Nadine Mosallam just wanted to make a dress; she didn’t set out to build a business. ‘It was based off my own body – that’s how I started. I never had the intention of starting my own brand. It was more that I could never find anything I liked, or that fitted me properly, or that spoke to who I am and who I wish to become – because I keep changing,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t ever thinking this has to be a real thing.’ That might have been the case, but once she launched her label Nadine Mos, the young designer realised she had a very real thing on her hands.
There are already the accolades to prove it. A gaggle of international cool girls – artists, musicians, Taylor Russell – love the lo-fi, minimally minded sensuality of her designs. In Marrakesh last October, Mosallam received a nod from Fashion Trust Arabia (the non-profit fund dedicated to nurturing emerging talent from the Middle East and North Africa); she scooped the ready-to-wear prize, which was voted for by a jury of fashion-industry luminaries including Remo Ruffini, Bethann Hardison and Olivier Rousteing. ‘It meant more than anything,’ says Mosallam, who is of Egyptian heritage. ‘Finding that recognition back home was the full-circle moment for me.’
Born in Kuwait, raised in Dubai and Toronto, and now based in London and Cairo, Mosallam (somewhat accidentally) founded Nadine Mos during the Covid pandemic. Feeling lost and low, she found solace while sitting at her sewing machine, instinctively running up a snug, panelled dress for herself from some leftover fabric. Friends saw it, loved it, and encouraged Mosallam to create a few more. Thank goodness they did; when she posted the dresses on Instagram they sold out in minutes (and are still among her bestsellers). By October 2020, she found herself thinking: ‘Let’s just give this a shot.’
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Mosallam’s nomadic background (‘I always felt between two places, two worlds’) is echoed by the duality embodied in her 90s-inflected work. Figure-hugging cotton dresses with overlocked seams and slinky jersey slip skirts are at once soft and strong, sensual and strident. They’re undeniably sexy, without trying hard; pieces for a bombshell, sure, but one with a barefoot sensibility. Mosallam’s clothes have the generosity (see the empire-seam waists, which complement actual boobs – still, shockingly, a fashion rarity) that is born from a woman designing for women. She gets it.
Being vulnerable doesn’t scare Mosallam. It’s only by going inwards, she says, that she’s able to create something relatable. When women try on her pieces, they often tell her that they feel as if they already belong to them. ‘There’s something familiar about them,’ she suggests of the appeal. Tenderness is a strength. She thinks that her clients can feel the layers, the feeling in her work. ‘Every aspect of what I do is very intimate.’
Make no mistake, the ease is underpinned by technical rigour. Mosallam – who splits production between Cairo and London – has been perfecting the fit, ‘working on it over and over’ for years, and is a self-confessed ‘snob’ when it comes to fabrics – deadstock or sourced new from suppliers she knows, likes and trusts.
What’s next? Who knows. ‘If something’s timeless, you can evolve and it will still make sense,’ she says. ‘Evolving is always interesting to me. Improving. And I want to stick to that for as long as possible’.
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