Her Royal Highness Princess Fawzia Fouad Farouk, and&nbsp;Co-Founder Of The Egyptian Fashion &amp; Design Council, Susan Sabet, were Nile FM guests on Good Vibes Only with Zeinab, and they talked about the&nbsp;Egyptian Fashion Council and latest edition of Egypt Fashion Awards.
How The Egyptian Fashion Council Came About? And what is its mission?
Susan: "Well, this is an idea that started maybe 10 years ago and was taken seriously by the five founding members of the Egyptian fashion council, who are all industry members, so you have Fatma Ghaly, the daughter of Azza Fahmy, Paul Antaki, who is currently our president, Abdelmalek Shamsi from the Shamsi family, Marie Bishara, who is one of the leaders in manufacturing in Egypt, and myself who is a publisher of a fashion magazine, who has always been involved with designers.
So we came together and we thought it&rsquo;s about time to do something that is everywhere, most countries in the world would have a council that promotes and mentors and it would be a non-profit, which is very important because as a nonprofit, you can really concentrate on those that you know that they&rsquo;re sustainable and growing, that&rsquo;ll go places, that needs mentorship, that needs support and that is worth your time, and somebody's money."
Can you tell us how it came about to ask the last king of Egypt&rsquo;s daughter to be an ambassador?
Susan: "When you do a program like this, The Fashion Council, you look at what other big councils are doing, so you look at the British Fashion Council and you see that they have an ambassadorship program, they have a sponsorship program, so you say &ldquo;Ok, that&rsquo;s a good idea&rdquo;. Having ambassadors for us, international ambassadors that have a voice, that have connections, is very important because they can spread your mission, they can spread the word, they can spread awareness, and maybe find opportunities to connect abroad, and in the region.
So of course, Princess Fawzia is an ideal candidate because she is Egyptian, she lives abroad, she is very well connected to very important people, and if she wears Egyptian designers people are going to know, so it puts us on the map, and she can share our mission, she can present us if there are events in Europe close by to her for instance.
We really want to connect with people who share our vision and our mission, who want to promote Egyptian fashion, and who want to promote Egyptian craftsmanship."
When Susan approached you to join the Egyptian Fashion Council as an ambassador, what was your initial reaction?
HRH Princess Fawzia: "When Susan told me about it I was really excited about it, I didn&rsquo;t hastate a minute, so I followed my instinct and it was a really great idea, and I&rsquo;m very thrilled and honored to be part of the project and be able to offer my time, my voice, and the little influence that I have to help them with their mission, and the beautiful goal of the council which is to promote Egyptian fashion.
I see my role as an ambassador to be able to talk about it abroad and to approach the network that I have and to be able to talk about the Egyptian designers, and the Egyptian fashion industry, and to play this role is fantastic."
As someone who lives abroad, how do you feel like Egyptian fashion stands with fashion abroad?
HRH Princess Fawzia: "I think Egypt has immense potential, we have unparalleled history and heritage, no other country has this heritage, and our designs and our philosophy, our history talks to everybody, it&rsquo;s a universal message so we attract a lot of people.
We also have a very long of fashion, and we have really been at the forefront of fashion for decades in the past, so we have a tradition of design, craftsmanship, and elegance, we&rsquo;ve been the star of the Middle East for the culture.
Nowadays we have a lot of young designers, and this is an asset, and this is our future, and we have a lot of creativity and inventiveness, and we have brilliant people and brilliant designers, and all the countries around want to see what Egyptian designers create and do because it&rsquo;s inspiring.
With Susan and the council and the system, they&rsquo;re organizing to promote young designers and give them a platform internationally, I&rsquo;m sure the next international fashion designers will be Egyptian."
What sparked the idea of the awards?
Susan: "I think to encourage any activity, there are always competitions and awards and it sorts of spurs people to give their best to come out, to get a chance to be visible, to show their collections, so we said let&rsquo;s do Egypt Fashion Awards, we have a lot of candidates, a lot of people that would be interested, and of course it has to be categorized, so we wanted to start with the very young, the fresh graduates, these are the young designers&rsquo; category from graduates to up to 2 years in the business, and you have the emerging designers, from 2 to 8 years in the business, which still needs support, and the accessory and jewelry designers categories, last year was the first edition, we took the winners to London fashion week, and the idea was to experience how does a fashion week work? If I want to eventually go abroad what are my options, it&rsquo;s not cheap to enter a fashion week internationally, especially one of the big 4, so if you decide to go and invest, you better have a return
So of course to show the designers that you could be on the runway, which is every designer&rsquo;s dream, but if you&rsquo;re a new designer maybe it&rsquo;s not the best way because the editors and buyers are so busy with going to shows, there are so many shows and if they don&rsquo;t know you the chances that the people want to come and see you are very low, so you just gonna pay a lot of money with the very little result most likely.
Then, of course, you have the showrooms, and the showrooms are the best options, this is where you&rsquo;re exhibited for a couple of days, this is where you benefit from other people in the showroom who already have established names, already have bias and press coming to them, so you don&rsquo;t really have to invest so much money in yourself, PR, and marketing, because you&rsquo;re within an environment of many designers and exhibitors.
In these showrooms, you can compare yourself to other designers, international designers, from all over the world, that have a similar product, you see their quality, their pricing, and understand &ldquo;I&rsquo;m I actually really compatible?&rdquo; because if I do the same thing that other designers do, but more expensive with less quality, I&rsquo;m gonna go there and have no results, because nobody would buy my things because what makes me stand out? So it&rsquo;s very important to see who are the other people that you&rsquo;re up against because you&rsquo;re not now competing with other Egyptian designers to take your market share, no, you&rsquo;re competing in the international market.
The winners of the first edition of the Egypt Fashion Awards went to London Fashion Week, what&rsquo;s going to happen with the winners of this edition?
Susan: This time we have three winners that will be going to Pure London. Pure London is the biggest trade showroom for accessories and jewelry, we had over 200 designers that applied for this edition and we selected 20 finalists in the 4 categories, and the focus on selecting the winner in the three categories was to look at their production, do they have their own production facilities? &nbsp;Do they have an experience in export? How many pieces do they produce? What suppliers do they work with?
It was pretty much also a choice about are they capable of selling, because if they go to Pure London, they&rsquo;ll be representing Egypt, if somebody gets an order and can&rsquo;t fulfill it, it looks bad for Egyptian designers, so we had to be 100% sure that the designers that won yesterday are capable of fulfilling an order.
What happens at the showrooms is that buyers from all over the world come and place their orders for the next season, and it&rsquo;s known that sometimes it takes two or three times to participate in a showroom till you really have a result.
So we feel that the winners we chose last night are up to it, and up to the experience, and can sustain even if there&rsquo;s no result this time to maybe be back on their own if they have a good experience the season after."&nbsp;
What should we expect from the next Egyptian Design Fashion Awards edition? &nbsp;
Susan: We do hope that the British Council will continue to be our partner because it&rsquo;s a partner that shares the vision of the Egyptian Fashion Council and has the reach in the UK to make things possible.
I would assume if we stayed partner next year as well that we will also have a London fashion experience.
The one thing we do have set as a council for now, as a date is the second edition of Egypt Fashion Week, which will be from the 10th to 14th of May next year.
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HRH Princess Fawzia Fouad Farouk & Co-Founder Of The Egyptian Fashion & Design Council Susan Sabet On The Egyptian Fashion Council and Latest Edition Of Egypt Fashion Awards

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