Fashions at the Oasis, Article Review Example

Dubai-based Arabia.style.com will be a very interesting website for both the Arab and Western worlds because it promises to bring together their very different world-views into the same tent (“Style.com Arabia”). The question is, whose camel is poking its nose into whose tent?

Wealthy American and European women won’t be seriously following Arab haute couture, any more than they follow Chinese, Indian, and African.  For them, this website would be useful only for when they travel to the Mideast, either for business or pleasure. That is why I think that after a year or so, the site will probably drop its English text, or at least just provide a separate page for each language. (A dual-language page might offered for language students.)

Of course, wealthy Arab women can be expected to be the heaviest users of the site. They are also going to be increasingly well-traveled in the West. So it may be that Arab trends will become Western trends to the point of diluting the distinctive Arab style of the clothes being shown. That would probably happen by gradually showcasing more Western-trained designers. Probably Arab designers have gotten a lot of their education and training in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo (Mukhtar). But lots of other Arabs live in the West too, and unknown designers among them will now have an educational and artistic outlet for their home culture’s couture.

Americans and Europeans automatically associate the Mideast with extremism and war, not fashion. A world-class fashion website there will open their eyes by raising their eyebrows. Arabia.style.com is a brave thing to try, a harbinger of a new generation’s Mideast.

Works Cited

Mukhtar, Rima. “Jilbab, for feminine and confident women.”Arab News. NUMU Multimedia, 29 Aug 2012. Web. 17 Sep 2012. <http://www.arabnews.com/jilbab-feminine-and-confident-women>.

“Style.Com Arabia.” Style.com Arabia, the new fashion capital of the Middle East, is coming soon.. Conde Nast, 2012. Web. 17 Sep 2012. <http://arabia.style.com/>.