Saudi designer Tima Abid got her start at a time when fashion shows were taboo and tourism, apart from religious pilgrimages, was almost non-existent in the Gulf kingdom. So she was as surprised as anyone to see models draped in her latest couture collection gliding down an overwater boardwalk connecting beachfront villas that go for nearly $2,000 per night. The sunset show on Thursday kicked off Saudi Arabia’s first Red Sea Fashion Week, pitched by organisers as a milestone both for Saudi fashion and for a nascent tourism sector whose growth is key to diversifying the economy of the world’s biggest crude oil exporter.
Abid’s collection of two dozen “resort wear” dresses featured flowing white and beige fabrics and only the occasional visible midriff. A second show on Friday was billed as the first to focus on women’s swimwear, an envelope-pushing development in a conservative Muslim country that less than a decade ago required women to wear body-covering abaya robes. “You may say it is boldness, but I look at it in another way: keeping pace with globalism,” Abid told AFP while surrounded by models and harried, headset-wearing show producers.
