A new fashion label that’s just launched in Dubai wants to appeal to the wanderer in you.
House of Nomad, founded by Emirati entrepreneur and fine arts graduate Saleh Al Bana and his business partner Ahmad Al Sayed, a fashion design student, is already creating quite a buzz on social media and among the city’s fashion set with its funky use of Arabic calligraphy and a single tone colour palette for the entire first collection. Almost entirely rendered in pale nude, the collection, features everything from gowns and skirts for women and bomber jackets and drop-crotch pants for men.
Al Bana, 30, and Al Sayed 25, came together to pursue their mutual love of fashion with a cultural twist. They have, in the process, given the UAE’s home grown fashion industry a nice little boost we can be proud of. The Directory got the pair to tell us, in their own words, their story, and what they’ve planned for their journey ahead.
In the beginning
“House of Nomad was born through our mutual love for fashion. We shop together, travel together, but still hold our own individual styles. Ahmad has an educational background in fashion design, so he would be occasionally sketching and Saleh would always give in his input. So we decided to take our skills and talents to the next level and create this clothing brand that caters to both men and women. The brand is born in Dubai, where we both reside, Saleh is Emirati, while Ahmad is from Egypt, born and raised in the GCC. After creating a few custom pieces for our friends, we started getting a lot of positive comments from outsiders, and so it was a push for us to create a full collection. We also noticed a gap in the market where the GCC doesn’t have two Arab men running a clothing brand that caters to both genders.”
Our philosophy
“Growing up in the GCC we noticed that our region is a very transitional place for the expatriates that live here. To us they seem like nomads, us too, we are always on the move, exploring countries, different cultures. And so we liked the name nomad, to us it’s a representation of the times we live in, we are all wanderers, trying to find a place for us to settle in this world.”
The challenges
“When launching our brand and collection we’ve always said that we were going to keep the brand operating on a small scale, as we both have full time jobs. But since we launched, the demand from our customers to own pieces from the brand has escalated in just the first month that it is now challenging to balance our full time workload with our brand. But thankfully we work under a very structured system and so far everything is falling into place slowly.”
There are fashion brands and then there are fashion brands
“For us our label is something we created out of our passion for fashion, so be rest assured that it is going to constantly evolve and grow in this market. We also believe in putting 100 per cent effort into whatever we are passionate about, and that goes without saying with our brand, we monitor the construction of each order, we package our customers’ purchases as well as deliver them ourselves, so for us it is a piece of our personal lifestyles that we share with the region.”
We are all about Arabia
“Our use of Arabic calligraphy was very minimal in this first collection, but the amount of positive feedback we have received in those pieces has given us the push we needed to use it heavily in our upcoming collections. For us Arabic calligraphy is an expression of our cultural identity which we share with the world. It was a proud moment for us to see people in Dubai wearing those pieces, people during European fashion weeks and across the region as well wearing them, so it really helps us express our own culture DNA and just share it with the world. It is very hard to use Arabic calligraphy in apparel and make it look high end, we’ve seen people print it on ready made sweaters and tshirts, whereas our pieces are made from scratch in a certain fabric that goes across all seasons, and can also be worn as a daywear piece to an eveningwear piece.”
It’s all about pale nude this season
“While researching what this market is missing and creating looks for our first collection, we were fabric hunting, and we came across the nude fabric that we are now using, and thought to ourselves why not create a whole collection using a single colour palette and the same fabric throughout. For us it was a challenge we gave ourselves, and the result has been rewarding. It was not easy to create a variety of looks using the same colour palette and the same fabric, but we wanted to also create a very strong sense of unity throughout the whole collection. We do not base our collections on the latest trends, as they are very seasonal oriented, instead we prefer to create wardrobe must have pieces that we consider timeless and can be worn at anytime. As well, we were proud to see Calvin Klein’s SS 14 collection showcasing a similar sweater that we have one week after we had launched our collection, so it was sort of an indication of that we were heading in the right direction with our cuts and colour palettes.”
Bigger and stronger we go
“Our collection consists of 14 pieces, which is seven looks for men and seven looks for women. Our collection has been loved by the media and several boutique owners across the region, but most importantly by our customers across the GCC and internationally. All we can say regarding our upcoming collection is expect to see a strong use of our cultural DNA throughout all the pieces.”
The future is bright
We like to focus on the now, but we are definitely planning to grow the brand into an overall expression of the lifestyle that we live. Our brand direction will definitely continue to highlight our cultural DNA to the rest of the world one collection at a time.”
For more on House of Nomad, go to house-of-nomad.com
