Saudi Arabia’s flagship fashion event, Fashion Futures, made its debut as a re-engineered digital platform on Thursday, with an online conference titled Fashion Futures Live: Moving Towards Sustainability, Diversity and Innovation.
Broadcast simultaneously from Riyadh and New York, the event featured Saudi, regional and international designers and industry experts in a series of keynote addresses, speeches and panel discussions.
Content was divided into four key pillars: entrepreneurship and experimentation; diversity, inclusion and the importance of empowering women, particularly not just as consumers but also as fashion producers; investment in new business models; and furthering the sustainable development goals.
The event kicked off with a keynote address from Noura bint Faisal Al Saud, sector development director of the Fashion Commission at Saudi's Ministry of Culture, who highlighted the importance of collaboration, a recurring theme throughout the day.
“We are living in a transition point in the planet, after 200 year of industrialisation. Our generation are the luminaries of this new era. We need collaboration; we need as soon as possible to change knowledge and practises,” said Oskar Metsavaht, founder of fashion brand Osklin and a Unesco ambassador for sustainability in Brazil, in a panel session called Building a Legacy: Fashion x Design.
We are living in a transition point in the planet, after 200 year of industrialisation.
Metsavaht went on to describe sustainability as a creative opportunity for designers. “Sustainability is a wonderful new field for designers. It’s a fertile field for us to research new materials. As designers we are used to designing with standard materials that were discovered hundreds of years ago. Sustainability is about searching for new materials.”
An advocate of a “new luxury” that combines ethics and aesthetics, Metsavaht believes that sustainability must become ingrained in designers’ mindsets, as opposed to being an afterthought or marketing ploy, as is often still the case. “It’s about changing the culture of companies and designers. Sustainability shouldn’t be something extra; it should be part of the thinking from the beginning,” he said.
It was a viewpoint shared in the same session by Nadja Swarovski, chair of the Swarovski Foundation, who highlighted how fashion has always been about “creative problem solving” and noted that the pandemic could reflect a tipping point for the industry and society at large.
“This reset that Covid has evoked is calling for a reconsideration of values, and encouraging more consideration towards each other and towards the planet,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sara Sozzano Maino, deputy director of Vogue Italia and head of Vogue Talents, stressed the importance of awareness and education, suggesting that ideas like conscious consumerism and responsible decision-making could be introduced as early on as kindergarten and throughout school, so it becomes integral to the consumer mindset. "It is about thinking in a different way," she said.
The audience also heard from successful entrepreneurs such as Sebastien Kopp, co-founder of ecological footwear company Veja, who started the brand out of a desire to “create a different breed of sneaker. We wanted to deconstruct the sneaker and build it in a different way."
Veja's trainers are crafted out of organic cotton and natural Amazonian rubber, which are purchased according to fair trade principles. The company also famously does zero advertising, preferring to channel that spend into the supply chain instead. "We’ve tried to create the company that we wanted to work in when we were younger," said Kopp.
Also featured was entrepreneur Katia Beauchamp, who founded Birchbox in 2010, after realising that only two per cent of beauty purchases were being made online. She realised that the overwhelming amount of choice in this segment, plus the fact that consumers want to try products on before investing, meant they were wary of using the Internet to make beauty purchases.
In response, she launched an online monthly subscription service that sends its subscribers a box of targeted make-up and skincare samples. She recounted the highs and lows of her entrepreneurship journey, but also stressed the importance of women creating and building businesses for other women.
Across the board, whether discussing sustainable design thinking, leadership or diversity and inclusion, panelists repeatedly stressed the need for greater dialogue, more perseverance and more “connecting of the dots”.
Abrima Eriwah, co-founder and director of Studio One Eighty Nine, also noted the importance of “having the patience to do the marathon, not the sprint.”
Morten Lehmann, chief sustainability officer at the Global Fashion Agenda, perhaps best summed up proceedings when he said: “If we can change fashion, which is so complex and so fragmented, we can change everything. We can inspire other industries, as well as individuals, to follow suit.”
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The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Anti-semitic attacks
The annual report by the Community Security Trust, which advises the Jewish community on security , warned on Thursday that anti-Semitic incidents in Britain had reached a record high.
It found there had been 2,255 anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2021, a rise of 34 per cent from the previous year.
The report detailed the convictions of a number of people for anti-Semitic crimes, including one man who was jailed for setting up a neo-Nazi group which had encouraged “the eradication of Jewish people” and another who had posted anti-Semitic homemade videos on social media.
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
How to increase your savings
- Have a plan for your savings.
- Decide on your emergency fund target and once that's achieved, assign your savings to another financial goal such as saving for a house or investing for retirement.
- Decide on a financial goal that is important to you and put your savings to work for you.
- It's important to have a purpose for your savings as it helps to keep you motivated to continue while also reducing the temptation to spend your savings.
- Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Innotech Profile
Date started: 2013
Founder/CEO: Othman Al Mandhari
Based: Muscat, Oman
Sector: Additive manufacturing, 3D printing technologies
Size: 15 full-time employees
Stage: Seed stage and seeking Series A round of financing
Investors: Oman Technology Fund from 2017 to 2019, exited through an agreement with a new investor to secure new funding that it under negotiation right now.
Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Three ways to limit your social media use
Clinical psychologist, Dr Saliha Afridi at The Lighthouse Arabia suggests three easy things you can do every day to cut back on the time you spend online.
1. Put the social media app in a folder on the second or third screen of your phone so it has to remain a conscious decision to open, rather than something your fingers gravitate towards without consideration.
2. Schedule a time to use social media instead of consistently throughout the day. I recommend setting aside certain times of the day or week when you upload pictures or share information.
3. Take a mental snapshot rather than a photo on your phone. Instead of sharing it with your social world, try to absorb the moment, connect with your feeling, experience the moment with all five of your senses. You will have a memory of that moment more vividly and for far longer than if you take a picture of it.
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The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
McLaren GT specs
Engine: 4-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: seven-speed
Power: 620bhp
Torque: 630Nm
Price: Dh875,000
On sale: now
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
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Joe Root's Test record
Tests: 53; Innings: 98; Not outs: 11; Runs: 4,594; Best score: 254; Average: 52.80; 100s: 11; 50s: 27
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Scores
Oman 109-3 in 18.4 overs (Aqib Ilyas 45 not out, Aamir Kaleem 27) beat UAE 108-9 in 20 overs (Usman 27, Mustafa 24, Fayyaz 3-16, Bilal 3-23)
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE%20JERSEYS
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Racecard
6.35pm: The Madjani Stakes – Group 2 (PA) Dh97,500 (Dirt) 1,900m
7.10pm: Evidenza – Handicap (TB) Dh87,500 (D) 1,200m
7.45pm: The Longines Conquest – Maiden (TB) Dh82,500 (D) 2,000m
8.20: The Longines Elegant – Conditions (TB) Dh82,500 (D)
8.35pm: The Dubai Creek Mile – Listed (TB) Dh132,500 (D) 1,600m
9.30pm: Mirdif Stakes – Conditions (TB) Dh120,000 (D) 1,400m
10.05pm: The Longines Record – Handicap (TB) Dh87,500 (D) 1,900m
KEY%20DATES%20IN%20AMAZON'S%20HISTORY
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Dust and sand storms compared
Sand storm
- Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
- Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
- Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
- Travel distance: Limited
- Source: Open desert areas with strong winds
Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
- Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
- Duration: Can linger for days
- Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
- Source: Can be carried from distant regions
Kandahar%20
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57%20Seconds
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Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
The specs
Engine: 2.9-litre, V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: seven-speed PDK dual clutch automatic
Power: 375bhp
Torque: 520Nm
Price: Dh332,800
On sale: now
The years Ramadan fell in May
