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Streetwear and sneaker growth may be slowing in the West — but in the Middle East, it’s just getting started. Last month, over 51,000 young people from around the UAE and the Gulf flocked to Abu Dhabi’s typically tranquil Yas Bay for the second-ever edition of Bred Festival, a five-day culture, fashion and music festival that has become a streetwear haven.
In the middle of the festival was an all-white installation for Dubai-based streetwear brand Shabab Intl, displaying its signature combat trousers, graphic football jerseys and hoodies. Founded by photographer and creative Cheb Moha as a side hustle 11 years ago (“in the Tumblr days”), Shabab Intl has become central to the Gulf’s growing streetwear movement.
Moha was born in Iraq and grew up in Libya, then Canada, where he encountered brands like Supreme and LRG. When he moved to Dubai in 2014, there wasn’t the same scene. “The streetwear culture is very new here [in the Middle East],” he tells me amid the throngs of local Bred fans trying on T-shirts, playing basketball, or heading to the nearest music stage for performances from stars like Metro Boomin and Ty Dolla $ign. “It didn’t exist as a scene until around 2018/19. When we first launched, people didn’t get it. Now, we’re seeing what happened in LA or New York in the ’80s and ’90s, with younger people doing grassroots stuff.”
Moha started off with caps, which he sold to friends, before gradually adding new categories as people spread the word. The brand riffs on football culture — reimagining football jerseys in bold colours with Shabab’s logo. He declines to share revenues, but confirms the business is profitable and growing; he’s moving into a bigger studio space this year with his sister (and business partner), and is looking to build a team.
Just over a decade after launching, Shabab (which means “youth” in Arabic) is one of the region’s most-established streetwear players. As it has reached maturity, it has inspired a new generation of brands, like Aota, Precious Trust and Sona3 Sudan, says Fuad Ali, co-founder of Duette Studio, who curated the brand offering for Bred.
“For many years, the youth in the region were fixated on getting their hands on the latest Air Jordan sneaker release or Off-White capsule, excitedly awaiting their next vacation to Europe or the US to [buy it],” adds Roula Ghalayini, creative director of Bred, which launched in 2023 to tap into the growing scene. Today, due to the abundance of global brands available in the Middle East, their exclusivity — and consequently their desirability — has waned “substantially”, she says, making way for local players.
This year, the festival featured pop-up stores or installations from 95 brands, including 52 streetwear and sneaker labels. The focus was on prioritising local talent alongside major brand partners like New Balance or Umbro.
Inspiring the next generation
As a pioneer of the region’s streetwear scene — known for launching a grassroots label while the consumer was still preoccupied with Western brands — Moha is something of a local celebrity. As we walk around the festival, myriad other founders and creatives stop us to give him a hug or shake his hand.
Among them is the Middle East’s biggest sneaker influencer, Kuwait-based creator Tareq Q, known as KicksTQ. His Bred installation is a huge paint-splattered box lined with branded basketballs and sneakers. He and Moha go back for “years”, he says, as Q began creating sneaker and streetwear content on Instagram around the time Shabab Intl was launched and Moha began working with Western brands on campaigns. Q went on to launch his own streetwear brand, Aota, in 2020.
When Q started creating sneaker and streetwear content in 2014, 70 per cent of his Instagram followers were in the US. Now, it’s completely flipped: 70 per cent of his following is from the Gulf, as regional interest in the category continues to grow, he says. After years working with brands in a creator capacity, Q launched agency Out The Box; Aota followed as an apparel arm.
“In the global streetwear scene, we’ve reached a point of saturation and unoriginality,” says Q. “The gap is storytelling. What we have with Aota is a brand that means something to people, that tells an authentic story.” For Aota, this often riffs on Q’s journey as a founder. The brand was born from sellout drops of T-shirts and hoodies featuring KicksTQ catchphrases like “no free ideas” and “no skillset”.
There is a renewed sense of pride in being Arab among the region’s youth, says Bred’s Ghalayini, which is instilling a sense of community in the streetwear scene. “In the ’70s and ’80s, Arabs aligned with Western culture in hopes of blending in with what the media at the time deemed ‘cool’. The region’s millennials and Gen Z don’t feel as inhibited,” she says. “They want to wear their identities loud and proud. They want to celebrate the richness of their culture in all its iterations — through music, fashion, art and food. Homegrown streetwear brands become enablers, or even the medium, in carrying that story of self-expression and cultural identity.”
Growing pains
The Middle East’s population skews young (the median age is 33 versus 38 in the US), and spending power is set to increase 5 per cent this year, compared with a 1.5 per cent increase in the US, according to Mastercard. The challenge is finding new opportunities for pop-ups and IRL retail, which is crucial to win over the local consumer, founders agree. Retailing at festivals like Bred and Sole DXB can play “a huge role” in getting things off the ground, says Q.
“In the West, if there’s a streetwear drop, maybe the average consumer is buying one or two pairs of sneakers and a T-shirt. In our region, they will buy four jackets, five hats, two pairs of trousers and seven pairs of shoes,” says Q. “The consumption here is drastic. So brands like ours have a lot of potential.”
Increased appetite means grappling with new production demands. Shabab currently manufactures across China, Portugal and the UAE, but the latter is mainly for quicker turnaround — simpler garments like tote bags, graphic tees and socks, which can be produced in a week, but at a lower margin, says Moha.
Duette Studio’s Ali agrees that, as the streetwear scene grows in the Middle East, brands will need to keep up. “It’s nice to go and design streetwear, but you also need to be able to manage your production and be able to run a business and set up the accounts and then do the pop-up and do the sales and then the marketing at the same time,” he says.
Shabab’s customers are mainly in the Gulf, the US and the UK. The business is mostly direct-to-consumer, but it sells wholesale in All White All Black on LA’s streetwear hub Fairfax Street and in a café in Qatar. Moha is learning the ropes on how to scale and manage production and inventory. For Bred, he stayed up the night before doing last-minute prep. “I’m ready to take this seriously now,” he says, “We don’t just want to be seen as a ‘local brand’. That makes us sound cute. It’s no longer a side project; we’re ready to grow.”
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