Project D in Dubai

Gulf News

12/6/2024

Project D in Dubai

Transcript

00:00I guess it's a natural progression. We need to move out of the UK, and we've moved into

00:09Australia. Yay! My home country! And this is kind of the next destination for us. This

00:16is where we find it's exciting, where we're getting a lot of feedback from the girls who

00:20are wanting the dresses. They're seeing them in the magazines on people, and they really

00:25want them here, and it's got to be accessible.

00:27The dresses really work for the ladies out here as well. The way we cover the arms, the

00:32long maxis, the sequins. I like real lady-like dresses, I call them, and my style icons are

00:38always from years gone past, you know, from, my ultimate would be sort of Elizabeth Taylor

00:45in her heyday. For most women, you want a dress that, you know, you can rely on, that's

00:50not going to have any mishaps for you. And that's where our client base has expanded.

00:57For me, our dresses are not trend-driven. They're dresses that are pretty elegant shapes,

01:02skim the body, hug the curves, and something you feel comfortable in. And they're kind

01:08to women, you know, and we do jackets that have long sleeves and sequins, and it's really

01:12hard to find a really gorgeous flattering sequin jacket. So we kind of, we try to make

01:18it easy for women. The local community, they took really well to it, especially here where

01:24there are a lot of glamorous events in the evenings. I saw a lot of the gowns were perfect

01:29for the evening dresses. And especially now, I feel that the taste has changed in the UAE

01:36dramatically, you know, from generation to generation. And our generation, we've become

01:41a little more, I guess we tend to follow the European trend more because we travel more.

01:46So now we look for ready-made dresses rather than tailor-made.

01:51We really want to expand the line. I think that with the dresses, we just wanted to do

01:54them, do them really well, understand our customer, be good at it, and then kind of

01:59expand into other things once we've done that. So there are plans afoot.

02:03This is where Tabs and I bonded first, over the frock. The frockage.

02:09Rock the frock.

02:10Rock the frock. And just something that made it easy. It all goes back to just easy dressing,

02:15something that will take you from day through tonight, being busy mums as we are and busy

02:19schedules. Sort of head off in the morning and we've got all sorts of events and things

02:24that we have to do. And sometimes we don't make it home before we're heading off somewhere else.

02:29So it was just part of making our lives easier. And we thought if it works for us,

02:34it's got to work for other women. We fight over what we both like. I design for me,

02:38stuff that I love. I'm vertically challenged, I think is the nice way to put it. So I like

02:45things that elongate and yeah, pretty feminine shapes. And Tabs designs for her and we're both

02:53very selfish and we fight over things and no, that's not going to work, that's not going to

02:57work. Tabs is always right. Whenever I've said that's not going to work, she's always right.

03:03For me, our collection is about dresses that you wear the dress, the dress doesn't wear you. And

03:09it's about how you accessorise it and make it your own style. We're often just taken aback when

03:15our clothes go to a photo shoot, and a stylist comes in and says, well, I'd put that with this

03:20and that and that. And we just said, well, we never imagined them to be styled that way. But

03:25we love it. And we've picked up lots of ideas. So we really let each person do their own with

03:31the clothing. If you're confident about the design and we're confident about the dresses

03:34that we're putting out there, people should be able to do anything with it and make it look good.

03:38It's a beautiful dress, it should work. The main thing is that any collaboration you do has the

03:44ethos of the brand and the integrity of the brand. And we are quite control freaks when it comes to

03:51that. So it's just making sure that you have the time to run the main label and to keep all of that

03:57going as you wanted and have the time to devote to something new. It's okay to expand, but there's

04:03still only going to be two of us, even if the company grows.

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