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DUBAI: Montenegrin Egyptian actress and model Tara Emad has been named among the newest inductees to The Business of Fashion (BoF) 500 Class of 2025, which recognizes individuals shaping the global fashion industry, alongside Saudi designer Ahmed Hassan, co-founder of streetwear label KML.

The BoF 500 is an annual index by the London-based platform The Business of Fashion, founded by Imran Amed, that celebrates designers, creatives, models, executives and entrepreneurs redefining the global fashion landscape. Each year, 100 new members are selected based on their impact, industry nominations and extensive editorial research.

Emad, who serves as a Cartier ambassador, is best known for her roles in the recently released Arabic action-comedy “Darwish,” the Arabic adaptation of “Suits,” Netflix’s family drama “Catalog,” and the film “Siko Niko.”

A fixture on red carpets across the region, she has become one of the Arab world’s most recognizable faces, championing regional designers while maintaining a strong international presence.

Meanwhile, Hassan’s inclusion reflects the continued rise of ������Ƶ’s creative scene and its expanding presence in the global fashion industry.

As co-founder of KML — known for its bold streetwear aesthetic infused with local cultural influences — Hassan, together with his brother and business partner Razan, has helped to bring Saudi design to the international stage.

In 2022, the brand was a semifinalist for the prestigious LVMH Prize — an annual award for young fashion designers run by the eponymous fashion conglomerate.

The Fashion Commission also recognized their potential, providing support that led to KML showcasing its collections at fashion weeks in Paris, Riyadh and Milan.

“Paris was a wonderful experience,” Ahmed previously told Arab News. “People found our clothes rebellious — especially the skirts for men. But it was rebellious to wear pants in ������Ƶ 200 years ago! Men everywhere here wore skirts — there were different names for them.”

This year’s BoF 500 Class of 2025 includes 100 new names from 30 countries, spanning 40 nationalities. Among the inductees are musicians Kendrick Lamar and Tems, designers Giambattista Valli and Michael Rider, and models Hailey Bieber and Mamour Majang.

Past Arab members of the BoF 500 include Saudi couturier Mohammed Ashi, founder of Ashi Studio, who became the first designer from the Kingdom to join the index in 2023.

DHAHRAN: There’s a new exhibition in town. Some of the artists you know, and some you don’t — which is exactly the point. 

The works of more than four dozen pioneering women from across the Arab world are on display — some for the first time ever — in “Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (’60s–’80s),” which opened Sept. 18 at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran and runs until Feb. 14. The show contains 70 works by artists from 13 countries. 

“The idea behind the title was to give back agency to a generation of women who have been overlooked,” the show’s curator, Rémi Homs, tells Arab News. “We also wanted to see this relationship between arts and craft as a horizon for further research. And we wanted to have this idea of hands — something handmade.” 

The exhibition is a collaboration between Ithra and Barjeel, a UAE-based foundation established by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi in 2010. Of the 50 artists featured, four are from ������Ƶ: Mona Al-Munajjed, Fatima Hassan Assiri, Mounirah Mosly, and Safeya Binzagr, regarded as the mother of Saudi modern art. Both Al-Munajjed and Binzagr are the subjects of an “In Focus” section of the show, along with the late Tunisian artist Safia Farhat, and the Wissa Wassef Art Center in Egypt, which preserves hand-weaving traditions. 

Al-Munajjed’s works, including “Traditional Saudi Door” and “Minaret of Mosque” — both from the mid-Eighties — weave together personal memory and collective history, capturing intimate domestic scenes and broader social narratives of Jeddah. Using the fiery batik dyeing technique, she blends vibrant colors and subtle textures, creating visual stories that feel both deeply personal and historically resonant. 

Assiri, the mother of renowned artists Ahmed and Jamila Mater, showcases an untitled acrylic-on-wood panel piece — a complex composition that intertwines colors and motifs, employing the feminist-centric traditional Saudi art form, Al-Qatt Al-Asiri — which women historically used to decorate their homes with specific shapes, colors, and markings, and is listed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. 

“The Young Woman,” by Mosly, exemplifies the late artist’s ability to blend portraiture with broader social and cultural themes, while Binzagr’s lithography etchings, intimate and bold, captured the spirit of Saudi life, blending figurative storytelling with a modernist sensibility that continues to resonate. Her 1980 work “Desert Ship,” depicting camels in front of a tent, is particularly striking. 

The show is split into thematic sections, including “Depicting a Rapid Modernization,” “Alternative Pathways: Self-Taught Artists,” “Revisiting Islamic Art Legacies,” “New Media Experimentation,” “Reclaiming Local Craft Practices,” and “Al-Qatt Al-Asiri.” 

Many of the works carry partial or unknown histories. Homs cites a brass piece by Egyptian artist Atyat El-Ahwal (1989), initially listed only by name and date.  

“We basically had no information about her,” he says. “We included her work because we wanted to focus not just on the more well-known names,” he said. Further research — and input from visitors and experts — helped uncover her full name, dates of birth and death (1919–2012), and even a video likely recorded in the 1970s found on YouTube, all allowing her work to be contextualized in a broader history.  

Everyday materials appear in surprising ways — transformed into abstract compositions, for example — and embroidery is reimagined as narrative painting. Henna recurs across many works; Homs highlighted Emirati pioneer Najat Makki, saying: “Henna was an accessible part of everyday life.”  

He praises the artists’ innovative and creative use of available materials. “Something that you cannot see in history books from the West, but it’s something very important and, in my opinion, very groundbreaking,” he says. 

And Homs is hopeful that the exhibition will lead to further revelations of artworks by women in the Arab world. 

“Yes, we are seeing 70 different works by 50 different artists—22 of whom are still alive,” he says. “But it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’d say that we are seeing maybe the first 5 percent of artists we need to discover.”