From a handful of couture and abaya designers 10 years ago to nearly 100 today spanning from haute couture and bridal, abayas and kaftans, to ready to wear and menswear, Dubai is the undisputed fashion hub of the Middle East - sorry Beirut. The growth has been tremendous and warranted. Only a few years ago Dubai suffered from luxury label overload and high street domination with a gaping hole between. Where was the originality, the innovation, the alternative sartorial point of view? As many expats were screaming and jumping up and down for attention it seems few heard the call and later many jumped on the bandwagon.

So whom is it paying off for? S*uce Boutique was one of the first out of the gate and have successfully brought independent designers to the UAE while also providing opportunities for local designers. Among their local clients they have managed to assign real value to these smaller designers thereby weaning Emirati fashionists off the idea of luxury labels for the sake of luxury labels. Hence we have the birth of a more sophisticated market. Their boldness has paid off with S*uce boasting multiple shops in Dubai and Abu Dhabi as well as their distribution agency, Two Scoops.

A tried and tested formula for independent designers calls for support from independent multi- brand stores. Dealing with bigger department stores is risky for a small designer and although some corporate chains tried working with local designers, relationships soured when the trend didn’t pay off. However, the recent pop-up shop hosted by Saks for local brands Bow, Kage and Dinz may perhaps be a sign of the industry maturing.

Between the up-swing in the economy, Esmod University and Preston University turning out fashion graduates, stronger fashion events, shows and a network of nearly fifty boutiques (online included) the UAE has seen a plethora of new designers emerging. Finally!

The question is can we keep this up? Demand for our work as well as creativity and inspiration is in abundance but what about the practical resources? Aside from a consistently high demand, haute couture has always thrived in the region as designers can build their own houses with artisans from the region. There is a well established and thriving textile importation industry of luxury fabrics and said houses can practice quality control as everything is manufactured under one roof.

Ready to wear is a much trickier market to tackle as there are no sample houses, leaving many designers to work with tailors since many can’t reach the minimum orders to work with manufacturers in Sharjah and Jebel Ali. From both first hand experience and reports from other designers this is problematic when multiple trips to the tailor can yield little control over quality of cut, fit and construction making deadlines impossible to meet.

Finding fabrics, trims and notions locally can be frustrating too. If you are lucky enough to source your materials locally trusting the merchant can prove foolhardy if you don’t know your natural fibers from your synthetic or the actual going rates. For someone keen to work with specialty fabric supply is difficult and shipping is expensive. I ask for “organic” and they say ”organza?”. These issues can send any burgeoning designer to compromise their work and even pack it in.

The couture model can not sustain itself with a ready to wear budget so perhaps moving offshore is the best option but expenses remain high between shipping and travel not to mention increase difficulty in preserving quality and prohibiting counterfeiting.

Reining supreme comes with the responsibility to produce our sartorial best. So can Dubai continue to maintain its fashion dominance without the ability to build high quality ready to wear garments?