We’re all for tradition and cultural preservation, but wouldn’t it be more fun to take the best and most interesting bits of each culture and create something totally fresh and new? That’s what the “Dubai-Berlin Fashion Fusion” is essentially about. Think A Tale of Two Cities, the fashion edition.

The joint fashion collection of eight young designers from Dubai and Berlin will be presented on the 23rd January 2012 at a fashion show focussing on fashion influenced by both cities. Born out of the “Young Designers’ Fashion Exchange Project,” an integral part of the Berlin-Dubai festival, the Pavilion Downtown runway show will feature the designers’ collaborative efforts.

In the context of the exchange programme, Emirati designers Khulood Thani, Maryam Selaich and Madeyya Almazroie and German-Egyptian designer Mona Fares visited Berlin in order to meet young fashion innovators from the German capital and gain first-hand insight into their work.

In return, four fashion design students from Esmod Berlin International University of Art for Fashion, Lena Braatz, Sophie Boehmert, Marina Hoermanseder and Anna Wilhelmi, traveled to Dubai get acquainted with the Emirati fashion design scene during the Berlin-Dubai Festival 2011. This close exchange of views on fashion brought to the creation of a joint collection by the eight young designers.

The collection offers not only an insight into the designers’ personal style but it also mirrors both cities’ individual style and tries to link their history with traditions, values and visionary concepts.

The designers’ collaboration has the same objective and the young designers have exchanged ideas about their cultural backgrounds and detected differences and similarities used in the creative process. As a result, the Abaya, the traditional Arabian garment, was revised in different styles ranging from ‘rocker’, ’20’s’ to ‘ethno’. Other pieces of the collection presented at the fashion show include a coat that combines a varsity jacket and an Abaya as well as an A-line leather dress partly inspired by the theme of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’.

The fashion show is open for the public and registrations can be done online under info@dubai.goethe.org until 21st January 2012.