RIYADH: Leaders in sustainable fashion in Saudi Arabia were honored at an awards ceremony in Riyadh on Monday.
Preowned luxury marketplace AMUSED, upcycling startup Darah, and sustainable makeup brand Asteri were the three winners of the inaugural Middle East Kering Generation Award.
The event was hosted by the French corporation that owns brands including Gucci and Balenciaga, in partnership with the Saudi Fashion Commission.
Rawan Alderaibi, CEO of Darah, spoke to Arab News about how she quit her corporate job to pursue her passion for fashion, before realizing that there was practically no secondhand market in Saudi Arabia.
“After exploring the idea further, I was led to an entrepreneurial incubator, developed the idea even further and came up with the idea of Darah — the circular model, where we start by reselling secondhand items … and upcycle some of the items into something more creative that makes people feel more unique and they only have one piece,” she said.
Darah buys clothing items by the kilogram: items in good conduction are sold as is, and the ones with some damage or issues are upcycled.
This idea has brought the startup some success and they now plan to expand into a recycling and local production factory.
AMUSED is a platform that connects buyers and sellers of previously owned, authenticated luxury items in Saudi Arabia. Mindful that fashion is the second-largest polluting industry in the world, AMUSED aims to create a more circular economy to break away from the make-use-dispose model that has dominated the fashion culture.
Sara Teymoor, co-founder of AMUSED, told Arab News: “It’s been five years of hard work creating this business and to receive the recognition for sustainability to us entrepreneurs is invaluable to our confidence and also to the connections, the mentorship and the opportunity that this award will bring us.
“We have a green field for fashion here in Saudi and we are now able to start with sustainability in mind. That is just priceless for our economy here in fashion and paving the way for our future generations.”
The third winner, Asteri, is one of the fastest growing makeup brands in the Middle East, designed specifically for the Arab woman. The company prides itself on its desert-proof, clean, and vegan products that also have sustainable and refillable packaging, certified by global nonprofit B Lab.
Burak Cakmak, the commission’s CEO, told Arab News: “I think for all of the winners, we’ve identified that there is a component of localized engagement, which is critical because we want to make sure that what is selected is going to succeed in the region.
“All of these three businesses were very much relevant to the Saudi context, and it was somewhat linked to Saudi lifestyle or culture or the environment, but also they were bringing something that doesn’t exist in the region, and different than what we are seeing necessarily in the rest of the world.”
The three winners will take a week-long trip to Paris, where they will have the opportunity to engage in exclusive mentoring sessions with Kering’s Sustainability teams.
Cakmak added: “I think Saudi has proven to the world that it’s the biggest growth opportunity as a market for many sectors when it comes to fashion and creativity.
“It’s also offering a lot of opportunities. We’ve seen in the past few years, as the Fashion Commission, the potential of the industry and the talent that exists, as well as a lot of the startups going into business in the country.
“We are very keen to engage the right partners who can help us in that journey and be able to bring the right perspective and the right support to a growing, prospering economy.”
