Mohammed Khoja’s fall 2026 “Hejaz Assortment” was a poetic pilgrimage to the western Arabia area from which he hails.
The present offered a sartorial resurrection of a area lengthy revered as a cradle of religion, commerce and poetry. Khoja introduced that again by way of an unabashedly modern lens.
The finale mentioned all of it with a mannequin rising in a glowing robe performing the normal Hijazi Zaffa bridal stroll, embodying Jeddah’s mythological moniker as “The Bride of the Sea.” It was a second of theater and the designer’s love letter to his father’s homeland materialized in brilliant fuchsia.
Your complete present honored the designer’s lineage by way of rigorously curated tributes: a musical homage to Hejazi icon Abadi Al-Johar, often known as the “the Octopus of Oud”; a poetic dedication to Dar Al-Hanan College, the Kingdom’s first college for ladies, the place Khoja’s mom studied, and a press release gown created with designer Hala AlGharbawi for the present’s patron, Princess AlJoharah bint Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who has championed Saudi design for greater than a decade.
Essentially the most private contact got here within the handwritten Arabic calligraphy printed throughout clothes: poetry penned by Khoja himself, translating to “The Hejaz. What can I say? It’s the spirit, the sensation, the dream, the wonder.”
However Khoja — who has named his model Hindamme, which interprets to “excellent kind, concord and aesthetic” in an historic Arabic dialect — wasn’t merely mining nostalgia. There was a pressure between reminiscence and futurism that outlined the gathering’s materials language. Mohair and silk shared the runway with purple vinyl and chocolate brown leather-based. Metallics, that are key for the model, evoked luminosity.
The silhouettes additionally married East and West. Structured outerwear in mirrored metallic calfskin have been reinterpreted as futuristic biker jackets and conventional kufiyah hats have been reworked into sculptural headpieces punctuated the present.
Vibrant fuchsia, a standard Hijazi hue seen in girls’s apparel, injected pleasure, whereas rooted in cultural specificity. The chocolate browns added sophistication, whereas punches of purple prompt ardour and energy. That Khoja selected pink for his bridal finale over standard white spoke volumes about Hindamme’s mission to reimagine the accustomed to cultural authority.
“Hejaz is an everlasting concept,” Khoja mentioned in an interview after the present. “This assortment honors my layered historical past whereas imagining what its future might appear to be.”
This assortment supplied a masterclass in how heritage can gasoline innovation fairly than constrain it, one thing the Kingdom’s artistic motion has been embracing at Riyadh Trend Week.
“I hope individuals really feel seen,” Khoja mentioned. “I need them to see their tradition represented in a approach that fills them with delight — reimagined, elevated and celebrated.”
