Walk into any rooftop in Dubai, any beach club in Mykonos, any dinner in Mayfair on a Saturday night and you will, without fail, spot the same three pieces. The global wardrobe delivered on every promise it made and somehow produced a world where opening your wardrobe feels less like a decision and more like a foregone conclusion.
We did this to ourselves, to be fair. Shopped the same six websites, followed the same accounts, and landed in the same Zara top at a family function where at least two cousins are wearing it better.
Style, for us, has always been more specific than that: statement denim for occasions where looking good is a competitive sport, jewellery that holds its own at weddings where subtlety goes not just unnoticed but actively penalised, linen sets for summers where your entire social life convenes in the same forty metres of coastline.
The brands that understand that grew up inside it. These are the seven worth knowing right now.
STUDIO ABBAS
London-based Iraqi designer Abbas Al Hamdani is almost too sweet for the denim he makes. Soft-spoken and unhurried, the kind of designer who lets the clothes do the talking, which they do. The jacket is cropped dark denim with copper rivets running down the front in two irregular columns, utilitarian until you look closer and realise how considered every detail is. The wide-leg jeans sit low in raw dark denim, substantial enough to anchor anything above them.
For the man who has lived in the same white t-shirt for three years and needs a revamp without the panic, this is the entry point that doesn’t feel like one. For anyone who has spent years borrowing from a boyfriend or brother’s wardrobe chasing that particular androgynous ease—Al Hamdani made it for you, and it actually fits.
SUEZ STUDIO
I stopped a man backstage at a Saint Levant concert for his bucket hat. Keffiyeh-printed, red and white, immediately recognisable once you know it. He told me it was his brand. That was Egyptian-Iraqi designer Serag Elmeigy, and I have been following Suez Studio ever since.
The easy version of this brand would have stopped at the bucket hat. Elmeigy kept going. Khayamiya—the centuries-old appliqué—runs in deep red arabesque patterns along jacket lapels, sleeve seams and trouser hems, each piece made in collaboration with Threads of Hope, a social enterprise whose women artisans’ handiwork stays deliberately visible in the finished garment. Heritage, here, doesn’t perform itself: no slogans, no borrowed symbols, nothing working harder at making a point than at being worn.
You throw it on in London or Paris and someone stops you, trying to place it. Your history, worn in plain sight.
DOUBLE AÂ
Leather in the Arab wardrobe has never been the obvious choice: too heavy, too Western, too much for the heat. Ayah and Aliaa Aboutera grew up around it anyway, daughters of an Egyptian leather manufacturer who has been working in the craft since 1977. What they built from that inheritance looks nothing like his.
The piece I keep coming back to is a long black vest, sleeveless, vertical pleated panels running its full length, silver eyelets lacing down the centre front. Worn over jeans and stacked jewellery it reads as part downtown, part ancient, entirely its own thing. Two young Arab women took a father’s material literacy and arrived somewhere he couldn’t have predicted.
Leather in summer reads as a decision. This is the kind that makes sense once you’re wearing it.
HOUSE JANOLO
The dominant move in fine jewellery right now is restraint: the barely-there chain, the single diamond, the piece that whispers its price tag. If you’re spending real money, the logic goes, you should be able to wear it everywhere, with everything, forever. Dujanah and Oloof Jarrar, Abu Dhabi sisters with a New York sensibility, find that logic unconvincing.
House Janolo works in 18k gold, enamel and gemstones in glossy, almost syrupy hues. The stones feel closer to Candy Crush than anything traditionally fine. These are pieces that stack, accumulate and catch the light from across a room, made for the function and the unremarkable Tuesday, because the latter deserves it too.
A slicked-back bun, a white tank, and the jewellery does the rest.
BEDOUIN’S DAUGHTER
I was sold by the storytelling and stayed for the shine. A fellow BD girl slid a sample across a dinner table and told me, quite confidently, that I’d get it. She was right.
The brand is built around being in between, and the name carries that quietly—just a person, specific and daughterly, no desert clichés required. The product is an ultra-glossy, slightly plumping lip treatment in a sheer, buildable mocha plum, the shade that works whether you’re making an effort or pretending you’re not.
It has replaced my Summer Fridays loyalty without fanfare. It feels less like being sold something, more like recognition.
TWIN FLAME
Every summer arrives with the same predicament. Sandals feel too casual, heels feel like a commitment, and after a winter of loafers the gap is suddenly there. This Egyptian brand fills it with a precision that makes you wonder why you spent so long without them.
Mary Janes in zebra-print pony hair with double buckle straps. Ballet flats in red suede so clean and specific the rest of the outfit becomes irrelevant. Shoes that make the decision so you don’t have to.
For anyone finally retiring their Chanel ballet flats, whether for reasons of budget, principle or fatigue, this is a natural next step. You’ll see them everywhere soon. Or, more likely, wish you had.
N.A. STUDIO
I am, almost exclusively, a sets person in summer. One decision, no coordination panic, out the door. The problem is finding one that doesn’t look like it gave up on your behalf.
Noran and Soad Ageel, sisters from Libya, solved it in linen. Thin multicolour stripes on white, the palette of a summer that went exactly as planned—better with a tan, a coffee, the soft light of late afternoon somewhere warm. The cuts are precise where they need to be and loose everywhere else.
An outfit that carries you through a Sahel summer, or Saint-Tropez if you must, and still reads as effortless. This is what I’ll be wearing. Repeatedly, without apology.
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