Dolly is a thobe brand that was founded by Saudi designer Dalia Darwish, who studied graphic design in the UAE and started her fashion brand when she came back to Jeddah in 2005. Darwish created this brand after she realized her love for color, style and accessories.

“I started really small when I thought of having my own brand of nice fashion items, such as accessories and girly T-shirts or anything new and innovative in the fashion scene,” said Darwish. “I started with a line called Jeddah Ghair featuring T-shirt designs. It was sold in a Jeddah boutique and it went really well. One year after I started designing summer dresses, Ramadan thobes suddenly came about and this is where it all started,” she added.

Making dresses for the summer while using the same method to make Ramadan thobes, Darwish wished to avoid limiting her designs for use only in the holy month of Ramadan. She sought to create special thobes that can be worn throughout the year and so she decided to design Ramadan thobe dresses.

In Darwish’s business point of view, thobes are the best seller and always in demand in Jeddah and this is what made her want to shift her design career to thobes. “Tailoring it is easier than tailoring evening dresses or cocktail dresses, and this was also advantageous to me. I started to increase the quantity and began focusing on how to improve the finishing and quality of the thobe while getting more experience with every line,” she said.

Darwish never went to fashion design school and never took courses. She wanted to do it on her own, experimenting and discovering what people like and what they don’t. She said that after all these years, she has filled up a clientele and she started looking through much more sophisticated fabrics to upscale the style.

Dolly’s designs are trendier than most products on the market, thanks to the designer keeping herself updated with international trends. She gets her inspiration through her travels and through watching fashion shows from the comfort of her home. She also makes sure to implement these new trends into her thobe line, which has made her designs a beautiful blend of cultural and modern at the same time. “I am a graphic designer, so I pay attention to small details and I see things that other people don’t,” said Darwish. “If I have a checkered fabric and a fabric with heart shapes or polka dots or any other pattern that has nothing to do with checkered, I know that if I put those two patterns together it would turn out to be beautiful at the end as an outcome. It’s a matter of learning how to combine patterns together and people often say that I am very good at mixing fabric together; this is my profession now,” she added.

Dolly is now known for print fabrics and mixed fabrics in one design, according to Darwish. She always likes to buy fine prints and combine them with solid colors and different materials from linen to silk and cotton. Darwish buys her fabrics from Europe and she doesn’t only use clothing fabric; she likes using different materials and matching them, even if it is a piece from a pillow case that she thought might turn out to be a beautiful dress. “I like to work with cotton because it is mainly what people ask for due to the warm Saudi weather,” she said. Last year Dolly started designing with hand-painted taffeta and other thick materials such as luxurious ready silk.

Darwish wants women who wear Dolly to feel stylish, feminine, unique and attractive.

Dolly can be found in S*uce in Dubai, Vibe in Riyadh and Cream in Jeddah. She is looking to distribute in Qatar as well.

-

Email: [email protected]