Word: sabah
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...spring 2001, Majed al-Sabah opened Villa Moda, a 100,000-sq.-ft. mall-cum-boutique (he calls it a "luxury bazaar") in a glass box on the outskirts of Kuwait City. The $20 million building is nearly as impressive as the swarm of big brands--Fendi, Marni, Ferragamo, Prada, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent--clustered in mini shops inside, along with a Botox bar and a traditional Middle Eastern restaurant (with nontraditional Cappellini furniture) overlooking Kuwait Bay. To make sure the opening didn't go unnoticed, al-Sabah offered members of the international fashion set free business-class flights...
Villa Moda shows why fashion is interested in Majed al-Sabah, but why is Majed al-Sabah interested in fashion? His stock answer, "I've always had a passion for fashion," hardly explains why a could-be leader of his country would annoy his relatives by deflecting suggestions that he become the country's next ambassador to Italy and instead go into a field so unseemly, so unmacho, so unimportant to global affairs...
Perhaps it's because, as a rather burly teenage sheik, al-Sabah wanted to wear only loose-fitting clothes by avant-garde Japanese designers, difficult to obtain in Kuwait. His penchant for getting the hard-to-find became his vocation. In 1991 al-Sabah began visiting the top European fashion houses, begging them to let him carry their brands in Kuwait. None consented. Undeterred, al-Sabah went to the U.S., where business was easier. "All the Americans wanted was a credit rating," he says. And despite a few hiccups--the head of sales at Donna Karan sent him away...
When at home, al-Sabah, like most other men in Kuwait, leaves the dressing up to his wife and sisters, preferring to wear traditional robes (called dishdasha). But in Europe or the U.S., he's quickly developing a reputation as one of the suavest men on the fashion scene. The British magazine Tatler recently deemed him a style icon and made him a contributing editor. Yet al-Sabah wants to do more than bring the fashion set to Kuwait. He wants, says Tashfeen Niaz, Villa Moda's COO, "to prove that Kuwait is not someplace you can ignore...
...course, Saddam Hussein has helped him--political writers who haven't been to Kuwait since the end of the Gulf War are back. Yet al-Sabah wants Kuwait to be known not only as a jumping-off point for war but also as a locus of beaches, shopping and spas. He wants Kuwait to be cool. So he keeps fashion folk interested with events he knows are irresistible to them: Prada caftans! A T-shirt collaboration of British artist Gary Hume and Stella McCartney! Cappellini furniture, reconceived by fashion designers...