There is a well-worn story about women and clothes in difficult times, and it goes like this: when the world gets hard, we dress to survive it. During the Second World War, lipstick was weaponised. In the US and Britain, women were encouraged to wear red as warpaint, and in 1943, Elizabeth Arden created a shade specifically to match the red piping on women's military uniforms. The act of putting it on, in the middle of everything, was a soft declaration: I am still here. I still choose this. Then the war ended, and the pendulum swung the other way.
In February 1947, Christian Dior walked into a Paris salon still scarred by occupation and presented something the world hadn't seen in years — abundance. Voluminous skirts. Cinched waists. Fabric used lavishly, almost recklessly. Critics called it wasteful. Women, exhausted by years of utility and restraint, thought of it as a reason to get dressed again.
The pattern repeats, constraint giving way to expression and expression to something more measured, until somewhere in the middle of each cycle women find a way to dress that holds both impulses at once, the urge to protect and the refusal to disappear.
Walk through Marsa Al Arab at dusk or past the kite beach stretch on a weekend morning. Sit for twenty minutes in Dubai Mall, or drift through Dubai Design District on a weekday. You'll notice something. Women across nationalities and age groups are gravitating toward a particular register: wide-leg linen trousers, good quality denim, easy shirts worn loose. Flowy open abayas. Long draped jackets that move with the body. Nothing that demands performance. Comfort has always been woven into the regional wardrobe, but this feels different, less casualness and more intention.
Beagy Zielinski (@beagystyle) a stylist for the past 22 years and creative director that works across the globe has been watching the pattern emerge. "In times of uncertainty, people tend to gravitate towards familiarity because it gives them a sense of comfort and control," she says. "Historically, fashion gets more utilitarian and less glamorous." But she is not gloomy about it. If the past has taught us anything, she notes, it's that after difficult times pass, people pull out all the stops — the post-pandemic swing from activewear to dressed-up everything being the most recent proof. She's looking forward to that. In the meantime, for Zielinski herself, the armour is specific: a good pair of heels, a red lip, and — if the moment calls for it — a favourite Dries Van Noten wrap from a recent menswear collection. "Add some fabric dramatically blowing in the wind," she says, "and I feel even more undefeatable."
Colour specialist Julie Grobler (@houseofcolourdubai) who works with women in Dubai on personal colour analysis, sees the psychology play out with striking consistency. She draws a line between two modes of dressing: colours that make you feel invisible — soft, safe, something to recede into and colours that announce you. "Empowering colours are more hi, it's me," she says. "They lift your energy, straighten your shoulders, and suddenly you're walking into the room instead of tiptoeing in." When life gets complicated and decisions stack up, she finds women instinctively reach for what she calls their "wow colours", the shades they already know work, that require no deliberation. One less decision when there are already too many.
Instagram content
The psychological basis for all of this is more than intuition. Carolyn Yaffe, at Medcare Camali Clinic, points to the concept of "enclothed cognition" — the idea that clothing shapes not only how others see us, but how we experience our own emotions. "When times are uncertain or stressful, the world can seem unpredictable and overwhelming," she explains. Choosing to dress with intention becomes a way to reclaim a small but meaningful sense of control: I may not be able to control everything happening around me, but I can control how I present myself to the world. That choice, she notes, can genuinely help calm the nervous system — and it can also be a form of expression, a way to access strength or softness or confidence even when those feelings are hard to reach directly.
None of this requires a new wardrobe. It only requires paying attention to what you reach for on the difficult mornings, to what makes you walk differently, to what makes the day feel, if only slightly, more navigable. And if the thing you reach for also happens to be beautiful, and local, and made with care? That’s not escapism. That's two good things happening at once, and we ought to take it!
