Over the years, wearable art has steadily moved out of niche fashion circles and into the cultural mainstream. This year’s Met Gala theme, centred around the idea of ‘fashion as art’ only pushed that conversation further, with designers across the world treating clothing less like seasonal trend pieces and more like living, breathing canvases carrying a deeper sense of identity.
In the UAE, a Dubai-born artist has been translating those ideas into a collection rooted in the country’s spirit of solidarity.
For Palestinian artist Dina Sami, who was born and raised in Dubai, the inspiration behind her recent unity-inspired fashion-art collection came from something many residents across the UAE have felt over the past few months, which is the overwhelming sense of how people here show up for one another.
In moments of uncertainty, grief, celebration or crisis, there has been a visible collective spirit across the country, one where communities from vastly different backgrounds somehow continue to rally around the same values of coexistence and belonging.
And that emotional undercurrent became the foundation of Sami’s latest work. “I wanted to create art that I would wear proudly here or anywhere in this world,” she says. “At its core, this collection is about solidarity and about capturing the spirit of a place where so many different identities come together, which was then translated to something you can wear and make your own.”
The collection, created in collaboration with New Balance, uses custom-designed patches, illustrations and graphics spread across tote bags, T-shirts and accessories, allowing people to style and layer the pieces in their own way.
At the centre of the collection are phrases like ‘We Stand Together’ and ‘In the UAE, Everyone is Emirati’, sentiments that immediately resonate with anyone who has spent enough time living in this country to understand the fluid nature of identity and belonging.
“[The collection] is not about where you’re from, it’s about how you show up, how you contribute and how you exist within the community. Growing up in Dubai, you understand that one’s sense of identity can be more complex but that’s something to be proud of,” says Sami.
That ‘complex’ sense of identity is something Sami understands intimately herself. Unlike many who move to Dubai later in life, she belongs to a generation that grew up alongside the city itself, watching it evolve from a rapidly growing Gulf city into a global cultural hub while still somehow retaining its deeply community-oriented spirit underneath all the ambition and scale.
“I was lucky to be born and raised in Dubai,” says Sami. “It’s home in every sense. It’s where I found my voice and built my career”.
Over the years, she says, Dubai’s constant evolution naturally shaped her creative language too. “I grew up alongside the city, its ambition, its dreams, its constant evolution,” she says. “Being surrounded by that kind of energy drove me.”
What really shaped her was also the multicultural fabric of the city. “My work sits in that in-between space of cultural fluidity. It’s universal, but still personal. It travels, but it always carries a sense of where it comes from.”
That idea of existing ‘in-between’ is visible throughout the collection itself. Rather than creating fixed pieces with rigid meanings, Sami intentionally chose patchwork as the central visual medium because of what it symbolises emotionally in the context of the UAE.
“Patchwork is something people can build on, remix, and wear their way,” she says. “You can layer it and make something of your own, which is exactly what the city stands for. Dubai is made up of different stories coming together, while still leaving space for individuality.”
And perhaps that is what makes the work feel particularly resonant right now. “The inspiration came from a collective feeling rather than one single moment,” she adds. “The collective feeling of the way people show up for each other, the pride, the sense of safety and belonging. I wanted to capture that visually.”
The actual design process was a mix of hand sketches and digital illustration, to develop artwork that “felt expressive but still wearable enough to become part of everyday life,” says Sami. “Unlike traditional artwork that remains confined to gallery walls, clothing can travel through public spaces, entering conversations and communities organically.”
According to the artist, fashion is one of the most immediate ways to express identity. “When you wear art, it becomes more than just clothing, it becomes a statement. It opens up a conversation without needing to explain itself. There’s so much room to tell stories through what we wear.”
Source: Khaleej Times