Sometimes it seems that fashion is born not in ateliers or on catwalks, but somewhere at the crossing of human imagination and time — like those worlds Terry Pratchett wrote about, where the most serious things emerge from a light irony of fate, and great stories begin with a small idea: strange, bold and almost impossible. Fashion, like literature, has always been a way of telling the world who we are and who we wish to become. The twentieth century taught us that style is the language of an epoch, with designers who transformed clothing into a philosophy.
One of the most striking figures was Elsa Schiaparelli, a woman who proved that fashion could be art, a dialogue with surrealism and a daring challenge to conventional taste. The House of Schiaparelli became a symbol of intellectual fashion, where every ornament, every line and every colour formed part of a larger artistic vision. The jeweller’s craft developed in parallel, transforming precious objects from marks of status into marks of individuality.
The Italian house Roberto Coin built its philosophy on the delicate balance between craftsmanship and emotion, where each piece carries a hidden symbol: a ruby touching the skin as a reminder of vital energy. Jacob & Co., in turn, became the embodiment of a new age — an era of audacity, technology and grand gestures, where the jeweller’s art borders on architecture and astronomy. Today, in the twenty-first century, fashion is experiencing a new phase: the age of cultural dialogue.
Paris, Milan and New York are no longer the only capitals of style. The Middle East is confidently shaping its own aesthetic agenda, one in which tradition meets a global vision of the future. It is here that a new energy emerges — the energy of the MENA region, where luxury acquires a philosophical dimension and fashion becomes cultural diplomacy.
In this context, Dubai occupies a particular place. A city that rose from the sands has become a symbol of ambition and creativity, a space where designers, artists and jewellers from across the world converge. Fashion has always been the mirror of civilisation.
It reflects our fears and hopes, our past and our imagined future. From the avant-garde experiments of Elsa Schiaparelli to the jewelled universes of Roberto Coin and Jacob & Co. runs an invisible thread: humanity’s impulse to transform matter into dreams. And perhaps this is precisely why fashion never grows old. It merely changes form, continuing to tell one and the same eternal story — the story of beauty that connects cultures, times and people. — Lara Palmer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief