Hoor Al Qasimi has been taking her time to build up experience in the fashion industry and in the design team at Qasimi, the brand that her late twin brother, Khalid, founded in 2015.
It’s been a challenge. On a personal level, she’s been dealing with the emotional toll of her brother’s unexpected death in 2019. The pandemic, and trade difficulties with Europe following Brexit, added extra pressure.
So it’s no surprise that her runway debut at Wapping Power Station in London was emotionally charged. “We’ve known this space for a very long time. It’s a space that my brother looked at one point, and I’ve made many trips here for different reasons,” she said after the show.
Al Qasimi collaborated with the artist Kambui Olujimi on the collection, taking images from his series “When Monuments Fall,” and adding them to light summer coats and to T-shirts with abstract shapes cut into them.
Cleverly, she didn’t allow the art or the subtext of war to overshadow the free-flowing T-shirts and silky dresses that resembled kites in motion, or the scrunched up silk-wool dresses inspired by piles of crumbling rubble.
“The idea of the monument was very important — how they come down is a new part of history and it’s about rethinking those parts of history,” said Al Qasimi.
Her subject may have been difficult, and laden with meaning, but the clothes were bright and functional and done in colors inspired by nature, such as the turquoise and taupe which are also found in Olujimi’s artwork.