edible beauty considerably further. Negin Mirsalehi's Gisou has reunited with pastry chef Cédric Grolet, while Nour Arida's Sorbé is teaming up with Ladurée and World Pastry Champion Julien Alvarez.

In both cases, flavours that usually live on your lips are crossing over into actual pâtisserie. Beauty has flirted with food forever, of course. Vanilla body lotions and strawberry lip balms aren't exactly breaking news. But this feels like a particularly 2026 evolution of the idea. Products aren't simply scented like desserts anymore. The dessert is becoming part of the beauty world itself.

And frankly, we're hungry.

Gisou x Cédric Grolet: From Lip Oil to Pastry

Gisou already makes it difficult not to think about food. Its honey-infused formulas come courtesy of founder Negin Mirsalehi's family history of beekeeping, which spans six generations, and this fall the brand has gone particularly gourmand with Cherry Chocolate, Pink Praline and Sticky Toffee.    

So who better to call than Cédric Grolet?

For the second year running, the French pastry chef has translated Gisou's beauty launches into something you can actually eat. Three limited-edition pastries take their cues from the colours, textures and scents of the fall collection, with each incorporating Gisou's proprietary Mirsalehi Honey.    

The crossover is almost ridiculously satisfying. Cherry Chocolate exists as a Honey Infused Lip Oil, a Honey Glaze Collagen Therapy Lip Mask and even a Honey Infused Hair Perfume Mini. Pink Praline takes its inspiration from caramelised hazelnuts coated in ruby chocolate, while Sticky Toffee channels buttery caramelised pastries into a sheer, buildable nude lip oil.    

Grolet then takes those beauty interpretations of desserts and turns them back into desserts again. Beauty inspires pastry, pastry inspires beauty, beauty becomes pastry. Keep up. “I love seeing how Cedric brings each collection to life in his own unique way through his creations,” Mirsalehi says, adding that seeing the three flavours transformed into edible creations using the family's honey felt particularly special.  

And visually, it works. The campaign images almost make the distinction between beauty product and dessert disappear, placing glossy cherries, sculptural pastries and Gisou's equally glossy lip oils within the same delicious-looking world.The actual pastries will have an extremely short life span: they're available October 2 and 3 only, exclusively at Cédric Grolet Le Meurice in Paris and the Cédric Grolet Boutique in Saint-Tropez.  

More on Gisou.com

Sorbé x Ladurée: Nour Arida Is Putting Her Lip Butters on the Dessert Menu

Over at Sorbé, Nour Arida is doing the reverse journey with another rather famous name in French pâtisserie.

From October 1, Sorbé is collaborating with Ladurée across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, taking the flavours associated with the brand's lip butters and handing them over to Ladurée Executive Chef and World Pastry Champion Julien Alvarez.

The starting palette is extremely Sorbé: rose, lychee, caramel and pomegranate. Alvarez and Arida have turned those into three individual pâtisseries inspired by caramel, pomegranate and rose lychee. Each comes in at fewer than 100 calories and is priced at AED 39. Ladurée and Sorbe

But naturally, when Ladurée is involved, there has to be a macaron.

A special Rose Lychee Macaron joins a Rose & Lychee Sorbet, alongside perhaps the most beauty-coded item of the entire collaboration: a collagen-infused slushie, made with fresh fruit and no added sugar.

There are also limited-edition macaron boxes combining the Rose Lychee creation with some of Arida's favourite Ladurée flavours, including Salted Caramel, Pistachio, Chocolate and Raspberry. Ladurée and Sorbe Suddenly applying lip butter and ordering dessert feel like remarkably similar activities.

More on Sorbeskin.com

What's interesting is that neither collaboration feels completely random. Gisou has honey embedded in its identity, while Sorbé's lip butters already borrow their language from flavour. Both brands also belong to a beauty generation in which texture, smell, colour and packaging are almost as important to the experience as the product's functional promise.

A lip oil isn't simply glossy anymore. It's Sticky Toffee. A nude pink isn't merely nude pink. It's Pink Praline, inspired by caramelised hazelnuts and ruby chocolate. Sorbé doesn't stop at a rosy lip treatment; suddenly there's a matching rose-and-lychee macaron waiting at Ladurée.

Beauty is becoming increasingly multisensory, and food might be its most effective shortcut. We already understand what caramel should feel like, what cherry chocolate should look like and what honey should smell and taste like before we ever open the packaging. These collaborations simply complete the fantasy by letting us eat it too.

Which leaves JDEED with one fairly important beauty question for autumn: Do we apply the lip oil before or after the pastry?

Sportmax Spring/Summer 2027 was really, really cool. This opening statement might sound uninspired, but truly that's a great word to define the collection that showed: the Sportmax gal is effortlessly cool, from the way she wears her pieces, to the way she holds her bag and walk down the runway.

It's a pretty good sign when every look is good enough you'd want to own it, and that is basically what was happening here.

The collection however, didn't start with 'cool' as a starting point. Pretty much the opposite: aborn during a canicule, when the Sportmax studio started observing workers and commuters trying to get through everyday life in soaring temperatures. That image became the starting point for a wardrobe that still has places to go and jobs to do, but desperately wants some air.    

The result is tailoring you can almost see through, transparent accessories, organza layered like tinted glass and clothes that reveal just enough of what's happening underneath. Or, as the studio puts it, “the real fashion show is in the street.”    

Sportmax's answer is essentially to keep the idea of the suit and remove some of the suit. Pinstripes return in voile, viscose and wool, but tailoring is opened up with panels that create the illusion of pieces disappearing against the body. One pair of pinstripe trousers conceals Bermuda shorts underneath, leaving its wearer somewhere between businessman and someone who has sensibly accepted that it's far too hot for trousers.    

That tension works particularly well because the collection never abandons structure entirely. Jackets remain precise, waistbands and long belts pull volume back towards the body, and familiar office codes are still visible. They've simply been loosened, sliced open and made to breathe.

Colour arrives as though viewed through a glass of water. Greys give way to stronger jewel tones, while layers of écru, orange and blush-pink silk organza overlap to create entirely new shades. The effect feels less like colour-blocking and more like looking through several transparent filters at once.  

One of the loveliest ideas comes from an antique Venetian lace tablecloth, which Sportmax turns into a print rather than reproducing as embroidery. It then sits beneath an organza trench, visible without ever being completely exposed. There is a lot of revealing and concealing happening here, which makes transparency feel considerably more interesting than simply putting everyone in a sheer dress.

Leather in summer sounds like a terrible idea until Sportmax starts taking pieces away from it. Buttery nappa and suede are deconstructed into skirts, sleeveless jackets and coats with convertible panels that can be adjusted to expose more of the body. Denim becomes so fluid that it behaves more like flou, while trompe-l'oeil suit lapels are stitched flat onto the chest, preserving the visual language of formal dressing without necessarily keeping all of its construction.

It's clever because these clothes still look dressed; they haven't surrendered to the heat and become beachwear, they've simply negotiated better terms.

Although, eventually, Sportmax does start thinking about the beach. Knitwear borrows from cut-out swimwear and ribbed bathing suits, introducing the rather appealing fantasy of leaving work and heading directly towards water. The accessories continue the transparency obsession. There are slides with contrasting details, icicle-bijou pumps, and glass-like jewellery that emerges from cuffs or appears beneath liquid necklines.

The casting, meanwhile, spans generations, connecting the collection back to Sportmax's origins in 1969 as a brand intended to reflect the world around it - which we truly love.

In the end, SS27 strips away what summer no longer needs: heavy construction, opacity, unnecessary layers and anything that traps the body too tightly. What's left still functions as a wardrobe, only one built around movement, transparency and the possibility of catching a breeze.  

More on Sportmax.com

For a long time, luxury in the Middle East was largely discussed through the international houses arriving here. The boutiques got bigger, the launches got louder and every major name wanted a piece of Dubai, Riyadh, Doha or Abu Dhabi.

Something much more interesting has been happening alongside all of that.

A generation of homegrown and regionally rooted brands is deciding what luxury looks like from here. And judging by the names currently on our radar, it looks increasingly personal. Diamonds are being worn with T-shirts instead of waiting for weddings. Lab-grown stones are entering the fine-jewellery conversation. A piece can be precious because of the memory attached to it rather than simply the size of the rock. And luxury might even mean an hour spent moving your body in a beautiful room with people you actually want to be around.

From jewellery to fashion and wellness, these are some of the names making us reconsider what “luxury” in the Middle East can mean right now.

Rosetta Fine Jewellery: Jewellery You Actually Live In

Rosetta Fine Jewellery comes with history. Established in Dubai in 1993, the family-led house talks about jewellery through heritage, emotion and pieces intended to move between generations.

What feels particularly relevant today is the idea that precious doesn't have to mean locked away. Collections range from structural diamond pieces to colourful designs intended for everyday wear. The new collector doesn't necessarily want to wait for an anniversary to put on her good jewellery, and why should she?

Baguette Design: Diamonds With a Story to Tell

There's a writer behind Baguette Design, and it shows.

Founder Fatma Al Bannai is an Emirati designer who describes storytelling as integral to each collection. Even the brand's name comes from her fascination with the baguette cut, whose strength and distinctive geometry became a starting point for the house. The pieces combine 18K gold with diamonds, pearls and semi-precious stones, with Al Bannai specifically interested in making jewellery luxurious enough to feel special and wearable enough for daily life. Baguette Design

It's jewellery with a point of view rather than jewellery designed simply to announce its value.

Lana Al Kamal Jewelry: When an Architect Makes Jewellery

Architecture and jewellery make rather good companions when you think about it: proportion, lines, structure, negative space.

At Lana Al Kamal Jewelry, founder Lana Al Kamal brings her architectural eye to 18K gold and natural diamonds. The result is clean and considered, with the kind of restraint that makes you want to look closer.

It represents another direction we're seeing across the region: quiet pieces with enough personality to become signatures rather than obvious status symbols.

TRYYST: Fine Jewellery Loosens Up

TRYYST is interested in a less formal relationship with diamonds. The Dubai-based brand (whose founder starred in an episode of SHE BUILDS) works with natural diamonds and traditional jewellery craftsmanship, but the attitude is younger, bolder and considerably more relaxed. These are pieces you stack, mix and make your own rather than jewellery accompanied by an instruction manual about when it is appropriate to wear it.

Fine jewellery without the ceremony? We'll take it.

STONE Fine Jewelry: Classics, With a Different Rhythm

Jordanian duo Ghadeer Taher and Joumana Jallad bring more than a decade of design experience to STONE Fine Jewelry.

STONE's language is fluid and polished, taking recognisable fine-jewellery codes and loosening them into forms that feel more contemporary. There's confidence in keeping things understated, particularly in a category that can so easily become about excess. Sometimes luxury whispers to draw in closer.

Endear by S: Wear Your Heart Somewhere Other Than Your Sleeve

Sentimentality is having a rather good comeback. At Endear by S, 18K gold and certified natural diamonds become vehicles for memory and connection, with the heart appearing repeatedly as a symbol.

The appeal lies in jewellery being precious for two reasons at once. Yes, there are diamonds involved, but the emotional attachment is part of the value too. In a world where almost anything can be bought instantly, meaning might be the harder luxury to manufacture.

Dhyan Diam: Thinking About the Next Generation

Dhyan Diam approaches contemporary jewellery with generations of diamond knowledge behind it. Its pieces sit between the present and the possibility of becoming future heirlooms. That's an increasingly compelling proposition: buy something because you want to wear it now, while knowing it could eventually acquire a completely different meaning in somebody else's jewellery box.

Longevity feels particularly luxurious in an era obsessed with the new.

halfhour: Your Diamond Stack Just Got More Interesting

halfhour, founded by Saudi entrepreneur Ghada AlHedeithy and Jordanian designer Dana Shishan, feels very much designed for the way a younger generation wears jewellery.

Its world is built around 18K gold, lab-grown diamonds, stacking and pieces that can be combined according to whoever happens to be wearing them. Everything is made to order, adding another layer of intention to the process.

The fun is that there isn't necessarily a finished look. Add one ring today, another next year, change the combination tomorrow. Your jewellery box gets to evolve with you.

YAZ & Co: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

The philosophy behind Abu Dhabi-born YAZ & Co is “The Extraordinary Ordinary,” which pretty much tells you where the brand stands.

Using 18K gold and lab-grown diamonds, the Emirati label creates jewellery intended to survive the transition between normal Tuesdays and life's much bigger moments. That everyday quality matters. Modern luxury is increasingly about how often something earns its place in your life, rather than how rarely you're allowed to take it out of the box.

Kayaa Jewels: Diamonds, But Make It Digital

Kayaa Jewels brings the convenience we've come to expect from almost every other part of shopping into fine jewellery.

The UAE-based brand specialises in lab-grown diamonds, with pieces spanning relatively simple bezel pendants and bracelets through to sizeable solitaire studs and eternity bands. Many designs are made to order and offer choices across diamond shape, gold colour and sizing.

It's a much more flexible way of buying diamonds, and one that feels particularly natural for customers who grew up customising almost everything else they own.

Escape Privé: Jewellery With a Passport

We particularly enjoy the premise behind Escape Privé.

Founded by GIA-certified gemologist Pooja Duggal, the brand calls its approach “Intelligent Luxury”, combining lab-grown diamonds and real gold with the realities of women who travel frequently. Duggal's Travel Twin concept can recreate the spirit of a treasured heirloom in lab-grown stones, giving clients an alternative to travelling with pieces they're nervous about losing.

It's a very modern luxury problem, followed by a very modern luxury solution.

Miniaar: Dressing on Your Own Terms

Jewellery isn't the only category where the definition is shifting.

Founded by designer Tinaz Bodhanwala, Miniaar works across couture, bridal and prêt, bringing together sculptural silhouettes, elaborate craftsmanship and customisation.

Bodhanwala founded the house in 2017 with an interest in glamour that could accommodate different cultural and sartorial choices, including modest fashion, rather than prescribing one idea of how a luxurious woman should look. And perhaps that's one of the most important changes happening in regional fashion: luxury becoming less about fitting yourself into somebody else's fantasy and more about having the freedom to define your own.

Curve Club: Because Luxury Might Be How You Spend an Hour

And then we leave the jewellery box and wardrobe altogether.

Abu Dhabi's Curve Club makes a convincing argument that modern luxury can also be about how you feel. The women's wellness concept brings together the Curveformer, reformer training, yoga, mobility and stretching within a design-conscious space, alongside a café, workshops and collaborations.

That feels particularly telling: the Middle East's evolving luxury landscape isn't only producing new things to own. Increasingly, it is producing experiences, rituals and communities that people want to belong to. This thread is what is connecting all 13 names: some work with natural diamonds, others lab-grown stones. Some look backwards to craft and heritage while others embrace digital convenience, personalisation or wellness. They don't agree on a single definition of luxury, and that's precisely what makes this moment interesting.

For her Spring/Summer 2027 collection at Fendi, Maria Grazia Chiuri began somewhere unusually intimate: with underwear. Bras, slips, dressing gowns and the pieces normally hidden beneath everything else were brought into view, layered and decorated with lace, embroidery and colour.

It was a fitting starting point for a collection preoccupied with the relationship between clothes and the bodies inside them, and with how much of ourselves we choose to reveal. Chiuri's premise is that the contemporary body can be both strong and fragile, masculine and feminine, individual and connected to another. Clothes become a porous second skin rather than armour, responding to the person wearing them rather than attempting to control them.  

For a house as historically associated with polished Roman glamour as Fendi, that made for an interesting proposition and quite frankly, we're here for it.

Chiuri treated undergarments as an “interstitial layer,” something capable of concealing and revealing at the same time. Lace, embroidery and colour heightened their presence rather than disguising them, giving lingerie the confidence of clothes intended to be seen.    

A dressing gown, meanwhile, was quite literally taken onto the street. But the sensuality wasn't particularly precious. There was humour here too, helped considerably by Raffaella Carrà, the Italian pop icon who became one of the collection's cultural touchstones (Trust me, you know her: "A far' l'amore commincia tu...." )

Carrà's significance goes beyond the fabulous stage wardrobe. Her combination of performance, sexuality and independence gave Chiuri a reference for a femininity that could enjoy being looked at while remaining entirely in control of the terms and that distinction matters.

Mirrors provided another recurring idea. Chiuri looked to Luciano Fabro's Cubo di specchi (Mirror Cube), while also referencing the multiplied bodies of Carrà, Adriano Celentano and the dancers in Prisencolinensinainciusol. On the runway, the mirror became a physical presence, forcing the audience to see themselves alongside everybody else; which took me aback a little at first: I needed a second and my wise neighbor to understand this was our reflections and not the people sitting across us (blame it on MFW fatigue...)

It turned looking, fashion's favourite activity, back onto the spectator. The idea worked particularly well alongside a collection concerned with bodies rather than an idealised singular silhouette. Instead of proposing one Fendi woman, or even separating the Fendi woman from the Fendi man, Chiuri allowed different identities to occupy the same visual language.

In the collection, Punk Meets Bourgeois, and Nobody Has to Pick

The clothes followed that refusal to categorise. Gloss met matte. Silk met animal print. Lace sat beside embroidery and intarsia. Velvet appeared with parchment, and punk collided with bourgeois codes. Pieces shifted through different lengths, weights and degrees of transparency, sometimes piling one language on top of another.    

Then there were the jewel shoes, because intellectual discussions about the body needn't preclude wanting something fabulous on your feet. What could have become a collection overloaded with references instead found its energy in those collisions. The contrasts weren't there simply to create visual tension. They reinforced Chiuri's broader argument that clothes, like the people wearing them, don't necessarily need to belong to a single category.

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That becomes clearest in the relationship between menswear and womenswear. Rather than borrowing a stereotypically masculine piece to make a woman look powerful, or softening menswear to make it feminine, Chiuri removes the hierarchy altogether. Men and women share fabrics, layers, sensuality and decoration on equal terms.    

Fendi Without the Rules

The press notes finish with two ideas that perhaps say more about the collection than anything else: “There are no hierarchies. There are no conformities.”    

That's an ambitious proposition for fashion, an industry that has traditionally been very good at creating both. For Spring/Summer 2027, Chiuri's Fendi feels most convincing when it allows those rules to become blurry: underwear and outerwear, masculine and feminine, bourgeois polish and punk irreverence, the private act of looking at yourself and the public experience of being seen by everyone else.

It is sensual without making sensuality its only subject, decorative without losing its intelligence, and occasionally strange enough to keep things interesting. Most importantly, the body doesn't have to squeeze itself into the Fendi fantasy; this time, Fendi moves around the body.

More on Fendi.com

It had been a minute since a Fashion Week venue truly took my breath away, but somehow, Loro Piana managed to do just that. Presented amongst the books of the spectacular Biblioteca Braidense, the SS27 collection had me thinking more than once: I want to be a Loro Piana woman.

Titles "Solutions For", this collection comes from an idea that is something quite fundamental to the house. When Loro Piana moved from developing exceptional fabrics into ready-to-wear, clothes weren't conceived simply as decoration. They were supposed to answer a need: something to wear for a particular moment, activity, season or occasion.

For Spring/Summer 2027, that philosophy becomes a wardrobe that takes a man practically everywhere. There are solutions for staying warm, being outside, spending a day on the golf course, dressing for the evening, escaping somewhere early in the season and eventually doing very little beside the sea.

There is nothing particularly complicated about the starting point: A camel blazer. A trench. A balmacaan coat. A safari field jacket.

The result doesn't ask the wearer to perform for the clothes; the tailoring is soft and the combinations deliberately relaxed: blazers with chinos, coats with jeans and summer peacoats with wide trousers and braided raffia lace-ups. Bombers and field jackets appear with trousers tucked casually into socks. It's elegant, certainly, but the appeal lies in how little effort that elegance appears to require.

Texture does much of the work throughout the collection: Cashmere and tweed gradually give way to lighter fabrics as the season progresses, while the palette moves through neutrals, muted shades and colours that look as though they've spent a little time fading under the sun.

A quilted jacket can behave like a shirt, knitwear is designed to move between seasons. Pieces retain their intended function but aren't particularly precious about how they're supposed to be worn.

As the collection gets warmer, everything loosens up: bermuda shorts and sahariennes enter the picture, suits become lighter and increasingly unstructured, and by the time we reach the beach there are guayabera jackets, printed shirts and drawstring linen trousers.

It's perhaps our favourite part of Solutions For: that gradual transition from proper clothes to holiday clothes without either category completely disappearing. Even as the sun goes down, Loro Piana doesn't suddenly demand that everyone straighten up. Summer peacoats, stand-up collar jackets and cardigan jackets offer just enough structure, while eveningwear follows the same philosophy. Loose tuxedos, tuxedo shirt jackets and cardigan jackets come in a strict black-and-white palette, but the silhouettes retain the ease found everywhere else in the collection.

Accessories follow the same practical logic. The Heddle tote comes oversized in nubuck, grainy leather or canvas, joined by the Pioneer backpack and Extra Pouch. On foot, there are golf-inspired Goodyear derbies, very soft reverse-suede desert boots and sandals.

The oversized tote particularly makes sense within this world. A collection about having a solution for every eventuality presumably requires somewhere to put all those solutions.

There is something appealing about Loro Piana framing luxury around usefulness. Solutions For doesn't propose an entirely new way for us to dress, quite the opposite. It takes the familiar things we already rely on and considers how they could feel softer, work harder, transition more easily and fit into more parts of a life.

The house describes its approach as the point where “the functional and the elegant meet.”

For Spring/Summer 2027, that meeting point happens to include cashmere, loose tailoring, linen trousers and an oversized bag and quite frankly, we've certainly heard worse solutions.

More on LoroPiana.com

Some days call for an 85mm heel covered in crystals and others call for a loafer. And sometimes, frankly, we want both energies at once. That seems to be where Sandra Choi found herself for Jimmy Choo Spring 2027.

Presented during Milan Fashion Week, the collection is less interested in defining one particular Jimmy Choo woman than acknowledging that she probably wakes up wanting to be a different person depending on the day, the outfit and her mood.

“Glamour doesn’t always have to be expected. It can be anywhere, on anyone. It’s a spirit, it’s how you feel,” Choi explains. “I wanted to create something instinctive, full of possibilities.” And there are plenty of them.

Jimmy Choo has never exactly been afraid of a fabulous shoe, and Spring 2027 doesn't suddenly discover minimalism and throw away the crystals. Instead, Choi plays the two against each other.

Take the IZU, a peep-toe mule balanced on a slender 85mm heel. An archival dotted elaphê snakeskin pattern has been reworked as a monochrome print on latte nappa leather, before being interrupted by a wonderfully excessive brooch of turquoise resin beads and crystals across the front. That brooch is everything and, quite frankly, the first thing we noticed .

That same black-and-white pattern appears again on the EYLA, except this time it sits on a slingback with a little 45mm heel and a black snubbed toe. Same idea, completely different personality. That switching of identities runs throughout the collection. This time around, Jimmy Choo there are no shoes that belong at lunch and other that should wait until 8pm. You play by your own rules.

One of the loveliest examples is the COKO, a satin pump decorated with a two-tone floral corsage in ruby red and macaron pink.It could quite happily live at a party, but that's almost beside the point. Spring 2027 makes a convincing case for wearing the beautiful thing whenever you feel like wearing the beautiful thing.

The same corsage subsequently lands on the lower EYLA in latte nappa, taking something overtly romantic and placing it on a considerably more pragmatic shoe.

It's an attitude we can get behind: saving your favourite shoes for a hypothetical future occasion has never been particularly fun (and have you met 2026? God knows when's the next time the occasion will arise.)

Then comes the ELLIS, and things get slightly more serious; The black-and-white loafer arrives both flat and on a 65mm block heel, made from glossy, crinkled patent naplak leather whose imperfect surface is intended to look lived in.

There's something satisfying about Jimmy Choo approaching height from the opposite direction here; Instead of taking one of its famous heels and lowering it, the house takes the loafer and lifts it up. The result still feels very Choo, just with a little less red-carpet energy and considerably more “I have somewhere to be.”

Longtime Jimmy Choo people will recognise the BING, although Spring's version has had a rethink. The new BING MARYJANE strips away the sparkle associated with the original and lets proportion do the work instead, with its low-cut shape interrupted by a strap across the arch.

The materials make it even better: rich cherry-oxblood nappa and grey flannel. Both have a slightly masculine quality and quietly reference some of Jimmy Choo's earliest designs from the 1990s. It feels nostalgic without becoming a reproduction of the past, which seems particularly appropriate as the house enters its 31st year.

One of Spring 2027's more mischievous ideas appears on the ORIA mule (we're OBSESSED.) The house's DROP heel has been reworked with greater volume, while tiny micro-sphere studs trace an English rose across hazel nappa leather. The rose brings things back to the house's British roots, but elsewhere the leather starts pretending to be something else entirely.

Jimmy Choo has printed it to look like denim. The trompe l'oeil treatment also appears across the RESA slingback and MARGOT lace-up, taking perhaps the most everyday fabric in the modern wardrobe and recreating it in fine leather.

From a distance: jeans. Up close: Jimmy Choo.

Now for the bags... the CINCH family also expands this season with the new CINCH TOP HANDLE, a small bag that borrows the soft gathering of the original but adds subtly cinched sides and a flap closure. It can be carried by hand or cross-body and comes in ripe cherry as well as the collection's monochrome elaphê pattern. The existing CINCH and CINCH CLUTCH return in seasonal colours, with the latter hanging from a faceted gold-tone chain.

The collection was shown in a quiet, almost museum-like space populated by life-sized golden statues of women, caught in different stages of transformation. Day into night, one mood into another, one identity into the next.

The sculptures were created through a combination of technology and handcraft, mirroring the precision and human workmanship behind the shoes themselves. But they also made Choi's point rather beautifully: individuality doesn't necessarily mean discovering one definitive version of yourself; perhaps, it's accepting that there are several.

More on JimmyChoo.com

There was something wonderfully unbothered about ETRO Spring/Summer 2027. Clothes floated, prints looked as though they'd spent a little too long under the sun, hems trailed behind the body and even the house's famously recognisable Paisley seemed happy to loosen up for summer.

Titled ETRO Halo, the collection begins with a simple image: clear sky, grass moving in the breeze and blazing sunlight making everything around it glow. From there, ETRO takes some of its most familiar codes and deliberately lets them fade. Prints become blurred and sun-bleached, Paisleys dissolve into almost abstract auras or reappear as patches, while the house's bohemian spirit remains firmly intact, only considerably lighter.    

Colour follows the progression of an entire summer day. The collection opens in powdery nude shades that almost mimic bare skin, before yellow and orange arrive with the rising sun. Blues and greens provide the midday cool-down, and eventually burgundy, brown and black take things into the evening.    

It's a lovely way of organising a collection because the changes don't feel abrupt. One mood slowly bleeds into another, much like the prints themselves. And for a house that has historically loved pattern, there is something particularly appealing about seeing those motifs become less literal. You know you're looking at ETRO without necessarily being hit over the head with it.

Naturally, the best clothes here seem to require some movement. Long, vaporous dresses barely touch the body. Shorter hems at the front extend into dramatic trains behind, fringes shake as the models walk and transparent fabrics reveal and conceal in equal measure.    

These are clothes that would probably look slightly sad standing perfectly still on a hanger. That lightness also creates some of the collection's best contrasts; an almost weightless windbreaker is thrown over a precious dress. A suede blouson interrupts all the transparency. Denim jackets arrive covered in Paisley patches (we do LOVE a good denim jacket.)

The styling stops bohemia from becoming too romantic: tere is always something slightly tougher nearby to bring it back down to earth.

Just when you've become accustomed to all that floating fabric, the silhouette changes. Tailoring becomes precise, trousers turn lean and jackets draw clean lines around the body. It's brief enough to feel like a punctuation mark before everything begins flowing again.    

That interruption matters. Without it, Halo could easily have become one long procession of beautiful bohemian dresses. Instead, ETRO reminds us that ease is more interesting when there is something structured to play against it.

Down below, ballerina flats, gladiator sandals and delicate cone heels keep things relatively close to the ground. Bags are soft and slouchy, collapsing naturally around the hand and body rather than holding some pristine architectural shape.     ETRO_SS27_Press Release_EN

And yes, the whole thing is undeniably bohemian. But calling boho a “trend” at ETRO would feel slightly ridiculous. The house has been living in that world long enough to watch everyone else leave and come back several times.

What feels newer is the way it handles its own history. Instead of treating archive codes as something sacred that must be perfectly preserved, Spring/Summer 2027 fades them, patches them, layers them and blurs them.    

More on Etro.com

I didn't expect to love Max Mara SS27 as much as I did. After a complicated morning looking for a Milanese cab for over an hour and rushing to the show like I was about to cross the finish of a marathon, I waltzed through the welcome hall, decided against an espresso and eventually found my seat; right behind Anna Dello Russo's and Scott Schuman's.

A bottle of the newly released Max Mara Le Parfum awaited each guest, something the person who was supposed to be sitting on my right will never know, their absence conveniently giving me enough space to lift my elbows without knocking anyone over. But back to the show.

It seems clear that a Max Mara woman has places to be. For Spring/Summer 2027, apparently some of those places involve safari jackets, aviator details and enough pockets to make carrying a handbag almost optional (wait for us, we are coming.)

Titled Far Horizon, the collection looks back to the extraordinary women who spent the 1930s going considerably further than society expected them to. Explorer Freya Stark, wildlife photographer Osa Johnson, cross-continental driver Eva Dickson, and aviators Amelia Earhart and Beryl Markham form the rather formidable cast behind the season.

Max Mara isn't attempting to dress us for a literal expedition, though. Instead, it takes the confidence and practicality of those women's wardrobes and brings them into a considerably more familiar kind of chaos: work, traffic, school runs, evenings out and all the places we're somehow expected to get to in between.

Naturally, the safari jacket sits at the centre of the collection. Rendered in textured linen and glossy gabardine, it appears draped and knotted at the side or elongated into a loose duster coat. The utilitarian foundations remain, but the result is much more glamorous than anything we'd necessarily want to wear while actually trekking through the bush.    

That tension between practical and polished runs through Far Horizon. Camiknickers become shorts, skirts are long and fluid, and slinky knits bring softness to all that expedition-ready structure. The clothes feel ready for action, just preferably with very good shoes.

Max Mara describes part of the collection as “corporate armor,” which feels fairly accurate for anyone who has ever entered a Monday morning meeting with a blazer doing most of the emotional heavy lifting.

Here, tailoring gets a more tactical treatment. Cargo vests are cut in exactly the same fabric as the jackets beneath them, transforming pockets and utility details into part of the suit itself. Aviator jackets come fitted with leather straps and D-rings, while voluminous trenches sit low on the waist for a slouchier take on one of the house's most familiar territories.  

Even overalls appear in organza, which might be one of our favourite contradictions in the collection. Something designed for work, recreated in a fabric that couldn't feel further from a uniform.

We also loved the multi-bags.Designed to move from cross-body to clutch to rucksack, they make sense in a collection preoccupied with women who are constantly going somewhere. And perhaps that's where Max Mara's historical references work best. The collection doesn't treat its female explorers as costume inspiration. Their wardrobes become a starting point for thinking about how women dress when their lives demand that they move continuously between different roles. The modern expedition might be considerably less romantic, but it still requires preparation.

Max Mara itself puts it rather perfectly: today's endurance test is less likely to involve crossing a desert and more likely to be “the school run, the cross-town rush hour, or the pivot from boardroom showdown to equally high-stakes gala.”    

It's a funny image, but also a surprisingly accurate one. The women behind Far Horizon crossed continents, flew planes and travelled into places few women of their generation had been permitted, or expected, to go. Max Mara takes something from that attitude rather than simply borrowing their aesthetic.

More on MaxMara.com

There are very few times I feel luckier than when I get to sit front row at a Prada show. As a longtime Prada stan, watching Miuccia Prada and her hand-picked collaborator Raf Simons' genius in motion is still one of those fashion moments that is difficult to put into words.

You know you are about to see clothes that will make you reconsider everything you already own and wonder why none of it is near as cool.

For Spring/Summer 2027, I might have been particularly lucky because Prada decided to devote its attention to one of my favourite pieces of clothing: the skirt. It also happens to be a favourite of Mrs Prada herself - call us besties.

By Cynthia Jreige

And there were skirts. So many skirts. The premise was deceptively simple: take one of the most familiar garments in our wardrobes and see just how many personalities it can have. Rather than constantly introducing new silhouettes, Miuccia and Raf worked within a recognisable form and kept disrupting it through fabric, construction, proportion and embellishment.

Some felt industrial, others incredibly precious. Re-Nylon and ciré were pleated, cotton was manipulated to resemble leather or suede, crinoline escaped from underneath the clothes to become part of what we actually saw, and oversized metal snap fasteners were treated almost like jewellery.

The crystal-bedazzled skirts were particularly to our taste at JDEED. Prada recreated the effect of guipure lace entirely in crystal, while elsewhere contrasting Velcro became the unlikely foundation for crystal embroidery. Something associated with pure practicality suddenly became decorative and desirable, without completely losing sight of why it existed in the first place.

That tension is where Prada is always at its most interesting. Something ordinary becomes precious, something technical becomes feminine, and something you would normally hide inside a garment suddenly becomes the reason you're looking at it.

There was also a sense that none of these skirts had one prescribed way of being worn. Velcro fastenings allowed shapes to shift and embellishments to be revealed or concealed. One pleated skirt extended beyond the body, leaving its excess fabric to be carried in the hand. Layers opened and closed, exposing what was underneath.

And what surrounded the skirt mattered just as much. Paired with a sweater, shirt or bra top, essentially the same garment could suddenly read completely differently. It made the styling feel a little like an ongoing experiment; to be fair, there's nothing better than a clash of fabrics, patterns, colors or style that suddenly works together, which happens a lot under the Prada sun.

Perhaps that's why a collection focused so obsessively on one garment never felt repetitive. Prada was asking how much possibility can still be found in something we think we already understand.

For someone who already considers the skirt one of the best things in a wardrobe, I didn't need much convincing. But give me a Prada skirt covered in crystals and apparently I can love it even more.

More on Prada.com

We know a Panerai Luminor when we see one. That distinctive case, the crown guard, the oversized numerals and the kind of wrist presence that has always been very much part of its appeal.

For September, though, Panerai has played with the proportions. The Maison has introduced three new Luminors, PAM01710, PAM01711 and PAM01714, all arriving in a 42 mm case for the first time. It's a subtle shift that makes the familiar Luminor feel a little different on the wrist, particularly for anyone who has always loved the design but found its traditionally larger proportions harder to wear every day.

The three versions also have quite different personalities: there's black with beige canvas, green on green, and perhaps our favourite of the lot, a dark DLC case with a matte beige dial and blue strap. Underneath, Panerai hasn't softened things up quite as much. All three come with 50-bar water resistance, the automatic P.980 calibre and a three-day power reserve. So yes, it's a smaller Luminor. But it still very much looks, and behaves, like a Panerai.

A Luminor for Every Day

The new trio retains the details that make a Luminor instantly recognisable, including its strong case architecture and signature crown-protecting device, but packages them into proportions designed to feel more versatile.

All three watches measure 42 mm across and 13.8 mm thick, with water resistance to 50 bar. Inside sits Panerai's automatic P.980 calibre, offering a three-day power reserve.

In other words, Panerai hasn't suddenly turned the Luminor into a delicate dress watch. The functionality and toughness are still very much there. It has simply made the silhouette a little easier to incorporate into everyday life. And then come the colours.

The PAM01710 is probably where we'd start if we wanted the most classic interpretation of the three. Its polished and brushed steel case is paired with a matte black dial, printed hour markers and Super-LumiNova, while a beige canvas strap softens the whole thing slightly. The combination feels appropriately utilitarian while still referencing the 1990s design language behind the collection. It's sporty, straightforward and very Panerai.

The PAM01711 keeps the same steel case but swaps black for a matte green dial, with printed Arabic numerals and hour markers finished with ivory Super-LumiNova. The familiar small seconds counter remains at 9 o'clock, while a green canvas strap continues the colour across the wrist.

Of the three, this feels like the easiest one to imagine moving between completely different settings. There is enough colour to give it personality without turning the dial into the entire conversation.

The PAM01714 takes things somewhere more graphic. Here, Panerai gives the 42 mm case and bezel a steel DLC finish, creating a much darker frame for a contrasting matte beige dial. Beige Super-LumiNova continues the tonal effect across the Arabic numerals and hour markers, while the small seconds counter sits at 9 o'clock.

Then Panerai throws in a blue canvas strap, which is perhaps our favourite slightly unexpected detail across the trio.

The result feels more contemporary than its siblings while still drawing on the same 1990s-inspired architecture.

What works about these three watches is that Panerai hasn't tried to reinvent the Lumino; the proportions may be new, but the visual language is familiar: substantial steel, highly legible dials, canvas straps, strong lume and the unmistakable Luminor silhouette.

Instead, the 42 mm format feels like Panerai making room for a different relationship with one of its best-known watches. Something that can still take an adventure seriously, but doesn't necessarily need an adventure to justify putting it on. Three watches, three very different colour personalities and, finally, a 42 mm Luminor.

Discover more on Panerai.com

Vanilla has a reputation. It’s sweet, comforting, familiar and, depending on who you ask, perhaps a little predictable. So when PHLUR decided to make it the centre of its latest fragrance, Chriselle Lim knew exactly what she didn't want.

“When you hear vanilla, you immediately think sweet or juvenile,” the PHLUR Co-Founder and Creative Director tells JDEED. “I wanted our vanilla to have a little more edge to it. Something darker, sexier, a little unexpected.”

The result is Vanilla Canyon, created with perfumer Jérôme Epinette, and making its global debut in Dubai. There is still the warmth that makes vanilla so easy to love, but this time it sits alongside velvet plum, wild honey, patchouli and oak wood, taking something we know very well and giving it considerably more attitude.

“You still get that warmth that makes vanilla so addictive,” Lim explains, “but then there’s the plum, the patchouli, the woods… together, they create a vanilla with a little more attitude to it.”

By Cynthia Jreige

What Does Limitlessness Smell Like?

Interestingly, Vanilla Canyon didn't begin with vanilla at all. Its starting point was a feeling: limitlessness. “At PHLUR, we always start with a feeling first and let it shape the story, the scent notes, and the entire world around the scent,” Lim explains.

For Vanilla Canyon, that feeling also had a landscape. Wide-open spaces, canyons, roads stretching towards the horizon and the particular sense of possibility that comes from having no idea what might be around the next corner all became part of its visual and olfactory world.

For Epinette, translating something as abstract as limitlessness into perfume meant resisting the temptation to make vanilla too heavy. “For me, ‘limitlessness’ is about openness, freedom and a sense of possibility,” he tells us. “I wanted the fragrance to capture that expansiveness, so rather than making vanilla feel dense or overly sweet, I gave it space to breathe.”

Madagascar vanilla provides the warmth and sensuality, while oak wood and patchouli bring what Epinette describes as a “grounded, textured depth.” Velvet plum and wild honey add luminosity. “That balance of openness and warmth is what brought the feeling of limitlessness to life.”

For Lim, the idea also speaks to the way she thinks we should actually wear perfume. “Some days you want to feel sexy, some days you want to feel cozy, and other days you want to feel more confident,” she says. “You’re constantly changing, and your fragrance can change with you.”

Finding Their Vanilla

Getting there took time. “We went through a lot of iterations trying to find the right balance,” Lim says. It wasn't until they grounded the fragrance in oak wood and allowed the patchouli and plum to become more prominent that everything began to make sense.

“At PHLUR, we never move forward with a scent unless it creates the visceral emotional reaction it's intended to.”

When Lim finally smelled the version that would become Vanilla Canyon, it took her back to a very specific chapter in her own life: arriving in Los Angeles and driving through the canyons for the first time. “It brought me back to when I had first moved to LA and drove through the canyons and really said to myself there are so many opportunities ahead.”

She found herself repeatedly returning to the scent, which she says is usually a very good indication that they have landed on something. “It was familiar, but there was something a little unexpected about it. That's when I knew.”

That emotional reaction has become something of a PHLUR signature. Rather than beginning the creative process by assembling a wishlist of fashionable fragrance notes, Lim starts somewhere much less tangible.

“I’m not someone who starts with, ‘Okay, I want these three notes in a fragrance.’ It’s usually more like, ‘I want to feel this.’ and then we figure out what that feeling smells like.”

It's an approach that makes more sense when you consider Missing Person (JDEED's personal favorite), perhaps the clearest example of how something extremely specific to Lim can take on completely different meanings once other people begin wearing it.

“That came from such a personal place for me, and then once we put it out into the world, everyone had their own story for it,” she says. “Some people thought of their mom, others thought of an ex, others thought of their home, and seeing everyone’s own interpretations was the coolest part.”

It also explains why storytelling feels inseparable from the actual perfume at PHLUR. The fragrance begins with Lim's emotion, Epinette gives that emotion a smell, and eventually someone thousands of kilometres away sprays it and attaches an entirely different memory to it.

That translation from feeling into fragrance is where Epinette comes in. When we ask where Lim's creative brief ends and his own instinct begins, he doesn't really believe the distinction exists.

“I don’t really see a clear line between the two,” he says. “My role is to understand the intention behind the brief and what feels authentic to Phlur, then find a way to bring my own creativity into that world.”

For him, the interesting part lies in finding the detail that makes something familiar feel slightly strange. “I’m always looking for the detail that makes a fragrance feel a little less expected… an unusual contrast, a shift in texture, or an ingredient used in a different way.”

With Vanilla Canyon, restraint was important. The surprises needed to be noticeable without pulling the fragrance away from the emotion they were trying to capture. “That instinct was about finding those subtle surprises without ever losing sight of the original vision.”

Vanilla Canyon's global debut in Dubai feels particularly fitting for Lim. As PHLUR has grown from fragrances including Missing Person and Father Figure to Vanilla Skin and now Vanilla Canyon, it has also had to speak to people whose cultures, memories and relationships with fragrance can be completely different.

Lim's solution is surprisingly simple: don't try to make something universal. “I think that's actually the interesting part, the more personal we get, the more people seem to connect with it.”

Every PHLUR fragrance might begin with something specific to her, but she accepts that her story stops being the only story once the bottle reaches somebody else's hands. “People tell me what it reminds them of, and it's never what I expected. The stories are always different, but the feeling underneath them is usually the same.”

It's a philosophy she wants to protect as PHLUR continues to enter new markets. “We're not trying to tell anyone how they should feel about a fragrance,” Lim says. “We're just creating something that makes you feel something and allow you to bring your own story to it.”

And vanilla, perhaps more than most fragrance notes, arrives with plenty of stories already attached.

“Dubai is such a meaningful place for Vanilla Canyon to make its global debut, because vanilla is a note so many people already have a relationship with, no matter where they're from.”

The difference is what PHLUR has decided to do with it. “But this is our take on it: darker, sexier, a little unexpected.”

And after years of smelling vanilla in almost every possible incarnation, a little unexpected is exactly where we'd like to go next.

More on Phlur.com

There are days when the last thing we need from a workout is another screen, another number to track or another reason to think about what everyone else is doing.

That feeling sits at the heart of ALYNE, the Jeddah-born movement concept founded by Nour Rifai, where Sculpt-style training, music and silent headphones come together to create an hour that feels surprisingly removed from everything happening outside it.

The idea is simple: put the headphones on, follow Nour’s voice and the beat, move, and for a little while, give your brain considerably less to think about.

For Rifai, however, ALYNE began long before its first class.

From Luxury PR to Wellness

Movement had always been part of Rifai’s life. Growing up, she played almost every sport available at school and captained several teams, but her relationship with wellness changed while living in New York in 2018.

After experiencing gut health issues, she began thinking about health beyond what she could see in the mirror. “I realised it was never only about how you looked. It was also about how you felt, day to day,” she tells JDEED.

That experience led her towards a broader understanding of movement, nutrition, mindset and wellbeing. “I stopped seeing it as something driven by aesthetics and started seeing it as an investment in my long term health and quality of life.”

It was a shift that would eventually lead Rifai away from her career in luxury PR and towards building something of her own.

ALYNE Started With a Walk

Fittingly, the idea arrived while Rifai was moving. “I asked myself while I was out on a walk: ‘What genuinely makes me happy?’” Two things came to mind: helping people and movement.

Her years in luxury PR might seem far removed from teaching Sculpt, but Rifai sees a clear connection between the two. Working in luxury had taught her to notice how tiny details can completely change an experience, something she wanted to bring into wellness. “I’ve experienced firsthand how movement can completely change your mood, mindset and energy, and I wanted to create a space where other people could experience that too.”

The headphones became an important part of that idea. Rifai had previously attended silent headphone classes and loved the strange intimacy they created. Once the headphones went on, distractions seemed to disappear and the experience became much more personal. “There was nothing to distract me and, for that hour, I was completely present. To me, that’s what movement should feel like.”

She combined that feeling with Sculpt, her favourite form of training, and ALYNE began taking shape.

The result isn't intended to feel like another class to tick off before work or squeeze into an already packed day. Rifai describes it as “an immersive movement experience designed to help people disconnect from the outside world for an hour and leave feeling stronger physically, lighter mentally and more ‘alyned’ than when they first walked in.” We see what she did there.

“If you want to build something new, you have to be willing to be a beginner. You have to start before you feel completely ready.”

It took almost a year to turn that initial thought into ALYNE’s first class. Rifai trained and completed her certification, developed the method, sourced equipment and obsessed over the details.

Surprisingly, she says the hardest part wasn't putting all of that together. It was convincing herself that she was allowed to do it. “The biggest challenges weren’t logistical. They were personal.”

Coming from luxury PR and entering the fitness industry for the first time, Rifai wasn't simply becoming an instructor. She was creating her own concept from day one. “Naturally, there was a lot of self-doubt and what many people call imposter syndrome. I questioned whether I was experienced enough, whether people would understand my method and whether they would embrace something different.”

Her perfectionism didn't exactly make things easier, but the experience gave her a philosophy she still carries into the business.

“If you want to build something new, you have to be willing to be a beginner. You have to start before you feel completely ready.”

And perhaps our favourite line from the conversation: “Confidence doesn’t come before action; it comes because of it.”

Jeddah Is Moving

ALYNE arrives at an interesting moment for wellness in Saudi Arabia. Rifai has watched Jeddah's active community grow significantly over the past few years, with movement becoming part of the conversation across different ages and a growing curiosity around new ways to exercise.

But she doesn't want ALYNE to simply add another class to an increasingly busy fitness calendar. “For many, exercise still feels like something they have to do. I’d love for movement to become something they choose because of how it makes them feel.”

That thinking explains the attention given to the experience surrounding the workout. The movements follow the beat, while Rifai's instructions arrive directly through each person's headphones. Oddly enough, something designed to make the experience feel more individual has also created a sense of community. “Even though the headphones create a deeply personal experience, they also create a unique sense of togetherness.”

Ultimately, Rifai is less interested in whether someone leaves ALYNE having completed the perfect workout than in how they feel walking out of the room. “I really believe that when you take care of yourself, it has a ripple effect on every other part of your life.”

So far, that emotional side of the experience seems to be what people remember. Rifai has heard everything from “I’ve never experienced anything like this before” to comments about the calming quality of her voice. One person told her they had arrived after a terrible day and left in a completely different mood.

But there is one piece of feedback she particularly loves. “‘I can’t wait to come back.’”

For Rifai, seeing the same faces return week after week matters more than simply hearing that someone enjoyed a class.

“What means the most to me is hearing the positive impact it had on them afterwards.”

Rifai's immediate dream is a permanent ALYNE studio in Jeddah, somewhere she can control the complete experience, from the interiors and lighting to the music and smallest design details.

But she is already imagining ALYNE outside Saudi Arabia too, with pop-ups and collaborations that could take the method into different cities and communities. Eventually, she sees the name extending beyond movement altogether.

“I’ve always been a creative person, and I love design just as much as I love wellness. Whether that’s clothing, furniture, interiors or thoughtfully designed lifestyle products, I’d love for everything to carry the same philosophy behind ALYNE.”

It makes the idea behind the brand rather more interesting. ALYNE may have begun with a workout, but Rifai is ultimately building around a feeling: that taking an hour for yourself can change what comes after it.

“Ultimately, I’d love for ALYNE to become a world people genuinely want to be part of.”

For now, we'll happily start with the headphones.

More info on Instagram.com/alynemethod

Photography: Armaan @Amvisuals_

We have a dangerous relationship with a good private sale. Add beautiful glassware, candles, cookware and the possibility of finding something from Lalique at up to 90% off, and suddenly our weekend plans have changed.

From September 18 to 20, HushDay is taking over Area 57 in Al Quoz for HOME EDIT, its first private sale dedicated entirely to the home. After building its name around members-only fashion and beauty sales, the Dubai platform is moving into interiors with 23 brands spanning tableware, glassware, cookware, home fragrance, candles and all the little things that make staying in feel considerably more appealing.

Come for the Lalique, Stay for the Tableware

The edit has been built around “An Invitation to the Table,” which feels rather appropriate considering the line-up.

There is French crystal from Lalique, contemporary glassware and tableware from LSA International, Italian home fragrance courtesy of Dr. Vranjes, cookware by de Buyer, Peugeot's iconic mills and kitchen accessories, and hospitality pieces from LUSINI. The wider selection brings in names including Kähler, Rosendahl, Stelton, Maison La Bougie, Mizensir, RIG-TIG and Studio William.

In other words, you could theoretically walk in looking for a candle and leave mentally redecorating your entire dining room.

And that is partly the point. Rather than arranging HOME EDIT like a conventional interiors store, HushDay is leaning into the treasure-hunt feeling that has always made private sales fun. Everything is available for three days only, with discounts reaching up to 90%, so what you find will depend a little on when you arrive and how good you are at spotting the gems.  

There is something about September in Dubai that makes everyone want to get their life together again. Holidays are ending, routines are returning, people are moving apartments and, for reasons we cannot entirely explain, replacing your glasses or buying a very good candle suddenly feels like an act of personal renewal.

HushDay co-founder Jennifer Cohen Solal says that feeling was part of the reason for launching HOME EDIT now.

“September always feels like a fresh start in Dubai. Many of our members are moving homes, settling into new spaces or have only recently arrived in the city.”

She says HOME EDIT came directly from what the HushDay community had been asking for: somewhere to discover everything for the home under one roof, while keeping the excitement and sense of discovery associated with the platform's existing private sales.

It also makes sense as a next chapter for HushDay. The members-only platform has built its model around giving pieces from past collections another life through limited-time sales, combining very good prices with a less wasteful way of dealing with existing stock. HOME EDIT simply takes that same idea beyond the wardrobe and into the rest of the house.

Make a Morning of It

Thankfully, HushDay seems aware that hunting through 23 brands requires fuel. La Crêpe Française will be serving freshly prepared sweet and savoury crêpes, with drinks and other surprises planned across the weekend. Valet parking will also be available, which removes at least one Al Quoz-related obstacle from the equation.  

HushDay HOME EDIT runs September 18–20, 2026, from 9am to 8pm at Area 57, Al Quoz, Dubai. Registration is required to receive an invitation.

As if we needed another reason to be excited about Milan next week. Prada Galleria has officially opened inside Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, transforming the historic home of Fratelli Prada into an eight-floor world of fashion, art, food, archives, architecture and very Prada ideas.

And with JDEED heading to Milan Fashion Week, we’ll be taking you inside and showing it to you live next week.

This isn't simply a bigger Prada store. Under the direction of Miuccia Prada, the project brings together more than a century of the house's history and the many things that have shaped its universe beyond clothes, from art and architecture to cinema, culture and sport. In other words, you might want to leave yourself a few hours.

It Starts Where Prada Started

There couldn't really be a more appropriate address. The project sits inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, where Fratelli Prada was founded in 1913. The original Prada Donna boutique has now expanded underground, almost doubling its display space and bringing womenswear together with travel, home and beauty, while retaining historic murals and archival objects.

Across the Galleria sits Prada Uomo, but here's where things get more interesting: the two stores are now connected underground. The new Passaggio Segreto, or secret passage, isn't simply a convenient shortcut between menswear and womenswear. It contains an exhibition of lesser-known moments from Prada's history, looking back at some of the experiments and early ideas that helped form the house we know today.

A Prada secret tunnel beneath the Galleria? Obviously we're going in.

Possibly the part we're most excited about is Pradasphere, the first permanent exhibition dedicated to Prada.

Located on the Galleria's piano nobile, the exhibition travels from the founding of Fratelli Prada in 1913 all the way to the present, pulling together objects from the archive alongside more than a century of Prada's relationship with fashion, art, architecture, film, culture and sport. Some of the material is being exhibited publicly for the first time. Previous versions of Pradasphere travelled to London and Hong Kong in 2014 and Shanghai in 2023, but Milan now becomes its permanent home.

For anyone who has spent years watching Miuccia Prada make ugly things beautiful, beautiful things strange and fashion feel considerably more intellectual than it probably needed to be, there is plenty to unpack here.

Thankfully, Prada understands that eight floors of culture require carbohydrates. Above Prada Uomo sits Marchesi 1824, the historic Milanese pastry shop, bringing its cakes, chocolates and very particular shade of pistachio green into the experience.

So theoretically, you can shop Prada, disappear through a secret underground passage, look through more than a century of Prada history and then have a pastry. A very reasonable afternoon in Milan.

And It Keeps Going...

Higher up, things become considerably more private. The Studio consists of intimate salon-style rooms for personalised shopping by appointment, alongside a central space for private events.

Then comes The Appartamento, which imagines an 18th-century apartment filled with antique Italian furniture alongside an exhibition curated by photographic artist Andreas Gursky. Looking out towards the Galleria's mosaics, the invitation-only space will host private dinners and special occasions.

At the top remains Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, dedicated to experimentation around contemporary image-making, technology and culture.

It means that within one building you can move from a Prada handbag to an archival exhibition, contemporary photography, an 18th-century-inspired apartment, experimental art and a very good pastry. Which, when you think about it, is probably the most Prada way possible to explain Prada.

Prada Galleria is particularly interesting for not attempting to reduce more than a century of the house into a neat retrospective. Instead, it feels like entering all the different things Prada has been interested in over the years at once. Fashion is there, obviously, but so are art, architecture, photography, food, history and experimentation. The result is a literal physical Prada universe.

JDEED will be in Milan next week, and we'll be heading inside Prada Galleria to show you the new space live. Stay tuned.

More info on Prada.com

We talk a lot about buying less and keeping things longer, but ZEGNA has taken that idea somewhere rather lovely for its Fall/Winter 2026 campaign. At the centre of the story is Mads Mikkelsen, a jacket and the idea that the best clothes might eventually belong to someone else.

The actor and ZEGNA Global Ambassador appears in the new campaign for Su Misura, the house's made-to-measure world, taking one of his own jackets to a tailor to have it altered for his son. It's a simple gesture, but one that says quite a lot about what luxury can mean when you remove novelty from the equation.

Su Misura is ZEGNA's approach to made-to-measure, with garments shaped around the person who will actually live in them rather than simply selected from a rail.

There are hundreds of possible alterations, alongside choices of textiles, buttons, linings and finishing details. Silhouettes are adjusted according to the wearer's preferences and personal style, turning the process into something much more intimate than choosing the correct size.

And ZEGNA has plenty of history to play with here. Three house signatures sit within the Su Misura world: Trofeo fabric, Abito #1 and the Falcon Jacket.

Trofeo dates back to 1965 and is made from Australian superfine merino wool, developed to combine softness with resilience. Abito #1, meanwhile, takes its inspiration from suits worn by founder Ermenegildo Zegna in the 1930s and is recognised by the house as its first suit.

The Falcon Jacket has a different story. Its origins lead back to Oasi Zegna, the house's 100-square-kilometre natural territory in the Italian Alps, and to the falcon itself, whose ability to “see beyond” was admired by the founder. So yes, we're talking about tailoring, but we're also talking about clothes designed with the expectation that they might stick around.

Perhaps the nicest part of the campaign is that it focuses on the tailor as much as the man wearing the suit. The accompanying text describes tailoring as “a life lived in millimeters,” where the pitch of a shoulder, the roll of a lapel and a quarter inch can change the entire garment. Hours might be spent perfecting a seam that its eventual owner may never consciously notice, but will hopefully feel.

It's a wonderfully unfashionable idea in an industry increasingly designed around speed; and then comes the line at the heart of the campaign:

“I am not just shaping a beautiful suit. I am shaping the shoulders that will carry a great life.” It might be a tad dramatic, but we like it.

The tailor talks about dressing men before proposals, speeches and becoming fathers, and that brief moment when someone looks at themselves in the mirror and sees something slightly different looking back.

Which brings us back to Mikkelsen. Having a made-to-measure jacket altered for his son changes the usual luxury-fashion narrative rather nicely. The object doesn't lose value because somebody has already worn it. Its history becomes part of the reason to keep it.

We're here for this: fashion spends so much energy convincing us to want the next thing that we sometimes forget how good clothes can become when they're allowed to accumulate memories. A jacket worn to dinners, meetings, celebrations and whatever else happens in between can eventually move into somebody else's wardrobe. The measurements change, the person changes, but at the end, the garment remains.

That, ultimately, is the point ZEGNA is making with Su Misura. Made-to-measure doesn't have to mean something made exclusively for you forever. Sometimes making something properly in the first place is precisely what allows it to have another life.

More on Zegna.com

Watch the video, here

Dubai might be one of the easiest cities in the world to meet people and, somehow, one of the hardest places to actually connect with them. There is always somewhere to go, someone new arriving and another dinner, workout, opening or party happening.

Yet when it comes to dating, a lot of us seem to have ended up in exactly the same place: staring at a screen, swiping through people we may never actually meet. Mohammad Akkaoui, founder of Pitch Them Perfect, thinks we may have forgotten something rather basic along the way: how to walk up to someone and say hello.

His growing Dubai dating concept is trying to bring that back, creating nights where singles meet in real life, conversations happen without a screen in between and your next date might begin because someone actually approached you.

And apparently, it's working.

The idea for Pitch Them Perfect began with a conversation Akkaoui was having with a friend about the strange contradiction of dating in Dubai. “Dubai is incredibly social, but it can still be surprisingly difficult to make genuine connections.”

It struck a nerve. In a city where meeting new people should theoretically be easy, the reality can feel very different. “Everyone wants to meet new people, but nobody really wants another app or another awkward singles night.”

Akkaoui had heard about a similar type of event happening elsewhere and started thinking about how he could reinterpret the idea for Dubai. “I heard about this kind of night happening and I thought, how can we remix it and make it our own?”

And so Pitch Them Perfect was born.

The premise taps into something we're hearing increasingly often from single friends: dating-app fatigue is very real. After years of swiping, matching, messaging, disappearing, reappearing and occasionally spending three weeks talking to someone without ever meeting them, going into a room full of actual humans suddenly feels almost radical.

Have We Forgotten How to Flirt IRL?

Perhaps the most interesting thing Akkaoui has discovered through the events isn't that Dubai residents want relationships. It's how uncomfortable many of us have become with the very first step.

“I think the thing we have heard the most is the lack of connection. People have been so used to speaking behind apps that the art of approaching someone and striking a conversation has become extremely difficult and awkward.”

He's got a point. Dating apps removed one of the scariest parts of dating: wondering whether someone is actually interested in being approached. A match gives you permission to speak. In real life, there is no little notification telling you that the person across the room also thinks you're cute.

Pitch Them Perfect is essentially creating a middle ground. You're still walking into a room knowing that people are there to meet someone, but what happens next relies on conversation rather than an algorithm.

There's eye contact, body language, chemistry, awkward pauses, someone making you laugh when you weren't expecting it. All the things a perfectly curated dating profile can't really tell you. And yes, occasionally, a second date.

For Akkaoui, watching Pitch Them Perfect grow has been part of the fun. “Feedback has been great. It has truly been amazing to see how this event has been growing.”

More importantly, the connections aren't necessarily ending when everyone leaves the room. “We've had second dates, plenty of exchanged numbers, first dates and a lot of genuine connections too.”

That last part matters because Pitch Them Perfect doesn't necessarily need to produce a wedding every time it hosts an event to prove its point.

Dating can be enjoyable without immediately becoming a search for the one. Meeting someone new, having a great conversation, getting a number or simply remembering that you're capable of flirting with a stranger all count. In an increasingly online dating culture, getting people comfortable talking to one another again might actually be the bigger achievement.

Next Up: Confessions, Fitness and Maybe a City Near You

Pitch Me Perfect is already evolving beyond its original format. A newer segment called Confessions was introduced recently and, according to Akkaoui, “has been a hit”, with more editions planned.

There's also a fitness dating initiative in the works for September, which feels particularly Dubai. If we're going to meet our future boyfriend or girlfriend somewhere, apparently a workout is as plausible a place as any.

And Dubai may only be the beginning. “We are really excited for what's coming. We are in talks with the potential chance to host a PTP event in other parts of the region.”

That expansion could be particularly interesting in the Arab world, where dating often sits at the intersection of very different expectations around relationships, family, privacy, religion and contemporary social life. A format that makes meeting people offline feel comfortable without turning the evening into an aggressively romantic singles event could have room to travel.

Pitch Them Perfect arrives at an interesting moment. We have more ways to meet someone than any generation before us and yet, somehow, plenty of people feel increasingly disconnected. We can filter by age, location, height, interests and intentions before saying hello, but none of those filters can tell us what it feels like when someone walks into a room.

Akkaoui isn't trying to invent a new form of dating. In some ways, he's doing exactly the opposite: he's creating an excuse for people to meet each other the old-fashioned way. No perfectly selected profile pictures or opening line agonised over in the group chat, also no algorithm deciding who should appear next.

Just a room full of people, a little courage and the possibility that someone might actually come over and talk to you. Turns out, in Dubai in 2026, that might be revolutionary enough.

More info, here

For tickets to the next edition, happening September 26th, click here

Packing is either something people love or hate doing. We're team the latter, but thankfully we're finding ways to make it better. We try to imagine ourselves gliding through the airport with one perfectly organised suitcase, a beautifully oversized bag on your shoulder and absolutely no chance of sitting on your luggage to make it close three days later. Reality may have other plans.

With Fashion Month underway and autumn travel officially back on the agenda, we've been thinking about the bags that actually make travelling better. The suitcase that survives multiple airports while still looking good at check-in. The enormous shoulder bag capable of swallowing everything you thought you needed for the flight. And the tote that somehow has to work at the airport, in a meeting and at dinner.

Right now, RIMOWA, TUMI and Polène have us covered.

RIMOWA Hybrid Stone: For the Person Who Wants Their Suitcase to Match Everything

RIMOWA's latest colour might be one of its nicest neutrals yet. The Maison has introduced Stone to its Hybrid collection, taking inspiration from the warm, mineral tones of natural travertine. The result is a soft greige that works particularly well against the Hybrid's signature silver details and feels refreshingly removed from the sea of black suitcases circling baggage claim.

Pretty, yes. But this is still RIMOWA, so the important bits are underneath.

The Hybrid construction combines a lightweight polycarbonate shell with aluminium corners and frame, while the new Stone colour arrives across Cabin, Check-In L and Trunk Plus sizes. The latter is particularly tempting for longer trips, with a taller vertical shape and generous capacity designed for journeys of two weeks or more.

Inside, Flex Dividers help compress and organise everything you've inevitably overpacked, while the exterior comes with RIMOWA's Multi-wheel System, stage-free telescopic handle and TSA-approved locks.

Our verdict? The one we'd take when we want our luggage to feel like part of the outfit.

More on Rimowa.com

TUMI 19 Degree: For Fashion Month

If you're going to spend an unreasonable amount of September dragging a suitcase between airports, trains, taxis and hotel rooms, it might as well be a good-looking one.

For Fall/Winter 2026, TUMI's 19 Degree Collection takes its colour cues from alpine landscapes, introducing Deep Pine and Salt across selected silhouettes.

We're particularly into Deep Pine. It's distinctive enough to spot immediately without entering novelty-luggage territory, and the colour works beautifully with the collection's already recognisable sculptural shell.

The seasonal shades appear across the Expandable Carry-On, Large Carry-On, Large Expandable Checked, Large Trunk and Front Access styles, giving you options whether you're disappearing for a weekend or attempting Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks with half your wardrobe.

And we're very much interested in the word expandable. Fashion Month has a funny habit of producing more luggage on the way home than you arrived with.

...And the TUMI Voyageur Q Tote: For Everything You Refuse to Check In

Laptop. Passport. Chargers. Sunglasses. Makeup. Headphones. Notebook. Water. An emergency outfit. Approximately seventeen receipts.

The airport tote has a difficult job.

TUMI's Voyageur Q Tote has been reimagined in supple leather with refined hardware, giving it enough polish to move beyond the departure lounge. Practical organisation is built into the design, but it still looks like a proper handbag, which makes it especially useful when you're travelling for work.

This is the one we'd carry onto the plane, take straight into an appointment after landing and continue using throughout the trip.

More on Tumi.com

Polène Shuldo: For the Chronic Overpacker

Then we get to Shuldo, Polène's new 2026 silhouette, and things become considerably more fashion.

Its name comes from the English word “shoulder”, which makes sense the minute you see it. Shuldo has been designed to sit closely against the body, with a huge curved opening and soft, sculptural shape that almost wraps around its wearer.

In other words, exactly the sort of bag we want for a train journey through Europe. The apparently simple shape actually took more than a year of prototyping. Its folds combine three different assembly techniques, while the edges are hand-painted after the bag has been assembled. Each Shuldo requires 33 leather panels, with eight hand-sewn stitching points reinforcing its handle.

We particularly like that Polène hasn't tried to make an oversized bag feel overly structured. Shuldo is intentionally soft and moves with the body, which gives it that slightly nonchalant I threw everything in here and left quality. The campaign imagery captures exactly that feeling too. Photographed by Rebekka Deubner, the bag appears in motion rather than sitting perfectly posed, emphasising how its folds and proportions change when carried.

And then there are the colours: Black, Ebony, Black Cherry, Brown, Mist, Desert and Linden.

Black Cherry with an all-black airport outfit? Yes. Actually we already know we won't be able to decide between all these perfect shades...

More on Polene.com

So, What Are We Taking?

If we're checking luggage, RIMOWA Hybrid Stone wins for the beautifully quiet neutral, while TUMI 19 Degree in Deep Pine is the one we'd choose when we actually want to recognise our suitcase from twenty metres away.

For the cabin, the Voyageur Q Tote makes sense when we're travelling for work and need organisation, while Polène's Shuldo is for those of us whose definition of an “essential” somehow expands every time we approach an airport.

We've finally accepted something about ourselves: we're probably never becoming carry-on-only people. We can, however, look very good while overpacking.

Ten years, twelve graduating designers and more than 600 people turning up to see what Lebanon’s next generation of fashion creatives have been working on. For its tenth anniversary, ALBA MODE, the fashion programme of the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts at the University of Balamand, brought its annual fashion show back home.

After taking over AHM last year, the school returned to its newly renovated and extended ALBA campus in Beirut, filling it with students, designers, artists, industry people, families and plenty of fashion.

And this year was a particularly big one. Founded in 2016, ALBA MODE began its second decade with its largest graduating class yet: twelve students, compared with the four or five graduate collections typically presented in previous years.

For anyone interested in what young Lebanese designers are thinking about right now, the evening offered a pretty good answer. There wasn't one collective aesthetic or neatly packaged idea of what Lebanese fashion should look like. Instead, we got twelve completely different worlds dealing with everything from heritage and childhood to capitalism, spirituality, identity and self-sabotage.

One thing we like about ALBA MODE's show is that you don't only meet the students once everything looks polished. The evening began with first-year students taking apart and reconstructing striped shirts and experimenting with felt-making. Second-year students pushed things further, presenting projects that included trousers designed around a specific persona, dresses created for Lebanese designers they had personally researched and met, jackets imagined for fictional worlds and knitwear made using unconventional materials.

Then came the graduate; ewach of the twelve collections arrived with its own soundtrack, silhouettes, materials, imagery and atmosphere, making the runway feel more like a succession of individual stories than one conventional graduate show.

Several designers went back to childhood to figure out where they wanted to go next. Mia El Khazen's Memory Lane began with the women in her family and the elegance, joy and playfulness she remembers growing up around. Humble and unexpected materials were transformed into something more precious, turning overlooked details into a collection about femininity and memory.

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For anyone interested in what young Lebanese designers are thinking about right now, the evening offered a pretty good answer. There wasn't one collective aesthetic or neatly packaged idea of what Lebanese fashion should look like. Instead, we got twelve completely different worlds dealing with everything from heritage and childhood to capitalism, spirituality, identity and self-sabotage.

One thing we like about ALBA MODE's show is that you don't only meet the students once everything looks polished. The evening began with first-year students taking apart and reconstructing striped shirts and experimenting with felt-making. Second-year students pushed things further, presenting projects that included trousers designed around a specific persona, dresses created for Lebanese designers they had personally researched and met, jackets imagined for fictional worlds and knitwear made using unconventional materials.

Then came the graduate; ewach of the twelve collections arrived with its own soundtrack, silhouettes, materials, imagery and atmosphere, making the runway feel more like a succession of individual stories than one conventional graduate show.

Several designers went back to childhood to figure out where they wanted to go next. Mia El Khazen's Memory Lane began with the women in her family and the elegance, joy and playfulness she remembers growing up around. Humble and unexpected materials were transformed into something more precious, turning overlooked details into a collection about femininity and memory.

For Ivana Rebeiz, the memory was watching her mother move constantly between events, dress codes and different roles. Her collection, Triality, questions why our clothes, and perhaps our identities, need such rigid categories in the first place. Daywear meets eveningwear, tailoring meets sparkle and masculine and feminine codes happily occupy the same wardrobe.

Then there was Vanessa Hanna's Twinkles, which sounds almost exactly like the inside of a particularly imaginative child's brain: Winx, performers, iridescent costumes, chandeliers, stained glass and moonlight bouncing off water. Hanna connected that fascination with regional ornamentation and craft, using reflective surfaces and movement to recreate that feeling of seeing something magical for the first time.

One of the most interesting questions facing young designers in Lebanon is what to do with heritage when you don't necessarily want to make clothes that look like they belong to the past.

Yara Massaad tackled that directly. Having grown up in a Lebanese village before encountering the more globalised environment of university and city life, Massaad used her collection هوة to bring those two experiences together. Inspired by her mother, traditional clothing and local craft, she reworked Lebanese silhouettes and volumes through contemporary streetwear.

It's a conversation we keep returning to at JDEED because heritage becomes much more interesting when designers are allowed to mess with it, question it and make it theirs.

Fashion Can Be Uncomfortable Too

Not every collection was particularly interested in nostalgia.

Marlyne Miskawi's Unowned takes on the 9-to-5 and the strange contradiction of contemporary working life: we're supposedly free, yet so much of our existence is structured around productivity. Exaggerated silhouettes express restriction and repetition, while Miskawi deliberately chose painfully slow techniques including crochet, knitting and weaving as a response to a culture obsessed with doing everything faster.

We particularly like the irony of spending hours painstakingly crocheting something to make a point about productivity.

Hiba Attieh's Atrapada, meanwhile, looks at something equally familiar: the comfort zone. Her collection follows the point at which the bubble we've built to protect ourselves begins to suffocate us, and when stepping into something unknown becomes preferable to remaining safely stuck.

And Dimitri Faraj's Masquerade explores the strange freedom that can come from hiding. Set within the imagined world of a masked ball, the collection asks whether concealing our identity can sometimes give us permission to reveal parts of ourselves we'd normally be too afraid of showing.

The graduate show really gave all it got to this runway.

Sophie Saad's For My Final Act approached graduation almost literally as the end of a chapter, exploring spirituality, femininity, energy and ideas around the divine and the self. Different materials became metaphorical “skins”, and then a stilt walker appeared on the runway, transforming the collection's finale into an actual performance.

Emile Maroun went in another direction entirely with Self Sabotage. Inspired by the fear of wanting to do and become everything at once, and then becoming paralysed by that ambition, Maroun looked towards obsessive women in cinema including Black Swan, Pearl and Kill Bill.

Naturally, his first model arrived on a motorcycle. We approve.

Elsewhere, Christina Malek's Strata explored what happens when urban routine makes us stop noticing the natural world, using colour, texture and structure to bring traces of nature back into city life.

Yasmina Dakhlallah's Métamorphoses took inspiration from a childhood fascination with insects and their strange colours, patterns and transformations. The atelier itself becomes a kind of cocoon, with familiar fashion-making tools reappearing as unexpected structures and details within the garments.

And Charbel Najjar's Dysmoreفكِ deliberately looked towards things we're taught to find ugly. Unwanted fabrics were burned, ripped, painted and layered, transforming discarded materials into surfaces that celebrate imperfection and vulnerability rather than attempting to hide either.

Twelve students, twelve completely different answers to what fashion can be.

Perhaps the nicest thing about ALBA MODE's anniversary wasn't simply that its graduating class had grown from four or five students to twelve; it was how little those twelve collections looked like one another.

The programme combines design with technical development, textile experimentation, image-making and individual creative research, but its students aren't being pushed towards a recognisable “ALBA look”. Instead, they're encouraged to develop their own vocabulary and then learn the technical and visual skills necessary to communicate it.

That feels particularly important in Lebanon right now; fashion education shouldn't produce twelve versions of the same designer. And judging by an evening that moved from Lebanese villages to office cubicles, childhood fantasy, insects, spirituality, motorcycles and a person walking down the runway on stilts, there doesn't seem to be much danger of that happening here.

More on ALBA.edu.lb

A robot beside a religious icon. Ottoman references dropped into a futuristic world. A photograph that looks completely believable until you notice that something about it couldn't possibly exist. Welcome to the slightly uncanny universe of Saint Voys.

Born Voys Micic, the Serbian-origin AI creative and fashion designer lives between Geneva and Dubai and is the founder of tech-fashion label Twelve Twelve. His work moves freely between fashion, art and technology, pulling from Eastern European heritage, Byzantine and Ottoman history, religious imagery, childhood memories and the increasingly strange possibilities of artificial intelligence.

The combinations can feel unexpected, but for Voys, they make perfect sense. “I don’t really consciously decide which references belong in my work. They come quite naturally from the different environments I’ve lived in and the things I’ve been exposed to throughout my life.”

His parents are Serbian, he grew up in Switzerland and now lives in Dubai, three places that have each left their own visual imprint.

“I think all of these places exist somewhere in my visual language. I don’t necessarily try to give them a specific direction or consciously separate them. They just coexist.”

That coexistence has become one of the most recognisable things about his work. The ancient can sit comfortably beside the robotic, religious symbolism can enter a hyper-futuristic landscape and something deeply nostalgic can suddenly become speculative.

For Voys, it also reflects the way he thinks about identity itself. “For me, identity isn’t one single thing. It’s a collection of places, memories, influences and experiences that keeps evolving. My work is really just a reflection of that.”

And then comes perhaps the sentence that best explains Saint Voys' universe: “I don’t want to recreate the past. I want to take elements from it and imagine where they could exist in the future.”

Wait, Is This Real?

Spend enough time looking at Saint Voys' work and you'll probably ask yourself that question.

His images are often hyper-realistic enough to resemble photography, except that the world inside them doesn't quite behave like ours. The proportions might feel strange, an object may be somewhere it shouldn't be or an otherwise familiar environment has become impossible.

That hesitation is intentional. “We’re used to photographs being connected to something that actually happened, a place, a person, a moment. AI changes that relationship. You can create something that never existed, but make it look as though it was captured by a camera.”

At a time when we're all becoming increasingly suspicious of the images appearing on our screens, Voys is interested in leaning into that uncertainty rather than hiding it.

“I like creating images that feel familiar at first, but then something doesn’t quite make sense. Maybe the environment is impossible, the scale feels strange, or something exists that shouldn’t. I want the viewer to have that small moment of hesitation where they wonder, Wait, is this real?”

He isn't particularly interested in tricking anyone, either. “I don’t necessarily need people to believe that my images are real. I actually prefer when they question them.”

Perhaps that's where his work becomes more interesting than AI simply being used to make a beautiful picture. The strange part isn't that the technology can create something impossible anymore. We've all seen enough AI-generated content to know that. It's how convincing that impossibility can become.

As Voys puts it, “It’s making the impossible feel believable enough that, for a moment, you question your own perception.”

Of course, it's difficult to talk about AI-generated art without getting into the conversation.

Does AI make us more creative? Does it make creativity easier? And if everyone can type a prompt into the same tools, where exactly does the artist come in?

For Voys, that's the wrong place to start. “Today, everyone has access to these tools. So I don’t think the interesting question anymore is ‘Can you use AI?’ Almost anyone can. The interesting question is ‘What can you imagine with it?’”

His own process doesn't necessarily begin with an elaborate prompt. Sometimes it starts with something as ordinary as a photograph taken on his phone. From there, he can change the light, move it into the middle of the night, remove elements, introduce something impossible or rebuild the environment altogether.

The machine can help construct the world, but Voys is adamant that the world still has to begin somewhere inside a human mind.

“I love AI because it allows me to take a simple idea and transform it into something I can actually see. But the technology doesn’t create the idea for me. The creative direction, the references, the decisions and the intention still come from the person using it.”

His philosophy comes down to five words: “Imagined by humans, enhanced by AI.”

And perhaps that is a useful distinction as fashion, photography and art collectively figure out what to do with a technology evolving faster than the conversations around it. “The technology is constantly evolving, but the imagination behind it is still human. I think that’s where the human hand matters most: in having something to say, knowing what you want to see, making choices and having the curiosity to keep pushing an idea further.”

Through Twelve Twelve, Voys is already experimenting with what happens when fashion's physical and digital worlds begin to overlap. But despite working so heavily with technology, he doesn't imagine a future in which physical clothes disappear.

Quite the opposite.

“There is something deeply human about touching a fabric, putting something on your body and having an object physically exist in the world. I think that emotional connection will remain, and perhaps even become more valuable as more of our lives move into digital spaces.”

What he does expect to change dramatically is everything surrounding those clothes. Imagine an avatar that already understands your measurements, proportions and personal style. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of pieces, an AI-powered shopping experience could immediately present the things most likely to fit both your body and your taste.

Campaigns could change even more radically. “You don’t have to wait for winter to create a winter campaign. You can build an entire winter world in the middle of summer. You can create places, environments and situations that would be almost impossible or extremely expensive to produce physically, and still make them feel completely real.”

We're already seeing AI Fashion Weeks, virtual shows and entirely generated campaigns. But Voys doesn't see that as a reason to write the obituary for photographers, stylists or creative directors.

“You still need the creative mind behind the idea, the designer, the art director, the stylist, the photographer, the creative director. AI simply gives those people more freedom to execute what they imagine.”

For him, the future isn't a competition between digital and physical fashion. Both remain, but their roles evolve.

“Physical fashion will remain important because of the experience of actually wearing something, the fabric, the texture, the construction, the way it feels on your body. But around that physical object, we will have an almost limitless digital layer.”

Which brings us back to the strange Saint Voys worlds where we started: robots and religion, memory and futurism, things that existed centuries ago sitting beside things that have never existed at all.

Maybe fashion's next frontier isn't deciding between the real and the artificial. Maybe it's discovering what happens when we stop treating them as opposites.

For Voys, at least, that's where things become exciting. “I think we’re entering an era where fashion can become almost limitless creatively. The biggest change won’t necessarily be what we wear, but how easily an idea can become a reality.”

And his final thought feels like a pretty good manifesto for Saint Voys as a whole: “Technology isn’t replacing creativity. It’s removing some of the limits around it.”

Discover more, here

We love a big necklace at JDEED. Even better when the thing hanging from it has a story. Our latest discovery is HEROBJECTS, the Saudi jewellery brand founded by Nouf Musallam, where chunky 18k gold objects meet freshwater pearls and colourful woven cords, with much of the inspiration coming from the landscapes and little details of Saudi Arabia that Musallam grew up around.

And before you ask, the name is a play on words. HEROBJECTS comes from her hero objects, pronounced her objects, and sums up Musallam's approach quite nicely. She thinks about jewellery as both something you wear and an object in itself: sculptural, tactile and personal.

At the centre of everything is the HERO object, cast in solid 18k gold. It appears throughout the collection, but how you wear it is really up to you.

It Started With Home

Musallam grew up in Jeddah, and HEROBJECTS feels like a collection of things she has noticed and remembered along the way. There are the desert and wadis, but also shells collected along the Red Sea, the marks left by sand and water, and the way light changes a surface. Elsewhere, you find references to dunes, flora and landscapes seen from above.

One of our favourite references is the pomegranate seed, a form associated with beauty and abundance in Arabic culture. Spirals and curves keep appearing too, giving the jewellery a softness despite the weight of the gold.

It doesn't scream Saudi heritage at you, though, and that's precisely why it works. The references are there if you want to look for them, but otherwise these are simply really good objects to wear.

Before HEROBJECTS, Musallam worked in fashion, styling and editorial, contributing to Vogue Arabia, ELLE and Harper's Bazaar Arabia. Later, she began hosting pop-ups from her studio, sharing designers and pieces she loved and paying attention to how people actually styled them.  

You can feel that stylist's eye in HEROBJECTS because the jewellery invites you to play with it.

The components are interchangeable. A HERO pendant can hang from pearls one day and a woven cord the next. Wear it alone and it feels cleaner; add pearls and suddenly it's softer and a little more dressed up. Stack several pieces and you've got the kind of necklace situation we would happily build an entire outfit around. The smaller Mini pieces sit closer to the neck for days when you're feeling slightly less maximalist.

Perhaps our favourite thing about HEROBJECTS is that everything feels slightly imperfect in the best possible way.

The collection is full of rounded shapes, softened edges and surfaces inspired by things that have been changed by time: wind moving across sand, clay drying beneath the Saudi heat and stone slowly being worn smooth. Shells and seeds sit alongside cleaner references to contemporary architecture.

And that's where HEROBJECTS feels particularly current. There is a new generation of designers across the region looking at heritage without feeling the need to reproduce it literally. Musallam doesn't need to put a recognisable Saudi landmark around your neck to tell you where she's from. Sometimes a curve, a texture or the shape of something you once picked up beside the Red Sea says much more.

More on Herobejcts.com

September has always felt a little like January without the pressure of New Year’s resolutions. Summer is winding down, everyone is returning from somewhere, routines are slowly coming back and suddenly the idea of sleeping properly, moving our bodies and taking care of ourselves feels appealing again (and potentially, you're also preparing one of the region's upcoming HYROX.)

But for the rest of 2026, we’re approaching wellness a little differently. We’re less interested in dramatic resets, impossible routines and trying to become an entirely new person by Monday. What feels more relevant right now is consistency, recovery and understanding what our bodies actually need, whether that means getting back into exercise slowly, paying more attention to hormones (a very hot topic!), treating sleep as part of our beauty routine (the basis of everything, NGL) or simply finding ten minutes to do something nice for our skin.

Here’s what is currently on our wellness radar.

First rule of the September reset: we are absolutely not trying to compensate for everything we ate, drank or didn't do over summer.

For Chloe Minet, Director of DRYP in Dubai, September is a natural moment to reset, but that doesn't mean throwing yourself straight back into the most intense version of your old routine. “September naturally feels like a fresh start.”

Her advice is to begin gradually, listen to your body and focus on consistency rather than intensity. Instead of immediately returning to your old weights, pace or number of weekly sessions, start with something realistic enough that you'll actually maintain it.

Recovery also needs to be part of the equation. Sleep, hydration, mobility and giving your body enough time between difficult sessions all matter, particularly when returning after a summer break.

And perhaps the biggest shift we're taking into the rest of 2026 is moving away from the idea that a workout only counts if it completely destroys you. The goal is to build a routine you can come back to, rather than spend three days recovering from.

We're also leaving the obsession with the scale behind. Strength, energy, sleep, stress relief and simply feeling better in your body are all perfectly valid reasons to move.

New Balance Wants You To Relax, Too

A new workout routine inevitably gives us an excuse for new activewear, and New Balance is leaning into the September reset with its new AC Bodywear and Ellipse collections.

The AC pieces are designed to move between workouts and everyday life, while the lightweight Ellipse shoe works across gym sessions, light running and yoga. The brand is marking the launch with a Back to Balance Weekend at Palm Jumeirah Mall from September 11 to 13, including yoga with Emirati-founded Gigi Studio, a matcha bar by Tease, a Dyson refresh station and even a flower workshop.  You can register your attendance on this link.,

Very September in Dubai, and we're not complaining.

Recovery Is Officially Part of the Workout

One thing we're taking into the end of 2026 is the idea that recovery shouldn't be something we remember only when our bodies start hurting.

At Dubai's Akari, recovery is being treated as something you can actively build into a routine. Its NovoTHOR Red Light Therapy uses red and near-infrared light as part of an approach focused on circulation, cellular energy and muscle recovery, while IHHT alternates lower and higher oxygen levels through a personalised breathing protocol.

Akari also has a Brain Bar centred on functional nutrition, with drinks incorporating adaptogens, botanicals and superfoods. But what we like most is the philosophy behind the whole thing: rather than another extreme wellness regime, the emphasis is on small choices that can actually survive your real life.

Because if your wellness routine requires waking at 5am, training six days a week, completely changing your diet and never having plans, we already know how that story ends.

See more info, here

We’re Booking Our Facials With The Best In The Game

The line between a facial and a wellness treatment is getting increasingly blurry, and Mandarin Oriental Downtown, Dubai is taking that idea further with a new weekly residency from renowned facialist Rosie Osborne.

Started August 13 and continuing every Thursday until December 2026, the residency is the hotel's first collaboration with a renowned skin expert, bringing Osborne's approach to skin health and longevity to The Spa.

With more than 16 years working across advanced skincare and medical aesthetics in Dubai and London, Osborne combines technology with hands-on techniques, tailoring each treatment to the person in front of her rather than following a one-facial-fits-all formula. And the menu sounds very good.

Using 111SKIN, The Spa's official skincare partner, Osborne has created five 75-minute treatments. The Rosie Glow Ritual combines lymphatic drainage and facial sculpting with LYMA laser technology for radiance and a more lifted appearance, while The Radiance Ritual focuses on hydration using radiofrequency and lymphatic drainage.

Then there's The Skin Architect, Osborne's signature structural facial, which combines fascia release, facial sculpting and EMS muscle toning to work on facial contours and firmness. The Overnight Edit and The Regeneration Ritual complete the treatment menu.

The setting makes the whole thing feel less like popping in for a facial and more like giving yourself an afternoon off. The Spa spans two floors, and guests can continue their visit in its vitality pools, experience showers and relaxation spaces after their treatment. We tried it and cannot wait to book another. Rosie was so kind, and her explanations finally made sense for someone like us who are not exactly knowledgable when it comes to skin.

Rosie Osborne's residency takes place every Thursday from 11am to 7pm at The Spa, Mandarin Oriental Downtown, Dubai, until December 2026. Treatments including The Rosie Glow Ritual, The Radiance Ritual, The Overnight Edit and The Regeneration Ritual are priced at AED 1,700 each. For bookings. click here

Fancying A Trip Somewhere? This Place in Kerala Is Finally Talking About Hormones Properly

If there is one wellness conversation we expect to keep getting bigger, it's hormonal health, and importantly, for both women and men.

At tulåh Clinical Wellness in Kerala, hormonal health is approached through a combination of modern medicine, diagnostics, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, nutrition, movement and mind-body practices. For women, its programmes look at perimenopause and menopause within the wider context of sleep, metabolism, mood, energy, muscle mass and long-term health rather than treating hormones as an isolated issue.

The same thinking is applied to men. Instead of looking at testosterone as one number to optimise, tulåh considers its relationship with sleep, stress, metabolic health, body composition and nutrition. As Dr Vishnuraj Prakash puts it, “The objective is not a higher number. It is a healthier man.”

That shift feels important. Wellness in 2026 is increasingly less about fixing one visible symptom and more about understanding what else might be happening around it.

More info, here

Thailand's RAKxa Is Also High On Our List

We're also increasingly interested in the point where skincare stops being purely about products and starts overlapping with sleep, stress, nutrition and general health.

At RAKxa Integrative Wellness in Bangkok, its Aesthetic Programme combines medical aesthetics with Traditional Chinese Medicine, nutrition, movement and restorative therapies. Its approach starts with a doctor consultation and facial skin analysis, but can extend into lymphatic drainage, facial acupuncture and other treatments.

More interestingly, RAKxa places hydration, sleep, movement, nutrition and stress management alongside aesthetic treatments as part of maintaining skin health.

We like that idea: skin as something connected to how we're living, rather than another surface to endlessly correct.

More info, here

Now, not everything on our wellness agenda needs to involve a machine, a complicated protocol or an expensive treatment. Sometimes stretching, breathing and spending an hour doing one thing properly is enough.

For World Wellness Weekend, Banyan Tree Dubai is opening its Wellbeing Studio to the wider community from September 18 to 20 for three days of complimentary classes centred around movement, mindfulness and skincare.

The programme is refreshingly simple. On Friday, you can learn to make your own body scrub using Banyan Tree Spa's natural exfoliating ingredients, or join an afternoon Mobility Movement class focused on flexibility and body awareness. Saturday brings Guided Meditation followed by Full Body Stretching, while Sunday repeats the meditation and mobility sessions.

We particularly like that the weekend doesn't try to overcomplicate wellness. You can come to meditate, stretch, move or spend some time making something for your skin, and then get on with your day.

It also fits nicely with what we're trying to take into the final months of 2026: wellness doesn't always need to be about fixing or optimising ourselves. Sometimes it can simply mean creating a little more space to feel good.

World Wellness Weekend at Banyan Tree Dubai runs from September 18 to 20, with sessions at 11am and 2pm each day. All classes are complimentary, with advance booking required. More info, here

And Sometimes We Just Want a Very Good Face Mask

Not every wellness ritual needs to involve diagnostics and a retreat in Thailand.

Dubai-born SOHL SKIN launched this year around a satisfyingly straightforward concept: facial masks in twist-up sticks. There are four formulas, Green Tea, Rose, Turmeric and Volcanic Mud, targeting everything from cleansing and radiance to brightening and oil control. They're designed as an up-to-20-minute reset, and the stick format means considerably less mess in the bathroom and honestly, so much more practical than rinsing it off your fingers.

More info, here

Similarly, Shark Beauty's FacialPro Glow has just arrived in the UAE for those of us slowly turning our bathrooms into treatment rooms (guilty!). The ten-minute system combines exfoliation, cleansing, hydration and depuffing with hydro-powered technology and a hot-and-cold gua sha-inspired attachment.  

See more, here

The Beauty Routine Continues While You Sleep

We're also giving nighttime skincare a little more attention. One of our favourite brands, Augustinus Bader, just launched its new Overnight Restorative Cream which is built specifically around overnight use, with the brand positioning its Advanced TFC8 technology around the skin's natural renewal process and circadian rhythm. The formula is designed to lock in moisture overnight while addressing visible signs of fatigue.

Which brings us to a wider 2026 wellness resolution we're very happy to get behind: going to bed. No 14-step evening routine is going to make us feel particularly well if we're answering emails at 1am (we truly need to stop...).

More on AugustinusBader.com

Functional nutrition isn't disappearing either, although we're increasingly drawn to things that can fit into food we already eat.

Dubai-based Mossology, for example, is making sea moss gels in flavours including Original, Mango, Blueberry, Strawberry and Pomegranate. Its sea moss is wild-harvested off Saint Lucia and prepared in Dubai with mineral water and fresh lemon juice.

The practical part is probably why it caught our attention: the gel can simply be stirred into yoghurt or oats, blended into smoothies and juices, added to cooking or even mixed into coffee or tea. The most straightforward, the better.

As with any supplement or functional ingredient, particularly something containing iodine, we'd still rather understand whether it suits our individual needs than assume that because TikTok likes it, our body automatically does too.

More info on Mossology.ae

Wellness fatigue is real, and beauty routines seem to be responding. Dubai-born SADE, which has now launched at Ulta Beauty Middle East, is built around a minimalist, climate-conscious approach to beauty, with multifunctional skincare, lip and brow products designed specifically to simplify the routine. Founder Ece Baltacı Mallak puts it nicely: “Beauty doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective.”

We're taking that energy into the rest of the year. Fewer products we don't use. Fewer rules we can't maintain. More things that genuinely make our mornings easier.

And For Our Fav Natural And Heavenly-Smelling Products...

Finally, wellness doesn't always need to optimise something. Sometimes it's a bath, clean pyjamas and a product that smells ridiculously good.

Lush's Autumn Gourmand collection arrives in the UAE and Bahrain this September with fragrances inspired by autumn rituals, from bonfires and spices to warm drinks. There are pumpkin scrubs, Pumpkin Spice soap, Cinnamon Spiced Latte shower gel and the return of the cult Lord of Misrule scent. Pumpkin everything is how we roll this Q4, don't mind us.

More on Lush.com/MENA

Lastly, We’re Actually Putting Self-Care in the Calendar

One thing we're leaving behind in 2026? Treating self-care as the first thing to cancel when life gets busy.

Tara Rose Salons has picked up on exactly that with its new Wellness Voucher, essentially a way of pre-planning your salon and self-care spending rather than promising yourself you'll eventually find the time.

The UAE salon has created three prepaid options, starting at AED 1,000 and going up to AED 4,500, with each adding bonus credit and extras depending on the tier. The entry-level Dip Your Toes gives you AED 1,150 to spend for AED 1,000, while Season of You turns AED 2,500 into AED 3,000 in credit. At the top end, the All-In VIP Year gives you AED 5,400 to use across 12 months for AED 4,500.

Credit can go towards eligible haircuts, blow-dries, treatments and colour services, with additional beauty and wellness treatments available depending on the salon. The packages also introduce extras such as birthday treatments, Home Ritual Kits, journals and credits that can be gifted to friends.

By paying in advance, Tara Rose is effectively asking clients to give that time the same permanence as everything else already sitting in the diary.

The Wellness Voucher is available at Tara Rose Salons across the UAE, with separate Dubai and Abu Dhabi vouchers. Dubai credit can be used at Al Quoz and Motor City, while Abu Dhabi credit can be redeemed at Mamsha Al Saadiyat and Khalifa City A. More info, here

And that might actually sum up how we're doing wellness for the rest of 2026. We're moving, but we're recovering. We're paying attention to what happens inside the body as much as what we see outside it. We're curious about new technology without believing every new wellness trend needs to become a personality trait. We're sleeping more, simplifying where we can and leaving room for pleasure. What about you?

Two icons of our generations that we never expected to see together are coming in hot for what might just be one of the coolest collaborations of the year. Hello Kitty is teaming up with Lebanon’s beloved Bachir Ice Cream, and somehow, it makes perfect sense.

Launching across the UAE from September 7 to October 31, 2026, Hello Kitty x Bachir Ice Cream brings Sanrio’s instantly recognisable character into the very colourful world of one of Lebanon’s most nostalgic ice cream names, complete with limited-edition packaging, merchandise and, naturally, plenty of pistachio-covered Ashta.

For anyone who grew up with Bachir, the nostalgia is real. Founded in Bikfaya, Lebanon, in 1936, the family ice cream house has been serving traditional Lebanese ice cream for generations.

Its most recognisable order remains the Ashta, a creamy combination of milk cream scented with rose and orange blossom before being generously rolled in roasted pistachios. Then there’s the Mshakkal, Bachir’s gloriously colourful multi-layered creation that can bring together up to eight different flavours in one cone or cup, before getting the signature pistachio treatment.

Now imagine all of that served with Hello Kitty.

Throughout the collaboration, Bachir’s ice cream will come in exclusive Hello Kitty x Bachir packaging, including co-branded boxes for the brand’s newly launched ice cream tubs. It’s cute, nostalgic and almost certainly going to end up photographed before anyone actually eats what’s inside.

Because it wouldn't really be a Hello Kitty collaboration without something to collect, the partnership goes beyond ice cream.

A limited-edition merchandise collection will include tote bags, black and white T-shirts, keychains and stickers, bringing the two worlds together beyond the cone.

And there is something particularly fun about this pairing. Hello Kitty has managed to remain a cultural icon across generations, appearing everywhere from fashion and beauty to design, while Bachir carries its own kind of cross-generational nostalgia for Lebanese families. One comes from Japan, the other from the Lebanese mountains, and now they're meeting over Ashta in Dubai.

We didn't have Hello Kitty dipped in Bachir pistachios on our 2026 bingo card, but we're very happy it happened.

The Hello Kitty x Bachir Ice Cream collaboration runs from September 7 through October 31, 2026, at Bachir locations in City Walk, City Centre Mirdif and Galleria Mall in Dubai, as well as AlJada in Sharjah. Delivery will also be available across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.

Some of the most personal stories are the ones sitting right in front of us. For Lebanese filmmaker and award-winning photographer Ziad Mazraany, his latest photographic project begins with his cousin Elsy, a 37-year-old artist with Down syndrome who has loved painting, crafting, colour and being in front of the camera since she was a child.

The resulting series, simply titled ELSY, is a collaboration between the two, built around creativity, identity and the freedom to be seen as yourself. It is also deliberately less interested in defining Elsy through Down syndrome than in introducing us to the person in front of the camera: a woman, an artist and an individual with her own character, confidence and creative voice.

“Through ELSY, I wanted to create a visual space where she could simply exist as herself, expressive, creative, confident, and unapologetically present.”

Mazraany grew up watching his cousin find her own language through creativity.

“Growing up, I watched her find her own ways of expressing herself, through painting, crafting, color, and the simple joy of posing in front of a camera,” he explains. “Art has always felt natural to her. It is a space where she can be completely herself, without explanation or limitation.”

That history changes the dynamic of the photographs. Mazraany isn't approaching Elsy as an unfamiliar subject, and Elsy isn't simply being documented. Their existing relationship created a level of familiarity and trust that allowed the project to become a genuine collaboration, resulting in photographs he describes as intimate, playful and honest. For Mazraany, the process also offered a different way of seeing someone he has known all his life.

“Creating this project together became much more than photographing her. It became a collaboration between us and a way for me to see Elsy beyond the familiar role of my cousin.”

“In front of my lens, I witnessed her confidence, sensitivity, humor, and the unique way she sees and responds to the world around her.”

Representation can easily become reductive when a person's disability becomes the entire story told about them. ELSY consciously moves in the opposite direction.

“Every image carries a part of her personality,” Mazraany says. “Nothing is about hiding or defining her through Down syndrome; instead, the project is about celebrating the person, the artist, and the woman in front of the camera.”

“Through ELSY, I wanted to create a visual space where she could simply exist as herself, expressive, creative, confident, and unapologetically present.”

It's an approach that sits naturally within Mazraany's wider practice. Working between photography and film, the Lebanese image-maker has built his work around identity, culture, human connection and personal narratives, often using intimate stories to examine conventional ideas surrounding beauty, representation and belonging. His work has appeared across PhotoVogue Italy, Harper's Bazaar Arabia, Fashion Trust Arabia and other platforms, and in 2025 he received the Tasweer Single Image Award from Qatar Museums. But ELSY brings those questions particularly close to home.

There is a tenderness to the idea behind the series, but Mazraany doesn't want that tenderness to turn Elsy into an object of sympathy. Instead, her creativity and personality are allowed to lead. At its core, he describes ELSY as “a celebration of being seen for who you are,” one that hopes to challenge familiar perceptions of beauty and representation through creative self-expression.

And perhaps the clearest way of understanding the project comes from what Mazraany says Elsy has taught him:

“Elsy reminds me that creativity does not require permission, explanation, or boundaries. It comes from emotion, curiosity, passion, and the freedom to be seen exactly as you are.”

With ELSY, that freedom belongs as much to the woman in front of the camera as it does to the photographer behind it.

Discover more from the artist, here

For a long time, cosmetic dentistry seemed to be moving towards one very recognisable ideal: straight, symmetrical and extremely white. Spend enough time scrolling through social media and you probably know the smile we mean.

But our relationship with beauty is changing, and for Dr. Edoardo Felici of Apa Aesthetic in Dubai, the future of aesthetic dentistry is much more individual.

Having grown up in a family of dentists before building a career that took him through Madrid, Rome and Milan and eventually to Dubai, Felici has encountered very different ideas of what makes someone beautiful. Today, rather than creating a signature smile that can be recognised as his work, he is interested in something subtler: creating teeth that feel as though they have always belonged to the person wearing them.

We spoke to him about growing up surrounded by dentistry, what different cultures have taught him about beauty, why perfectly uniform veneers aren't necessarily the answer and, yes, whether your lipstick really can make your teeth look whiter.

Dentistry was part of Felici's world long before it became his profession. “Growing up in a family of dentists, I was fortunate to be surrounded by incredible role models from the very beginning. My father and my older brother were my first mentors, and having the opportunity to learn from them gave me a broad understanding of the profession long before I started building my own career.”

Rather than feeling pressure to simply continue the family profession in the same way, he says he was given room to find his own place within it.

“Rather than feeling obliged to follow a predetermined path, I was encouraged to explore the area of dentistry that brought me the most passion, which ultimately became aesthetic dentistry.”

“Our objective is harmony, not perfection.”

It's also something that informs the advice he gives younger dentists now. “Don’t worry about finding your niche immediately. Build strong foundations, stay curious, seek mentors who genuinely challenge you, and never stop learning. Your career isn’t defined by where you start, but by the commitment you bring to improving every single day.”

Moving between cities gave Felici an interesting education in how differently beauty can be understood. “Every city taught me something different,” he says. “Italy gave me an appreciation for proportion, elegance, craftsmanship and timeless beauty. In Europe, I experienced a more expressive and emotional approach to aesthetics. Dubai introduced me to patients from every continent, each bringing different cultural expectations and personal definitions of beauty.”

That last point is particularly interesting in a city like Dubai, where patients arrive with different cultural references and ideas of what they want to look like. For Felici, it has reinforced a belief that aesthetic dentistry shouldn't be about reproducing the same teeth from one face to another. “There is no universal ‘perfect smile.’ A smile only feels authentic when it belongs naturally to the person’s face and personality.”

“Today, my goal isn’t to create smiles that look recognisable as my work. It’s to create smiles that simply look like they have always belonged to that individual.”

At Apa Aesthetic, that means starting with the entire face rather than immediately looking at individual teeth. “The smile should never be designed in isolation. Teeth are only one element of a much larger composition,” Felici explains.

“Before thinking about veneers or tooth shape, we analyse facial proportions, lip dynamics, age, skin tone, facial movement and the patient’s personality. The same tooth can look completely different on two different faces.”

It's also why he rejects the idea that there is one ideal veneer shape or even one ideal shade of white.

“Sometimes the most beautiful result comes from making the teeth slightly softer, slightly warmer or slightly more textured rather than perfectly white and uniform. Natural teeth have depth, translucency and individuality, and preserving those characteristics is often what makes a smile truly elegant.”

His approach comes down to one simple idea: “Our objective is harmony, not perfection.”

Beauty doesn't stop at the dentist's chair either. The colours we wear around our faces can change the way our teeth are perceived, which brings us to that old beauty trick about red lipstick.

“Yes; it is a genuine optical effect based on colour theory,” Felici confirms. “Lipsticks with cool, blue-based undertones create visual contrast against the natural yellow tones found in enamel, making teeth appear brighter and whiter. Blue-reds, berry shades and cooler pinks tend to produce this effect most consistently.”

Orange, coral and warm brown undertones can have the opposite effect by making naturally warmer pigmentation more noticeable. “The colour of the lipstick isn’t changing the teeth themselves; it’s simply changing the way our eyes perceive them.”

But even here, Felici isn't interested in universal beauty rules. Natural enamel varies in translucency, internal colour, brightness and texture, while veneers themselves can differ according to their material and fabrication. Skin tone and undertones enter the equation too. “The most flattering result always comes from considering the face as a whole rather than following a single beauty rule.”

And perhaps that sentence says more about Felici's approach than any discussion about veneers or lipstick could.

In an aesthetic landscape that has spent years giving us templates for what our teeth, lips, noses and faces are supposed to look like, his philosophy feels refreshingly simple: your smile doesn't need to look perfect. It needs to look like it belongs to you.

Discover more about Apa Aesthetic Dubai and schedule a consultation, click here.

For a perfect cleaning and whitening, we recommend doctor

Bottega Veneta has been quietly building a fragrance world that feels very much like the house itself: tactile, considered and a little unexpected. Now, it is expanding that universe with Alta, a collection of ten new Eaux de Parfum inspired by different moments of the day, states of mind and a broader interpretation of Italy.

The concept behind Alta takes its cue from one of Bottega Veneta's most recognisable signatures, Intrecciato. Each fragrance is constructed as an “Intrecciato duo”, pairing an ingredient connected to Italy with another sourced from elsewhere in the world. The result is less about creating a literal scent of Italy and more about imagining Italian ingredients in conversation with other places, cultures and memories.

Across the ten fragrances, that idea goes in very different directions. Always Now pairs Italian basil with vetiver Bourbon from Madagascar, while Montebello combines blood orange with North African neroli. Slow Rise moves into roses and French clary sage, while Ricordami might be the collection's most playful proposition, taking the nostalgic smell of stracciatella ice cream, with its milky vanilla and chocolate notes, and grounding it with oakwood.

Then things get darker. Night Sounds brings Italian saffron together with Vietnamese benzoin, Velvet Steps combines plum with Spanish labdanum, and Crepuscolo plays with the contrast between salty Fior di Sale and South Asian oud.

Our favourites came down to three: Crepuscolo, Balliamo and Bare Morning.

Balliamo feels like the fragrance equivalent of an Italian summer evening, built around lush Italian white fig and American cedarwood. Crepuscolo, meaning twilight, is more intriguing and unexpected, with that meeting of saltiness and deep oud creating something that feels warmer and moodier.  

But in the end, we went for Bare Morning.

There was something about its simplicity that kept pulling us back. It combines the powdery softness of an Italian talco accord with Oceania sandalwood, creating something intimate, soft and almost skin-like. It doesn't scream for attention, and perhaps that's exactly why we wanted to keep smelling it.

The fragrances themselves come housed in sculptural glass bottles inspired by Bottega Veneta's Intrecciato leather weave, finished with a wooden cap and gold-toned ring. Each is refillable and available in 50ml and 100ml formats, with recycled glass used for the bottles.

Alta will launch across Bottega Veneta boutiques and leading department stores worldwide, alongside a collection of woven leather fragrance accessories. It also marks the house's most expansive fragrance release to date.

Ten fragrances, three favourites, but only one came home with us (for now): Bare Morning.

More on BottegaVeneta.com

How many versions of yourself are you expected to be at once? That question sits at the heart of YASSMIN SALEH’s Pre-Fall 2026 campaign, Everyday Forms, photographed by Luana Bassil and art directed by Léa Casini. Rooted in the lived experiences of Lebanese women, the campaign begins with a deceptively simple question: what actually defines us as women?

The answer, of course, gets complicated very quickly. Lebanese woman. Mother. Daughter. Professional. Wife. Friend. Individual. The campaign looks at how all of these identities can coexist within one person, alongside the expectations attached to each of them. Have a career, but don't work too much. Be a devoted mother, but remain social. Pursue your ambitions, but perhaps only once your children need you a little less. Be the bent 3ayle, the loving wife and the friend who always shows up, while somehow finding enough space to remain yourself. Rather than treating these pressures as abstract ideas, Everyday Forms brings them into some of the most intimate parts of women's lives.

Motherhood is one of them. The campaign uses breastfeeding to explore how even something deeply personal can become open to public scrutiny. Is your milk enough? Are you eating enough? Why do you want to stop? Why are you breastfeeding in public?

Suddenly, feeding your child becomes another decision that requires an explanation.

It's a particularly relatable starting point for a campaign interested in the quiet negotiations women make every day: what they give, what they sacrifice, and how much room they're permitted to keep for themselves.

There is also a generational conversation running through the campaign. YASSMIN SALEH considers the different versions of womanhood not as separate identities, but as layers shaped partly by the women who came before us.

The choices and sacrifices of mothers and grandmothers inevitably enter our own stories, just as the choices women make today will influence the generations that follow.

That idea of inheritance eventually moves Everyday Forms beyond the personal and into something explicitly political. Through a series of visual chapters, the campaign culminates with Lebanon's nationality law, which prevents Lebanese women from passing their nationality on to their children.

It's a powerful place to end because it takes the campaign's original question, what defines us as women?, and turns it into another: who gets to decide?

For YASSMIN SALEH, Everyday Forms ultimately becomes a conversation about identity, belonging and choice, but also about whether the things women inherit must necessarily be the things they pass on.

The Pre-Fall 2026 campaign features Nadine, her children and Coco, with photography by Luana Bassil and art direction by Léa Casini.

More on YassminSaleh.com

If there is one thing the Maghreb knows how to do, it is a wedding. In fact, one of the Arabic words used for marriage, farah, literally means “joy”, which feels like the perfect starting point for Vive la mariée !, the new exhibition at Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe exploring weddings across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Rather than looking at marriage simply as a ceremony, the exhibition considers everything surrounding it: the clothes, jewellery, music, dancing, food, rituals and, perhaps most importantly, the women who make so much of it happen.

The Wedding Wardrobe Alone Is Worth the Visit

At the heart of the exhibition are around 40 historic costumes and pieces of jewellery from Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian collections, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries and being shown in France for the first time.

Through bridal dress and the clothes worn by the women surrounding the bride, the exhibition traces regional differences as well as traditions shared across communities, including those between Muslims and Jews.

There is also a closer look at the women behind the celebrations, from preparing the bride's trousseau and making garments to accompanying her through the different stages of the wedding itself. What makes Vive la mariée ! particularly interesting is that it doesn't leave these traditions in the past.

Alongside the historical pieces, 27 contemporary artists, predominantly women from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and their diasporas, have been invited to look at marriage from their own perspectives.

Some celebrate the traditions and collective joy surrounding weddings; others question what these rituals tell us about gender, society, inheritance and the ideologies we continue to carry with us.

It turns the exhibition into something bigger than a display of beautiful wedding clothes. What do we keep? What changes? And what do the rituals surrounding marriage still say about us today? Presented as part of Saison Méditerranée, Vive la mariée ! brings together contemporary art, archival material and historic objects within an immersive scenography incorporating the sounds, movements, clothes and food associated with Maghrebi weddings.

And because you can't really make an exhibition about a Maghrebi wedding without an actual celebration, the accompanying programme will kick off with “Raconte-moi ton mariage,” a large festive procession under the artistic direction of Mohamed Bourouissa. Frankly, we're ready for the farah.

Cover Photo: Ghalia Kriaa, At the Hajema, 2025, vidéo. © Ghalia Kriaa

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More on Imarabe.org

Robert Pattinson has played a vampire, Batman and some of cinema’s stranger leading men. His latest role comes without a script: Jaeger-LeCoultre has named the British actor its newest Global Ambassador.

It is a pairing that actually makes quite a bit of sense. Pattinson has spent much of his post-Twilight career making unexpected choices, moving between major Hollywood productions and films by directors including Robert Eggers, Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon Ho and the Safdie brothers. Jaeger-LeCoultre, meanwhile, has spent almost two centuries balancing tradition with the rather obsessive technical innovation that makes watch people, well, watch people. And Pattinson appears to be one of them.

Apparently, Robert Pattinson Is a Watch Guy

“For me, the most compelling objects are the ones that have real depth to them,” Pattinson says of his appreciation for mechanical watches. “A great watch isn’t just about precision – it’s about character, craftsmanship, and the story behind how it’s made.”

He also points to what he calls the Maison's “quiet mastery”, drawing a connection between Jaeger-LeCoultre's combination of technical innovation and artistic expression and his own approach to creative work. It's an interesting choice of words because “quiet” probably describes the partnership rather well. Pattinson's personal style has rarely felt overly calculated, and Jaeger-LeCoultre isn't exactly the watchmaker you associate with shouting across the room. The appeal of both tends to be in the details.

From Edward Cullen to the Vallée de Joux

Pattinson's career has become considerably harder to predict since the days when the world knew him primarily as Edward Cullen. Good Time, High Life, The Lighthouse, Tenet, The Batman and Mickey 17 have all followed, alongside collaborations with filmmakers ranging from David Cronenberg and Claire Denis to Matt Reeves and Bong Joon Ho. More recently, he starred in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, with upcoming projects including Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Three, Lance Oppenheim's Primetime and Fernando Meirelles' Here Comes the Flood. He has also moved behind the camera through his production company, Icki Eneo Arlo.

That constant movement between the mainstream and the unexpected is part of what attracted Jaeger-LeCoultre.

“Robert Pattinson represents a rare combination of artistic depth, curiosity, and authenticity,” says Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre. “His journey is defined by a relentless commitment to excellence and an independent spirit that aligns seamlessly with the values of our Maison.”

Pattinson won't simply be appearing on the ambassador roster. His first campaign for Jaeger-LeCoultre is set to debut in mid-September, giving us our first proper look at what the partnership will actually look like.

For a Manufacture founded in 1833, with more than 1,400 calibres and 430 patents behind it, bringing Pattinson into the fold feels like another way of connecting that considerable history with contemporary culture.

And really, Robert Pattinson disappearing down the mechanical-watch rabbit hole feels surprisingly on brand.

More on Jaegerlecoultre.com

This is a big one. H&M has just announced ELIE SAAB as its next designer collaborator, bringing one of Lebanon’s most celebrated fashion houses to a much wider audience with a collection launching this October.

For anyone who grew up in the region watching Elie Saab gowns appear on red carpets, royal weddings and some of fashion’s biggest stages, the collaboration feels particularly special. Saab founded his house in Beirut, first becoming known for his bridal creations before taking Lebanese couture all the way to Paris and becoming one of the first international members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.

Today, ELIE SAAB is synonymous with a very particular kind of glamour: intricate embellishment, beautiful fabrics, femininity and, of course, the kind of dresses that require an entrance.

So what happens when that world meets H&M?

The ELIE SAAB H&M collection will span womenswear, menswear and accessories, including footwear, and rather than moving too far away from what the house is known for, the collaboration is leaning straight into it.

Expect embellished gowns, shimmering separates and sharply cut tailoring, with fine lace, gradient sequins and ELIE SAAB monograms appearing throughout.

In other words, this doesn't sound like the moment to play it safe.

“We are thrilled to announce this landmark collaboration with ELIE SAAB,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M Creative Advisor and Head of Design Womenswear. “Mr Saab is a designer we have always respected – the journey from master of bridalwear in Beirut to the centre of Paris fashion is an amazing, rich story and we are so excited to be exploring his world.”

And perhaps most importantly, she promises “a magical, ornate and glamourous collection.” We would expect nothing less.

Just like it has been for Cavalli, Rocha or Versace, there's exciting about seeing a designer so closely associated with haute couture translate that world into clothes that far more people will actually be able to buy.

For Saab, that accessibility seems to be an important part of the collaboration. “This collection is created for all who admire the world of ELIE SAAB, and I hope it will be embraced with the same enthusiasm it was created with,” says Elie Saab, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer.

He describes working with H&M as “a truly collaborative and inspiring process,” adding that the aim was to create “a complete wardrobe that speaks to every moment of a woman's life.”

We’re particularly curious to see how the house's more elaborate codes translate beyond the gowns. The promise of menswear, tailoring, shoes and accessories could make this considerably more interesting than a collection built solely around occasion dressing.

Save the Date

And unlike many global designer collaborations that can be frustratingly difficult to get your hands on in our part of the world, this one is very much coming to the region.

ELIE SAAB H&M launches on October 22, 2026, in select stores across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Egypt, as well as online.

A Lebanese couture house, an H&M designer collaboration and embellished gowns within reach of considerably more wardrobes?

October 22 might require an early alarm.

More om HM.com

We’ve had LIMÉ on our radar for a while, and Fall ’26 gives us a few more reasons to keep watching. Alongside a new collection filled with great textures, strong tailoring and plenty of red, the brand is expanding its world in the GCC with the arrival of LIMÉ Man and a dedicated UAE app.

The fashion brand has been steadily building its presence across the GCC, but Fall 2026 feels like a particularly big moment. There is a new womenswear collection full of rich autumn textures and a lot of red, LIMÉ Man has officially entered the picture, and UAE shoppers now have a dedicated LIMÉ app bringing Woman, Man and Kids together in one place.

Basically, the LIMÉ universe is getting considerably bigger.

For Fall ’26, LIMÉ looks backwards to move forward, reworking retro references through contemporary silhouettes and an autumn wardrobe that feels polished without becoming overly serious. And the colour of the season? Red.

It runs through the collection from deep burgundy to softer salmon tones, alongside grey, white, black and navy. The real story, however, is texture. Tweed, corduroy, denim, suede, wool and knitwear are layered throughout the collection, giving even relatively simple pieces a richer, more tactile feel.

Some of the strongest dresses play with shape and detail: a wool-and-cashmere dropped-waist dress, a lyocell style with a stand collar and fringed hem, and a checked cotton dress finished with a bandana detail at the waist.

Then there are the suits. LIMÉ gives the skirt suit its Fall 2026 treatment in mélange cotton, denim and corduroy, while a checked wool midi skirt, statement shirts and flared corduroy trousers bring more of that slightly retro mood into everyday dressing.

Autumn dressing is ultimately about the outerwear, and LIMÉ seems to know it. A voluminous wool jacket with exaggerated wide lapels is one of those pieces that can essentially become the entire outfit, while a water-repellent cotton-twill trench offers something more classic and practical. The accessories are where things get a little more playful. Contrasting ankle boots, animal-print pumps and over-the-knee boots with patent toes sit alongside embossed belts, croc-effect patent bags, a structured box bag and a suede shopper. It's the kind of collection that makes us slightly impatient for temperatures to drop.

And Now There’s LIMÉ Man

The bigger news for the region is that LIMÉ is no longer just about womenswear.

LIMÉ Man has officially launched as part of the brand's next phase of GCC expansion, with a wardrobe designed to move between work, formal occasions and more casual everyday dressing. The collection combines contemporary minimalism with classic wardrobe staples, moving between cleaner, more directional silhouettes and pieces designed to become everyday essentials. And they really have gone for the whole wardrobe.

There are sharp single-breasted suits alongside cotton T-shirts and polos, jeans, trousers, cotton bomber jackets, leather loafers and lace-up boots. Even the accessories have been considered, including suede shopper bags, while underwear and footwear round out the wider offering.

For anyone who likes the women's LIMÉ aesthetic, the menswear feels like a natural extension of the same world: clean, wearable and just fashion enough.

LIMÉ Is Now on Your Phone Too

The other major arrival is digital. LIMÉ has launched a dedicated mobile app in the UAE, bringing its Woman, Man and Kids collections together in one place. Beyond shopping the latest drops, users can browse looks curated by LIMÉ stylists, save pieces to a wishlist and use an AI-powered Size Assistant to help find the right fit.

It's a smart move for a brand that releases new arrivals weekly and is clearly thinking beyond individual collections towards building a much bigger LIMÉ wardrobe and lifestyle in the region. Between the new Fall collection, the arrival of LIMÉ Man and an easier way to shop everything from your phone, LIMÉ's ambitions in the GCC are becoming pretty clear.

And if Fall ’26 is anything to go by, we have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot more of it.

More on ae.limestore.com

Paris doesn't exactly have a shortage of Lebanese food. From institutions that have been around for decades to a new generation of Levantine restaurants, you don't have to look particularly hard to find hummus, tabbouleh or a good shawarma in the city.

But Shwi is interested in something a little different. Following the success of Kubri, its second Paris concept takes something incredibly familiar to anyone who grew up in or around Beirut and builds an entire restaurant around it: farrouj meshwi.

The food isn't being reinvented. In fact, that's precisely the point. The chicken, toum, pickles and flavours are meant to taste exactly as they would back home. Instead, Shwi is rethinking everything around them, replacing the nostalgic, folkloric version of Lebanon often presented abroad with something younger, urban and much closer to the Beirut its founders actually know.

We spoke to Ingrid Chehlaoui, co-founder of Kubri and Shwi, about making Lebanese grilled chicken sexy in Paris, why authenticity doesn't have to mean nostalgia, and the exact order we should all be getting when we visit.

From Kubri to Shwi

Before Shwi, there was Kubri. “Kubri was our first move into the Parisian market, the first time we put Lebanese food forward in a way that was fun and contemporary rather than traditional,” Chehlaoui tells JDEED.

Introducing that idea to Paris took some time. “People needed to understand what ‘creative Lebanese cuisine’ actually meant, and how to place us in a market that didn't really have a reference point for what we were doing.”

Once Kubri found its audience and the team had time to stabilise the restaurant, they were ready to think about what could come next. And according to Chehlaoui, another Lebanese concept was always part of the plan.

“From the beginning, our vision was bigger than one restaurant: we wanted to show Parisians that Lebanese food and culture could be cool, modern, contemporary. A second concept was never really a question of if, it was always going to happen, and it was always going to be Lebanese.”

This time, however, they wanted to move away from the restaurant format and towards something quicker and closer to the casual spots found all over Beirut.

“We knew we wanted to explore QSR (quick service restaurants), something closer to the snacks and quick spots you find in Beirut.”

The initial idea was to explore mashawi more broadly, but the conversation kept coming back to one thing.

“At some point it just clicked: Lebanese grilled chicken, Beirut style, simply didn't exist in Paris and chicken is the most consumed protein in the world. It's universal and approachable, it was never going to be a hard sell.”

The hard part? “The real challenge was making Lebanese grilled chicken sexy.” Challenge accepted.

Beirut, Minus the Postcard

Shwi arrives in a Paris where Lebanese and Levantine food is already everywhere, particularly around Canal Saint-Martin.

“Canal Saint-Martin and honestly, plenty of other areas of Paris is already saturated with Lebanese and Levantine addresses,” Chehlaoui says. “It's one of the most consumed, and most popular ‘ethnic’ cuisines in the city at this point.”

But while the food might be good, she felt the way Lebanon was being presented alongside it often looked strangely familiar.

“A lot of those addresses are doing good food, but wrapping it in something very cliché, very folklore. The decor, the ambiance, the whole experience leans hard into a traditional, heritage, postcard version of Lebanon.”

Shwi deliberately strips that away.

“The one thing we kept 100% authentic, untouched, non-negotiable, are the flavors.”

And Chehlaoui is very specific about what that means.

“What you eat at Shwi is exactly what you'd eat off at any farrouj meshwi shop in Beirut, and that’s exactly how we want people to experience it. Everything else, the space, the branding, the energy, we built to feel current, not nostalgic.”

That distinction feels important. Lebanese food doesn't need to be changed to make it contemporary. Sometimes it's simply the way we present our culture that needs catching up.

So What Does a Modern Farrouj Shop Look Like?

For Chehlaoui, “modern” isn't one big gesture.

“‘Modern’ and ‘youthful’ come through in the layers of detail we built into the experience. It's a lot of small, deliberate choices stacking together.”

The music mixes modern Arab and Western hip-hop and R&B tracks, while the interiors borrow from a New York deli sensibility, with Lebanese references kept subtle rather than literal. The grill itself sits directly in front of customers.

“The grilling itself happens right in front of the customer, facing them directly, almost like sitting at a Japanese robata counter.”

Even the branding was designed to avoid falling back on nostalgia.

“The branding is built to feel authentic, eclectic without tipping into nostalgia: it's rooted in an urban, street vibe rather than a traditional, classic one.”

There is also something we particularly love about the people behind that visual world: Shwi's brand identity was developed entirely by Lebanese women, with Nour Abou Jaoude leading the artistic direction and Samar Keyrouz designing the interior.

For Chehlaoui, that choice was an important part of creating an identity that genuinely felt like Shwi. “Working with Lebanese creatives wasn't incidental, it’s a big part of why the brand feels as strong and specific as it does.”

So, What's Next?

For a concept that has only been open a few months, Shwi has already had quite the introduction to Paris. “We opened four months ago and got hit with volumes we weren't fully ready for operationally,” Chehlaoui admits. “It's been a rollercoaster.”

So while more locations in Paris or even expansion beyond France might seem like the obvious next move, there isn't a master plan being rolled out just yet.

“We haven't had the opportunity to zoom out and think about the next few years. So we don't have a defined answer yet, we are still discussing.”

What she does know is that whatever happens next won't be rushed. “Whatever we decide, we'll do it as well as we possibly can! We'd rather move deliberately and get it right than rush any decision.”

Fair enough. First, survive the queues.

Naturally, we couldn't talk this much about farrouj without asking Chehlaoui to give us the definitive Shwi order. Quarter, half or whole chicken? Spicy or classic? Toum or Shwi sauce? Thankfully, she didn't make us choose between the sauces.

“Our honest answer: half a chicken, classic (not spicy). Both sauces on the side, toum and Shwi sauce. Pickles, a lot of them. Tabbouleh and batata meshwiyyé.”

And her final piece of advice? “An empty stomach, preferably.” We couldn't agree more.

See more of Shwi, here

After years where the cleanest image, biggest celebrity and most perfectly controlled set seemed to win, Fall/Winter 2026 feels noticeably more interested in character. People look like people, clothes are moving, locations actually matter. There is humour, weirdness, sensuality and, thankfully, some really good casting.

From FKA twigs roaming London for Burberry and Teyana Taylor turning her body into sculpture for Alaïa, to LOEWE climbing 3,470 metres up Mont Blanc, these are the campaigns currently filling our saved folders.

LOEWE Goes Very, Very High

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have taken LOEWE to the top of a mountain. Literally.

Photographed by Talia Chetrit at Pointe Helbronner in the Mont Blanc Massif, the Fall/Winter 2026 campaign places the collection against snow, ice and granite at elevations reaching 3,470 metres. And it works. Bright yellow knits, huge shearling mittens, inflatable parkas and the new suede Amazona 180 look even more exaggerated against all that white.

The cast is just as eclectic: Julia Garner, Théodore Pellerin, Lil Yachty, Laïka Blanc-Francard, Beau Gadsdon, Nyawurh Chuol, Carin Herven, Siegfried Blanche and artist Cosima von Bonin. Her work also appears across special Amazona 180, Puzzle and Flamenco bags, bringing lazy animal characters, florals, checks and unexpected colour into LOEWE's leatherwork.   Snow, surreal colours, enormous clothes and Lil Yachty on Mont Blanc. We're sold.

More on Loewe.com

Givenchy Celebrates Women as They Are

For Sarah Burton's Givenchy, the women are the story. Shot by Juergen Teller in Croatia, the Winter 2026 campaign stars Eva Herzigova, Kaia Gerber, Nyaduola Gabriel, Liu Wen and French writer and former lawyer Constance Debré, all women connected to the wider creative family around Burton's Givenchy.

“There’s a directness about the women in the campaign which speaks to their personality and strength,” Burton explains, adding that her work at Givenchy centres around celebrating “the reality and the brilliance of all kinds of women.”

Against hard Croatian granite, the tailoring, leather white shirts, draped evening dresses and extravagant accessories feel almost secondary to the personalities wearing them. That's precisely why the pictures work.

More on Givenchy.com

Teyana Taylor Is an Alaïa Woman

There are certain castings that require very little explanation. Teyana Taylor for Alaïa is one of them. For Summer Fall 2026, David Sims photographs Taylor in tightly framed black-and-white images that make full use of her background in dance and performance. Her body bends, balances and moves through the clothes, turning Pieter Mulier's sculptural silhouettes into something alive.

There are second-skin knits, anatomical cut-outs and a metallic embellished mini, but it's Taylor's physicality that makes everything click.

Alaïa has a history of working with performers whose bodies are part of their artistic language, from Grace Jones to Tina Turner, and Taylor feels like a natural continuation of that lineage.

As Taylor puts it herself, the collection is “bold” and “feminine,” with a strength she connects with. Very hot. Very Alaïa. No notes.

More on Alaia.com

Burberry Takes FKA twigs Back to London

FKA twigs in Burberry. In London. At night.Sometimes that's enough of a concept.

Daniel Lee's Winter 2026 campaign returns to the British capital, with Glen Luchford shooting cinematic images around the River Thames. FKA twigs, who also provided the soundtrack to the runway show, appears alongside Romeo Beckham and a wider cast against London landmarks and city lights.

The location completes a story that began at the Winter show inside Old Billingsgate Market, where the set referenced Tower Bridge. Now the real city becomes the backdrop. And the clothes are wonderfully British without feeling like costume: trenches become eveningwear, leather appears across coats, jumpsuits, kilts and jogging pants, while checks, rainwear and silk scarves keep the Burberry vocabulary firmly intact.

FKA twigs walking around London in Burberry is also exactly the sort of fashion image we would happily pin to a wall.

More on Burberry.com

CELINE Keeps It Effortlessly Cool

For CELINE Winter 2026, photographer Zoë Ghertner captures the collection with the kind of undone, spontaneous energy that makes you want to immediately copy the entire look. Bold flashes of red and pink meet sharp black and white, oversized scarves, sculptural bags and plenty of attitude. The accompanying film is by Massimiliano Bomba.

It feels polished without being too perfect, and very, very cool.

More on Celine.com

Tom Ford Wants You to Come As You Are

If some campaigns this season are escaping into fantasy, Haider Ackermann's Tom Ford is interested in getting uncomfortably close.

For AW26, Ackermann continues his exploration of seduction through a cast of characters of different ages and walks of life, photographed against a clinical white background in glaring light. There are no elaborate sets or props to hide behind. Just the clothes, the camera and the people wearing them. Ackermann describes them as people marked by lives intensely lived: proud, individual, imperfect and very aware of themselves.

His invitation is simply: “Come as you are.” And then comes the very Tom Ford part. Ackermann imagines these characters as people who have all, in his words, “flirted with debauchery, but now they stand straight.”

We love that. Seduction here isn't about perfection or looking impossibly polished. It's in someone's face, attitude, clothes, age, history and whatever they may have got up to before arriving in front of the camera. Sexy is interesting again.

More on TomFord.com

Valentino Finds Beauty in Things That Shouldn't Belong Together

Under Alessandro Michele, Valentino's Interferenze campaign takes us to one of Rome's strangest and most beautiful museums: Centrale Montemartini.

The former electricity plant places ancient Roman sculpture amongst enormous turbines, boilers and industrial machinery. Instead of simply borrowing the location because it looks cool, the campaign builds its entire idea around those collisions: gods and machines, marble and steel, antiquity and modernity.

Photographed by Glen Luchford, bodies and clothes appear amongst statues and machinery as shafts of light cut through the darkness. The softness of the garments meets heavy steel, while living bodies seem to continue gestures begun by figures carved centuries ago.

It's dramatic, slightly strange and unapologetically intellectual. In other words, Alessandro Michele is Alessandro Michele-ing again and we're very happy about it.

More on Valentino.com

On Wants FKA twigs to Slow Down

After exploring training together, On and FKA twigs are slowing things down for Fall/Winter 2026, turning their attention to recovery and the idea that rest is part of movement too.

Creative-directed by twigs and photographed by Sharna Osborne with a grainy '90s VHS feel, the campaign sees her alongside dancers in sculptural, restorative poses. At its centre is the new Cloudmonster 3 Mule, On's first mule silhouette, designed specifically for those slower post-workout moments.

FKA twigs telling us to lie down and recover? Finally, a fitness trend we can fully commit to.

More on ON.com

Calvin Klein Gives Tate McRae a Pair of Jeans and Lets Her Dance

The equation here is beautifully uncomplicated: Tate McRae + Calvin Klein jeans + dancing + “Groove Is in the Heart.”

The first chapter of Calvin Klein's Fall 2026 Feel the Fit campaign is directed and photographed by Carlijn Jacobs, with Tate moving and dancing through ordinary settings as soon as she slips into her jeans. The campaign deliberately plays with the energy of Calvin Klein's '90s imagery, filtered through Tate's own performance style.

The denim itself includes Low Rise Baggy, High Rise Loose and the returning '90s Straight jean. Is reinventing the fashion campaign necessary when you have Tate McRae dancing in jeans? Probably not.

More on CalvinKlein.com

Fendi Makes Walking an Art Form

For Maria Grazia Chiuri's first collection at Fendi, one of the House's familiar shoes gets a rethink.

The Colibrì slingback, first introduced for Spring/Summer 2018, returns as the Very Colibrì, stripped down and reshaped with a slimmer heel and deeper V-shaped vamp.

Photographer Michal Pudelka takes it to Rome's Stadio delle Terme di Caracalla for The Art of Balance, where models are captured in surreal moments of movement and balance. Rather than a straightforward shoe campaign, the imagery turns the act of walking into something closer to choreography.

It's feminine without being precious, elegant without standing still, and an intriguing first glimpse at how Chiuri is approaching the Fendi woman.

More on Fendi.com

Lacoste Goes Back to the Court

While everyone else is climbing mountains and wandering through Roman power stations, Lacoste is going back to where it all began: tennis.

The new Slam Break sneaker takes elements from the brand's sporting archive and brings them into a lifestyle shoe, including its Absorption De Shock technology originally developed for performance tennis models in the 2000s.

The accompanying campaign moves between a footwear atelier and the tennis court, playing with Lacoste's visual history rather than treating heritage too reverentially. It's clean, slightly retro and playful, much like the shoes themselves. And the colourways are particularly good: classic cream and grass green, chocolate brown and beige, alongside pink, navy, mint and sky blue.  

More on Lacoste.com

PUMA Lets the Suede Bloom

PUMA's iconic Suede gets a very pretty makeover for its latest Middle East campaign. The new Suede Bloom adds faux pearls, satin and frilled laces to the sneaker, with Powder Pink, Vintage Cream and Black colourways.

Regional talents including sisters Rania, Dania and Talia Fawaz front the whimsical campaign, each putting her own spin on a sneaker that has been reinventing itself since the late '60s.

More on Ae.Puma.com

There are restaurants you go to because they're new, and then there are restaurants you go back to because you already know exactly what you want. Scalini Dubai falls firmly into the second category for us. And after temporarily closing its doors for a renovation, the Italian favourite is officially back today September 1, with a new look, a refreshed menu and, most importantly, the same spirit that made us love it in the first place.

And before we get into the interiors, the Amalfi Coast references or what's new on the menu, we need to talk about the Parmigiana.

Because Scalini's Parmigiana is genuinely one of our favourite dishes in the whole world. Not just one of our favourite Italian dishes in Dubai, no. The whole world. Have we been to Italy to say that? My Nonna was from Tuscany. So believe me on that one.

And so yes, we're very happy they're back.

Located at Restaurant Village at Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach, Scalini has given its home a Mediterranean refresh while keeping the familiar blue and yellow palette associated with the restaurant. The colours are now joined by ivory, striped fabrics, deep navy, timber and blue velvet, with references to Italy's seaside destinations running throughout the space. The open kitchen remains at the heart of the dining room, keeping that slightly theatrical element of watching the chefs at work.

But it's the veranda that might tempt us to stay particularly long once Dubai's weather starts behaving again (please behave presto, weather.)

Set beneath a white pergola, it's surrounded by citrus trees, traditional lanterns, woven chairs and striped textiles, drawing inspiration from the courtyards and terraces of the Amalfi Coast, Sicily and the Italian Riviera. Sicilian-inspired blue majolica tiles greet you at the entrance, completing the feeling that you've temporarily escaped Jumeirah for somewhere along the Italian coast.

So, What's for Lunch?

The menu continues to focus on the kind of Italian cooking we tend to love most: good ingredients, relatively simple combinations and no need to overcomplicate things.

Executive Chef Francesco Cortorillo has introduced dishes including Crudo di Gamberi Rossi di Mazara, made with raw red prawns from Mazara del Vallo, yellow Datterino tomatoes, Sicilian white grape vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, basil and fresh chilli. There's also Tartara di Manzo, prepared tableside with two types of mustard, capers, chives and olive oil, bringing back some of the old-school restaurant theatre that makes eating out actually feel like an occasion.

And then there's the Linguine alla Nerano, inspired by the Amalfi Coast and made with gently fried Italian zucchini, basil and Provolone del Monaco, slowly brought together with the pasta until everything becomes silky and intensely comforting. For something fresher, the Insalata di Gamberi e Asparagi combines grilled prawns with white and green asparagus and avocado.

All very tempting (just coming back from Lebanon now and said DIET! but one more meal won't hurt?)

Some Things Don't Need Reinventing

Scalini first opened in London in 1988, eventually becoming known as much for its charismatic atmosphere and A-list following as its Italian food. Dubai carried that DNA over to the UAE, with its open kitchen, tableside preparation and the slightly chaotic warmth that a good Italian restaurant should have.

The new Scalini seems to understand something we wish more restaurant renovations did: if people already love you, you don't need to become an entirely different restaurant. The room can change, the menu can evolve, the chairs can get prettier.

Just don't touch our Parmigiana.

More on Scalini-dubai.com

We’ll admit it: put Dua Lipa in a campaign and you already have our attention. Add coffee, New York, Italy, poolside iced lattes and a little George Clooney cameo into the mix, and we’re listening fully.

Today September 1, Nespresso is launching its latest global campaign in the UAE, starring its new Global Brand Ambassador Dua Lipa. And rather than simply giving us another beautiful celebrity coffee ad, the campaign leans into something Dua knows particularly well: jumping between different worlds. The premise is simple: every coffee can take you somewhere else. In a year full of challenges, we don't mind a little fun.

If you follow Dua, you’ll know that the woman is seemingly always somewhere. One minute she’s swimming in the Mediterranean, the next she’s eating her way through a new city, performing to thousands or posting the kind of holiday photo dump that immediately makes you question your own travel plans.

So casting her as Nespresso’s guide to a world built around curiosity, travel and discovery makes a lot of sense. The campaign follows Dua through different moments of the day, with the coffee changing alongside her. There’s a Melozio in New York in the morning, an Altissio espresso in Italy, a Double Espresso Chiaro iced latte by the pool and, later, a French Lavender & Vanilla Decaf (surprisingly, it's one of our fav, especially when we've already exhausted our caffeine threshold for the day.)

There’s also a playful passing of the Nespresso baton. Dua borrows fellow ambassador George Clooney’s famous “What else?” and turns it into a question about what else there is to taste, try and discover. Clooney himself makes a brief appearance, connecting this new chapter to the Nespresso campaigns we all grew up watching.

Meet the Vertuo Up

Dua may be the face of the campaign, but there is another new arrival: the Nespresso Vertuo Up.

The new machine heats up in just three seconds and introduces a dedicated Coffee Creation button, designed to produce bolder, more intense extractions for milk-based, plant-based and over-ice drinks. It also gives access to more than 50 coffees, which feels particularly appropriate at a time when ordering “a coffee” can mean anything from a straight espresso to an iced pistachio oat milk situation. Using Nespresso’s Centrifusion™ Technology, the machine recognises each capsule and adjusts the extraction accordingly, while a redesigned lever brings a little more ritual to the process.

And yes, you still get that very satisfying Nespresso crema on top.

The campaign also signals a broader shift for Nespresso, with a new creative identity that feels younger, more playful and considerably more curious (we're here for it!).

Created with Leo Constellation, the new direction introduces updated design codes, including a bespoke typeface, while moving the conversation beyond coffee simply being a morning ritual. Instead, Nespresso is leaning further into the way we actually drink coffee now: iced, hot, flavoured, over milk, plant-based, decaf at night and increasingly influenced by whatever drink has taken over our feeds that week.

French Lavender & Vanilla coffee? Apparently, yes.

And we’re into the fact that the brand isn't treating experimentation as something that needs to be overly serious. Coffee can be excellent and still be fun.

What Else?

There’s something fitting about Dua Lipa entering the Nespresso universe at this particular moment. Coffee culture has changed dramatically, especially for younger drinkers. Our coffee order has become strangely personal, cafés have become part workspace, part social club, and an iced latte has practically become an accessory. Also we need the caffeine more than ever: we're ti-red.

Nespresso seems ready to play in that world. As for us, we'll happily follow Dua from a morning coffee in New York to an espresso in Italy and an iced latte beside the pool.

Although if Nespresso could also provide the flights, that would really complete the experience (right?)

More on Nespresso.com/ae

There are few jewellery motifs as instantly recognisable as the Cartier panther. Elegant, powerful and just a little dangerous, the feline has been roaming through the Maison’s universe for more than a century, appearing across everything from delicate earrings to unapologetically bold high jewellery.

For Cartier’s latest Into the Wild gathering, that universe came to life in Istanbul, bringing together a seriously good line-up of talent from across the region and beyond, all wearing pieces from the Maison. And naturally, the Panthère was everywhere.

A Night of Panthers

Lebanese actress Razane Jammal opted for one of our favourite looks of the evening, wearing an articulated yellow-gold Panthère torque necklace with lacquer, onyx and tsavorite garnets, alongside matching Panthère stud earrings. Egyptian actress Tara Emad went in a completely different direction, choosing an articulated white-gold Panthère torque covered in diamonds and finished with emerald and onyx details, paired with matching earrings.

Turkish actress Tuba Büyüküstün also embraced the feline, wearing an emerald Panthère necklace and dramatic earrings set with emeralds, onyx and diamonds. Then there was Yousra, who reminded us why yellow gold will never really disappear. The Egyptian icon wore a full Panthère moment with earrings, necklace and bracelet in yellow gold, punctuated by tsavorite garnets, onyx, black lacquer and diamonds.

Saba Mubarak kept the jewellery focused on a pair of long yellow-gold Panthère earrings with tsavorite garnet, onyx and diamonds, while Raya Abirached added a flash of colour with rubellite Panthère earrings alongside Juste un Clou and Clash de Cartier rings.  

Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, meanwhile, wore small Panthère earrings in rose gold set with onyx, emeralds and diamonds, proving the panther doesn't always need to roar to get our attention.

The Men Had Their Cartier Moment Too

The evening wasn't only about the Panthère.

Turkish actor Barış Arduç paired a large Santos de Cartier watch in yellow gold and steel with a small yellow-gold Santos chain necklace, while Egyptian actor Ahmed Malek wore a Santos-Dumont skeleton watch with a Panthère brooch, Juste un Clou necklace and Panthère sunglasses.  

Ishaan Khatter chose the elongated Tank Américaine in platinum alongside an extra-large, diamond-paved Juste un Clou multiwear necklace, while Fady El Sayed went classic with a yellow-gold Tank Louis Cartier and a Faune et Flore de Cartier pin.  

And perhaps one of the more unexpected styling moments came courtesy of Anas Bukhash, who wore the tiny yellow-gold Baignoire watch, a reminder that the arbitrary divide between "men's" and "women's" watches feels increasingly irrelevant.

What we liked most about the night was seeing the same Cartier signatures take on completely different personalities depending on who was wearing them. A Panthère can be a small rose-gold earring on Nadine Labaki, a diamond-covered white-gold torque on Tara Emad or an entire yellow-gold jewellery story on Yousra. The Tank can remain impeccably classic, while the Baignoire suddenly looks surprisingly cool on a man's wrist.

And for us, the pieces that really stood out were naturally the ones with a little more drama: the oversized necklaces, sculptural Panthère torques, emeralds, rubellites and flashes of green tsavorite.

Because if you're going Into the Wild with Cartier, you might as well let the jewellery do some roaring.

More on Cartier.com

It feels like everywhere we look lately, someone is wearing ALO. On the way to Pilates, grabbing coffee, travelling, and increasingly, nowhere near a workout at all.

The Los Angeles-born brand has managed to turn activewear into something closer to a lifestyle uniform, building its world around that now-familiar studio-to-street idea. And if its latest moves are anything to go by, that world is only getting bigger in the UAE.

ALO has just expanded its Dubai presence with a new store at Dubai Hills Mall, which opened on August 28, with another, much bigger opening already around the corner. On September 18, the brand will open its largest UAE flagship at Mall of the Emirates, joining its existing locations at Dubai Mall and The Galleria Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi. The expansion comes through ALO's partnership with Alshaya Group.

A New 950-Square-Metre Home

The Mall of the Emirates flagship is the one we're particularly curious to see.

Spanning 950 square metres, the store is designed to bring more of ALO's wellness universe into the retail experience. Alongside its fashion and performance collections, the space will feature luxurious fitting rooms, a dedicated VIP seating area and, perhaps most unexpectedly, an olive tree built directly into the store, a nod to the brand's focus on nature and mindful living.

It makes sense for a brand that has long moved beyond leggings. Founded in Los Angeles in 2007 with yoga and mindfulness at its core, ALO now stretches across performance wear, everyday fashion, wellness products, community experiences and digital fitness.

And Dubai, where a Pilates class can quite easily be followed by lunch, shopping and dinner without anyone ever changing out of their activewear, feels like particularly fertile ground.

The expansion also comes at an interesting moment for ALO globally, as Bella Hadid recently became the new face of the brand's Pre-Fall 2026 campaign.

Photographed around Los Angeles by Mert & Marcus and styled by Mimi Cuttrell, the campaign places Hadid in the kind of performance pieces that have become synonymous with the ALO uniform, but the partnership goes beyond the usual celebrity-in-leggings formula.

Hadid has spoken about how her relationship with wellness has evolved as she has grown older, with slowing down, movement and creating space for herself becoming increasingly important parts of her everyday routine. That makes the partnership feel fairly natural for a brand that has built much of its identity around wellness as a lifestyle rather than simply working out.

It also doesn't hurt that Bella has spent years helping define the very model-off-duty aesthetic that turned leggings, tiny sports bras, oversized jackets and sneakers into legitimate fashion territory.

Perhaps that's the most interesting part of ALO's continued expansion. What began with yoga has become an entire visual language around how wellness looks today.

The gym and the wardrobe have become increasingly difficult to separate, while Pilates, recovery, matcha, supplements and activewear have somehow found themselves living within the same lifestyle universe. ALO has been particularly good at positioning itself right in the middle of it.

With Dubai Hills now open, its biggest UAE flagship arriving at Mall of the Emirates in September and one of fashion's most recognisable faces fronting its latest campaign, ALO clearly sees plenty more room to grow here.

Judging by the number of ALO sets already walking around Dubai, we'd say the feeling is mutual.

More on Alo.com

September has always felt like a reset, whether or not there is actually a classroom involved. New notebooks become new routines, summer skin needs a little recalibrating, and suddenly we want to reorganise our beauty shelves, our bags and, ideally, our entire lives.

This year, our back-to-school beauty edit is less about starting over and more about finding the products that make getting ready easier, and a little more fun. Think one-swipe eyeshadow, a primer that actually keeps everything where it should be, summer skin that survives well beyond summer, deliciously scented body creams and a new fragrance that might just become our autumn signature.

Here’s what is currently making the cut.

e.l.f. Power Grip Primer Niacinamide +4%

We'll start with the practical one, because September mornings aren't exactly known for giving us unlimited getting-ready time.

The e.l.f. Power Grip Primer Niacinamide +4% takes the brand's cult sticky gel primer and adds 4% niacinamide into the mix. It still gives makeup that grippy base designed to keep everything in place, but now works on the appearance of uneven skin tone and dullness at the same time.

The translucent formula smooths and preps the complexion while leaving behind the kind of dewy finish we generally spend several products trying to achieve. Basically: skincare benefits, glow and makeup that hopefully still looks good by the end of the day.

Why we love it: Because if we're going back to long days, we'd rather not bring midday makeup touch-ups with us.

Available at Sephora Middle East

Saie SuperSuede™ Baked Eyeshadow

Remember when doing your eyes involved a palette of 15 colours, three brushes and a YouTube tutorial? We're not going back there.

Saie's SuperSuede™ Baked Eyeshadow is essentially the opposite. Inspired by effortless '90s beauty (and Helena Christensen as the star of the campaign), the collection consists of 11 neutral singles spanning demi-mattes and low-lit shimmers, designed to work alone or layered without requiring much expertise. Saie says they wear for up to 16 hours without a primer and are formulated with jojoba esters, ceramides and squalane for a lightweight, comfortable finish.

The shades are exactly the sort of colours we want heading into autumn: Cannoli, Biscotti, Amaretto and Dolce on the matte side, with Gelato, Granita, Affogato and Tartufo bringing the shimmer.

Why we love it: One shade, a finger, a quick swipe and you're basically done. We're particularly into Affogato, a warm bronze shimmer that feels made for the post-summer transition.

More on SaieBeauty.com

Maison Margiela Scentsorium Collection

Maison Margiela is taking fragrance into haute parfumerie with The Scentsorium Collection, six genderless scents inspired by the house’s Artisanal approach to deconstruction and reconstruction.

The names alone have us intrigued: Blaze of Stillness mixes neroli, fig and suede, while Silent Fury goes darker with leather, spices and tobacco. Elsewhere, expect black rose, liquorice, incense, saffron, patchouli and mineral musk.  

Why we love it: The unexpected combinations and the idea of choosing fragrance according to emotion rather than simply a scent family. Very Margiela, and definitely one we want to smell in person.

More on Maisonmargiela-fragrances.us

Dr. Barbara Sturm Everything Bronzing Drops

Just because the holiday is over doesn't mean the holiday face has to be. Dr. Barbara Sturm's Everything Bronzing Drops sit somewhere between skincare and makeup, adding warmth and luminosity while also tackling hydration and the appearance of pores. Hydrolyzed yeast extract and avocado oil support hydration, red clover extract targets the appearance of enlarged pores, while optical pigments create that soft-focus, sun-kissed finish.

You can wear one or two drops directly on the skin, mix them into moisturiser or foundation, or even add them to body lotion.

Why we love it: We are absolutely not emotionally prepared to give up our summer glow just because September says so, and these will come super handy.

More on DrSturm.com

KAYALI Yum Lip & Body Collection

KAYALI has spent years convincing us that one fragrance is never enough. Now Mona Kattan is taking layering beyond perfume altogether.

Launching globally on August 28, the brand's first Yum Lip & Body Collection translates two of its much-loved gourmands—Yum Boujee Marshmallow | 81 and Yum Pistachio Gelato | 33—into Silk Soufflé Body Creams and Cashmere Kiss Lip Balms.

And these sound dangerously edible. The whipped body creams contain hyaluronic acid alongside KAYALI's Dream Elixir, a blend including date seed, sesame, moringa, almond and olive oils, and are designed to provide up to 24 hours of hydration without a greasy finish.

The lip balms, meanwhile, offer up to eight hours of hydration with a soft shine. Boujee Marshmallow comes with pink marshmallow, strawberry and whipped cream notes, while Pistachio Gelato goes into full dessert territory with pistachio, hazelnut, whipped cream and cotton candy.

Why we love it: Because smelling like pistachio gelato from lips to fragrance sounds like our idea of fun—and exactly like something we'd enjoy.

More on Kayali.com

Wardufil Organic Oils

Not everything we're loving comes from a global beauty counter.

Tucked inside a restored Beirut heritage house in Mar Mikhael, Wardufil is the kind of place that immediately makes you slow down. Away from the rhythm of the city outside, its approach is built around calm, restoration and thoughtful rituals of wellbeing.

At the heart of many of those rituals are Wardufil's locally made organic oils, used throughout its massages and body treatments. They add another layer of nourishment to treatments already designed around unwinding, resetting and reconnecting with the body.

And while we love the full Wardufil experience, this time it's the oils we're bringing home with us.

Why we love it: It's local, organic and feels distinctly Beirut. More importantly, it brings a little bit of that post-massage feeling home—which might be exactly what September calls for.

More on Instagram, here

Max Mara Le Parfum

And now for something considerably chic: for its first fragrance, Max Mara has looked to perhaps the most recognisable object in its universe: the coat. More specifically, the house's iconic 101801. The idea behind Le Parfum is essentially an invisible version of it: a fragrance intended to envelop the body with the same warmth and understated confidence as Max Mara cashmere.

Even the bottle borrows from the coat: an architectural glass silhouette is wrapped with a camel-coloured lacquered belt, complete with stitching details and gold accents.

The fragrance itself, created by perfumers Marie Salamagne and Fabrice Pellegrin, combines sandalwood and cedarwood with creamy tuberose, before vanilla and benzoin bring warmth to the base.

Why we love it: September always makes us want a new fragrance, and this one feels like the olfactory equivalent of putting your favourite coat back on after summer.

More on MaxMara.com

There are certain objects that feel so familiar you never really stop to wonder where they came from, because they were simply always there: in your grandparents’ house, on the table during long summer lunches, somewhere in the village, or sitting on a shelf waiting for someone brave enough to actually use them.

For many Lebanese, the breek is one of them. Your Teta would often reach out to grab it, remove the piece of crochet protecting its top and help you quench my thirst as you'd tilt your head backwards.

You probably remember the shape before you remember the name: the rounded body, the handle, the narrow spout stretching upwards and, if you grew up around one, the slightly chaotic ritual of attempting to drink from it without touching it with your lips—or pouring half of its contents down your shirt.

Because drinking from a breek was never simply drinking water, no: there was technique involved. You started close to your mouth, became increasingly confident, raised it a little higher, and before long someone was inevitably attempting to drink from what felt like half a metre away while everyone else watched.

It is such a distinctly familiar Lebanese image that we started wondering about something we had somehow never really questioned before: where did the breek actually come from? The answer, as is often the case with objects that have existed for generations, is considerably more complicated—and more interesting—than simply calling it Lebanese.

So, What Exactly Is a Breek?

Known as the breek, briq or ibriq (إبريق), the vessel is instantly recognisable for its rounded body and elongated upward-facing spout, which allows water to be poured directly into the mouth without the drinker ever having to touch the vessel with their lips, making it particularly practical at a time when one breek might be shared between several people around a table or out in the fields.

The Arabic word ibriq itself has a much broader history and can refer to different forms of pitchers and jugs across the region, but in Lebanon it became closely associated with this very particular silhouette and, perhaps even more importantly, with this particular way of drinking. It was functional, communal and surprisingly clever, but over time it also became something else: one of those everyday objects so deeply embedded in Lebanese life that we stopped noticing how unusual it actually was.

Until you hand one to someone who has never used it before.

How Far Back Does It Go?

This is where the story becomes fascinating, because the breek is often casually described as a Phoenician invention, and while that makes for a wonderfully neat origin story, history is rarely quite that cooperative.

Archaeological excavations along the Lebanese coast have revealed an extraordinarily sophisticated tradition of pottery and vessel-making stretching back thousands of years, and specialised jugs and spouted vessels appear throughout the material culture of ancient communities in the region. Archaeological research from sites including Sidon and Sarepta has documented the importance and diversity of Phoenician pottery, which was produced locally and circulated throughout the Mediterranean.

Research into the breek itself has also pointed to a vessel illustrated in Patricia Bikai's The Phoenician Pottery of Cyprus, dated to approximately 1050–850 BCE, whose form bears a striking resemblance to the object we recognise today, while other breek-like forms have been associated with material going as far back as the Early Bronze Age.

But resemblance doesn't necessarily prove continuity. We don't know that those ancient vessels were used in precisely the same way, nor can we confidently draw an uninterrupted line between a Phoenician vessel from three thousand years ago and the breek your grandparents kept at home.

So, no, we're not going to tell you that the Phoenicians definitely invented the breek.

What we can say is perhaps more interesting: the shape we recognise belongs to an incredibly old regional language of making, storing and drinking, with forms resembling it appearing in this part of the world thousands of years ago.

Before Glass, There Was Clay

Today, the breek many of us immediately picture is made from glass, often with that slightly greenish tint and tiny imperfections that somehow make it even more beautiful, but for much of its history the object was made from unglazed earthenware, and this wasn't simply because clay happened to be available.

The material actually did some of the work. Unglazed clay is porous, meaning that a very small amount of water can pass through the walls of the vessel and evaporate from its exterior surface; as that evaporation takes place, heat is removed and the water remaining inside stays cooler than it otherwise would.

In other words, long before anyone was opening the refrigerator every five minutes during a Lebanese August, there was the breek.

It's the sort of beautifully simple design solution that feels almost surprisingly contemporary now: local material, no electricity, no plastic and no complicated technology, just an understanding of how a material behaves and a form developed around everyday life. Lebanon's pottery traditions produced a whole vocabulary of vessels for carrying, storing and drinking water rather than one standardised object. In places such as Rashaya, for example, traditional pottery included different forms of ibriq, kuz and dawraq, each responding to slightly different domestic needs. There was also a larger relative of the breek known as the awafi, which could carry more water and was traditionally used by people working in fields and orchards.

Eventually, the breek moved from clay into glass, and this is where we arrive at the version many Lebanese today probably recognise most immediately.

That evolution feels particularly appropriate in Lebanon, because glassmaking itself has an extraordinarily long history along the eastern Mediterranean coast, while artisanal glassblowing traditions continued much later in places including Sarafand and Tripoli, where craftspeople have kept techniques of hand-forming glass alive.

The material changed the breek completely without really changing its identity. Suddenly, water became visible through the vessel. The silhouette became lighter and more delicate. Shades of green, turquoise, blue and amber entered the equation, while the bubbles, variations and imperfections created during traditional glassmaking meant that no two handmade pieces necessarily looked exactly alike.

And for us, this is probably where the breek becomes especially interesting as a design object, because remove it from the context of nostalgia for a second and actually look at it: it's quite strange.

The proportions are unusual. The spout is exaggerated. The handle and neck seem almost sculptural. It doesn't really resemble the anonymous carafes that now populate restaurants and homes around the world, and that distinctiveness is precisely what makes it feel so relevant again today.

We spend an enormous amount of time talking about objects having identity, and the breek has had one all along.

There Was Also an Art to Drinking From It

Of course, none of this is necessarily what you were thinking about as a child. You were mostly thinking about whether you could get the water into your mouth.

The genius of the long spout was that you didn't need to place your lips against it, which meant several people could drink from the same vessel without drinking directly from the same surface, but what began as practicality inevitably became something considerably more entertaining.

You held the breek slightly above your mouth and tilted it until the stream reached you. Once you'd mastered that, you moved it further away. Then higher. And higher again. Accounts of the tradition even recall children competing to see who could drink while holding the breek furthest from their mouths without spilling.

Which feels completely believable.

There is something very specific about memories like these, because they aren't the grand traditions we usually document when we talk about heritage. Nobody necessarily sits you down and explains that drinking from a breek is part of your cultural inheritance. You simply watch someone else do it, try it yourself, probably make a mess, and eventually learn. And then, one day, you realise you haven't done it in years.

From Kitchen Essential to Design Object

The breek isn't as ubiquitous in Lebanese homes as it once was, for fairly obvious reasons. Refrigeration changed the way we cooled water, individual drinking glasses became standard, bottled water became omnipresent and the objects we used every day inevitably changed with the way we lived.

But what is particularly interesting is that the breek didn't simply disappear.

Instead, its meaning changed.

What was once an ordinary utilitarian object slowly became something associated with memory, craftsmanship and identity. Old versions are kept rather than discarded, contemporary glassmakers continue producing them, restaurants use them because of the instant visual connection they create with Lebanon, and designers have returned to the silhouette precisely because it is so recognisable.

Contemporary interpretations have taken the familiar form and played with scale, material and function, turning the breek into something that can sit comfortably within a modern interior without stripping away the characteristics that make it identifiable in the first place.

And maybe that's why we're particularly drawn to it now. At JDEED, we're constantly interested in what happens when heritage stops being treated as something fragile that needs to sit behind glass and instead becomes something we can actually use, reinterpret, wear, eat from, drink from and play with.

The breek feels like exactly that kind of object.

We're increasingly looking back at the things that surrounded us growing up—the fabrics, glasses, chairs, tiles, coffee cups, food packaging and household objects that once seemed completely ordinary—and realising that they tell us as much about where we're from as the monuments and artefacts we're taught to call heritage.

The breek happens to tell that story particularly beautifully: an ancient-looking form that remained useful for generations, changed materials as the world around it changed, developed its own rituals and somehow became unmistakably familiar without most of us ever stopping to ask why. And now that we've properly looked at it again? We kind of want one on our table.

There was a time when fine jewellery came with rules. Diamonds belonged to special occasions, precious stones were saved for evening, and the pieces themselves were often bought with a future moment in mind rather than the life happening right now.

Not so much anymore.

Fine jewellery is loosening up. Diamonds are being worn with denim, coloured gemstones have become everyday signatures, and necklaces, rings and bracelets are stacked according to mood rather than convention. Across the Middle East and beyond, a new generation of jewellery houses is holding onto everything that makes fine jewellery special, from craftsmanship and precious materials to technique and storytelling, while letting go of some of the formality surrounding it.

The result feels much more personal. And, thankfully for us, a lot more fun.

Aponine

Aponine brings an international perspective to the conversation. Founded in Istanbul, the fine jewellery house builds its universe around an appreciation for gemstones, bringing technical knowledge together with a contemporary eye. Colour plays an important role, as do distinctive stones and considered craftsmanship, resulting in jewellery that feels refined without losing its personality.

What we love most: The colour. Give us unusual gemstones, unexpected combinations and pieces that immediately catch the eye. Aponine feels particularly right for anyone who believes fine jewellery should bring as much personality to an outfit as the clothes themselves.

Endear by S

For Endear by S, things get a little more emotional. The Omani fine jewellery brand looks at the relationship we develop with the pieces we choose to keep closest to us. Jewellery becomes less about decoration and more about memory, something capable of marking a person, relationship, place or chapter in your life without necessarily announcing what it means to everyone else.

What we love most: The emotional element. We love statement jewellery, obviously, but we also love when a piece has a reason for existing beyond looking beautiful. Endear by S brings sentiment into fine jewellery without making it feel overly literal.

More on EndearbyS.com

ZEI Jewels

ZEI Jewels thinks about jewellery as something to actually live in. Versatility sits at the heart of its approach, with pieces intended to be styled, mixed and made personal rather than admired from a distance. It's a way of dressing with jewellery that feels increasingly instinctive: there isn't necessarily a right combination, only yours.

What we love most: The styling potential. These are the kinds of pieces that invite experimentation, whether that's stacking several rings, layering necklaces or mixing them with pieces already sitting in your jewellery box. More is more, after all.

More on Zeijewels.com

Khayal

That confidence is also emerging strongly from the UAE. Emirati fine jewellery brand Khayal brings imagination and cultural perspective into a modern design language, representing a generation of regional creatives who no longer need to conform to an established idea of what Middle Eastern jewellery is supposed to look like.

What we love most: The imagination. Khayal feels particularly exciting when it leans into jewellery that is expressive, unexpected and visually strong. We will always choose the piece that starts a conversation.

More on KhayalJewelry.com

Renu Oberoi

At Renu Oberoi, movement and versatility take centre stage. Collections including La Vie en Rose, Avia, Helios and Florere explore diamonds and gemstones through expressive forms that don't necessarily need an occasion. They're pieces that can move from the everyday to something more dressed-up without ever feeling out of place.

What we love most: The sense of movement and drama. We are always drawn to jewellery with presence, especially pieces that transform an otherwise simple look. Renu Oberoi gives us that preciousness without making it feel overly formal.

More on RenuOberoi.com

Majesta

Majesta takes a polished, distinctly feminine approach. Precious materials meet carefully considered proportions in pieces that feel elegant but very much designed for the way women dress now. Rather than jewellery you save, these are the kinds of pieces that slowly become part of your uniform - by elevating it with class.

What we love most: The elevated femininity. These are the pieces we'd stack, layer and wear repeatedly, using them as the polished foundation before adding something a little louder on top. Pretty sure they would be incredible conversation starters!

More on MajestaOfficial.com

Baguette

At Baguette, the clean, graphic nature associated with its namesake diamond cut lends itself naturally to something sharper. Precise lines and considered compositions give precious stones a more contemporary attitude, reminding us that timeless doesn't have to mean traditional.

What we love most: The geometry. JDEED loves a strong shape, and there is something about the graphic precision of baguette-cut stones that instantly makes jewellery feel cooler, sharper and almost architectural.

More on BaguetteDesign.com

Elyamm

From Oman, Elyamm adds another voice to the growing Gulf jewellery landscape, translating identity, craftsmanship and personal narratives into pieces capable of speaking far beyond the region.

What we love most: The regional point of view. We're always interested in designers who create from where they come from rather than flattening their identity into something globally generic. Give us jewellery with a story, a sense of place and enough personality to hold its own.

More on Elyam.com

Dhyan Diam

At Dhyan Diam, the story begins with generations of diamond expertise. But heritage doesn't mean looking backwards. The house approaches its pieces as contemporary keepsakes, jewellery that respects the enduring value and beauty of fine diamonds while being designed to remain relevant enough to eventually pass from one generation to another.

What we love most: The idea of the future heirloom. Particularly when diamonds are used with enough scale or design confidence to make them feel fresh today. We want the piece your mother might steal from you now and your daughter will want later.

More on Instagram ,@Dhyan.Diam

Samra Jewellery

It's a balance Samra Jewellery knows well. The Emirati house has decades of jewellery expertise behind it, yet continues to evolve its vocabulary through geometry, precious stones and contemporary forms. Here, heritage isn't treated as something untouchable. It becomes the starting point for what comes next.

What we love most: Samra's ability to go bold. We're especially drawn to the larger silhouettes, strong geometry and pieces that can carry an entire look on their own. When a necklace makes the outfit, you already know we're interested.

More on Samra.com

Yaz & Co

Yaz & Co represents another evolution altogether. The Emirati house puts lab-grown diamonds at the centre of its jewellery universe, spanning everyday diamond pieces and engagement rings with an emphasis on versatility and personalisation. It speaks to a new jewellery customer who wants to understand what they're buying and make their own choices without giving up the emotion or beauty traditionally associated with diamonds.

What we love most: The freedom to play with diamonds. Lab-grown stones open up interesting possibilities around scale, stacking and personalisation, which means more room for the kind of generous, sparkling jewellery we naturally gravitate towards.

More on YazAndCo.com

Charmaleena

And in Saudi Arabia, Charmaleena turns storytelling into something you can wear. Saudi culture, heritage and symbolism inform its jewellery, but references are interpreted rather than simply reproduced. The result is pieces that carry a very particular sense of place while still feeling unmistakably of the moment.

What we love most: The symbolism, especially when it's translated into a bold, recognisable piece rather than something overly discreet. Charmaleena understands that jewellery can carry culture and still be playful, graphic and incredibly wearable.

More on Charmaleena.com

Different countries, different stories and very different aesthetics, but perhaps that's precisely the point.

There isn't one new definition of fine jewellery emerging from the region. There are many. Some are minimal, others deeply symbolic. Some begin with diamonds, others with colour, culture or emotion. And then there are the pieces we personally can't resist: the oversized necklace, the unexpected stone, the ring that probably doesn't need another ring next to it but gets one anyway.

What connects these houses is a willingness to treat preciousness differently, making jewellery more personal, more wearable and less dictated by old ideas of when, where or how something valuable should be worn.

Fine jewellery isn't becoming less precious. We're simply having a lot more fun with it.

I’m lucky enough to have been to Japan twice in my life. One of the most—scratch that, the most amazing trip I’ve ever been on.

From the people’s energy to the shopping, and from the landscapes to the food, every bit of those trips was absolutely perfect. And ever since my last visit in 2017, all I’ve been waiting for is the moment I get to go back.

While flying over to Japan isn’t always that easy, sadly, sometimes you need to find ways to bring Japan a little closer to you. And I think I found just that.

Niched away in DIFC, inside the Four Seasons Hotel Dubai International Financial Centre, KIGO is a Japanese dining experience that has somehow managed to bring a little piece of the country of the rising sun to the Gulf.

From the materials used throughout the space to ingredients flown in twice a week and, of course, the chefs themselves, Japan transpires everywhere you look.

By Cynthia Jreige

There’s a sobriety and elegance to KIGO that immediately reminded me of those intimate restaurants in Japan where everything feels intentional and where nothing is screaming for attention. There’s no overly elaborate décor, no deafening soundtrack and no need to turn dinner into a spectacle. Instead, there are natural materials, just 12 seats around the sushi counter and an almost obsessive attention to ingredients, technique and storytelling.

KIGO opened in September 2025 as a collaboration between Fundamental Hospitality and Four Seasons Hotel DIFC, with Chef Akinori “Aki” Tanigawa at its helm. His approach sits between two Japanese culinary traditions: the seasonality, progression and precision of Kaiseki, and the more intimate chef-led nature of Omakase.

When we first experienced KIGO, it was through an eight-course omakase that delivered on every level. Every dish felt incredibly refined, mixing flavours we had never tasted before and introducing us to fish we had never even heard of, all prepared right before our eyes by chefs whose passion and technique command immense respect.

Bite after bite, we were transported thousands of kilometres away from our seats, hoping each course would last a little bit longer, and then a little bit longer.

Now, there’s a new reason for us to go back.

A Japanese Summer, Woven Into Six Courses

For summer, Chef Tanigawa has reshaped KIGO’s Tsumugi Menu, a six-course seasonal tasting experience available until 6 September.

The name itself says quite a lot about what happens here. Tsumugi is the Japanese word for a woven fabric, where threads from different origins are brought together to create something whole. At KIGO, those threads are Kaiseki and Omakase, woven into one experience that changes according to the season.

And seasonality here isn't simply a menu update every few months.

KIGO's philosophy is rooted partly in the Japanese concept of mono no aware: an awareness of the fleeting nature of things and the beauty that comes precisely from knowing they won't last forever. The menus respond to what the land and sea have to offer at a particular moment, meaning the experience you have now isn't necessarily one you'll be able to repeat later.

For summer, that begins with Scallop and Summer Vegetables with Beetroot Miso Sauce, followed by Chawanmushi with Green Pea Soup.

Then things get particularly interesting: Black Cod covered with Cha Soba noodles and Uni Pâté, before the main course of Charcoal-Grilled Tajima Wagyu Sirloin, Salt Koji Cured.

The experience ends with a Seasonal Sushi Selection with Silken Egg Miso Soup, followed by a selection of premium Japanese fruits.

For those who want to take things a little further, there’s also a Premium Nigiri Selection, including uni and otoro, available for an additional AED 520.

The six-course Tsumugi Summer Menu is priced at AED 980 per person, while a private dining experience including the premium nigiri selection is available for AED 1,500 per person in KIGO's Japanese-inspired private dining room, which accommodates up to 10 guests. Premium beverage pairings can also be added separately.

Not Your Typical Dubai Dinner

What we love about KIGO is also what might make it slightly unexpected for Dubai. KIGO isn’t at all like most restaurants we've been to in the city.

There’s obviously no spicy mayo or truffle wagyu here, the music isn't loud, the atmosphere is a little serious and nobody seems particularly concerned with creating the next viral dish.

Instead, you're being asked to pay attention, to watch the chef. To notice where an ingredient came from. To understand why something is being served at this exact moment of the year. To appreciate the difference between one fish and another, or the amount of technique hiding behind something that can look remarkably simple on the plate.

There is a restraint to it that feels distinctly Japanese, and perhaps that is why it transported us so successfully. You're not just here to enjoy an unforgettable meal. It’s a whole experience.

And until I finally manage to get myself back on that flight to Japan, I'll happily take a seat at KIGO's counter instead.

The Tsumugi Summer Menu is available Wednesday to Sunday, with seatings between 6 PM and 10 PM, until 6 September 2026. The menu is priced at AED 980 per person, with seasonal dishes subject to change.

More on KIGODubai.com

For Palestinian artists, being seen is only part of the equation. Having the infrastructure, representation and freedom to build a sustainable creative career on your own terms matters just as much.

That idea sits at the heart of Aswatna, a Palestinian-owned talent agency founded by Nour to represent and uplift Palestinian artists while creating new pathways for their work to reach international audiences. Meaning “Our Voices” in Arabic, Aswatna works across artist management, bookings, branding and cultural programming, with a focus on helping Palestinian creatives grow without disconnecting them from their values or communities.

“Aswatna is about building pathways for Palestinian creativity to thrive with integrity,” explains Nour. Her ambition is ultimately much bigger than representation alone: to see Palestinian art “powerfully positioned on the world stage,” changing perceptions of Palestine through the creativity and imagination of its people. It feels particularly important at a time when Palestinian artists are increasingly present within global cultural conversations, yet the structures supporting those artists don't necessarily evolve at the same pace.

“Palestinian artists hold extraordinary creative power, but too often they have had to navigate industries without the support systems needed to grow,” says Nour. “We created Aswatna to be a home for Palestinian artists, a space where they are supported, represented, and connected to opportunities that honor both their craft and their values.”

That commitment extends to where and how its artists are represented. As a Palestinian-owned and operated agency, Aswatna carefully vets the venues, festivals, cultural institutions and collaborators it works with, ensuring partnerships align with the ethical principles of the artists themselves.

Next Stop: London

That philosophy will soon take physical form with the Aswatna Showcase, an evening dedicated entirely to Palestinian music, visual art, storytelling, food and community, held in the courtyard of Studio 12 in London on August 22nd.

Rather than focusing on one creative discipline, the event brings them together. Live music will sit alongside visual art, Palestinian food, books and independent vendors, creating a space where visitors can discover Palestinian creativity through multiple perspectives. It is an extension of what Aswatna wants to achieve beyond traditional talent representation: curating cultural programmes exclusively featuring Palestinian artists and allowing audiences to encounter Palestinian heritage and contemporary creativity through music, art, storytelling and performance.

At the centre of the visual arts programme will be an exhibition by acclaimed Palestinian artist Malak Mattar, while four Palestinian musicians bring very different sounds and stories to the evening.

Four Artists, Four Very Different Sounds

Rawan Roshni will present Palestinian Folklore Reimagined, weaving ancient Palestinian chants, revolutionary anthems and tarweedat with contemporary songs of sumoud. Through live looping, vocals and instrumentation, her performance moves through identity and history, but also grief, resilience and empowerment.

Marwan Halabi, meanwhile, crosses musical borders entirely. The Palestinian singer-songwriter brings Middle Eastern maqams into conversation with Indian ragas, blues, alternative rock and spiritual musical traditions, creating a sound shaped by cultural exchange, reflection and connection.

Then there's SAIFAMEE, a Palestinian underground hip-hop artist who has been rapping since he was ten. His music comes directly from lived experience, using deeply personal storytelling to explore justice, spirituality, struggle, motivation and the realities unfolding around him.

And Yousef Mattar, a Palestinian pianist, arranger and music producer from Gaza, brings a particularly powerful story to the programme. A self-taught musician since childhood, Mattar continued creating while growing up under military blockade and through repeated wars that destroyed his piano and much of the life he had built in Gaza. His music combines Arabic traditions with contemporary influences, exploring identity, resilience, hope and the richness of Palestinian musical culture.

Throughout the evening, the performances and exhibition will be joined by Palestinian food, books and independent vendors, making the showcase as much about gathering and community as it is about watching a performance.

More Than Representation

The agency isn't simply trying to place Palestinian artists within existing cultural structures; its ambition is to help build the support systems around them while simultaneously creating spaces of its own. For Aswatna, representation means “visibility, sustainability, and cultural presence,” with the longer-term vision of Palestinian artists not simply being included in international cultural spaces, but recognised as essential voices shaping them.

The London showcase offers a glimpse of what that can look like: Palestinian culture presented not through one medium, one narrative or one artist, but through a room full of voices, sounds, images, stories and people.

And perhaps the name says it best: Aswatna. Our Voices.

Get your tickets for the London showcase on August 22nd, here

Dubai has never exactly struggled when it comes to places to work out. But lately, something has shifted. The traditional gym session is increasingly being replaced by something more considered: Lagree on the Megaformer, reformer Pilates, Microformer classes and workouts performed inside infrared-heated rooms.

The burn is slower, the movements smaller, and somehow our legs are shaking more than ever. For anyone who has found themselves suddenly fluent in phrases like “time under tension” and “Mega Pro,” welcome to Dubai’s latest fitness obsession.

From Al Quoz to d3 and Downtown, these are the studios currently making us want to book another class before we’ve recovered from the last one.

BRRN Barre: Things Are Heating Up in Al Quoz

At BRRN Barre, the clue is very much in the name.

Located in Al Quoz, the women-focused studio describes itself as Dubai’s first infrared-heated Pilates, barre and reformer studio, combining controlled, low-impact movement with rooms heated using infrared technology. Its programme moves between reformer, barre, Pilates and sculpting sessions, with both heated and unheated options.

And while the red-lit rooms certainly make good content, the heat isn't just there for the aesthetic. Infrared training has become one of the UAE's biggest fitness trends, with studios using it alongside low-impact movement to warm the body and add another layer of intensity to already challenging classes.

BRRN somehow manages to make sweating profusely feel rather chic.

What we loved: A different kind of challenge, the intense sweat from the heated room, the space (DISCO BALLS!!)

BRRN Barre

Villa Boost: Meet the Infrared Micro Burn

If you've already graduated from reformer to Lagree and are wondering how to make those tiny movements hurt even more, Villa Boost may have found the answer.

The Al Safa 2 space offers everything from Reformer Pilates Flow and Dynamic Reformer to Micro Burn and Micro Strength, but we're particularly intrigued by its Infrared Micro Burn.

The 45-minute workout takes Boost's Lagree-inspired Microformer method—slow movements, controlled transitions and plenty of time under tension—and puts it into an infrared-heated environment. The result is a full-body session designed around muscular endurance and that now very familiar Microformer shake.

Founder Rania Zorkot's philosophy is refreshingly straightforward: movement isn't about doing everything faster, but doing it well. It's an approach built around precision, control and intelligent sequencing rather than rushing through repetitions.

Basically, tiny movements. Enormous burn.

What we loved: The most challenging class we tried in a while but the energy was superb. You both want to stop and keep going forever. We can't recommend this for beginners.

Villa Boost

Soul MVNT: Lagree in d3

Over in Dubai Design District, Soul MVNT is feeding our current Lagree fixation.

The contemporary fitness and wellness studio offers Lagree on the Mega Pro, bringing together the slow pace and precision that make the method so deceptively difficult. The philosophy here extends beyond pure intensity, with the studio positioning its approach around balancing mind and body while its classes span movement including Pilates and strength-focused training.

It's also a good reminder of why Lagree has become such an obsession. From a distance, everyone appears to be moving extremely slowly. Get onto the machine yourself and suddenly holding a position for a few more seconds feels like a personal crisis.

Exactly what we're currently looking for.

What we loved: the instructors! They're attentive and will push you to your limits. Love the 'Live DJ' class as well as their super cute merch.

SOUL MVNT

Platform Studios: Turn Up the Heat

If your definition of a good workout involves leaving absolutely everything in the room, IGNITE at Platform Studios takes the heated-workout trend somewhere considerably more athletic.

Rather than Pilates or Lagree, IGNITE is a 45-minute heated, full-body training concept combining athletic flow, explosive drills and strength sequences. Functional movement meets rhythm, control and power, with the heated environment adding another dimension to the workout. It's part of Platform's much broader approach to boutique fitness; the studio's line-up currently spans barre, strength, reformer, Pilates Burn, cycling and yoga alongside IGNITE.

So if you've done enough slow lunges on a reformer for one week and want something faster and sweatier, this is where we'd switch things up.

What we loved: The burn, the energy, the room and instructor: a wonderful change from our usual Lagree. bringing us back to the mat in style.

Platform Studios – IGNITE

Ikigai: Mat Meets Lagree

Ikigai Studio in Downtown Dubai offers us the best excuse not to choose sides.

The ladies-only studio takes its name from the Japanese idea of finding purpose and has built its identity around mindful, controlled movement. Alongside mat and reformer Pilates, its current schedule includes Lagree Mega Pro and Lagree Mega Pro Advanced, allowing you to move between traditional Pilates and the considerably more intense Lagree method within the same space.

The atmosphere may lean serene, but don't let that fool you. A Mega Pro class still delivers everything you'd expect from Lagree: control, resistance, endurance and the kind of muscle shaking that makes stairs an interesting proposition afterwards.

What we loved: super cute studio, the machines aren't packed next to one another, great instructor.

Ikigai Studio

GIGI: Lagree, But Make It a Lifestyle

Gigi is another name firmly feeding Dubai’s Lagree obsession. Founded by Emirati entrepreneur Ghaliya Ahli, the concept was designed to be more than somewhere you simply arrive, work out and leave. GIGI brings Lagree, design, wellness and community together, turning the studio into more of a lifestyle destination.

The workout itself centres on the slow, controlled movements Lagree is known for—low-impact, but with enough resistance and time under tension to make your muscles question every decision that brought you there. GIGI has built a loyal following across its Mirdif and Nad Al Sheba locations, while the Mirdif studio also introduced Miniformers, a more compact take on the traditional Megaformer.

What makes GIGI interesting, though, is everything surrounding the workout. Ahli has approached the brand through the lens of community, creativity and considered design, with events and activations helping it feel less like another boutique fitness studio and more like part of Dubai’s evolving wellness culture.

Come for the Lagree shakes; stay because apparently working out is now a social plan.

What we loved: the quiet and lit room, the aesthetic, the ambiance.

GIGI Dubai

So, Why Is Everyone Suddenly Shaking?

Perhaps what's most interesting about Dubai's latest fitness openings isn't any single method, but the direction they're collectively taking.

Low-impact no longer means low-intensity. Reformer Pilates is getting more athletic. Lagree is appearing on more schedules. Microformers are joining Megaformers. Infrared heat is turning an already difficult class into an even sweatier proposition. And the studio itself has become almost as considered as the workout happening inside it.

The common thread is controlled intensity: fewer frantic repetitions and more precision, resistance and time under tension. It's fitness designed to make you slow down while somehow working considerably harder.

Cover Photo: BRRN Room

Nespresso and The Weeknd are bringing Samra Origins back to the UAE, and this time the collaboration comes with a new limited-edition coffee, branded machines and accessories designed around something most of us can relate to: the ritual of having coffee together.

Having made a return to the UAE on August 11, the expanded collaboration introduces the Samra Origins Togetherness Blend, created for Nespresso’s Vertuo system and bringing together Nespresso’s coffee expertise with The Weeknd’s creative vision.

But there is a much more personal story behind Samra Origins than another celebrity coffee collaboration.

Co-created by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, Samra Origins takes its name from his mother, Samra. The brand is described as a love letter to the woman whose support has played an important role throughout his life and creative journey. That connection also explains why ideas of family, togetherness and ritual sit at the heart of the project. For The Weeknd himself, coffee is something of a constant: “I have a daily coffee ritual that brings me grounding and comfort,” he explains. At home, coffee gives him a moment to reflect, while on tour the familiar process offers “consistency and calm” wherever he happens to be. And his order? Black, either hot or over ice.

The new Togetherness Blend builds on that idea of coffee as something greater than what is inside the cup: a daily ritual capable of creating conversation, connection and even creativity. Nespresso and Samra Origins position coffee here as a catalyst for everything from art and music to culture. And naturally, there is more than coffee involved.

Alongside the new limited-edition blend, the returning collection includes a tumbler, travel mug and Vertuo Pop coffee machines, all finished with Samra Origins branding and a distinctive colour palette.

This isn't the first time the two names have come together. Nespresso and Samra Origins initially launched their collaboration in 2025, united by what they describe as a shared appreciation for craftsmanship, creativity and meaningful everyday rituals. Following that first release, the expanded collection now gives UAE coffee drinkers more ways to bring the Samra Origins universe home.

The Nespresso x Samra Origins Togetherness Blend and collection are available across the UAE since August 11, both online and at Nespresso boutiques.

More on Nespresso.com

Some style is taught, some is inherited. For sisters Amani and Manal Waqi, co-founders of The Amanqi Consultancy, it's both:

a wardrobe built on their mother's own clothing label and vintage possessions, local emerging designers and high-end must haves, sharpened by a business-meets-creative instinct, and worn with the kind of ease that can't be bought off a runway. This week on The Way She Wears, we sit down with the duo shaping some of the region's coolest emerging brands from the inside, to talk vintage Prada denim, the one non-negotiable staple in every closet, who their favorite regional designers are right now, and more!

The Way She Wears (TWSW) is our way of spotlighting women whose style feels personal, intuitive, and entirely their own. Not trends, not formulas, just a point of view.

MANAL

Manal Waqi Co-Founder at The Amanqi Consultancy

When did you know you’d be working in fashion/creative industries?

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a part of the fashion industry. Initially that was in the space of design, but now

Who are you fashion icons?

I wouldn’t say it’s any one person but I love following people who have an unique sense of style and are true to themselves.

What are 3 brands you could wear forever?

Missoni, The Row, Pucci, Amina Muaddi, Ermanno Scervino

⁠4 staples everyone should own?

A good pair of mules (Amina Muaddi Juliette are an essential), a good everyday gold choker, a denim jacket (mine are always cropped), a good white t-shirt.

What are the regional brands you love right now?

Seam The Label

Your fashion most special possession?

A faded pink Prada denim jacket.

A piece worth investing in?

A good pair of tailored jeans.

Your current favourite song, book or tv show?

Barbaad - Saiyaara

AMANI

Amani Waqi

Co-Founder at The Amanqi Consultancy

Swiss, originally Pakistani

When did you know you’d be working in fashion/creative industries?

I honestly didn’t have one defining moment. My educational background is in business, but I’ve always been drawn to the creative side, so the work we do has become a natural blend of the two.

⁠Who are your fashion icons?

My sister.

What are 3 brands you could wear forever?

Studio T (our mom’s clothing brand) is the only one I’ll always be loyal to! In shoe brands, Jimmy Choo and Casadei.

‍

⁠4 staples everyone should own?

I don’t believe there are universal must-haves in fashion - it depends entirely on your personal style. For me, the four staples I always come back to are blue tinted sunglasses (Rendel are my favourite), silk and linen trousers, and a pair of neutral kitten heels.

What are the regional brands you love right now?

We’re lucky to work with some of the region’s coolest emerging brands, so the list is constantly growing. But beyond our clients, I love many of the region’s couture houses, especially Zuhair Murad and Georges Hobeika.

‍

Your fashion most special possession?

A few pairs of vintage sunglasses passed down to me from my mother. They’re cool, yet incredibly timeless.

⁠A piece worth investing in?

A customised piece of fine jewellery - it is created entirely for you and truly one of a kind. It’s especially precious because it carries meaning beyond its material value and becomes something you keep and cherish forever.

Your current favourite song, book or tv show?

My current favourite song is Akhiyan by Abdullah Maharvi.

Discover more about The Amanqi Consultancy, here

Sometimes the most compelling fashion image doesn't need a spectacular location, an elaborate set or an impossible fantasy. Sometimes, it just needs a moment. For its Fall/Winter 2026 campaign, Simple Stories, Prada turns its attention towards exactly that: the intimate, honest and seemingly insignificant fragments of everyday life that become meaningful when someone stops long enough to notice them.

Created around the Fall/Winter 2026 women's and men's collections by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the campaign stars Chen Haoyu, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Hunter Schafer and Troye Sivan, with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins behind the lens.

It is a fitting collaboration. Jenkins' cinema has long found power in intimacy; the gestures, silences and human exchanges that can reveal more about a character than dialogue ever could. Here, that sensibility enters Prada's universe, turning scenes of domesticity and normalcy into something worth preserving.

The clothes aren't simply placed within these scenes, either. Prada describes them as becoming "another character, another focus," part of a continuing dialogue between fashion and cinema that has long informed the house's visual identity. Rather than presenting us with complete narratives, Simple Stories offers fragments.

A posture, a private moment, a look that may or may not be aware of the camera. Each still and film short hints at a larger personal world without ever fully explaining it, leaving us to imagine what happened before and what might happen next. The campaign deliberately plays with the boundary between reality and performance: are we watching someone act, or simply react?

That ambiguity also changes the way the clothes are seen. Instead of existing independently from their wearers, they respond to bodies, attitudes and individual gestures. Fashion becomes less about creating a perfect image and more about observing what happens when clothes enter real—or at least apparently real—life.

The casting adds another cinematic layer. Hunter Schafer, whose work moves between acting and art, appears alongside musician and actor Troye Sivan, Chinese actress and vocalist Chen Haoyu, and Kelvin Harrison Jr., whose filmography spans Waves, Elvis, Chevalier and Mufasa: The Lion King.
Jenkins himself brings an extraordinary cinematic history to the project. His 2016 film Moonlight received eight Academy Award nominations and won Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, while If Beale Street Could Talk and The Underground Railroad further established his distinctive approach to character, intimacy and visual storytelling.

Yet for all the recognisable names involved, Simple Stories is deliberately quiet. Still lifes sit alongside enigmatic portraits. Domestic scenes are given the weight usually reserved for grander gestures. The images don't demand attention so much as invite you to look closer. And perhaps that's the point.

At a moment when fashion imagery can feel increasingly engineered to stop a scroll, Prada does almost the opposite. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, together with Jenkins and campaign creative director Ferdinando Verderi, find intrigue in restraint, allowing ordinary gestures to carry the story.

More on Prada.com

Dubai’s dining calendar has another date worth bookmarking. On Friday, August 14, Sutēki is bringing together two Japanese icons—exceptional wagyu and NIKKA Whisky—for Marble & Malt: The Nikka Wagyu Experience, an intimate, one-night-only dinner celebrating Japanese gastronomy and craftsmanship.

For the evening, Sutēki has created a special four-course menu showcasing its signature approach to Japanese cuisine, with each dish thoughtfully paired with one of NIKKA’s celebrated whisky expressions.

The idea is a simple but very tempting one: explore the richness and marbling of wagyu alongside the complexity of Japanese whisky, with each pairing designed to bring out different elements of both.

With just two limited seatings at 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM, the experience is deliberately intimate, with only a select number of reservations available.

The Details

What: Marble & Malt: The Nikka Wagyu Experience
Where: Sutēki
When: Friday, August 14
Seatings: 7:00 PM & 9:00 PM
Price: AED 390 per person
Includes: Four-course dinner paired with NIKKA Whisky

Reservations are required, click here

For wagyu lovers—and anyone with an appreciation for Japanese whisky—consider your Friday night plans sorted.

Over the years, Abu Dhabi has become one of our favourite cities for a weekend away. Between the beaches of Saadiyat, an increasingly exciting food scene, beautiful hotels, a new generation of wellness concepts and a cultural district that keeps giving us reasons to return, the capital has plenty going on beyond the landmarks everyone already knows.

So, where are we sleeping, eating, sweating and spending our time? Here's the JDEED guide to Abu Dhabi right now.

TO SLEEP

For a classic Abu Dhabi stay, The St. Regis Abu Dhabi puts you directly on the Corniche, pairing old-school luxury with sweeping Arabian Gulf views and easy access to the beach. It's the kind of address that works particularly well when you want to feel connected to the city without sacrificing resort time.

For something decidedly more contemporary, The Abu Dhabi EDITION is our pick. Sitting on the waterfront at Al Bateen Marina, its understated interiors, restaurants and social spaces offer a younger, design-led take on the city's luxury hotel scene.

Then there is Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi, because sometimes you simply want the full Abu Dhabi fantasy. Sitting on its own private beach, the property has 390 rooms and suites overlooking the sea, city or gardens, alongside 12 dining venues, two pools, a private marina and a 1,500-square-metre spa. Trust us, you will reach your 10k steps easily just staying on the hotel premises. The little plus? Book a room with Club Access, it's one of the best ones we've seen.

And if the beach is the priority, Jumeirah Saadiyat Island gives us exactly the kind of barefoot luxury we're after: a resort escape on Saadiyat's beautiful coastline that feels removed from the city without actually being far from it. Ask anyone we know, we've always claimed the beaches in Saadiyat to be the most beautiful in the UAE.

INDEX

The St Regis Abu Dhabi, here

Abu Dhabi Edition, here

Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, here

Jumeirah Saadiyat Island, here

TO EAT

Lunch: Alkalime

We're starting with something that makes us feel good. Alkalime on Saadiyat is where we're heading for a healthy reset between everything else we're planning to eat.

Think colourful, nourishing, plant-forward food that actually leaves you excited rather than feeling like you've reluctantly ordered the healthy option. From breakfast and smoothie bowls to salads, wholesome mains and plenty of fresh ingredients, it's exactly the kind of lunch that gives you enough energy to keep exploring rather than sending you straight back to the hotel.

Dinner: blue

One of the addresses we're particularly excited about is blue, a fine-dining restaurant on Mamsha Al Saadiyat that's shaking up Abu Dhabi's increasingly interesting independent food scene, which you can read more about it in JDEED 12.

The approach is thoughtful, ingredient-led and refreshingly unpretentious, with seasonality and produce playing a central role. It's the kind of restaurant that proves Abu Dhabi's dining scene doesn't need to rely exclusively on international imports or big hotel names to be exciting. If you're interested in seeing where the city's next generation of food is heading, this is one to have on your radar. The plus? The selection of natural wines, still a rarity in the UAE.

Dinner, but make it a night: SUSHISAMBA

And then there's SUSHISAMBA Abu Dhabi.

If you're looking for somewhere that combines seriously good food with an actual night out, put this one very high on the list.

The SUSHISAMBA concept brings together Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian influences, moving between sushi and sashimi, ceviche, anticuchos, robata dishes and plates designed for sharing. It's colourful, theatrical and unapologetically energetic—the opposite of a quiet dinner you forget about the next morning.

And we're not recommending it simply because it looks good on Instagram. Everything we tried was absolutely phenomenal. The rolls were excellent, the black cod was one of our standouts, and then came a frankly humongous chocolate lava cake that you absolutely need to save room for. We kept saying 'OK LAST BITE' until eventually there were no more bites to be had.

But what really makes SUSHISAMBA work is the combination of food and atmosphere. As dinner progresses, the energy completely shifts, with samba dancers bringing the heat and turning the restaurant into somewhere you genuinely want to stay long after the plates have been cleared.

The service was also great: warm, attentive and on point throughout the evening. SUSHISAMBA manages that difficult balance of being a destination restaurant, an experience and a proper night out all at once. We'd want to come back in the cooler months to sit on their gorgeous terrace overlooking the sea.

INDEX

For Alkalime, see here

For blue, see here

For SUSHISAMBA, see here

TO SWEAT

We've been very into Lagree lately, and Abu Dhabi is giving us increasingly fewer excuses to skip a workout while we're there.

ARC Fitness at Nation Towers is an obvious stop for fellow Lagree converts, with dedicated Pilates and Lagree studios and classes built around the Mega Pro. Expect the slow, controlled, high-intensity movements we love—and the inevitable shaking legs afterwards. We tried it and loved it! It's ideally located in Nation Towers Mall, which is connected to St Regis and is home to a Café Bateel and Organics Foods and Café, ideal for a post work-out pick-me-up.

Then there is The Curve Club, an intimate Pilates destination in Al Manhal. Founded by Emirati entrepreneur Fatma, The Curve Club takes a considered approach to women’s wellness, bringing together innovative movement, beautifully designed spaces and a genuine sense of community. Its Abu Dhabi studio was the first in the region to introduce the Curveformer, a pioneering machine created for a balanced, transformative full-body workout, offered alongside the Classic Reformer.

For Fatma, the vision has always extended beyond the workout itself. “We created The Curve Club to offer women a space that feels empowering, welcoming, and intentional,” she explains. With the concept now expanding to Dubai, the brand is bringing that same philosophy to a wider community while staying rooted in the values that have shaped it from the start.

FORM Studio at Eastern Mangroves is another one we're bookmarking for days when we want movement to feel a little more mindful.

Over at Al Raha Beach, FS8 mixes reformer Pilates with functional strength and yoga-inspired movement. It's a great option if you want something low-impact but still properly challenging, particularly if you like switching between strength, mobility and Pilates rather than committing to one training style. We tried it back in Europe and then in Doha and we're hooked!

But one Abu Dhabi studio we're particularly excited about right now is The Burn Room.

Founded by Emirati entrepreneurs Meerah Al Matrooshi and Alia Al Mazrouei, The Burn Room brings Lagree, Hot Pilates, Hot Yoga and integrated red-light therapy together under one roof. The philosophy goes beyond simply training harder, looking instead at the relationship between performance, strength and recovery.

Recovery isn't something you remember to do after the workout here; it's integrated into the experience itself. And that feels very representative of where wellness is heading generally: less obsession with punishment and quick transformations, and more focus on strength, longevity, recovery and creating routines you can actually sustain.

We spoke to the founders about exactly that philosophy for JDEED in The Burn Room Wants to Change the Way Abu Dhabi Thinks About Fitness, which you can read here.

INDEX

For ARC Fitness, see here

For The Curve Club, see here

For FORM Studio, see here

For FS8, see here

For The Burn Room, see here

FOR A CULTURE FIX

You can't really do Abu Dhabi without giving yourself at least one day for Saadiyat Cultural District. Actually, make that two.

We keep returning to Louvre Abu Dhabi again and again. Jean Nouvel's extraordinary dome alone makes the visit worthwhile, but what keeps bringing us back is that this isn't the kind of museum you tick off once and consider done. The exhibitions change, you notice different works each time, and there is something about walking beneath that geometric dome with the Gulf surrounding you that still feels special no matter how many times you've done it.

Nearby, the Abrahamic Family House offers a completely different kind of cultural experience. Bringing a mosque, church and synagogue together within the same complex, the space is as much about dialogue, coexistence and understanding as it is about architecture. It's one of those places that feels particularly meaningful within the context of the UAE and the wider region.

And then there's one of Saadiyat's newest reasons to spend an entire afternoon there: Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.

This one takes us much, much further back. The museum follows the story of our natural world across 13.8 billion years, from the formation of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth to the biodiversity of the Arabian Peninsula. It's immersive, enormous and exactly the sort of museum where you go in thinking you'll spend an hour and suddenly realise half the afternoon has disappeared.

There's an extra reason to head there this summer, too. From 21 August, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi opens LEGO® SHOWS Natural Brickstory, a world-first, limited-time exhibition that invites visitors to explore those same 13.8 billion years of natural history through creativity, play and hands-on discovery.

The interactive experience brings LEGO® brick building together with the museum's extraordinary specimens and scientific stories. Across themed zones inspired by Earth's history, wildlife and the cosmos, visitors can take part in collaborative builds, experiment and discover together, turning some pretty enormous scientific concepts into something wonderfully tangible. Designed for curious minds of all ages, it might also be the best excuse we've had in a while to play with LEGO® and call it culture.

We explored the Natural History Museum for JDEED when it opened, and it's firmly on our Abu Dhabi cultural rotation now.

Between Louvre Abu Dhabi, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi and the Abrahamic Family House, Saadiyat has reached the point where we'd genuinely build an Abu Dhabi trip around its cultural offering alone. We're also particularly excited about The Guggenheim opening later this year, on December 11th!

For Abrahamic House, see here

For Louvre Abu Dhabi, see here

For the Natural History Museum, see here

WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

Celebrate Emirati Women's Day at Emirates Palace

If you're in Abu Dhabi at the end of August, Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental is hosting a three-day programme for Emirati Women's Day from 28 to 30 August, centred around Emirati heritage, craftsmanship and creativity.

On 28 August, Hind Al Oud hosts its Karat Oud Workshop, taking guests through the role of oud in Emirati culture, fragrance layering and different grades of oud before a creative session decorating authentic oud chips with gold paint and foil.

On 29 and 30 August, Reine de Roses takes over with floral-arrangement workshops designed around creativity and conversation. Guests will create their own arrangements to take home, with complimentary dates and Arabic coffee adding to the afternoon. Best of all? The workshops are complimentary, although advance registration is recommended as spaces are limited. You can register on this link.
There's also an Emirati Women's Day Afternoon Tea at Episodes from 27 to 30 August and a special Sweets Moment running from 27 August through 28 September.

And if you need to unwind afterwards, the hotel's spa is offering an Oriental Rose Hammam, combining rose petal and lavender black soap, traditional Kessa exfoliation and a rose rhassoul treatment, followed by a rose rinse and argan and oud hair oil.

Spritz Your Way Around the Palace

Also happening at Emirates Palace is Spritz & Friends, running until 30 September. Created in collaboration with Aperol, the experience connects four of the hotel's restaurants—Hakkasan, Talea, Broadway and Strawfire—through eight different interpretations of the Spritz.

The combinations are fun: Shiso and Yuzu Spritzes at Strawfire, Il Viaggio and Rosmarino at Talea, La Birra and The Garden at Broadway, and Hakka Lemonade and un YUZUal at Hakkasan. Each restaurant also brings its own bites into the mix, ranging from Wagyu gyoza and Korean fried chicken to arancini, soft-shell crab, dim sum and crispy calamari.

Basically, it's an excuse to drink your way around some of the Palace's best restaurants without having to pick just one. Can you blame us? Woops....

And When You Need Something Sweet...

Dubai-born CHUNK Bakehouse has finally landed in Abu Dhabi. It is JDEED tested and approved (don't tell our fitness coach. Or do, he'll probably order some for himself.)

The cult dessert brand now has an Al Reem Island base delivering its full lineup around the capital, including its viral Chocolate Dreamcake, Kinder Choco Dreamcake and Tiramisu Dreamcake, alongside Dreamcookies and those instantly recognisable tins.

Consider that our post-Lagree balance restored.

More info and orders, here

Cairo is a city that rarely stands still. Its streets are loud, layered and endlessly in motion; millions of lives unfolding alongside one another against a backdrop that carries thousands of years of history.

Yet for Egyptian street photographer Mustafa Tawfik, some of the city's most compelling stories are found not in its monuments or its most recognisable scenes, but in the moments almost nobody notices.

In his latest photographic series, Tawfik turns his lens towards the quieter rhythm of everyday Cairo: people passing one another in the street, figures momentarily lost in thought, familiar routines repeated day after day and brief exchanges between strangers. Individually, the photographs capture seemingly ordinary moments. Together, they become fragments of stories we may never fully know.

It is an approach deeply connected to the way Tawfik understands photography itself.

"My practice is grounded in observation," he explains, describing himself as drawn to "the quiet theatre of everyday life, where people reveal themselves through gesture, rhythm, and presence."

Rather than searching for spectacle, Tawfik watches. A glance, a posture, the distance between two people or the way someone occupies a particular corner of the city can become enough to suggest an entire narrative. His interest lies precisely in what remains unsaid: "the unspoken narratives carried in movement and behaviour, and the way personal stories surface in public space."

There is something particularly fitting about applying this gaze to Cairo.

So much of the visual language surrounding the Egyptian capital has historically been dominated by its extraordinary past. The pyramids, mosques, architecture and densely populated streets have become familiar shorthand for the city. Tawfik's photographs propose another way of understanding it. Here, Cairo is shaped as much by its inhabitants as by the history surrounding them.

His images explore this relationship between people and place, documenting a city whose identity is continually being rewritten through ordinary life. The people within the photographs are not performing for the camera. They are simply existing: moving through routines, thinking, waiting, interacting and inhabiting spaces they may have crossed thousands of times before.

That ordinariness is precisely where the beauty lies.

Tawfik describes his photographs as "fragments of untold stories," an idea that leaves space for the viewer to participate. We don't necessarily know where the people pictured are going, what happened moments before the shutter clicked or what will happen afterwards. Instead, we encounter them briefly, much as we encounter strangers ourselves while moving through a city.

Culture inevitably shapes the way Tawfik sees those moments. As an Egyptian photographer documenting his own surroundings, his perspective comes from familiarity rather than observation from the outside.

"Culture shapes my gaze," he says, "acting as a lens through which I interpret shifting urban life and translate fleeting moments into visual form." It is an important distinction. His Cairo isn't presented as something exotic to be decoded. It is lived-in, intimate and constantly evolving.

Street photography has always possessed this ability to preserve what history books rarely do: the mundane details of how people actually lived. Clothes change. Buildings disappear. Neighbourhoods transform. Habits evolve. Yet a photograph can hold onto a fraction of a second that otherwise would have vanished completely.

Tawfik's series feels particularly interested in those fractions.

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There are no grand declarations here, nor does there need to be. Instead, his photographs ask us to pay closer attention to what is already happening around us. To the gestures we overlook, the strangers we pass and the countless small human stories playing out simultaneously across Cairo every day.

Because perhaps a city's identity isn't only contained in the landmarks that survive generations, no. Sometimes, it lives in the moments that last only a second.

Follow Tawfik's work on Instagram, here

Istanbul-based visual artist Ces XC doesn't just make images, he builds worlds. Over more than a decade behind the camera and inside graphic design, he's developed a visual language fluent in football shirts and Mediterranean sunlight, chrome and VHS grain, luxury and longing, treating each as an emotional code rather than a still life.

In recent years, AI has become part of that language too, not as a shortcut, but as an extension of a photographic instinct built long before the technology existed. Ahead of his latest work across campaigns, editorials, and physical installations, we spoke to Ces XC to talk about where photography ends and generation begins and why, for him, that question stopped mattering a long time ago.

Your work blends original photography with AI-generated elements until the line blurs completely. Where does that boundary actually sit for you creatively — is there a point where "real" versus "imagined" stops mattering?

For me, there isn't really a fixed boundary anymore, but that doesn't mean the origin of an image is unimportant. I spent more than ten years working with photography and graphic design before AI became part of my process, so photography still forms the foundation of how I see. It taught me about light, composition, texture, imperfection, timing, and — most importantly — how an image can carry an emotion. In many of my works, the original photograph is still the skeleton, while AI allows me to extend it into places that would be difficult or sometimes impossible to reach physically.

I don't use AI to escape reality; I use it to stretch reality. Sometimes that means adding something surreal to a photograph, changing the environment around a subject, or combining references that would never normally exist in the same frame. My approach has always been about "connecting the dots", bringing together photography, fashion, sport, music, street culture, cars, architecture, memory, and imagination until they become part of one visual language.

At a certain stage, I stop thinking about which part is photographed and which part is generated. What matters then is whether the final image feels emotionally believable. Something can be completely imaginary and still feel true. At the same time, something can be technically real but emotionally empty. So for me, "real" and "imagined" stop mattering when the image begins to exist as its own world. The final work should not feel like a demonstration of technology. It should feel like a memory from somewhere you may never actually have been.

Identity, youth culture, sport, and luxury all surface across your work, alongside something as physical as Mediterranean life. What's the thread connecting those for you? Is it the tension between the emotional and the material, or do you see them as the same thing?

I don't really see the emotional and the material as separate things. Objects can carry an incredible amount of emotion, especially within youth culture. A football shirt, a pair of sneakers, a car, a motorcycle, a piece of jewellery, or even a certain logo can represent belonging, ambition, status, rebellion, or a specific period in someone's life. These things may be material on the surface, but the relationships we build with them are deeply personal.

Sport is especially powerful because it contains both identity and community. It can tell you where somebody comes from, who they represent, and what they dream about. Luxury functions in a similar way in my work, but I'm not only interested in luxury as wealth. I'm interested in the desire around it — how an ordinary object can become mythological, how chrome, jewellery, a car, or a branded piece of clothing can become part of someone's identity. Mediterranean life gives all of those symbols a physical environment. There is sunlight, heat, salt, concrete, white walls, the sea, scooters, outdoor spaces, summer evenings, and people living very close to the street. That physicality keeps the images from becoming too sterile or purely conceptual. Even when I create something surreal, I want the viewer to almost feel the temperature of the scene.

The connecting thread is desire: the desire to belong, to transform yourself, to escape, to be seen, or to create your own identity. The material objects become emotional codes. That is why a sports jersey, a luxury car, and a Mediterranean sunset can naturally exist in the same image for me, they are all communicating different parts of the same human feeling.

Your images are dreamlike but stay emotionally grounded — a hard balance to strike. How do you know when a surreal world has gone from "striking" to "too far," losing the emotional truth underneath it?

A surreal element works when it intensifies the feeling that is already inside the image. It becomes too much when it starts competing with that feeling. If the first thing the image communicates is simply, "Look what I can generate," then I usually know I have gone too far. Technology or technique should never become more important than the atmosphere. I often ask myself whether the image would still contain something meaningful if the most obviously surreal element were removed. Would the composition, light, character, gesture, or mood still hold my attention? If the answer is no, then the image is probably relying too heavily on the trick. The surrealism has to be supported by an emotional structure underneath it.

I also think imperfection is extremely important. I'm attracted to analogue photography, harsh flash, VHS textures, film grain, low-resolution imagery, and moments that feel accidental because they leave space for memory. A perfectly polished image can sometimes feel more artificial than an impossible image with the right texture and emotional weight. I want the viewer to feel as though the scene was discovered, not simply manufactured.

A lot of it comes down to editing and instinct. The first idea is often the loudest, but not necessarily the strongest. I try to look at the image again after the initial excitement disappears. If the surreal element still feels connected to the world and gives the image another emotional layer, I keep it. If it only looks clever or spectacular, I pull it back. The impossible detail should feel strangely natural, almost as if it had always belonged there.

Istanbul sits at its own cultural crossroads, yet Mediterranean life keeps surfacing in your imagery. How much of that visual language comes from lived geography, and how much is a constructed, imagined version of it?

It comes from both. Istanbul has shaped the way I understand contrast. It is a city where different histories, cultures, social classes, and visual languages constantly overlap. You can see something extremely old next to something completely contemporary, or a luxury car parked beside a worn building. The city can feel European, Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, traditional, and global at the same time. Growing up around those contradictions taught me that very different symbols can exist naturally within one frame.

The Mediterranean side of my work is connected to lived experiences;, the quality of the sunlight, the sea, the heat, the architecture, the streets, the colours, and the way life happens outside. Those details stay in your visual memory. Even when I'm not consciously trying to create a Mediterranean image, they often return through the light, the atmosphere, or the physical feeling of the scene.

But I'm also not trying to document a single, geographically accurate Mediterranean reality. I construct my own version of it. It may contain Istanbul, the Aegean coast, memories of summer, global youth culture, fashion imagery, cars, music videos, and places that only exist in my imagination. It becomes an emotional geography rather than a specific location on a map.

I sometimes think Istanbul gives my work its contradictions, while the Mediterranean gives it its temperature. One creates the tension, and the other creates the feeling. I'm not interested in producing a perfect postcard version of either one. I want to build a personal mythology from what I have lived, what I remember, and what I wish could exist.

You've moved between campaigns, editorials, installations, and physical spaces for international brands and cultural institutions. What's the biggest misconception people still have about bringing AI into that kind of creative process — versus what it actually adds?

The biggest misconception is that AI is the idea, the execution, and the finished work all at once; that you press a button, receive an image, and the creative process is finished. In reality, the first output is almost never the work. AI can create possibilities, but it cannot decide which possibility belongs to your visual language. That still requires taste, experience, direction, editing, and a clear understanding of what you are trying to communicate.

My background in photography and graphic design is still present in every decision I make. I think about composition, lighting, colour, typography, texture, brand identity, and how a series of images works together. For a campaign, it is not enough to create one interesting visual. You may need ten or twenty images that all feel consistent, while the product, logo, and identity remain accurate. For an installation or physical space, you also have to consider scale, materials, colour reproduction, viewing distance, and how the image interacts with its environment. AI does not remove any of those responsibilities.

What it adds is freedom and speed in exploration. It allows me to test more directions and build worlds that might require enormous budgets or complicated production methods if they were created entirely in-camera. But speed does not mean lowering the quality bar. In some cases, AI actually creates more work, because there are more possibilities to evaluate and refine.

I see AI as another lens — a lens capable of looking beyond the limits of the physical world. It does not replace photography, design, or creative direction; it expands the space in which they can operate. The technology gives me more ways to connect the dots, but it cannot decide which dots are meaningful. That authorship still comes from the artist.

Discover more on cesxcommercial.com

Lake views, a private boat trip, a horse-drawn carriage through town, Swiss comfort food, and a very special anniversary afternoon tea: our stay at Mandarin Oriental Palace, Luzern felt less like a hotel visit and more like stepping inside a postcard we didn't know we'd been waiting for.

The feeling set in before we'd even unpacked. From check-in to the final goodbye, everything unfolded with a kind of effortless warmth that's rarer than it should be at this level of hospitality. This is, unmistakably, a palace — every detail considered, nothing left to chance — and yet nothing about it feels stiff or overwrought. That balance, we suspect, is harder to strike than it looks.

Then, of course, there's the view,  the real star of the show. The hotel sits directly on the shores of Lake Lucerne, looking out over still blue water, passing boats, and the Swiss Alps rising beyond. It's the kind of picturesque that ambushes you every few minutes, as the light shifts almost imperceptibly and suddenly demands to be photographed all over again.

The Palace Hotel first opened its doors in 1906, the vision of Swiss entrepreneur Franz Josef Bucher, who imagined a Mediterranean-style retreat improbably nestled in the heart of Switzerland. Following an extensive restoration, the Belle Époque landmark reopened in 2022 as Mandarin Oriental Palace, Luzern, its original architecture intact, layered now with contemporary interiors and quiet nods to the hotel group's Asian heritage.

This year, the property marks its 120th anniversary. After a few days on its shores, it's not hard to understand why people have kept returning to this particular bend of the lake for well over a century.

Our room was incredibly comfortable, but not in the anonymous luxury-hotel way where everything is beige and you could technically be anywhere.

The interiors take cues from the surrounding Swiss landscape, combining muted greens, natural wood, brass accents and warm textures with the building’s original Belle Époque details. Most rooms and suites also come with private balconies or terraces overlooking Lake Lucerne and the mountains.

The result feels elegant without being stiff. There are beautifully made details everywhere, but the room still invites you to unpack, put on a robe and seriously reconsider every plan that involves leaving (but then again, the lake and the promenade will be calling your name.)

It is also extremely quiet, which becomes even more noticeable after a full day outside. The beds are excellent, the bathrooms are spacious and the lake view makes opening the curtains in the morning makes you wonder if you'll ever be able to leave.

A Day on the Lake

Of course, staying beside Lake Lucerne and not getting onto the water would have been slightly criminal.

We spent part of the day travelling by boat, taking in the surrounding mountains, waterfront towns and changing views across the lake. Lucerne is an ideal base for exploring Central Switzerland, with boat cruises connecting visitors to nearby mountains and destinations including Rigi, Pilatus, Stanserhorn and Bürgenstock.

There is something about seeing the landscape from the water that makes everything feel quieter. The mountains seem larger, the villages look almost staged and even the air feels different. After the boat, we continued by horse-drawn carriage, which may sound slightly theatrical because it absolutely was—and we loved it.

Moving through the Swiss countryside at that pace gave us time to actually look around rather than rushing from one stop to the next. As per the food, we indulged in traditional Swiss food comprising of rösti, melted cheese (a lot of it!) and other delicacies that felt warm and generous, exactly what we wanted after a full day outside.

Back at the hotel, one of the clear highlights was its special anniversary afternoon tea, created to mark the Palace's 120-year history. Served inside MOzern, the experience felt like a small edible journey through the hotel's past — tradition layered with the playful precision you'd expect from Mandarin Oriental. Polished, yes, but still fun: the kind of tea where every course makes you curious about what's coming next.

MOzern is the hotel's all-day brasserie and social heart, all high ceilings, chandeliers, and views stretching over the lake and mountains beyond. Alongside its signature afternoon tea, it serves Mediterranean dishes, international breakfasts, sharing plates, and cocktails, built around menus that lean seasonal and locally sourced.

The setting does a lot of the work, admittedly — tea simply tastes better with Lake Lucerne as the backdrop; that's just science. But the anniversary edition felt genuinely tied to the hotel's own story, not staged purely for a photograph. It was celebratory, a little nostalgic, and beautifully executed. And for the confirmed coffee people we are, this was one of the rare times we found ourselves genuinely savouring a cup of tea: bold, properly steeped, full of flavour.

We ate at MOzern more than once during our stay, and the food never wavered. The menu moves through Mediterranean flavours without ever settling into predictable — generous, well-balanced dishes built for sharing. It's the kind of restaurant where you plan for a quick meal and somehow linger for two hours, because the room feels good, the service is unhurried, and another plate always seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. We particulary loved the lobster tagliolini and Mediterranean sea bass.

In warmer months, MOzern spills out onto Quai 10, its seasonal lakeside terrace, where we were lucky enough to land a table. Overlooking the water, it serves the same menu in a relaxed outdoor setting that's welcomed visitors for well over a century.

Even breakfast deserves its own mention. The spread was extensive without tipping into overwhelming, everything tasting fresh and properly considered. More importantly, no one rushed us which is essential when coffee, pastries, and a lake view are all in play. Additionally to the buffet, an à la carte menu will satisfy anyone dreaming of perfectly poached eggs, pancakes and other waffles.

The Luxury of Feeling Looked After

What stayed with us most was not one dramatic gesture, it was how consistently good everything felt.

The welcome was warm, the team remembered the small things. Every activity ran smoothly, meals never felt hurried. Returning to the hotel after a day outside felt genuinely comforting, and even the departure was handled with the same attention as the arrival.

That may sound simple, but it is surprisingly rare.

Mandarin Oriental Palace, Luzern has all the obvious luxury-hotel elements: the historic architecture, the lakefront position, beautifully designed rooms, Michelin-starred restaurants and a Biologique Recherche spa. But what makes it memorable is the feeling it creates around those things. It is luxurious, yes, but also warm, calm and incredibly easy to settle into.

From the lake and carriage rides to the Swiss food, anniversary tea and slow mornings at MOzern, every part of the visit felt special. The only part we did not enjoy was leaving.

More info and booking on www.mandarinoriental.com/en/luzern

The region's sound is getting more interesting by the day. This week alone, we got a ride-or-die hip-hop anthem, a Tunisian rap project built to dominate a whole scene, a Jordanian pop return steeped in motherhood and vulnerability, a Cairo trap-shaabi flex shot in red-toned cinema, a Palestinian voice drawing comparisons to Fairuz, and an Egyptian alt-pop statement about living unfiltered.

Six drops, six completely different worlds. Here's what's on repeat.

"PARTY LIFE" — Wingz

Tunisia's hip-hop scene has a new center of gravity, and his name is Wingz. The rapper and songwriter drops his most ambitious project yet on July 27th via Records El'Muttbukh — nine tracks of gritty, unfiltered sound that refuse to sit still inside one genre. That's always been his signature: the same artist who can deliver a hard-hitting street anthem can just as easily turn introspective and melodic two tracks later, and somehow it never feels like whiplash. "PARTY LIFE" isn't a one-off moment either, it's the opening chapter of a bigger run of collaborative releases with Records El'Muttbukh still to come. Wingz isn't riding North Africa's hip-hop wave right now. He's the one generating it.

Listen to the album, here

"Ulli Inno Mafi Minni" — Reina Khoury

Translated, the title means "tell me that I'm special"  and that vulnerability is the whole point. Reina Khoury's new single, out of Amman, wraps a tender, romantic melody around one of the most universal needs there is: to be seen, valued, and reassured. It's the sound of motherhood's duality laid bare,. the strength and unconditional love sitting right next to the self-doubt and quiet guilt, a tension Khoury has been threading since her previous single "Bi Alami." Rather than resolve the feeling, the track sits inside it, honestly. It's a plea aimed at whoever you trust most to say the simple thing you need to hear. "Ulli Inno Mafi Minni" arrives ahead of Khoury's long-awaited self-titled debut album, "REINA," landing this September, a comeback built on two years of life, not distance.

Listen to the track, here

"El Filo" — Blu Fiefer & Bea Kadri

Summer romance rarely sounds this self-aware. Blu Fiefer's "Ghalta,"  turns the emotional push-and-pull of a fling into something sharp, playful, and impossible to sit still through: flirtation, tension, and humor moving in the same breath, delivered with the conversational confidence of an argument you can't stop replaying in your head. Sung across three languages, it's pop built for a generation that codeswitches without thinking twice and feels everything at full volume. Self-directed and self-produced, "Ghalta" is the first single off Fiefer's sophomore album, and it announces a new sonic chapter while staying rooted in the wit and instinctive storytelling that's always defined her. The visual world leans into the colors and nostalgia of Lebanese summers: familiar terrain, seen through a refreshed lens. A confident, danceable reintroduction.

Listen to the track, here

"AFELT EL 3DAD" (قفلت العداد) — Showkey

Translated loosely, the title says he's off the scoreboard — beyond competition. Showkey's new Trap Shaabi anthem is a resilience record dressed as a flex, tracing a path from betrayal and setback straight through to dominance, produced by La Sauce. The video matches the ambition of the sound: Showkey towering over Cairo in striking red-toned visuals, with choreography by Ali Astro giving the whole thing a cinematic, almost theatrical weight. This isn't a survival story anymore, it's a victory lap. And the confidence in every beat says Showkey knows exactly which chapter of his career he's writing now.

Listen to the track, here

"El Basme" — Talia Lahoud (feat. Abdmusik)

Riding the momentum of her debut EP "Gharibi" and her original work before it, Talia Lahoud expands her uplifting Arabic pop world with a new collaboration alongside Syrian singer-songwriter Abdmusik. "El Basme" — meaning "the smile" — is built around confidence, positivity, and the specific kind of energy women give each other when they choose to uplift instead of compete. Abdmusik meets that energy from a different angle, adding a layer of admiration and emotional openness that rounds the track out rather than competing with it. The original "El Basme" had already proven its pull organically, racking up over 20K TikTok creations before this new version even existed, proof the song was never just a moment, but a mood people wanted to keep returning to. This regional collaboration doesn't reset that momentum. It multiplies it.

Listen to the track, here

"Madina" — Aya Samra

Aya Samra's story alone would be worth the listen: a 30-day, on-foot asylum journey from Syria to Germany in 2015 that turned music into her lifeline. Her 2025 beatbox rendition of Asmahan's "Ya Habibi Taala" organically crossed 215 million views across platforms and introduced the world to a voice already drawing comparisons to Fairuz for its restraint and clarity. Her new single "Madina," out of Berlin, folds Arabic Tarab tradition into Spanish flamenco guitar, building a sound with real movement and real tension underneath it. What started as an imagined city, Samra says, revealed itself as something internal: "I wasn't writing about a city. I was trying to find a reason to stay alive. In the end, I realized I was building a place inside myself." Memory, home, and longing, mapped in real time.

Listen to the track, here

"HAYATi FiLM" — HYPE

HYPE's follow-up to his debut EP "DAKHANA" pushes past trap-hop and into wider Egyptian hip-hop and alternative-pop territory; and it's a statement, not a stopgap. "HAYATi FiLM" is a defiant, hook-driven record about refusing to perform a highlight reel of your own life for everyone else's benefit, choosing to actually live it instead. It carries the same raw, unfiltered honesty that pushed his earlier single "KAWASAKI" past 336K streams, proof that HYPE's appeal was never about polish, it's about not flinching. This is an artist widening his lane on his own terms, mid-momentum.

Listen to the track, here

jdeed — meaning "new" in Arabic. Six artists, six cities, one region that refuses to sound like anything but itself. Press play.

Summer in the GCC has its own rhythm. Early mornings before the heat fully arrives. Long afternoons by the pool. Rooftop dinners, late drives and at least one friend who insists on taking control of the playlist. If you're anything like us, music is involved in all of it, obviously.

Sonos has three portable speakers designed to move with the day: the compact Roam 2, the new Play and the more powerful Move 2. Each one fits a different kind of plan, from a quiet beach morning to a gathering that becomes considerably louder than expected.

Roam 2: For People Who Actually Pack Light

The Sonos Roam 2 is the easiest one to throw into a beach bag and forget about until someone asks where the music is.

It weighs less than a pound, so it does not take over your hand luggage or compete with the seven unnecessary skincare products already inside. It is also waterproof and dustproof, which is important when sand, splashes and questionable poolside decisions are part of the plan.

The battery lasts for up to ten hours, enough to cover a morning by the water followed by a long lunch where nobody seems interested in leaving.

It comes in Black and White for the minimalists, as well as Olive, Sunset and Wave for anyone who wants the speaker to match the towel, sunglasses or general summer mood.

Play: The Staycation Favourite

Sitting between the Roam 2 and Move 2 is the Sonos Play, the newest addition to the line-up. It is compact enough to carry around without turning the journey into a workout, but powerful enough to fill a hotel room, balcony or rooftop. The stereo sound gives it more presence than its size suggests, while the battery runs for up to 24 hours.

That is basically an entire staycation on one charge. The Play can also top up your phone when the battery starts dying halfway through the day, which makes it the kind of friend who arrives prepared instead of asking to borrow your charger (woops, guilty of charge, we are that friend.)

Once home, it sits on its own charging base and works like a regular Sonos home speaker, meaning it is useful even when summer plans become sofa plans.

The Move 2 is for the bigger plan. It is the most powerful of the three, with stereo sound and a tuned woofer designed to fill a room and carry the music outside towards the pool.

There is a handle built into the back, so moving it from the kitchen to the garden does not require a complicated setup or several people giving instructions. The battery also lasts for up to 24 hours, which should outlive even the longest pool day or at least the people who said they were “just stopping by for an hour.”

The useful part is that the speakers are not limited to performing solo. When you are away from Wi-Fi, the Play can group with a second Play or a Move 2 over Bluetooth. Up to four speakers can play together, covering the beach, pool or rooftop without requiring everyone to crowd around one small speaker balanced dangerously close to the water.

Back home, all three connect to the wider Sonos system over Wi-Fi and can be controlled through the Sonos app. The music can move from the bedroom to the balcony without the playlist cutting out or somebody having to reconnect their phone every ten minutes.

So, Which One Are You?

The Roam 2 is for the person with one tote bag and a very organised itinerary. The Play is for the staycation, hotel room, road trip and anyone whose phone battery is permanently at 12%. The Move 2 is for the host - the person who invited six people and somehow ended up with 25 in the living room.

Whichever version of summer you are having, Sonos has clearly accepted one thing: the playlist is not optional.

The Roam 2, Play and Move 2 are available across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

More info on Sonos.com

Is it the ultimate Summer watch? Bvlgari just introduced the Bvlgari Bvlgari, a design that has spent five decades sitting somewhere between Roman jewellery and impeccable Swiss watchmaking.

This season, the Maison is revisiting the icon through two very different ideas of how a warm-weather watch should feel. One is light, technical and unapologetically sporty: the Bvlgari Bvlgari Aluminium, now dressed almost entirely in white, with a second limited edition featuring a vivid blue dial. The other is more precious and distinctly Roman: two 33 mm models with pink or green mother-of-pearl marquetry dials, each assembled from approximately 400 tiny pieces.

Same family, different holiday plans.

The Bvlgari Bvlgari story began in 1975, when Gianni Bulgari created the original Bvlgari Roma as a gift for 100 of the Maison’s most important clients. Gérald Genta reinterpreted the design in 1977, giving rise to the Bvlgari Bvlgari name and the form that would become one of the brand’s clearest watchmaking signatures.

The double engraving around the bezel is often treated as a piece of bold branding, but its origin is more considered than that. The circular inscription refers to ancient Roman coins and the monumental Latin lettering found across classical architecture. It is an idea that feels unmistakably Bvlgari: Roman history turned into something graphic, modern and slightly provocative.

And unlike many logo-heavy designs, it has aged remarkably well.

When Bvlgari introduced the Aluminium in 1998, the decision to combine aluminium with rubber was genuinely disruptive. At the time, luxury sports watches were still largely associated with steel, gold and conventional ideas of permanence. Bvlgari went in the opposite direction, using industrial materials to create something lighter, more informal and more connected to the way people actually dressed.

The engraved rubber bezel, integrated rubber bracelet and aluminium case made it feel almost anti-luxury; except the design was too precise and too recognisable to be anything but luxury. Since 2020, the line has also been powered by an automatic mechanical calibre, giving the material experiment proper Swiss watchmaking substance.

The new summer versions stay very close to that original spirit.

Both arrive in a 40 mm sandblasted aluminium case with a titanium crown and caseback, a white rubber bezel and matching integrated strap. They are water-resistant to 100 metres and powered by the automatic B77 calibre, offering hours, minutes, central seconds, a date display and a 42-hour power reserve.

In other words, these are not simply white summer accessories, they are properly usable watches.

The monochromatic reference is the quieter of the two, although an entirely white Bvlgari Aluminium is hardly anonymous. Its opaline dial is matched with rhodium-plated markers and hands, while the rubber bracelet and bezel keep the entire watch within a controlled white and silver palette.

The effect is cleaner than flashy. White watches can easily drift into novelty territory, but the contrast between rubber, brushed aluminium and titanium gives this one enough texture to avoid looking flat.

It is also the version that best reveals what has always made the Aluminium interesting: the tension between an industrial case, a luxury name and a design that refuses to behave formally.

The Blue One Is the Collector’s Pick

The second version keeps the same white architecture but adds a deep blue sunburst dial, blue indices and hands, and a red-tipped seconds hand.

Only 500 pieces will be produced, which immediately makes it the more collectable reference of the pair. The blue changes the watch more than expected.

Against the white rubber and pale aluminium, the dial becomes the visual centre, shifting in the light while still feeling legible and sporty. The red detail on the seconds hand adds just enough contrast without turning the watch into a flag.

Between the two, the white model is the purist choice. The blue feels more expressive and probably the one enthusiasts will remember from this release.

The two 33 mm Bvlgari Bvlgari models take an entirely different approach. Here, the story is not lightness or technical sport. It is craftsmanship on a scale small enough that you have to look closely to understand what is happening.

The dials are made using mother-of-pearl marquetry inspired by the Roman tradition of polychrome mosaics. Around 400 tiny fragments are individually arranged to create each dial, producing a surface that changes constantly depending on the angle and light. Twelve diamond hour markers sit across the composition without overpowering it. This is where Bvlgari’s jewellery instincts become particularly useful.

Mother-of-pearl dials are hardly new in watchmaking, but these do not rely on one simple sheet of iridescent material. The fragmented construction gives them more depth and irregularity, closer to a miniature mosaic than a conventional decorative dial.

Pink or Green?

While the pink version pairs its mother-of-pearl dial with a rose-gold bezel, rose-gold hands and a crown set with a pink tourmaline cabochon, the green version uses yellow gold for the bezel and hands, while keeping the same pink tourmaline crown detail. Both are housed in polished steel cases and bracelets, creating a two-tone look that feels jewellery-led without becoming overly ornate.

At 33 mm, the proportions are compact and elegant. Both use quartz movements with hours and minutes only, which may disappoint anyone insisting on mechanical watchmaking at every price point, but the movement is not really the main event here.

These pieces are built around dial craft, colour and the way gold, steel and mother-of-pearl behave together on the wrist. The green model is probably the more distinctive of the two. Its dial moves between mint, turquoise and deeper emerald tones, while the yellow-gold bezel adds warmth. The pink is softer, but not overly sweet. The fragmented marquetry keeps the colour from feeling uniform, and the steel bracelet gives it enough structure to stay modern.

These releases truly demonstrate how much flexibility exists inside one very recognisable design. The Aluminium models strip the watch back to rubber, brushed metal and graphic contrast. The mother-of-pearl pieces move in the opposite direction, bringing ancient decorative techniques, diamonds and precious metals into the same circular architecture.

The logo remains where it has always been, the Roman reference is still clear. The watch is still instantly identifiable across a room.

But depending on the version, it can now look equally at home beside a pool, on a boat, at dinner in Rome or under the kind of lighting that makes mother-of-pearl do all the work for you. Bvlgari may be selling two visions of summer here, but watch people will understand the real problem immediately: choosing just one.

More on Bulgari.com

Running in Dubai in July usually requires either an extremely early alarm, a questionable relationship with heat or a treadmill. On and SIRO are betting on the treadmill—but making it considerably more social.

The Swiss performance brand has teamed up with SIRO One Za’abeel to launch the SIRO | On Run Club, a new indoor running concept built around structured training, recovery and the kind of group energy that makes the last interval slightly less painful. Launching at SIRO One Za’abeel this summer, the club has been created specifically with the region’s climate in mind. So instead of putting your running routine on pause until October, you can train indoors, stay consistent and enjoy the highly underrated luxury of air conditioning.

Not Just Running in a Room

The sessions combine speed, incline, duration and recovery in an interval-led format designed to deliver a full workout without expecting everyone to run at the same pace. Each participant can adapt the session to their own level, which means the club works whether you are training for a race, returning after a long break or still negotiating with the idea of becoming “a running person.”

The shared setting matters too. Because let's be real, treadmill running alone can feel suspiciously endless. Add music, coaching and other people suffering beside you, and suddenly it becomes a community activity.

“This experience is about redefining what indoor running can be,” says Jamie Moore, SIRO’s Director of Fitness. The programme, he explains, was designed to give runners enough structure to improve while remaining accessible, engaging and supportive at every stage.

Try the Shoes While Actually Running

One of the more useful parts of the partnership is the dedicated On try-on station, where participants can test the brand’s running shoes during the session rather than walking around a shop for three minutes and pretending they have gathered enough information.

The featured models include the Cloudmonster 3, a cushioned daily trainer designed for a smooth, forward-rolling ride, and the Cloudmonster 3 Hyper, created for more intensive training and longer efforts with extra responsiveness.

Trying them in an actual workout gives runners a better sense of how the cushioning, propulsion and fit respond when speed and incline enter the situation. It also makes the collaboration feel more integrated than a logo placed beside a treadmill. We have personally tried them on several occasions ranging from Hyrox training to weightlifting to simply walking around and it might be our fav all around sneakers we've ever tried.

The SIRO | On Run Club is not built around the idea that a good workout should leave you incapable of using stairs for three days.

Recovery is worked into every session, reflecting SIRO’s broader approach to performance through five pillars: sleep, fitness, recovery, nutrition and mindfulness. The goal is not only to train harder, but to understand when to slow down and how to do both more sustainably.

That philosophy feels particularly relevant now, when wellness culture can easily become another form of pressure (hello the THOUSANDS of Insta posts telling you what to do...) More steps, more classes, more kilometres, more data to check before breakfast: no thank you.

This club still wants you to improve, obviously, but it also acknowledges that rest is not what happens when training fails. And surprise, It is part of the training.

The indoor format will run through Dubai’s hottest months, with plans to expand into outdoor activations as the weather becomes less hostile. It is also the first major activation in a longer-term partnership between SIRO and On, with more experiences expected to follow. It makes sense for both brands.

On has built a global audience by making technical performance products feel relevant far beyond race day. SIRO, meanwhile, approaches hospitality through the routines modern travellers do not want to abandon when they leave home: training, eating well, recovering properly and getting enough sleep.

Together, they are creating a run club that sits somewhere between fitness class, product trial and social plan, which is probably exactly what running needs during a Dubai summer.

See you on the treadmill. We might be the ones pretending the incline is not bothering us.

The SIRO | On Run Club is open to all levels at SIRO One Za’abeel, with sessions available to book through the SIRO app.

There are times when water feels too boring, but regular soda feels like a decision you'll regret. This is where HalaPop comes in. Founded in Dubai by Karim Jalloul and Walid Antabli, the homegrown brand is introducing what it calls the Middle East’s first prebiotic soda: a fizzy drink that tastes familiar, comes in genuinely fun flavours and offers a little more than a sugar rush.

The line-up includes Pomegranate Hibiscus, Strawberry Vanilla, Tangerine, Ginger Lemon and Cherry Cola. Each can is made with 15% real fruit juice, contains 6g of prebiotic fibre and comes in at 29 calories, with no added sugar, preservatives, artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners.

In other words, it is still soda but one that has better intentions.

“We were tired of putting down a soda and feeling like we’d done something wrong,” says Jalloul. “So we asked a pretty simple question: why can’t a soda just be good for you?”

Fair question. HalaPop lands at a time when people across the region are looking at wellness a little differently. It is no longer only about supplements, green juices or an overly ambitious routine that lasts three days. The products we reach for every day are expected to do more too, even when all we really want is something cold and fizzy with lunch.

That is where the prebiotic element comes in. The fibre is included to support gut health, but the brand is clearly not trying to turn soda into homework; the cans are bright, the flavours are playful and nothing and it doesn't feel like yet another health trend.

Strawberry Vanilla and Cherry Cola are the nostalgic options, Pomegranate Hibiscus feels very at home in the region, while Tangerine and Ginger Lemon are probably the ones we would reach for on a hot afternoon.

And the price also helps - at under AED 10 per can, HalaPop sits closer to an everyday drink than one of those wellness products you buy once, photograph, and then forget at the back of the fridge.

The response so far suggests people were ready for it. According to the brand, HalaPop sold through its opening stock and exceeded its launch forecast within weeks. It also reached the top of Amazon UAE’s soda category, while Noon described it as one of its strongest CPG launches to date. The company has since raised more than $1 million, signed Emirates Snack Foods as its official UAE distributor and brought a strategic anchor investor on board.

“We didn’t set out to launch a product,” says Antabli. “We set out to start a category and to prove it could be built from this region instead of imported into it.”

That might be the more interesting part of the story.

The better-for-you soda space is already crowded internationally, but HalaPop is not presenting itself as a local imitation of an American trend. It is being built in the UAE, for the region, with plans to expand into Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC over the next six months.

The brand is also making sure it appears outside the usual supermarket setting. A limited can takeover with Benefit Cosmetics brings HalaPop into the beauty world, while a collaboration with Pret A Manger puts it in front of the daily lunch crowd. More partnerships across beauty and food are expected to follow.

It makes sense. HalaPop has the kind of branding that wants to be seen, and the concept is easy to understand without reading crazy explanations at the back of the can.

For now, it is available through Amazon UAE, Noon and Noon Minutes, Careem, Talabat, Calo, Joga and Fit Republik, as well as selected retail and wellness spaces. A broader rollout across Spinneys, Carrefour and other quick-commerce platforms is also underway.

Will it replace the soda you grew up with? That depends on how loyal you are. But five flavours, proper fizz and a gut-friendly reason to open another can is a very convincing start.

More on DrinkHalapop.com

Designed by Frank Gehry and years in the making, the museum will officially open on December 11, 2026, on Saadiyat Island.

It is official: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open its doors on December 11, 2026. The long-awaited museum of modern and contemporary art is joining Abu Dhabi’s increasingly serious cultural line-up on Saadiyat Island, alongside Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi and teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi.

At this point, Saadiyat Cultural District is becoming a full cultural itinerary.

Part of the wider Guggenheim family, which includes museums in New York, Venice and Bilbao, the Abu Dhabi institution is not being presented as a copy-and-paste version of what already exists elsewhere. Its collection and programming will look at modern and contemporary art through a perspective shaped by the UAE, the region and Abu Dhabi’s long history as a meeting point between different cultures.

The museum will focus on art from the 1960s to today, bringing together painting, sculpture, photography, installation, moving image and new media. Rather than telling one neat, chronological history of art, it will connect artists and ideas across countries, generations and disciplines.

Basically, less “walk from decade to decade” and more “follow the connections and see where they take you.” We're so excited! Are you?

Frank Gehry, But Make It Abu Dhabi

The building itself is, unsurprisingly, a major part of the story. Designed by the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi sits between land and sea, with a silhouette shaped by the architecture and climate of the Gulf.

Inside, the museum will include 30 galleries connected through a central atrium. Ten sculptural cones rise through the building—nine wrapped in stainless-steel mesh and one finished in onyx and glass, .creating natural ventilation and shade while giving the museum its instantly recognisable form. Some of the cones reach heights of up to 88 metres.

The scale is difficult to ignore: 11,600 square metres of interior gallery space, 23,000 square metres of outdoor exhibition areas and a total built-up area of 80,000 square metres.

So yes, wear comfortable shoes.

A Collection Built Over Time

Although the museum has yet to open, its collection has been developing since 2009. The galleries will explore themes including abstraction, popular culture, land, language and storytelling, looking at how artistic ideas have travelled and changed across different regions. Visitors will be encouraged to create their own routes through the museum rather than follow a single fixed narrative.

That approach feels especially relevant in Abu Dhabi. The city has spent years positioning itself as more than a host for international cultural names, building institutions that bring global conversations into contact with local history and regional perspectives.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is designed to sit within that exchange; not simply importing art into the UAE, but asking how the UAE can shift the way that art is seen, understood and discussed.

Dr. Mariët Westermann, Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, describes the collection as both local and global, centred in the region while featuring work from every continent. Meanwhile, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, says the museum will create new opportunities for learning, creativity and cultural exchange.

And whileiIt would be easy to focus only on the architecture, the scale or the Guggenheim name, the more interesting question is what the museum will actually add to the region’s cultural landscape.

For younger audiences, it offers access to modern and contemporary art without requiring a trip to New York, London or Paris. For artists and creatives from the region, it creates another major platform where their work can exist within a genuinely international conversation. And for Abu Dhabi, it is another step in becoming a city where culture is not treated as decoration, but as infrastructure.

Details surrounding the opening exhibitions, collection highlights and new commissions will be revealed over the coming months. For now, the date is finally in the diary.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opens on December 11, 2026, in Saadiyat Cultural District.

Like many modern beauty discoveries, ours began with TikTok. The product was Haruharu Wonder’s Black Rice Hyaluronic Toner: a dark, slightly mysterious bottle appearing between skincare routines, glass-skin tutorials and very convincing before-and-after videos. Naturally, we became curious. Then we tried it.

The toner felt hydrating without being sticky, soothing without disappearing into the skin and simple enough to use consistently. It was the kind of product that became part of our routine pretty instantly. From there, one formula led to another, and somewhere between the cleansing oil, barrier essence and sunscreen, we became full-on fans.

Now, the Korean skincare brand has officially arrived in the Middle East, making our recommendations considerably easier to act on.

The Black Rice Hyaluronic Toner is one of Haruharu Wonder’s global cult favourites, formulated with fermented black rice extract, hyaluronic acid and red ginseng. It is designed to soothe and soften the skin while improving moisture retention, leaving it feeling plumper and refreshed. But beyond the ingredient list, its appeal is how uncomplicated it feels.

This toner gives skin that comfortable, hydrated feeling without turning your routine into something too complicated. It also became our entry point into the brand’s wider philosophy: skincare should work day by day, rather than promising a completely new face by next Tuesday.

The name Haruharu literally means “day by day” in Korean, reflecting the brand’s focus on consistency, daily rituals and long-term skin health instead of quick fixes.

Why Black Rice?

Black rice is not simply there because it looks good in the product name. Haruharu Wonder uses fermented black rice, which is naturally rich in flavonoids and antioxidants. The brand combines it with its patented Ultra Deep Technology, a liposome-based delivery system developed to help active ingredients absorb more effectively without overwhelming the skin. Fermentation is central to the brand’s approach. The process is used to amplify the natural potency of plant-based ingredients while keeping the formulas gentle enough for regular use.

This balance—effective but not aggressive—is probably why the products have found such a loyal audience online. Haruharu Wonder does not build its identity around the idea that your skin needs to be constantly corrected, stripped or exfoliated into submission. The emphasis is on maintaining a healthy barrier and giving the skin what it needs consistently.

All of the brand’s products are vegan and cruelty-free, clinically tested for skin compatibility and developed without unnecessary additives.

Haruharu Wonder’s Middle East arrival comes at a particularly appropriate time. Summer skin here is dealing with several personalities at once. There is outdoor heat and humidity, followed immediately by freezing indoor air conditioning. Add sweat, sunscreen, makeup, travel and possibly several hours inside a very dry plane cabin, and the skin can somehow feel oily, tight, dehydrated and congested on the same day.

Instead of suggesting 14 products to solve the problem, Haruharu Wonder divides its summer approach into three realistic steps: protect, hydrate and cleanse properly.

Start With SPF

The brand’s sunscreen selection includes the Black Rice Moisture Airyfit Daily Sunscreen SPF50+/PA++++, a lightweight daily formula with a velvet finish and no white cast. It is designed to sit comfortably beneath makeup rather than creating another layer you spend the day feeling on your face. For sensitive skin, there is the Black Rice Pure Mineral Relief Daily Sunscreen SPF50+/PA++++, while the Black Bamboo Top-to-Toe SPF Veil extends the protection beyond the face with a non-sticky lotion texture and three types of hyaluronic acid.

Also, let's be real; the best sunscreen, after all, is not necessarily the one with the most dramatic marketing claims; it's the one you will willingly put on every morning.

For hydration, the Black Rice Probiotics Barrier Essence has a creamy, milky texture and a formula built around ceramides, fatty acids and cholesterol in a 3:1:1 ratio. Fermented ingredients including Galactomyces and Bifida help support elasticity and hydration.

There is also the Black Rice Probiotics Barrier 2% NAD+ Serum Mist, which works somewhere between a toner, essence and serum. It is an ultra-fine milky mist made with probiotics and a five-ceramide complex, useful when skin needs something during the day but you have no interest in applying another full routine.

The less glamorous part of wearing sunscreen every day is that it also needs to be removed properly. Haruharu Wonder’s Complete Cleansing Duo Kit offers a simple version of the Korean double cleanse. The first step, the Black Rice Moisture Cleansing Oil, melts away makeup, sunscreen and daily build-up using naturally derived oils including rice bran, olive, sunflower, macadamia and jojoba.

It is followed by the Black Rice Moisture 5.5 Soft Cleansing Gel, a gentle, pH-balanced cleanser developed to remove whatever remains without leaving the skin feeling tight or stripped. This is probably the part of the routine we appreciate most: effective cleansing that does not make your face feel as though it has been through a difficult emotional experience.

From TikTok Discovery to Middle East Shelves

Haruharu Wonder has built a global presence across more than 100 countries, largely through word of mouth, viral consumer recommendations and products that perform consistently enough to keep people repurchasing them.

Its Middle East debut brings the brand exclusively to Ulta Beauty, both online and at Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates. The regional launch also includes a Best Glow Mini Trial Kit, containing the cleansing oil, an AHA cleansing gel, the toner that started our obsession and the Probiotics Barrier Essence.

It is a very convenient introduction for anyone who has watched the same black bottle appear on TikTok and wondered whether it is actually worth trying.In our case, the answer was yes.

More info on HaruHaruWonder.com

You and I have probably been, at some point in our lives, either the victim of a wasta, the facilitator of one, or the person happily receiving it. Sometimes, we have been all three.

In Arabic, wasta—واسطة—refers to using a personal connection, intermediary or position of influence to help someone gain access to an opportunity, service or outcome. It could be the friend of a friend who knows someone, your immediate family, or the cousin of 3amo Khaled, whose address book is somehow larger than an encyclopaedia.

It can mean securing an interview, speeding up paperwork, finding a doctor who will fit you into an impossible schedule or calling someone who can finally explain why your licence application has been sitting untouched for three months.

By Cynthia Jreige

On the surface, it often feels harmless. It is simply a network of people helping one another, right?

Across the Arab world, pulling out the wasta card is almost always a possibility. From your first summer internship to your driving licence, university application or first proper job, there is usually someone who knows someone who might be able to “see what they can do.”

The practice exists everywhere in different forms: networking, referrals and introductions are not exclusively Arab concepts. However, there is something particularly familiar about the way wasta operates in our region: informal, personal and often understood without anyone needing to say too much.

One phone call, one name dropped at the right moment, one reminder that your father once helped his father in 1998. Done. But while sipping coffee one afternoon, I started wondering whether wasta might be more harmful than we like to admit.

When a Connection Is Just a Connection

Not every wasta is corruption, and not every introduction is unfair. Sometimes, a connection simply helps someone get noticed. It's a friend recommending you for a role because they know you would be good at it; it's a former colleague introducing you to someone working in an industry you are trying to enter; it;s a relative putting your CV in front of a hiring manager, but you are still expected to interview, demonstrate your skills and earn the position.

In these cases, wasta does not necessarily replace merit, it just creates access.

And access matters, especially in places where formal systems can feel slow, opaque or difficult to navigate. Knowing the right person can help you understand a process that no one properly explained, reach someone who was otherwise impossible to contact or be considered for an opportunity you may never have heard about.

We are constantly encouraged to network, maintain relationships and build communities. LinkedIn has essentially turned professional introductions into an entire business model. So why does a referral become respectable when it happens at a corporate event, but suspicious when it happens through 3amo Khaled?

Perhaps the discomfort is not always about the connection itself but more about what happens after the connection is made.

When the Little Push Becomes a Shortcut

The problem begins when wasta stops opening the door and starts removing everyone else from the room. It is one thing to help someone secure an interview but it is another to guarantee them the job, regardless of whether they are qualified.

It is one thing to help a person understand a bureaucratic process but another to move their application ahead of people who have been waiting longer.

This is where wasta becomes more than networking and just becomes favouritism. The thing about favouritism it that is inevitably damages the idea of merit. It tells people that working hard may matter, but perhaps not as much as their surname, family network, money or proximity to power.

We grow up being told that we can achieve anything if we work hard enough. But can we, when somebody with more influence can obtain the same thing—or something better—through one well-placed phone call?

The damage is not limited to the person who loses the opportunity, it can affect entire workplaces and institutions.

When people are appointed because of connections rather than ability, everyone around them has to carry the consequences. Teams become less capable, trust disappears. Employees stop believing that performance will lead to recognition because promotions appear to have been decided elsewhere, perhaps over lunch between two families who go back several generations.

Eventually, people either leave or learn to play the same game and the system reproduces itself.

Merit and Wasta Can Exist at the Same Time

Of course, reality is rarely that simple. What happens when someone is both talented and connected?

You may have worked hard, built experience and spent years developing genuine relationships. You are good at what you do, and someone in your network offers to give you a small push. Should you refuse simply because another person may not have access to the same introduction?

Professional success has never been based entirely on skill. Timing, confidence, visibility and relationships have always played a role. Many opportunities come from being remembered by the right person at the right moment.

Networking itself requires effort. Building a reputation, maintaining relationships and making people trust your work can be forms of merit too. But there is an important distinction between a recommendation and a guarantee. A healthy connection says, “You should meet this person. I think they could be right for the role.”

An unhealthy wasta says, “Give this person the role.” One supports consideration while the other determines the result. That difference may sound small, but it changes everything.

Do We Only Hate Wasta When It Is Not Ours?

There is also an uncomfortable hypocrisy in the way we discuss wasta. We criticise it when someone else benefits, but rarely question it when it saves us time.

When another person gets the position through connections, it is deeply unfair. When our mother calls someone to move our appointment forward, it is simply practical.

When an unqualified colleague is promoted, we complain about corruption. When someone offers to send our CV directly to the CEO, we suddenly become very open to “networking.” Perhaps this is why wasta survives so easily. It is difficult to reject a system when we never know when we might need it.

Even people who dislike it may feel forced to participate. Refusing a connection can feel less like taking a moral stand and more like voluntarily putting yourself at a disadvantage while everyone else continues playing by different rules.

Stop or Encore?

So, should wasta stop, or do we accept it as an inevitable part of how society works? Perhaps the answer depends on whether the connection creates access or replaces fairness. A wasta that helps someone discover an opportunity, meet the right person or receive guidance can be harmless and sometimes genuinely helpful. Communities have always survived through people supporting one another.

But when wasta overrides competence, skips established processes or takes something away from someone more deserving, it stops being community and becomes privilege protecting itself.

The goal should not be to eliminate human relationships from professional or public life. That would be unrealistic, and probably undesirable. It should be to build systems strong enough that connections cannot determine outcomes on their own.

Make the introduction. Pass along the CV. Share the contact. Give someone the small push. But let them do the rest. Because a door opened through a connection is one thing but a future decided before anyone else had the chance to knock is something entirely different.

Karen Wazen is having a summer. After opening her own beach club in Lebanon and introducing the first men’s collection for Karen Wazen Eyewear, she is now joining forces with Saie for a limited-edition beauty-meets-fashion collaboration.

And considering we have loved Saie’s easy, glowy formulas since discovering the brand a couple of years ago, this one immediately got our attention. Founded by Laney Crowell, Saie has built a loyal following around clean beauty that does not feel complicated or overly serious. Its high-performance formulas are made for effortless glow—the kind of makeup that makes you look fresher without making it seem as though you spent an hour trying.

Karen Wazen Collection, meanwhile, has grown from an eyewear label into a globally recognised lifestyle accessories brand, founded by Lebanese Dubai-based entrepreneur and content creator Karen Wazen. Together, the two female-founded brands are bringing their communities into one very summer-appropriate drop built around confidence, simplicity and elevated everyday essentials.

At the centre of the collaboration is an exclusive co-created frame inspired by the woman who wears both brands: effortlessly chic, naturally radiant and probably moving between three plans in one afternoon. The contemporary cat-eye silhouette is crafted from premium black acetate, finished with subtle gold co-branding and fitted with lenses offering 100% UV protection. It feels classic enough to survive more than one summer, but sharp enough to change the mood of an otherwise very simple outfit.

The sunglasses are paired with Karen’s curated Saie essentials: Glossybounce Hydrating Lip Gloss Oil and Lip Liner 101.

Both products come inside Karen Wazen Collection’s classic pillow pouch, redesigned with subtle co-branding and dedicated compartments for the Saie products. So everything stays together instead of disappearing into the bottom of your bag alongside receipts, tangled headphones and one unidentified lip balm from 2023.

It is the ideal on-the-go combination: sunglasses on, lips lined, gloss added and suddenly you look considerably more put together than you felt five minutes earlier.

Not every collaboration needs to happen, but to be honest we're kinda excited about this one.

Karen Wazen Collection is about accessories that can elevate a look without demanding too much effort. Saie approaches beauty in much the same way, creating products that enhance what is already there rather than covering it completely.

“This collaboration was inspired by the shared DNA between the Karen Wazen girl and the Saie girl; effortless, confident, and naturally elevated,” Karen explains. “She gravitates towards pieces that enhance rather than overpower, whether it’s a clean beauty routine or a timeless pair of sunglasses.”

Laney Crowell felt the same connection.

“I instantly fell in love with Karen’s designs because they feel effortless while still elevating your look,” the Saie founder and CEO says. “What I love most is how Karen approaches style in the same way we think about beauty at Saie. It’s about enhancing what’s already there, not overpowering it.”

As Crowell got to know Karen and the brand more closely, she says the alignment between their aesthetics and values made the partnership feel natural.

And that shared language is easy to see: the frame makes a statement without becoming a costume and the lip products add definition and shine without turning into a full makeup situation.

The products are cute, obviously. But we also love what the collaboration represents. Both Karen and Laney have turned a clear personal point of view into businesses with loyal international communities. They understand their customers, know exactly where their brands fit and are not afraid to expand without losing the identity that made people care in the first place.

Karen’s evolution as a business owner has been especially exciting to watch. Karen Wazen Collection has released more than 14 collections and expanded across international retailers, e-commerce platforms and dedicated stores throughout the region. She is also a co-founder of KE Partners, a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and a board member of Fashion Trust Arabia.

The beach club, the men’s collection and Now Saie.

She is clearly not interested in staying inside one category, and we love watching a woman from the region continue to build on her own terms. The limited-edition Saie x Karen Wazen collection launches on July 24, 2026, through Saie and Karen Wazen’s websites, as well as Karen Wazen stores. Customers purchasing the collaborative sunglasses in-store will also receive exclusive Saie samples and surprises while quantities last.

It is Karen’s summer. Saie brought the glow. And we will be carrying the pillow pouch everywhere.

More info on Karenwazen.com and SaieHello.com

The two heritage houses unite for a three-piece collection that pairs BIRKENSTOCK’s anatomical comfort with Repetto’s Parisian sense of movement.

At first glance, BIRKENSTOCK and Repetto may appear to belong to entirely different worlds. One is built around the anatomy of the foot, functional design and a shoemaking history that stretches back to 1774. The other emerged from the discipline and poetry of ballet, creating footwear defined by lightness, movement and distinctly French elegance.

Their first collaboration proves the distance between the two is not quite as wide as it seems. Developed through BIRKENSTOCK 1774, the brand’s Paris-based special projects and collaborations division, the new BIRKENSTOCK x Repetto collection brings the German footbed into dialogue with the codes of the ballet studio. The result is a trio of silhouettes that feels practical, playful and unexpectedly romantic.

The Arizona Gets a Ballet-Inspired Update

The collection begins with a familiar icon: the Arizona. For this release, the classic two-strap sandal is reworked with oversized rounded buckles, giving its instantly recognisable shape a more sculptural finish. It remains unmistakably BIRKENSTOCK, but viewed through Repetto’s softer and more expressive lens.

The Scala introduces a round-toed silhouette finished with two delicate straps and a lace bow. It has the charm of a ballet flat without becoming overly literal, balancing sweetness with a slightly bolder attitude.

Completing the collection is the Opéra, a sabot-style design with long, fluid laces that wrap around the ankle like a dancer’s ribbons. Of the three, it is perhaps the clearest meeting point between both houses: grounded by a substantial footbed, then transformed through gesture and movement.

Each silhouette arrives in three colours drawn from Repetto’s visual universe. Iconic Pink references the delicacy and lightness traditionally associated with dance. Flame Red brings a more dramatic energy, while Profound Black offers the collection’s most timeless and understated option.

A Vichy-check lining appears across the footbeds, introducing a motif associated with effortless Parisian style and linking the three designs through one recognisable detail. The collection is offered in European sizes 35 to 42.

Beyond the visual contrast, the collaboration is held together by a shared interest in how people move. BIRKENSTOCK’s identity is rooted in foot health and its anatomically shaped footbed, while Repetto began with an equally functional purpose. Founded by Rose Repetto in 1947, the house was created after she designed dance shoes for her son, dancer and choreographer Roland Petit.

That original act of care became the foundation for a maison synonymous with ballet flats and French savoir-faire. Repetto later created the Cendrillon for Brigitte Bardot in 1956, while Serge Gainsbourg helped turn the Zizi into another cultural signature.

Both brands have since moved far beyond their original contexts, but neither has abandoned the purpose that shaped it. BIRKENSTOCK continues to frame comfort as a matter of natural movement, while Repetto’s designs remain connected to precision, freedom and the body in motion.

The partnership arrives at a moment when fashion is increasingly interested in unlikely combinations: technical and delicate, practical and theatrical, familiar and slightly strange (and we're not mad at that.)

Rather than disguising the BIRKENSTOCK footbed or turning Repetto’s ballet language into a costume, the collaboration allows both identities to remain visible. Rounded buckles, ankle ribbons, bows and checked linings soften the utilitarian forms, but comfort remains central. Somehow it works, and somehow we kinda want it all.

The collection was conceived in Paris before being produced in BIRKENSTOCK’s German workshops, combining Repetto’s creative vocabulary with the German house’s manufacturing expertise. It launched on July 16, 2026, through 1774.com, Repetto’s channels and selected retailers worldwide.

It may be called a ballet of style, but these are shoes made for more than standing beautifully at the barre. They are designed for moving through the city—with ribbons tied, footbeds grounded and perhaps a little more drama in every step.

More on Birkenstock.com and Repetto.com

The new Al Safa destination combines an in-house roastery, an open bakery and all-day dining in a space designed to make the process behind every cup and loaf part of the experience.

Dubai’s café scene has a new address and Cherryhouse is not any other coffee shop. Now open in Al Safa, the concept brings together specialty coffee, artisanal baking and all-day dining within one open, design-led space. Founded by Emirati entrepreneur Mohammed Matar Al Koas Al Falasi, the name behind Saddle and Feels, Cherry House has been created around a simple idea: the craft behind what we eat and drink should not stay hidden.

Named after the vivid red fruit surrounding every coffee bean, Cherryhouse turns preparation into part of the hospitality. Roasting, baking and coffee-making unfold in view of guests, making the rhythm of production as central to the experience as the final result. Deep cherry tones, natural light and an open-plan layout give the venue a warm, contemporary character, while the roastery, bakery and espresso bar remain visible throughout the space.

From Green Bean to Final Cup

At the centre of Cherryhouse is its fully operational in-house roastery, fitted with a Loring machine known for its precision and cleaner roasting process.

The most visually striking feature, however, is the region’s first overhead belting system, which transports freshly roasted beans across the venue through a network of pipes. Functional and theatrical at once, it turns the movement of coffee into part of the interior experience. The green beans are sourced from producers across Colombia, Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia, Costa Rica and Panama. Guided cuppings and coffee tours are also planned, offering guests a closer look at the journey from origin to roast and, eventually, the cup in front of them.

For Al Falasi, Cherryhouse is the outcome of years spent studying coffee and bakery cultures around the world.

“My vision was always to create a global destination where Emirati hospitality meets world-class coffee and artisanal baking,” he says. “Every detail, from the green bean to the final cup, from the grain of wheat to the loaf on the table, is shaped by the same belief in delivering only the best.”

As per the bakery, it follows the same transparent approach. Breads and pastries are shaped, proofed and baked in full view, bringing guests closer to the time and technique behind each item. Cherryhouse works with certified organic, French-milled wheat, while its sourdough is fermented for up to 48 hours before reaching the table.

That focus on patience carries through the wider menu, which moves from fresh pastries and breakfast plates to nourishing bowls, sandwiches, salads and larger dishes. Specialty coffee sits alongside matcha and seasonal drinks, allowing the venue to transition naturally from an early-morning bakery visit to a longer lunch or slower evening stop.

A Café Designed for Staying

Cherryhouse describes itself as a destination rather than a stop, and its interior reflects that ambition. Natural materials, generous light and the brand’s signature cherry palette create a space that feels polished without becoming formal. The layout is built around lines of sight, keeping the roastery, bakery and bar visible so that movement, conversation and craftsmanship remain present throughout the visit.

It also speaks to a wider shift in Dubai hospitality, where guests increasingly expect more than a beautiful room or a strong menu. They want to understand the story, sourcing and process behind what they are consuming. Cherryhouse brings those elements together without separating them into different concepts. Coffee, baking and dining exist side by side, connected by the brand’s four central values: craft, integrity, ritual and gathering.

The result is a venue where the smallest details become part of the appeal: the sound of bread being prepared, the movement of beans overhead and the possibility of watching a morning coffee take shape from beginning to end.

Cherryhouse
Matloob Building, 22A Street, Al Safa 1, Dubai
Open daily from 7:00 AM to 12:00 AM.

From miso buns and perfectly salted fries to local wine, vinyl records and post-workout coffee, the Beirut-based communications and social media manager shares the places currently shaping her experience of the city.

Kristy Ayoub notices all the details (and we always loved her style!). A Beirut-based communications and social media manager with a soft spot for good food, considered branding and beautiful spaces (and a JDEED Alumn!), she is always searching for the kind of place that gets more than one thing right. It could be a menu built around exceptional produce, a perfectly made coffee or an atmosphere that makes you stay long after the bill has arrived.

More often than not, she is also the person stopping everyone mid-walk—or mid-meal—after spotting something worth photographing.

Her guide to Beirut moves between bakeries, neighbourhood coffee shops, restaurants, bars and a workout-and-smoothie combination worth building a morning around. Some are established favourites, others are more recent discoveries, and a few are still waiting to be crossed off her list.

Start With Coffee—and Something Sweet

At the top of Kristy’s bakery list is BakeLab, where choosing one thing is part of the challenge.

“The miso bun. The almond croissant. The coconut cake that they just brought back. I could go on,” she says.

The coconut cake, in particular, receives all-caps approval, while the bakery’s combination of familiar pastries and less predictable flavours makes it the kind of stop that easily turns into a recurring ritual.

For a slower brunch, Kristy recommends Mavia—although the lavender shortbread cookies are reason enough to visit on their own.

“Come for brunch, stay for the lavender shortbread cookies. Trust me.”

On Fridays, the space shifts into pizza-night mode, offering another reason to return beyond the morning coffee run.

At Headshell, the appeal extends beyond what is in the cup. Alongside great coffee, the space carries a selection of local brands and vinyl records, turning a caffeine stop into an opportunity to browse Beirut’s wider creative scene.

For somewhere to work, meet a friend or simply settle in for a while, Kristy heads to Levant at Brazzaville.

“One of my favourite spots to get some work done or catch up with a friend,” she says. “Super cute, super chill.”

Then there is Beyond Organic, which combines coffee with the practical pleasure of picking up fresh produce, and perhaps a beautiful bunch of flowers on the way out.

Where Kristy Is Eating Right Now

Beirut’s restaurant scene rewards curiosity, and Kristy’s list moves easily between steak, saj, sushi, tacos and local wine.

Un Peu Fou makes the cut for its new menu, which Kristy describes simply but decisively as “really good.” When she is craving steak, she heads to Smoking Barrels. The restaurant may be her choice for a proper cut of meat, but the burger should not be overlooked.

“Their burger is absolutely killer,” she adds.

At Terrible Prince, the recommendation is reassuringly uncomplicated: you cannot go wrong with anything on the menu.

For a more communal meal, Kristy points to Souk El Tayeb. The visit may begin with saj, but it should not end there. Its new lunch formula is designed for sharing, making it an easy choice for a longer table with friends.

And then there are the fries.

“The fries are salted to perfection—which, if you know me, is a very big deal.”

For local wine and small plates, Aleb offers the right kind of relaxed pairing, while Chubby Fish earns a specific order: the Hamashi roll. Its playlist also receives Kristy’s approval, proving once again that the experience of a restaurant goes far beyond the plate.

Stir is another name on her current rotation, while Los Santos Tacos stands out for both the food and the visual world surrounding it.

“So, so good,” she says. “Really cool identity too.”

For someone working in communications and social media, strong branding is not an afterthought. It becomes part of how a space feels, how it tells its story and whether it stays in your mind after the meal.

Drinks, Pizzas and Late Nights

For drinks, Kristy’s Beirut shortlist includes Ivis & Olea, Riff, Fizz and Internazionale.

At Ivis & Olea, the menu leaves plenty of room to explore, but one order is non-negotiable.

“You can’t go wrong with anything on the menu,” she says. “But whatever you do, don’t skip the pizzas.”

Riff, Fizz and Internazional round out the list for nights when the destination matters just as much as the drink—places to meet, stay longer than planned and let the evening develop without overthinking it.

The Workout-and-Coffee Combination

Kristy’s ideal active morning begins at SOAR Lagree and ends nearby at Alma with a smoothie or coffee.

It is the kind of pairing that feels distinctly Beirut: a workout followed by something social, a quick plan that can easily stretch into the rest of the morning.

Arab music is moving differently in 2026. Not only across streaming platforms or international collaborations, but through ambitious live shows that are placing artists from the region in venues and festivals across Europe, North America, the Levant and North Africa.

Wegz, Saint Levant, Zeyne and TUL8TE are each taking their music on the road this year, but no two tours look quite the same. One is returning for his second global run, another is transforming a concert into a narrative world inspired by Levantine nightlife, while others are building international audiences through intimate venues, major festivals and newly announced dates.

Together, the four tours reflect a generation of Arab artists no longer treating international stages as occasional stops. They are creating full touring worlds around their music, identities and visual languages.

Wegz Returns for His Second World Tour

Egyptian rapper Wegz began his second world tour in Jordan on July 17, launching a multi-month schedule spanning North America, Europe and the Middle East.

The North American leg begins in September, with confirmed performances in New York, Washington, Dallas, Tampa and Los Angeles. From there, Wegz is set to head to Europe, with dates announced for Athens and Istanbul, while concerts in London, Milan, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin and Vienna are still to be confirmed. The tour will later return to the region for performances in Doha and Saudi Arabia.

The tour follows Wegz’s first major international run in 2023 and arrives after the release of his 2025 debut album, Aqareb. His return to the global circuit feels less like an introduction and more like a continuation of the space he has already created for Egyptian rap abroad.

More info on Instagram: @wegzofficial

Saint Levant Builds the World of Afandi

Saint Levant is approaching touring through an entirely different lens. His newly announced 41-date Afandi World Tour will feature Layali Al Afandi, a narrative live production inspired by the Levantine cabarets of the 1990s.

Rather than simply presenting a traditional concert, the show will combine live music, storytelling and stage design, drawing from Beirut’s nightlife and the fashion, sound and artistic energy that shaped Arab popular culture during the period.

The tour begins in the region with performances in Amman on August 13 and Kfardebian, Lebanon, on August 15. Saint Levant will then travel through North America from September, with stops including Boston, Brooklyn, Toronto, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland.

The European leg begins in Dublin on October 29, continuing through cities including Paris, Antwerp, Cologne, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens and Istanbul. The closing stretch brings him back to MENA for Casablanca, Doha, Muscat and Dubai. Presales begin from July 21, followed by the general ticket release on July 24.

With Afandi, Saint Levant is not only exporting his sound. He is bringing a carefully constructed Arab visual and cultural universe with him.

Zeyne Brings Awda Across Europe and the UK

Zeyne is also deepening her international presence with the Awda EU/UK Tour, moving between summer festivals and a run of headline European shows.

Her 2026 schedule began with festival appearances in Casablanca, Montreux and Bern. Upcoming performances include London’s Mahrajan Festival on August 1 and the Lowlands Festival in the Netherlands on August 21.

The headline portion of Awda begins at KOKO in London on September 1, before travelling to Dublin, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona and Istanbul. The run concludes on September 18 at Salon IKSV in Istanbul.

The title Awda, meaning “return” in Arabic, gives the tour an emotional weight that goes beyond geography. For Zeyne, movement between cities becomes part of a wider story about belonging, memory and the way contemporary Arabic music can feel deeply local while travelling far beyond the region.

More info on Zeyne.co

TUL8TE Looks Towards the Gulf and North America

After a European run that included Vienna, Paris, London, Dublin, Milan, Berlin and Amsterdam, TUL8TE is continuing his touring momentum with new dates across the Gulf and planned shows in North America.

His upcoming schedule currently includes Kuwait on October 8, with the venue still to be announced, followed by a performance at Desert Garden at the Beyon Al Dana Amphitheatre in Sakhir, Bahrain, on October 23.

The artist’s official tour page also lists forthcoming concerts in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles and New York, with the dates and venues yet to be revealed.

TUL8TE’s route reflects how quickly his music is moving beyond its original audience. From Egyptian stages to European venues, the Gulf and an upcoming North American chapter, his live presence is expanding alongside the mysterious visual identity that has become central to his appeal.

More info on Tul8te.com

It's defintely a new live era for arab artists; Wegz is carrying Egyptian rap across a second international run. Zeyne is moving between festivals and more intimate European venues. TUL8TE is expanding into new markets while maintaining the mystery surrounding his image. Saint Levant is taking the concept further, treating the tour as theatre, nightlife, memory and music at once.

Together, their schedules suggest a broader shift in how artists from the region are approaching international success. Global touring is no longer positioned as the final reward after breaking through at home, no - It is becoming part of how Arab artists build their stories from the beginning, meeting diasporic audiences while introducing new listeners to music that does not need to translate or dilute itself to travel. This is an interpretation supported by the artists’ expanding 2026 schedules across MENA, Europe and North America.

Returning from May 26 to 30, 2027, the multidisciplinary platform will bring designers, architects, artisans, chefs and cultural voices together across Beirut and beyond.

WE Design Beirut is officially returning for its third edition, taking place from May 26 to 30, 2027, with a new theme that looks beyond borders and towards the waters that have long connected them: “Love On The Mediterranean.”

Since its launch, WE Design Beirut has grown beyond the traditional framework of a design week. It has become a multidisciplinary cultural platform where design, architecture, craftsmanship, heritage and contemporary creativity meet, while creating space for conversation between Lebanon and the wider international community.

For 2027, the Mediterranean is approached not simply as a location on a map, but as a cultural artery. For centuries, its waters have carried people, traditions, ingredients, objects, techniques and ideas between different shores. “Love On The Mediterranean” will explore the emotional, historical and creative connections that continue to link these communities today.

Across five days, the program will unfold through exhibitions, installations, talks, student initiatives and cultural activations. Established and emerging designers will take part alongside architects, artisans, chefs, curators and students from Lebanon and abroad, creating an edition built around collaboration rather than a single discipline.

The upcoming chapter also promises a wider focus on international exchange, education and conversations between different creative practices. While the full list of designers, locations and programming has yet to be announced, the event will once again activate historically and architecturally significant sites throughout Beirut and beyond. This relationship between design and place has become one of WE Design Beirut’s most defining qualities. Rather than presenting work inside anonymous exhibition halls, the platform allows Beirut’s buildings to become part of each story.

During its second edition in 2025, exhibitions unfolded across locations including Villa Audi, the Roman Baths, Burj El Murr, Abroyan Factory and Immeuble de l’Union. Each space carried its own memories, architectural language and relationship to the city, placing contemporary design in direct conversation with Beirut’s past.

The program included eight exhibitions across five locations, alongside panel discussions, workshops, showcases and excursions. Its official recap recorded more than 200 participants, as well as 4.5 million social media views and an organic reach of 207,000 accounts.

The exhibitions moved between materials, generations and cultural questions. At the Roman Baths, designers reimagined marble through the histories of water and communal rituals. At Abroyan Factory, textiles and traditional skills were explored as living archives of labour, memory and resilience. Burj El Murr became the setting for a student exhibition examining conflict as an ongoing system rather than a closed chapter.

These projects reflected the platform’s wider commitment to treating heritage as something active. Not frozen in the past, but continuously questioned, protected and reshaped by new generations.

Launching another edition in Lebanon’s current climate is an ambitious decision, but for founder Mariana Wehbe, that is exactly why it matters.

“This is precisely when culture becomes essential,” Wehbe says, describing WE Design Beirut as a platform centred on continuity, preserving knowledge, supporting creatives and reminding audiences of the cultural richness that continues to exist in Lebanon.

With its third edition, WE Design Beirut is not only inviting the Mediterranean into Beirut. It is placing Beirut back within a larger Mediterranean conversation, one shaped by movement, memory, hospitality, craftsmanship and exchange.

Further announcements surrounding the participating designers, venues and full program will be revealed in the coming months.

WE Design Beirut 03: Love On The Mediterranean
May 26 to 30, 2027
Beirut, Lebanon

More on Wedesignbeirut.com

Cover Photo: Dia Mrad

When I was a child, I’d watch my grandmother read my father’s coffee cup, trying to see his future in the dregs inside. She’d tilt it this way and that, the black swirls speaking to her in images only she could decipher. It felt like magic to me - the kind passed down through women who knew things without ever explaining how.

Now, I realise it wasn’t magic at all. It was a man trying to make sense of a future he couldn’t see, and a woman trying to give him a story soft enough to hold. I thought she was telling him what would happen. What she was giving him was really much simpler: a moment of clarity in a life that rarely offered any. A few sentences to hold onto. Whether it came true was beside the point.

By Mariam Shour

This was my first lesson in how people survived uncertainty. A skill we’ve all been forced to practice these past few years. Because when life stops making sense, answers are the last thing you’ll find, but rituals are always right there, waiting to be used again. We trace patterns in cups, hang charms on doorknobs, light incense in the corners of new rooms. We whisper prayers our mothers whispered, and their mothers whispered, that no one remembers even learning. From the outside, these things look like heritage. From the inside, they’re coping mechanisms. Comfort wrapped in centuries-old practice.

Coffee cup readings travelled from Ottoman kitchens into our living rooms. The evil eye has been feared by everyone from the Greeks to the Phoenicians. And bakhoor predates almost every religion here; it blessed ships, soothed spirits, and covered the smell of whatever the neighbours were cooking.

These rituals didn’t survive because they were poetic or sacred. They survived because humans have always needed tools, even imaginary ones, to point at fear, envy, illness, or uncertainty and say, “Okay, I’m doing something. This should help.”

When we moved into our new home, my mum walked in with her little baggie filled with bakhoor stones like an on-call cleanser. She grabbed a bowl, lit the coal, and waved the smoke into every corner, protecting my family and I in the process.

In the West, they call it “cleansing the energy,” buying palo santo kits, and saging their homes. Here, we’ve been doing the same thing forever - only it actually smells good. They talk about manifesting; we read coffee cups. They wear crystals; we wear evil eyes. Different vocabulary, same instinct: everyone is just trying to feel a little safer in their own skin and space.

My mother wasn’t trying to purify the future of the house. She wasn’t trying to guarantee that our next ten years would be blessed and blissful and financially stable (though I wouldn’t have complained). She was simply lightening the present - settling the energy, marking the beginning, making a strange space feel familiar.

And when I’m feeling tired, heavy, or carrying the kind of sadness we sometimes don’t know how to name - she’ll place a hand on my head and start praying. There’s something ancient and comforting about someone speaking the heaviness away. And now, without thinking, I find myself doing the same with my own children.

Maybe this is how heritage actually survives: not through museums or textbooks, but through emotional muscle memory, passed down through generations. A gesture that outlives logic.

Every Arab household has at least one evil eye talisman somewhere. A necklace, a bracelet, a keychain, a giant one hanging in the hallway, one dangling from the car mirror, bouncing dramatically with every pothole. Even the people who swear they don’t believe in any of this still wear one “just in case.” You know, for science.

And if the charm breaks, a small bead snapping off, that’s suddenly proof that something was “too strong.” We joke about it, but replace it immediately. We call them decorative, cultural, aesthetic - but deep down, we know they’re tiny shields. Not for the future. For right now. For the feelings we don’t want to explain, the envy we pretend isn’t there, the heaviness we drag around.

And maybe that’s why these rituals linger. Not because they point us forward, but because they hold us together right now. We like to say our heritage shapes our future, but I think we reach for these old gestures because today is the part no one knows how to manage. The ground keeps shifting. The world keeps asking too much of everyone, especially of our children. And in the middle of all that, we need something older and slower to remind us that people have been overwhelmed before, and still found a way through.

So the rituals continue, not as prophecy but as relief. We light incense not to bless what’s ahead, but to ease what hurts now. We read coffee cups not to see tomorrow, but to feel less lost today. We hang the evil eye because we’re still hoping - stubbornly, irrationally - that we can keep the worst away.

And maybe that’s always been enough.

Lana Qatramiz's style is ecletic, expressive, mixing vintage and very modern references. The Syrian, Dubai-based founder of beauty brand LAS CLUB sees fashion as an intuitive language, building looks that are led by feeling instead of convention.

Creativity has always come naturally to her. From spending her childhood drawing, making crafts and imagining stories to developing an early fascination with photography and visual storytelling, fashion became the natural meeting point for every creative instinct. Today, she approaches styling and creative direction as a way of bringing emotion, identity and aesthetics together, building a career that has seen her work with Farfetch, Threads Styling, Marie Claire Arabia and Haya Magazine.

The Way She Wears (TWSW) is our way of spotlighting women whose style feels personal, intuitive, and entirely their own. Not trends, not formulas, just a point of view.

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“Lana’s ID”: name, origin, profession

I’m Lana a Dubai-based creative director, stylist, and founder of LAS CLUB. Originally from Syria, I’ve been living in Dubai for the past 12 years, building my career between fashion, beauty, and creative storytelling. My work has always been about creating emotion and identity through visuals

When did you know you’d be working in fashion/creative industries?

I think creativity was always naturally part of me. As a child, art and crafts were my favorite subjects, and I was constantly drawing, creating, and imagining stories. Later on, I became obsessed with photography I loved taking photos, editing them, creating moods, and even filming little scenarios with my siblings. I was always fascinated by storytelling through visuals.

Fashion eventually became the perfect outlet for all of that. Styling felt like freedom to me because every project, person, and story is different. It combines emotion, aesthetics, movement, and identity all at once. From there, my path naturally evolved into creative direction. Alongside freelancing in fashion, I worked as a personal stylist for Farfetch and Threads Styling, and later as a stylist and art director for Marie Claire Arabia and Haya Magazine.

Who are your fashion icons?

I don’t really have one specific fashion icon. For me, inspiration changes depending on the mood, the story, or the energy I’m drawn to at the time. But I will always come back to the icons and fashion of the ’90s. There’s something about that era that feels timeless to me: the elegance, the confidence, the bold femininity, and the fierceness.

Women like Christy Turlington and Yasmeen Ghauri really embody that energy for me, strong yet effortless, elegant but powerful. That balance is something I’m always inspired by creatively.

What are 3 brands you could wear forever?

Saint Laurent

Prada

Loewe

They all represent very different sides of femininity, but still feel timeless.

4 staples everyone should own?

A strong oversized blazer

A timeless structured jacket

A perfect white shirt or T-shirt

Black sunglasses that instantly elevate a look

What are the regional brands you love right now?

I love seeing regional brands becoming more daring and globally influential right now. Some brands I really enjoy are:

Farah Seif, Hala by Hala Shemmari, Reemami, Mayka and Nora The Label I’m always drawn to brands with a strong identity and point of view.

Your fashion most special possession?

Definitely my jackets. I’m very attached to outerwear pieces because they completely transform the energy of a look. Some of my favorite jackets feel almost like characters on their own — they carry memories, moods, and confidence.

A piece worth investing in?

A beautifully tailored blazer or coat. If the fit is perfect, it becomes timeless and something you can wear in completely different ways for years.

Your current favourite song, book or TV show?

Right now:

Song: Quadris De Ouro - Pale Jay

TV show: Beef

Book: Let them theory

I’m always inspired by things that feel visually strong, emotional, and intentional.

Keep up with Lana on Instagram, here

There are few artists whose work is instantly recognisable from across a room quite like Hassan Hajjaj. Defined by bold colour, layered pattern and an unmistakable visual language that sits somewhere between fashion editorial, street photography and pop art, the Moroccan-British artist has spent decades celebrating the richness of multicultural identity through his lens.

This summer, that world arrives at Sotheby's London with Hassan Hajjaj: My London Rockstars, Ends to Estates, a selling exhibition presented in partnership with Vigo Gallery, running from 13 July to 7 August.

Alongside the exhibition, Hajjaj is also taking over Sotheby's Story Café on New Bond Street, transforming the space in his signature style inspired by the vibrant cafés and tea salons he has created in Marrakech and Paris.

The exhibition marks the latest chapter of Hajjaj's long-running My Rockstars series, an ongoing body of work he began in the early 2000s documenting the people who make up his creative universe. Rather than focusing solely on celebrity, Hajjaj's portraits celebrate the communities, friendships and cultural exchanges that have shaped his own artistic journey. As he puts it: "I am so proud to introduce this new creative energy in London, which mirrors the spirit and excitement of my early days in the city."

At the heart of Ends to Estates is a new generation of London's cultural protagonists. The exhibition brings together portraits of artists, musicians and designers who have helped redefine the city's contemporary creative landscape, including Central Cee, Joy Crookes, Jorja Smith, Clint 419, Slawn, Walid Labrim, Buck Betty, Knucks and Seb Tabe. While many of these names now command international recognition, Hajjaj photographed several of them before they reached global prominence, capturing a moment of emergence rather than arrival.

The exhibition's title is equally significant. Ends to Estates references journeys from public housing to cultural influence, reflecting the rise of a generation moving fluidly between underground scenes and mainstream visibility. According to curator, writer and broadcaster Ekow Eshun, what makes these portraits so compelling is Hajjaj's personal connection to his subjects.

"It's a measure of his personal outlook, his commitment to friends and kin, that he saves the term 'Rock Star' only for those he feels a real affinity with."

For Eshun, the series is ultimately about something much larger than portraiture. Hajjaj's photographs become affirmations of multicultural London itself, celebrating a city continually reinvented by the communities that shape it. As Eshun writes, Hajjaj recognises in these figures "the same resourcefulness and hybridity that shaped his own trajectory," insisting that multiculturalism remains one of London's greatest creative strengths.

That perspective is deeply personal.

Born in the Moroccan coastal town of Larache, Hajjaj moved to London with his family at the age of twelve. Unable to speak English, he left school at fifteen before forging an unconventional career through Camden Market, underground club culture, fashion and streetwear, eventually launching his own label, R.A.P. (Real Artistic People), in Covent Garden. Immersed in London's creative underground throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he developed the hybrid visual language that would later become synonymous with his work, blending North African street culture, global fashion, music and portraiture into images that feel simultaneously documentary and fantastical.

Whether photographed in Marrakech, London or an improvised studio built around a patterned textile, Hajjaj's portraits have always challenged conventional ideas of identity and representation. Framed by colourful everyday objects and saturated textiles, his subjects appear confident, joyful and unapologetically themselves, reflecting lives shaped by migration, creativity and cultural exchange rather than neatly defined borders.

Today, Hajjaj's work belongs to major international collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, LACMA, the Brooklyn Museum, MACAAL in Marrakech and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, among many others. Yet My London Rockstars, Ends to Estates feels less like a retrospective than a continuation of a lifelong conversation about community, belonging and creative possibility.

More than a portrait exhibition, it is a celebration of the people who continue to redefine contemporary culture from the ground up—one vibrant frame at a time.

Cover: Our Motherland Collective, framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2023. Courtesy of Our Motherland Collective crew, Vigo Gallery, London and Hassan Hajjaj Studio