Arab Beauty Needs Arab Expertise

I was listening to a panel about the future of Arab beauty. The premise was that our region was becoming an exporter of brands, after being a market where the rest of the world came to sell theirs. As far as I could tell, every person on the panel was non-Arab. I don't know whom the organisers approached or why the panel took that shape.

I wanted to ask about it, but hesitated. It felt a little rude, as though pointing out who was missing would make the conversation uncomfortable.

A company can use Arab ingredients, draw on Arab traditions and sell a product through an Arab story. It can do all of that without trusting an Arab founder to set its direction. Our culture can supply the material while someone else decides what to make of it.

I want Arab expertise to lead the development of Arab beauty. That means trusting Arab founders to decide which needs to address, what a tradition might mean to people today and what kind of brand to build. I want international experts involved in that work, developing and testing ideas with Arab founders.

If an Arab founder is invited in only to make an existing idea feel local, their knowledge has already been given a narrow job. They can correct a reference or help the message land. But someone else has chosen the idea they are being asked to improve. The industry loses the chance to discover what that founder would have proposed in the first place.

This brought Edward Said's Orientalism to mind. His introduction examines the authority behind Western representations of the East. The question for me is whose understanding of a culture gets to shape what is done with it.

I co-founded Diggn'It, a men's grooming brand in Saudi Arabia. I know a small number of other Arab founders doing this work. We talk about the same struggles, and it can feel lonely. They shouldn't have to succeed internationally for the industry to take their ideas seriously.

My customers have given us plenty of support. They are the best. My challenge is to the people organising industry conversations, choosing brand partners and deciding which businesses to back: listen to Arab founders before deciding what the opportunity is.

Arab founders have a responsibility here too. I wonder whether some of us wait for recognition from elsewhere before taking our own knowledge seriously. We need enough belief in our expertise to put our ideas forward and argue for them.

Arab founders should lead the development of Arab beauty, with authority over what gets built and responsibility for the decisions that shape it.