RIYADH — Fashion relies heavily on image and signaling, and the third edition of Riyadh Fashion Week currently underway telegraphs the scale of Saudi Arabia‘s ambitions.
The six-day event, which wraps on Tuesday with a Stella McCartney runway blowout, boasts transporting show venues; a clutch of prominent international editors, influencers and retailers, and five international labels sprinkled among the 45 shows and presentations by local designers of couture, ready-to-wear, streetwear and jewelry.
“Riyadh is going to become a major commercial destination for retail, and we also need to engage with international brands interested in opening their stores, moving their regional headquarters into the country,” Burak Cakmak, chief executive officer of the Saudi Fashion Commission, said in an interview after the Leem show on Thursday night, set in a dramatically lit rock canyon on the outskirts of the capital.
Tasked with building a fashion ecosystem at the lightning speed that defines the rapidly liberalizing kingdom, Cakmak initiated Riyadh Fashion Week in 2023, then shining the spotlight on about 30 local talents.
“As you can imagine, when you’re building a new industry it can be easy to get lost in it, especially for brands that are not yet very established and not necessarily known outside of the region. So in the first two years, we made sure that they had their moment,” he said.
Backstage at Adnan Akbar.
Courtesy of Riyadh Fashion Week
Now the balancing act is: “How do we grow local brands as well as give opportunity for international brands to capture the attention of local consumers?”
In a wide-ranging conversation, Cakmak elaborated on the commission’s strategy, progress and future ambitions.
WWD: What kind of impact do you anticipate having big international names like Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney on this year’s program?
Burak Cakmak: The fashion week itself is obviously beyond just an individual brand: It’s also about Riyadh branding, and Riyadh Fashion Week branding. We want to highlight what’s happening in the country through the diversification of its economy. It’s a destination for retail, consumerism, tourism, and being able to get the message out there that it’s also a destination to visit, and for retail in the future, similar to what’s happening in the other countries in the region.
WWD: European fashion weeks unveiled spring 2026 collections, whereas here we are seeing a lot of fall 2025 lines. Why is that?
B.C.: Most local brands are focused on direct-to-consumer because this is what they’ve always done. After last year’s fashion week, local brands told us they saw a big spike in attention from local consumers and retail immediately the month after.
At the same time, the individual brands going into wholesale internationally are now starting to test if they want to show spring-summer during the season. So it’s a blend of everything. We are trying to learn from it. Do we become a destination for see now, buy now? Or do we allow everybody to do what they want based on who they’re targeting?
Burak Cakmak and Faye Peraya at the Atelier Hekayat show.
INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Riyadh Fashion Week
WWD: How does this third edition stack up to prior Riyadh Fashion Weeks?
B.C.: We definitely expanded. This year, between shows and presentations, we are doing 45 of them, versus around 30 the first year. Plus this time, it’s six days so it’s getting closer to the full fashion-week mode, with everything that’s happening.
WWD: What’s the media impact goal?
B.C.: Clearly, our aspiration is to make it as big as possible and also align with the overall ambition of the country, and make sure that we are playing a key role in making Riyadh a destination, a retail destination, but also supporting all the creatives to get all the content they need to promote their businesses, both here and abroad.
WWD: How important are social media channels in engaging local consumers, and getting the word out internationally?
B.C.: The digital penetration is extremely high in the country. It’s one of the highest in the world, and at every age level, and everything goes viral. So there’s a big reliance on social media to be able to get the message out. And it’s a great way to amplify the message of the brands.
There are a lot of regional influencers, but also the brands themselves. Several of them do only social media commercially. Some of them don’t even have a website.
WWD: How does RFW compare to other fashion weeks in the region, in terms of attendance, scope, scale and ambition? Elaborate.
B.C.: In Saudi Arabia, you have 70 percent of the population under 35, very educated and interested in the creative economy, similar to youths elsewhere in the world. We want to build as many local creative businesses and support them. And considering Saudi represents around 70 percent of the population of the whole region, I think we can definitely say that Saudi will be leading in the regional voice of creatives in the Gulf. And obviously we all recognize the potential growth in the country for retail, which was quite limited until five years ago. And with the number of malls coming and the stores opening, we know that it will increase very quickly.
WWD: The Saudi Fashion Commission is also increasingly present abroad, with events in London and Tokyo recently. What’s the rationale behind these events?
B.C.: What’s unique as a fashion commission, as part of the Ministry of Culture, is that we are supporting every kind of local business, which means every product category potentially appropriate for every audience around the world. Part of the journey is first understanding which market is appropriate to which brands and helping them create those relationships. That’s why you’re seeing a big international mix of buyers and media as well.
We have Saudi designers that speak fluent Japanese and that are able to cater to a Japanese market versus somebody else might be more appropriate for a European, U.S. or a very regional market. So we are connecting those dots for them, as well as ensuring that we are giving visibility to Riyadh as a destination idea to all of those audiences. Going abroad to all these countries also means delivering the message of cultural exchange, beyond the products, beyond the brand.
WWD: How is the fashion ecosystem developing in the kingdom? How far along are you in the roadmap set before you, and what are the next steps?
B.C.: We are working on steroids, we are moving very fast. We opened many spaces. We are working with agencies. We just announced that the first permanent showroom in the country is opening in this year. It’s a partnership with White from Milan, and they will be operating a separate space that is full-time in the country, bringing international brands into the country, as well as local brands abroad to the appropriate markets. So having the showrooms, agencies, a modeling academy, and even Marangoni, that has opened their first-ever campus this year, is building that full ecosystem to make sure that we can do a lot of it on the ground.
WWD: We hear a great deal of Italian being spoken here, and watched the Italian brand Amen join local brands on the runway. What’s behind the intense collaboration with Italy?
B.C.: It was not intentional. Of course, we are talking to all all countries and all entities. What we’ve seen is that from Italy, there was an immediate engagement to be able to build on that collaboration. But we want all destinations to come and take part of building this ecosystem.
