THE SAMMAN ARCHIVE: A RETROSPECTIVE IN THREE LOOKS, ONE OF THEM WORN WITH THE WRONG COLOGNE

RIYADH — The retrospective went up on Sunday, August 31, 2025, under the title "The Outfit Was Doing The Talking" and the subtitle "When Identity Became A Costume." Its programme note: "When your appearance became your armor ... and what cracked underneath."

Look one runs from the late 80s to the early 90s, a period the designer files under "peak adolescence and identity crisis": "all jeans and loud American T-shirts." Wordplay, cartoons, sarcasm. "Especially during the Gulf War." The aim was clash: "The more it clashed with the world around me, the better." Vin Tayge, vintage dealer, called it "a grail-tier capsule" and asked whether any of it survives. The post does not say.

The brief is stated plainly: "I wasn't dressing for comfort. I was dressing to not be seen as Saudi." The media, he writes, "painted Saudis as extreme," and he was "light-skinned. Lighter-haired." So: "If people already assumed I was a foreigner, I gave them a show." Not maliciously, he adds. "Not even consciously, really."

Look two is a single outfit, and the post treats it as the turning point. A distant relative had passed away. He put on a thobe and "Tried to show respect," then "sprayed cologne like I was heading to a party ... not a wake." Someone pulled him aside, "Not to shame me... but to protect me from embarrassment." Fitz Chekk reviewed the look in full: "Thobe, correct. Intent, correct. Fragrance, at the wrong event. The relative's note was the best note of the season."

What hit him, he writes, was "Not because I'd broken a rule. But because I realized I didn't even see the line I crossed." He had been "dressing against" his culture because he thought it was "all or nothing," and "performing for a version of them that didn't actually exist." His relatives, the post says, were "kind, grounded, nuanced people." Auntie Climax said she has been kind, grounded and nuanced for decades and is still waiting to be performed for.

The critics' favourite line is short: "It wasn't rebellion. It was projection. And maybe even... protection." Then come the three remarks he got tired of: "You're not full Saudi." "You grew up abroad." "You're white-passing." "It was easier to let the T-shirt talk," the post says.

Look three is current. "Now? I don't wear much Western stuff at all." The designer offers age, comfort and the fact that "thobes are easier when you've got a little extra around the middle." Trent Dee, trend forecaster, called comfort "the only trend that has never needed a slogan."

The show closes on peace: "Peace with being both. Peace with not needing to convince anyone." Then the last line, printed as written: "Now? I'd rather just be heard." Auntie Climax has asked for the thobes to be photographed for her album. The post includes no photographs. She will wait.