‘CONFRONTING NEW IDEAS IS INVIGORATING’

Deconstructed denim. Dazzlingly inventive dresses. Graphic 3D elements. And coutureworthy gowns. These are some of the things that Luxury’s deputy editor, Sarah Maisey, discovered when she went off in search of the UAE’s next wave of design talent. She rifled through creations by recent graduates from some of the UAE’s biggest design schools and identified a handful of the country’s most promising young creatives. Pieces by these exciting new designers are presented on page 28, in a bold shoot that complements the inventiveness of the clothing on show.

There is something invigorating about being confronted with new ideas. This is the crux of a new exhibition at London’s V&A museum, which places a muchneeded spotlight on contemporary African creatives. While fashion designers in the West, from Yves Saint Laurent to John Galliano, have o en looked to Africa for inspiration and have been lauded for their efforts, not enough attention has been paid to what is being produced within Africa itself.

The new V&A exhibition is the first to chart the sartorial history of the continent, using designs by Thebe Magugu, Duro Olowu, Kenneth Ize, Imane Ayissi and others to tell a story of “agency, abundance and unbounded creativity”, Christine Checinska, the V&A’s inaugural curator of African and African diaspora fashion, tells us on page 21.

The exhibition highlights how fashion has been instrumental as an expression of identity and liberation on the African continent. And it is a poignant reminder that, sometimes, clothes are not just clothes. Nowhere is this point more pertinent than in the atmospheric environs of the Hirbawi factory in Palestine’s West Bank, which is featured on page 24. As the last remaining Palestinian maker of traditional keffiyeh scarves, the family-run factory is keeping a vital piece of the country’s heritage alive.

When Hirbawi opened in the 1960s, it was weaving 1,000 scarves a day. Today, half of the factory’s hulking Suzuki looms lie idle and output has fallen dramatically as the market has been flooded with cheap copies of the keffiyeh. When Sarah Maisey visited the site, she was greeted by Abed Hirbawi, son of founder Yasser, who was delighted to have an unannounced visitor.

This month, we were also invited into the muchanticipated Aman New York, which has opened in the city’s historic Crown Building. As seen on page 42, the property artfully reconfigures the hotel brand’s Asianinspired, resort-style aesthetic for an urban setting, and melds the old and the new in intriguing ways.

Hirbawi is attempting a similar undertaking with new versions of its multicoloured keffiyehs. And these new ideas are, indeed, invigorating.