If there was one thing almost true about Sex and the City 2, it’s how it depicted the life of stylish Khaleeji women who exert admirable effort to showcase their style, despite the hurdles of wearing an abaya.

Maybe they don’t really meet in some shoddy underground room in the middle of a souq, but the idea is the same. People may think abaya-wearing women don’t pay attention to what they have underneath that floaty black gown, but a slew of Emirati bloggers – posting their own personal style without showing their faces – is progressively breaking this misconception.

One such blogger is UAE native Latifa Al Shamsi. La Moda’s newest contributor, Latifa gives us a peek into the secretly stylish world of today’s Emirati fashionistas. – Editor

As Brit designer Holly Fulton said, the most striking thing about GCC fashion is bag envy.

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The point of my blog is to show people that they can be fashionable whether it was to go to the mall or a casual dinner. I want to represent everyday fashion rather than commercial styling. I want to show the world how Emiratis really dress up, how with the Abayas we can still look stylish and trendy.

Many think that the Abaya challenges us when it comes to dressing up but I think that this challenge is what makes Emirati girls so creative and inventive when it comes to fashion.

Latifa Al Shamsi’s personal style blog can be found here ^[2]