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What We Are Buying Today: Saudi Arabia’s ‘Jawlah’ educating and empowering children

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Updated 25 March 2024
Nada Hameed
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What We Are Buying Today: Saudi Arabia’s ‘Jawlah’ educating and empowering children

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Updated 25 March 2024
Nada Hameed
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Jawlah is more than just a toy shop; it is a cultural and educational oasis catering to the unique needs of the region’s children.

Founded by Shahd Al-Athel and Sandi Ismail, this Saudi-based brand is on a mission to transform learning into an adventure, helping children envision a brighter future while remaining anchored in cultural history and values.

Jawlah offers a curated collection of toys and books that not only entertain but are specifically designed to improve cognitive and motor skill development. The brand’s originals reflect the rich fabric of the region, ensuring that children’s cultural identities are replicated in their play and learning experiences.

By weaving local Saudi traditions and values into their products, Jawlah fosters a deep connection between children and their heritage. From the dallah set to characters like Salman, Nakhla, and Fahda, each item embodies the essence of Arabian hospitality, identity, and legacy, educating children about the significance of customs and traditions in a fun and engaging way.

Their products cater to children aged up to 10 years, and the educational tools and toys are tailored to meet developmental milestones. By intertwining cultural themes with a commitment to sustainability and safety, Jawlah nurtures children’s curiosity, creativity, and sense of identity, encouraging them to embrace their roots while acquiring essential skills and knowledge.

The products are made from non-toxic, eco-friendly materials, allowing children to play and learn in a safe, healthy environment while introducing them to a variety of educational materials, including books, spinning tops, kaleidoscopes, and drawing tools.

Through its deeply rooted character designs and thoughtful curation like the Palestine collection, Jawlah goes beyond entertainment, aiming to educate children about various cultures and support humanitarian efforts.

By incorporating exclusive collections from publishers like Buschel and Peck, Jawlah also enriches children’s reading experiences and broadens their understanding of the world.

Here's Instagram account @jawlah.club

 

Topics: What We Are Buying Today

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Fatima Al-Banawi celebrates highlights ahead of January’s Joy Awards in Riyadh

Fatima Al-Banawi celebrates highlights ahead of January’s Joy Awards in Riyadh
Updated 2 min 15 sec ago
Arab News
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Fatima Al-Banawi celebrates highlights ahead of January’s Joy Awards in Riyadh

Fatima Al-Banawi celebrates highlights ahead of January’s Joy Awards in Riyadh
Updated 2 min 15 sec ago
Arab News

DUBAI: After topping off a stellar 2024 by co-hosting the closing ceremony of the star-studded Red Sea Film Festival in December, Saudi director and actress Fatima Al-Banawi took to Instagram this week to share behind-the-scenes snafus that occurred before the event.

The star, who is nominated in the Best Film Director category at the upcoming Joy Awards in Riyadh, shared a carousel of photos taken during and after the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, including a poignant shot of her grandfather.

“I don’t know where the words came from, but truly behind every grand appearance there are dark nights, dim lights, a sudden illness, and a liver sandwich that drips a sauce on your dress. But what comforts us through all the moments of exhaustion and fatigue are the celebrations that unfold honoring the stories we tell. And above all that, the moment you return home and find your grandfather watching you on the television screen (sic),” she captioned the post.

Al-Banawi made her directorial debut with “Basma” this year and she is nominated for an award at the Joy Awards, set to be held on Jan. 18.

The Best Film Director nominees include Tarek Al-Eryan (“Welad Rizq 3: Elqadia”), Ali Al-Kalthami (“Night Courier”), Fatima Al-Banawi (“Basma”), and Moataz Al-Touni (“Ex Merati”).

“Basma” launched on Netflix in June and Al-Banawi  not only directed the movie, but wrote it (and an original song for the soundtrack) and played the title role — a young Saudi woman who returns home to Jeddah after two years away studying in the States to find that her parents have divorced without telling her after struggling to deal with the mental illness of her father, the well-respected Dr. Adly.

“My undergrad is in psychology. My father’s a psychologist. My sister’s a psychologist. I have psychology and sociology in my DNA,” Al-Banawi told Arab News at the time of the film’s release. “We talk about Sigmund Freud over lunch, you know?”  

And so, when she sat down to write her first feature, it was natural that she would choose mental health as its focus. 

“Dissonance was a word I found when I started working on ‘Basma.’ I wasn’t familiar with this term: to be in a complete state of, not just denial, but not responding in any way — action or awareness — to what (is obvious),” she said. “I felt it around me everywhere; things that were brushed under the carpet for years and years until they piled up and a person or a family could not handle them anymore.”

 

Topics: Fatima Al-Banawi Saudi Arabia

Review: Award-winning ‘Moon’ comes out on top as a tense thriller

Review: Award-winning ‘Moon’ comes out on top as a tense thriller
Updated 29 December 2024
Gautaman Bhaskaran
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Review: Award-winning ‘Moon’ comes out on top as a tense thriller

Review: Award-winning ‘Moon’ comes out on top as a tense thriller
Updated 29 December 2024
Gautaman Bhaskaran

JEDDAH: Iraqi Austrian filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub seems to have found her niche telling stories of women in distress. While her debut fiction feature film, “Sonne,” was awarded the Best First Film Award at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, her latest, “Moon,” sees the director wade into similar territory.

After clinching the special jury prize at the 77th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, it played at the recent Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah — and to me it was one of the event's highlights. 

“Moon” trails Sarah (Florentina Holzinger, who is quite good as a foreigner bewildered by her surroundings), an unhappy martial arts fighter, who having hit the dead end in her career, takes up an assignment with a wealthy Jordanian family whose shady dealings soon make her uneasy. 

Asked to train three sisters after her humiliating defeat in the ring, Sarah grabs the chance, hoping to find a new beginning and earn back her respect. But what awaits her there is beyond her imagination — a household that is run with eerie brutality by the girls' brother in the absence of their parents. Sarah is frightened when things begin to spiral out of her control, and with the sisters' steely defiance toward any sort of regulated life, “Moon” plays out like a thriller and boxes us into a deadly climax.

Ayub specialises in filming the loss of freedom and examines how women struggle circumvent this.  The sisters' trips to the mall seem like one way of tasting freedom — despite the watchful eye of a burly bodyguard — and the audience feels every bit as claustrophobic.

Unfortunately, there are pitfalls in the narrative with some of the protagonist’s actions going unexplained but what keeps the work flowing is the beautiful relationship among the sisters and how they ultimately come to trust their trainer.

Topics: Red Sea International Film Festival 2024

Georgina Rodriguez steals the spotlight at Dubai event

Georgina Rodriguez steals the spotlight at Dubai event
Updated 28 December 2024
Arab News
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Georgina Rodriguez steals the spotlight at Dubai event

Georgina Rodriguez steals the spotlight at Dubai event
Updated 28 December 2024
Arab News

DUBAI: Argentine model Georgina Rodriguez made a head-turning appearance this week at the Globe Soccer Dubai Awards 2024, held as part of the Dubai International Sports Conference 2024.

She attended the event alongside her longtime partner, Cristiano Ronaldo, who was honored with two awards: Best Middle East Player 2024 and All-Time Top Goal Scorer.

Rodriguez turned heads in a fitted black dress featuring a sweetheart neckline and lace-detailed sleeves. She completed her look with black pointed-toe heels and carried a matching black purse.

The couple was joined by Ronaldo’s eldest son, Cristiano Jr., making it a family affair at one of the year’s most celebrated sports events.

Upon accepting the award, Ronaldo, who plays for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr FC, expressed his gratitude on stage, saying: “For me, it is a big pleasure to win this trophy. It is very different than the other ones. It is a pleasure to be in this gala. (There are) a lot of champions here, young generations and old generations.”

He continued: “I have to say thank you to my own family, my kids. They are all here in Dubai. My oldest son is there. My wife is here. She’s my lovely support all the time to carry on to play. In one month I’m gonna be 40 years old but I’m not finished yet. I will continue because I want to win titles, I want to be a champion.”

After the event, Ronaldo shared pictures with his 646 million Instagram followers, captioning the post: “A great way to end the year. Thank you to my teammates, staff, to everyone who has supported me along the way, and especially to my family. There is still more to come.”

The couple were later spotted at Nobu Dubai in Atlantis the Palm, where there was also Brazilian football player Neymar and former Italian footballer Alessandro Del Piero.

Rodriguez and Ronaldo traveled to Dubai following their family vacation in Lapland, Finland, where they celebrated the festive season.

The couple shared glimpses of their activities on Instagram, including an in-house dinner with their children, sledding adventures, ice baths and more, giving fans a peek into their holiday moments.

Topics: Georgina Rodriguez Globe Soccer Dubai Awards

Mohammed Al-Saleem: Saudi Arabia’s best-selling artist dominates art auctions

Mohammed Al-Saleem: Saudi Arabia’s best-selling artist dominates art auctions
Updated 28 December 2024
Adam Grundey
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Mohammed Al-Saleem: Saudi Arabia’s best-selling artist dominates art auctions

Mohammed Al-Saleem: Saudi Arabia’s best-selling artist dominates art auctions
  • Al-Saleem’s works fetched the highest prices for Saudi artists at both Christies and Sotheby’s this year 
Updated 28 December 2024
Adam Grundey

DUBAI: The late Mohammed Al-Saleem was once again the Kingdom’s stand-out performer at art auctions this year, topping the price list for a single work by a Saudi artist at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s.  

He didn’t quite match the record-breaking levels of the 1986 piece sold by Sotheby’s last year, which made him the first Saudi artist in history to fetch more than $1 million for an auctioned work, but this year Al-Saleem’s 1990 work “Bi nur al-iman, nara al-s'adah” (In the light of faith, we see happiness) realized well over twice its highest estimated price for Christie’s, eventually selling for £630,000 (around $788,285), while, at Sotheby’s, an untitled Al-Saleem piece from 1960 went for £84,000.  

Seen together, the two pieces clearly demonstrate Al-Saleem’s evolution as an artist over the three decades separating the pieces. But the earlier piece also shows just how well-defined Al-Saleem’s aesthetic sense was even at the start of his artistic journey.  

Mohammed Al Saleem, 'Untitled,' 1960. (Supplied)

As Sotheby’s head of sale for 20th Century Art/Middle East, Alexandra Roy, says of the untitled painting, “It’s a work that’s finding its own language. And they you see him really evolve, which I think is always a sign of a great artist — they really find their own language that you can recognize immediately. Even if you only know his later works, you can immediately infer that this was done by Mohammed Al-Saleem. 

“You can see he is starting to think a lot about the visual culture around him,” she continues. “And what I love is that he is super-interested in the landscape around him, abstract art, calligraphy, the Qu’ran… and this work combines a bit of all of that: it has the abstract, the calligraphy, and that important element of the landscape around him with the figures in the painting, which are actually camels. 

“It’s actually super-rare to find a work from the 1960s and really amazing to see the development — how he goes on from this,” she continues. “There’s something traditional and yet very avant-garde about this work. For me, it looks like an Arab flag. So, immediately, my associations go to those early pan-Arab artistic movements. It’s also very textured — he’s really creating something with depth and movement. And visually it has all of these elements which kind of harken back to the Islamic world, to Saudi Arabia’s landscape, to popular motifs, but done in a very original way.” 

Mohammed Al-Saleem. (Supplied)

Ridah Moumni, Christie’s chairman, Middle East and Africa, also stresses the fact that Al-Saleem had a very clear aesthetic identity — one which, by the time he came to paint “Bi nur al-iman, nara al-s'adah” — had become clearly defined.  

“It’s more than the technique. It’s really the composition,” Moumni says. “He creates very abstract layers of colors, in which we see a sort of geometry that we can sometimes identify as human forms, or calligraphy, or animal forms. It’s very interesting. Sometimes people would say this is a Saudi style — I don’t think it is; it’s the style of Mohammed Al-Saleem. He’s an excellent painter in the way he uses the colors to create these abstractions.” 

This particular work is unusual in the way that Al-Saleem used a painted frame to divide the canvas into quarters.  

“This is a really special work. You won’t see two of them. It’s a rare composition and I think the collectors who saw this work saw its exceptional quality,” says Moumni. “I find this piece extremely beautiful. I love it because it’s an abstract piece, with spectacular composition, but it’s also a piece that is absolutely optimistic and shows extraordinary creativity. In the Nineties, the artist was really struggling financially. Then he paints this beautiful message — ‘In the light of faith, we see happiness.’  

“I think the Arab world is full of talent, of resilience, of creativity, of richness. And I think the artists of the Arab world have so much to give, not only regionally, but also from a global perspective,” he continues. “So when I see this work, I see also the optimism and the generosity of the art scenes of the region. The Arab world has so much to give, and we have so much to learn from its artists.” 

Topics: Mohammed Al-Saleem Saudi Arabia

Mytheresa CEO on personalization, culture, Saudi Arabia’s luxury boom

Mytheresa CEO on personalization, culture, Saudi Arabia’s luxury boom
Updated 29 December 2024
Hanadi Merchant Habib
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Mytheresa CEO on personalization, culture, Saudi Arabia’s luxury boom

Mytheresa CEO on personalization, culture, Saudi Arabia’s luxury boom
Updated 29 December 2024
Hanadi Merchant Habib

DUBAI: As Saudi Arabia cements its position as a global centre for luxury, the Kingdom’s burgeoning fashion market is capturing the attention of high-end retailers worldwide.

Mytheresa, one of the leading luxury e-commerce platforms, is at the forefront of this shift, catering to a growing and increasingly discerning Saudi clientele.

Michael Kliger, CEO of Mytheresa, revealed how the brand is evolving alongside the Kingdom’s dynamic landscape, with a focus on personalization and cultural connection. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Mytheresa (@mytheresa.com)

 

“We’re witnessing incredible changes in the Saudi market,” Kliger said. “More Saudis are staying in the region, with some even moving back permanently, which has created a significant increase in local demand for luxury fashion.

“Events like weddings and receptions have always been important here, but now, with cinemas and fine dining experiences becoming more common, there are even more occasions for people to dress up.”

While Mytheresa does not yet have a physical presence in Saudi Arabia, its strategy focuses on creating meaningful connections with local clients.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Mytheresa (@mytheresa.com)

 

“We host a variety of events to engage directly with our Saudi customers,” Kliger said. “Recently, we had a dinner at Hia Hub in Riyadh with the designers of Oscar de la Renta, and in Jeddah, one of our clients hosted 100 of her friends for us at a hotel. These gatherings, along with style suites where customers can try curated collections, allow us to bring the Mytheresa experience to them in a personal and exclusive way.” 

Additionally, the e-tailer frequently collaborates with local creatives to create authentic connections with their customers. Kliger said that understanding the timing of local events and traditions, such as Ramadan and other festive gatherings, is essential. He highlighted the importance of working with local influencers and ambassadors to ensure the brand’s messaging feels genuine and accessible, making it easier for Saudi customers to engage with Mytheresa.

Michael Kliger. (Supplied)

Personalization too, is at the heart of Mytheresa’s approach. “It’s not about catering to a ‘Saudi style,’ but understanding each individual client,” Kliger said. “For example, one of our clients in Riyadh loves Yamamoto and Sacai. It’s about identifying those preferences and curating options that resonate with their personal taste. That’s what makes our service unique.”

Kliger also touched on the recent acquisition of Net-a-Porter by Mytheresa and its implications for the Saudi market.

“Net-a-Porter complements what we do at Mytheresa,” he said. “They’re strong in discovery and editorial, while we focus on highly curated, established luxury brands. Together, we can cater to different corners of the luxury market without diluting our individual strengths.”

As Saudi Arabia’s young, tech-savvy population drives the growth of e-commerce, Kliger emphasized the importance of adapting to the Kingdom’s digital preferences. “Social media usage here is unique, with platforms like TikTok and Snapchat playing a major role in how people interact and shop. Understanding these behaviors is key to connecting with this market,” he said.

With a focus on personalization, community engagement, and digital strategy, Mytheresa is poised to strengthen its position in Saudi Arabia’s thriving luxury landscape. “The Saudi market is one of the most dynamic regions for us,” Kliger said. 

Topics: Mytheresa Saudi Arabia

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