Emirati designer Reem Al Jasmi takes Afterglow to Milan Fashion Week

The latest:

Emirati designer Reem Al Jasmi showed her Afterglow collection on the sidelines of Milan Fashion Week, built around the colour shifts of the sky after sunset. She described the show as a personal and professional milestone and the product of years of work, telling CNN in Arabic it gave her brand’s craftsmanship exposure to an international audience for the first time at this scale.

Details:

• The collection: Afterglow takes its name and its logic from the sky immediately after sunset, Al Jasmi said, translating those transitions into a palette that combines gold, blue, beige, black and red across the looks. She said she wanted each piece to hold its own character while the collection stayed cohesive as a single statement.
• The design brief: Al Jasmi said the designs were meant to convey a confident, elegant woman whose presence lingers in the memory after she leaves the room. That intent, rather than a single silhouette or fabric, is what she described as the organising idea behind the range.
• The craft: Hand craftsmanship is one of the core pillars of her work, Al Jasmi said, naming embroidery and fine detailing as the elements that give the pieces their Eastern character. She stressed that these techniques demand time and skill, and that she treats the handwork as visible labour rather than decorative add-on.
• Why Milan: Al Jasmi framed the Milan appearance as a chance to put her designs in front of an international audience and introduce a wider segment of the industry to the house’s identity and the craftsmanship it rests on. She did not disclose the number of looks shown or the date of the presentation.
• The wider argument: Asked where Arab designers sit in the global fashion industry, Al Jasmi pointed to their expertise in embroidery, handcraft, layering and occasion wear. She said those strengths, combined with attention to detail and individual expression, add diverse perspectives to the international scene.
• Cultural specificity: For Al Jasmi, heritage functions as a starting point for innovation rather than a constraint on design. She said the approach allows work carrying cultural specificity to remain legible to an international audience instead of being read as local-only.
• The next stage: Al Jasmi said her goal for the coming period is to develop collections that preserve the house’s identity and its level of craftsmanship, while expanding the brand’s presence in international markets. She did not name target markets or give a timeline.
• The values: Her work draws on elegance, modesty and attention to detail, reframed in a design language she says moves beyond a purely local frame. The collection’s images were credited to Charbel Msallem Studio.

Between the lines:

Al Jasmi’s pitch rests on a single claim repeated across the interview: that embroidery and hand detailing are a competitive asset, not local colour. Treating the handwork as visible labour rather than ornament, and tying it to a stated ambition to grow in international markets, positions craftsmanship as the brand’s export argument rather than its heritage footnote.

What’s next

Watch whether Al Jasmi follows the Milan showing with distribution deals or a presence in additional international markets, and whether the next collection keeps the hand-embroidery base she has made central to the house’s identity.