Saudi Arabia hosts its 1st Arab Fashion Week
‘Whole new level’
RIYADH, April 11, (Agencies): Jean Paul Gaultier and Roberto Cavalli are in Saudi Arabia — headlining the kingdom’s first ever Arab Fashion Week, an event that opened Tuesday to equal parts excitement and controversy.
Two weeks later than initially planned, the Saudi Arabian edition of Arab Fashion Week joins designers from Europe and the Arab world over the course of four days — including the kingdom’s own Arwa Banawi, whose The Suitable Woman line is adored by fashionistas across the region, and Mashael Alrajhi, the eponymous gender-inclusive label of a rarely-seen Saudi sheikha.
Princess Noura Bint Faisal Al-Saud, honorary president of the Arab Fashion Council in Riyadh, joined designers, influencers, and industry insiders from Ukraine to Lebanon for the inaugural season of fashion week at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, the hotel now infamous as the holding place of hundreds of royals and businessmen arrested in a state-sponsored corruption crackdown.
“Fashion has always an interest of Saudi Arabia,” Princess Noura told AFP at the event.
“It has not been something that wasn’t on the table or in the picture,” she added. “Our fashion council is trying to bring the fashion industry in Saudi Arabia to a whole new level, a whole new industry.”
Offers
Listed as an international fashion week alongside Paris and Milan, Arab Fashion Week offers exclusively see-now-buy-now collections and pre-collections. Until this week, it had been hosted exclusively by Gulf fashion capital Dubai.
But unlike Dubai, the Riyadh shows are not open to cameras, and attendees remain women-only.
The ultraconservative kingdom has witnessed rapid policy change since the June appointment of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of the king and heir to his throne.
As of this summer, women will be allowed to drive in the kingdom. The crown prince has also hinted that the abaya, the long loose robe worn by women from the neck down, may not be compulsory.
“We are so excited today to be announcing a history and new era for the kingdom, and for the entire Arab world, which is Arab Fashion Week,” said Jacob Abrian, CEO of the Arab Fashion Council.
A second edition of Saudi Arab Fashion Week is already scheduled for October.
Dubai will continue to host its own parallel Arab Fashion Week, with the sixth edition slotted for May 9-12.
When Ayesha Akhter walks into the factory where she works, the supervisor greets her with a smile and wishes her a pleasant day - a major change after years of physical and verbal abuse from managers in Bangladesh’s $28 billion garment industry.
The seamstress said it is her biggest victory since being elected president in October of the workers’ union at Jeans Factory Limited in Dhaka, amid a push to improve conditions across the global fashion supply chain.
“In all these years, I have heard supervisors yell, verbally abuse, call us prostitutes and slap us behind our heads to work faster,” Akhter, who spends eight hours a day stitching pockets on jeans and shorts, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Then I became the union president and everything changed. Overnight, I became important.”
Akhter, 28, is among scores of women in Bangladesh standing up to head unions and negotiate with male-dominated management for more pay, safer workplaces and respect on the job.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter with some 4 million people working in its 4,000-plus factories, nearly 80 percent of them women, campaigners say.
Poor working conditions and low wages have long been a concern in the sector, which suffered one of the worst industrial accidents in 2013, when more than 1,100 people were killed in the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex.
Garment factory workers attempting to set up unions have encountered resistance across the region, with many losing their jobs or being suspended by managements that fear the power of unions, leaders said.
“Freedom of association and collective bargaining are the biggest challenges the industry faces today,” said Nazma Akter, a former child worker and founder of Awaj Foundation, which campaigns for labour rights.
“Without that power, workers are just surviving, not leading normal lives, and it’s almost a crime.”
Five years after Rana Plaza, one of the region’s strongest movements to organise workers and help them exercise collective bargaining has emerged - led by Bengali women.
The number of registered unions in Bangladesh has increased about fivefold to almost 500 since 2013, according to Jennifer Kuhlman of US-based workers’ rights charity Solidarity Centre.
“Many of them are being headed by young, dynamic women who are choosing to lead from the front to bring about change,” said Kuhlman, who heads its Bangladesh programmes.
Campaigners estimate that women make up about half of the new factory union leaders.
Although women said their newfound union power had opened their eyes to their rights - from social security benefits to overtime - they fear losing their jobs.
Akhter remembers the “big fight” she had with her husband when she said she was considering standing for president.
“He was mad and upset and clearly told me not to,” said the mother of two. “He was scared and worried about my safety. He relented but we always worry because of what we see and hear.”
It was easy to unionise immediately after the Rana Plaza disaster but activists are now being harassed, workers fired and union meetings disrupted, said Babul Akhter, president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation.
“It is difficult and workers are facing a tough time,” said Akhter, whose organisation supports workers across 52 unionised factories.
The government cracked down on unions after garment workers in Ashulia, a suburb outside Dhaka, protested the death of a coworker and demanded more wages in December 2016, campaigners said.
In the following four months, almost 40 union leaders were arrested and many union offices were shut down by the government, according to the Solidarity Centre.