For the Fall Winter 2025 collection, Hoor Al Qasimi brings a poignant collaboration to life, teaming up with renowned Māori artist Emily Karaka. This partnership connects fashion with powerful storytelling, drawing deeply from Karaka’s evocative art, which explores themes of ancestral legacy, language, and resistance. Her bold canvases, layered with color, text, and Māori phrases, serve as a vivid chronicle of struggles for land and identity, as well as a celebration of cultural resilience. Through this creative dialogue, Al Qasimi transforms Karaka’s artistic essence into wearable statements, using fashion to amplify the voices and histories of indigenous communities worldwide.
Rooted in QASIMI’s established aesthetic, the FW25 collection mixes relaxed silhouettes with modular designs. Loose shirts paired with flowing trousers evoke influences from the Middle East and North Africa, while oversized hoodies and windbreakers exude casual refinement. Tailoring takes on a fresh perspective with curved shoulders and expansive fits, creating a balance between structure and comfort.
Building on the brand’s signature adaptability, the collection incorporates innovative design elements that allow garments to transform. Adjustable zips, buttons, and seams enable wearers to reconfigure pieces, turning a shirt sleeve into an abstract form or transforming a classic skirt into a dynamic spiral.
The color story of the collection echoes the earthiness of Karaka’s work, with shades of deep brown, sand, and turmeric punctuated by bold indigo and maroon. Luxurious jacquards and tactile frayed seams create a sensory richness, while a trompe l’oeil pattern adds an unexpected visual dimension, imitating the texture of mohair from afar.
The collection also serves as a canvas for Karaka’s artistic language. Her brushstrokes and etched words appear as embroidered details. Technicolored threads trace her lines of resistance and resilience, creating a dialogue between her art and the wearer’s experience. Each piece carries dual narratives: one of artistic expression and another of lived histories.
A focal point of the collection is Karaka’s painting He Kakano Ahau (2014–2015), a work infused with cultural and personal symbolism. The painting reflects themes of navigation, ancestry, and strength, with red, black, and white motifs representing traditional Māori weaving and blue strands symbolizing the sea and rivers that connected Māori to their ancestral land.
This artwork resonates deeply with Hoor Al Qasimi’s vision. “Renowned Māori painter Emily Karaka’s use of color, language, and text to depict Māori land rights and historic treaties was the inspiration behind the AW25 Collection,” she explains. “Through bold prints, intricate embroideries, and changeable silhouettes, this collection reflects not only the ongoing struggle for Māori rights but also other indigenous struggles around the world.”
Though Hoor Al Qasimi and Emily Karaka come from different cultural contexts, their work shares a commonality in its ability to communicate complex histories. Karaka reflects on her artwork’s significance, stating, “He Kakano Ahau embodies strong lyrics from the Waiata (song): ‘And I can never be lost, I am a seed born of greatness, language is my strength, an ornament of grace.’ The intertwining strands represent the waves of the sea and rivers on which Māori traveled from Raiatea to Aotearoa, New Zealand.” Her words and visuals resonate deeply, amplifying the message of solidarity that underpins this collection.
