The Ghutra Effect

Up until a couple of years ago, Essa was an enigma wrapped in a mysterious shroud of theories. The
rumour mill churned out copious amounts of presumptions on the Sharjah-based designer. Some speculated that he was a recluse, producing only a handful of ghutra-inspired garments for the select elite to don; some said that he was an eccentric, temperamental character who would make uncompromising commentsto the few who made the precarious trek to his Sharjah atelier; others protested at the steep prices placed on Essa attire, deducing that it was a demand imposed by the designer himself. Dubai’s chic and modish would gather at hip cafés and lounges and exchange their Essa wish-lists. The Indian-born designer made rare appearances in Dubai’s blossoming art and social circuits;even rarer was his media coverage at the height of Dubai’s then-emergent fashion and society magazines. Gossip aside, Essa provoked a whopping level of intrigue as the designer who created funk and style out of a traditional, Arabian fabric.

Having grown up in the UAE, it was a fateful high school encounter which set Essa’s sights on the fashion industry. “I really owe it to a classmate at the International School of Choueifat. When all the kids in my class were reading ‘Car’, ‘Driver’ and ‘CompuTech’, she handed me ‘Cosmopolitan’ and ‘Vogue’,” he notes. After arming himself with an undergraduate degree in economics and marketing from Cyprus College in Nicosia, Cyprus, stints with pattern-cutters in London and Paris beckoned. From working at a men’s clothing store in Dubai to costume-designing in Bollywood and, “Venturing nomadically in the Far East,” Essa returned to the UAE and worked with Dubai-based designer Aline Saad at her Kabale atelier.

In 2004, a Paris-based organisation launched a project that aimed to establish UAE designers internationally. Essa chose to incorporate traditional Arabian material - from Bedouin jewellery and thalli trimmings used for kaftans to the aghal...