The British Embassy in Cairo celebrates The Red Dress and the Egypt Fashion Awards
Ashraf AboArafe
27 September 2022, CAIRO – The British Embassy in Cairo hosted “The Red Dress & Egypt Fashion Awards” exhibition yesterday, celebrating British-Egyptian collaborations in the fashion industry.
The exhibition featured the “Red Dress”, a 13-year old award-winning, global embroidery project conceived of by British artist Kirstie Macleod.
It also featured the finalists of the Egypt Fashion Awards and their designs, including clothes, jewellery and accessories. The winners recently travelled to London Fashion Week with Susan Sabet, Founding Member of the Egyptian Fashion and Design Council.
During the event, people were able to see the magnificent embroidery on the Red Dress, which provides an artistic platform for vulnerable women around the world to tell their personal stories through such embroidery. The garment has been worked on by more than 300 embroiderers from more than 40 countries, including female refugees from Palestine, Syria and Ukraine as well as victims of war in Rwanda. It also includes 50 Egyptian women supported by FanSina in St Catherine, an initiative aimed at preserving Bedouin traditions and culture through high-quality handicraft production and embroidery.
The Red Dress has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including Gallery Maeght in Paris, Fashion and Textile Museum, London, the Royal Academy in London, and the Premio Valcellina Textiles award in Maniago, Italy where it won first prize in 2015.
After 13 years of traveling the globe, the last stiches of embroidery were added recently and the Red Dress made its debut as a complete garment in the British Embassy in Egypt, paying tribute to the 50 Bedouin women who worked on the largest pieces of the dress – some of whom were present at the reception.
On the other hand, the Egypt Fashion Awards were launched earlier in the year by the Egyptian Fashion & Design Council in cooperation with Marakez, Mall of Arabia and the British Council Egypt.
And in February the finalists’ show and award gala took place with four designers declared winners: Marina Azer in the Young Designer Category, Moaaz El Behairy in the Emerging Designer Category, Jarii in the Accessory Category and Reem Jano in the Jewelry Category.
British Ambassador to Egypt, Gareth Bayley, said: “For years, Egypt has been synonymous with the finest cotton in the world, and with traditions of skill and elegance in clothing going back centuries. Fashion never goes out of fashion. It is brilliant to see growing British-Egyptian collaboration in the fashion and textile industry, and the Egypt Fashion Awards, and the winners’ designs, are a truly exciting expression of the talent here in Egypt. We and the British Council are proud to support and showcase all their hard work. I am proud also that the Embassy is hosting British artist Kirstie Macleod’s magnificent ‘Red Dress’, a masterpiece of design and embroidery, made with the help of fifty remarkable women from St. Catherine in Sinai. The dress has been around the world, but it feels very fitting that it should come back to Egypt, and that we should celebrate the skill and industry of the women who helped create it.”
