Cultivating one of the best fabrics in the world, long-thread Egyptian cotton, and blessed with a rich heritage from the pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, Islamic eras, and Western influences, Egypt has all the makings of a fashion destination.
However, local fashion design and high-end garment manufacturing are still budding sectors. “Most designers rush to start their own businesses,” said Susan Thabet, founder of the Egyptian Fashion & Design Council (EFDC), an organization helping local fashion startups, in an interview with Forbes in June 2024. “Most of them are one-man shows, which makes building a sustainable business and expansion very difficult.”
Meanwhile, rising interest from multinational fashion players in China and Turkey in opening factories in Egypt pressures the local industry to be more price-competitive, scalable, and identifiable while also appealing to mass taste.
Muse central
Since the early 2000s, several high-profile designers and design houses have used Egypt’s unique motifs and designs in their collections. It started with Christian Dior’s 2004 Couture show. “John Galliano [Dior’s art director at the time] brought ancient Egypt back from the tombs for his spring haute couture show … and the result never looked so glitzy or modern,” reported the Associated Press in 2004. “Galliano turned out a mind-boggling collection that would have stunned even Queen Nefertiti.”
Chanel also drew inspiration from Egypt’s history in its 2018/2019 collection, held in the New York Metropolitan Museum, where a reconstructed pharaonic temple was built for the show.
In 2020, renowned Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad used cues from Egypt’s history in his spring collection. “I decided to go back in history, especially in this place and time because pharaohs were so mysterious,” Murad told Vogue in a 2020 interview.
In 2023, the Dior and Stefano Ricci fashion houses held live runway shows in Egypt. “My interest in ancient Egypt is about the stars and the sky,” Kim Jones, Dior men’s creative director, told international media. “It’s that fascination with the ancient world and the parallels with what we look at today; what we inherited from them and what we are still learning from the past.”
Next-gen locals
Several Egypt-based universities offer bachelor’s degrees in fashion design to create a pipeline of local fashion designers and high-end garment producers.
According to EduRank, a specialized think tank, 34 institutions have undergraduate studies in fashion design. The top-ranked are Cairo University (6th in Africa and 582nd worldwide), Ain Shams University (10th and 737th), Mansoura (13th and 868th), Alexandria (14th and 886th) and Helwan (17th in Africa and 1,088th globally).
In 2017, Sabet established the EFDC to “oversee and overhaul one of the world’s oldest fashion industries,” she told Forbes.
It offers “mentoring programs to support rising entrepreneurs and small businesses [by] providing information [about] the fashion and design industry.” The council also helps them “leverage new technologies [to] increase efficiency at every stage of the industry [including] research, design, branding, production, sales and retail.”
The EFDC also offers “further education, scholarship, and vocational training [to teach] much-needed skills” and help businesses “identify talents [and] establish early stage investment vehicles for startups [and] linking entrepreneurs.”
In 2022, the U.S. Embassy in Egypt held the second iteration of its ATX-EGY program, inviting fashion designers from Texas to network with local counterparts. The program also gave local designers a 16-week business course by the Austin Community College Fashion Incubator and showcased their designs at a “pop-up store sponsored by American fashion retailer Macy’s,” the embassy press release said.
In 2023, the EFDC organized Egypt’s first “Fashion Week,” comprising a “curated mix of runway shows, exhibitions, workshops, and panel talks in the fields of education, design, craftsmanship, sustainability, production, retail, and finance,” said Thabet.
Those efforts contributed to steady growth of the local fashion scene. In 2024, data aggregator Statista said Egypt’s “fashion market” generated $1.29 billion in revenue, up from $280 million in 2017. It forecasts the local market will top $1.62 billion in 2025 and that between 2025 and 2029, its annual average growth rate will be 10.67%, reaching $2.34 billion.
That would help Egypt improve its global status as a fashion destination. CEO World ranked Egypt 100 out of 199 nations in its World’s Most Fashionable Countries 2024 list, published in April.
Caveat to growth
Despite those optimistic forecasts, Thabet noted challenges. “Investment … hasn’t proven easy, as investors usually look for big returns,” stressing that “it’s not impossible, either.”
One reason investments have been low is up-and-coming fashion designers usually rely on complicated craftsmanship and designs to “create a unique brand DNA,” said Thabet. “However, it may not be easy to turn [those designs] into a [mass-produced] product that generates massive revenue.”
Accessing the highly lucrative international market is challenging for unproven local designers as “most international retailers are … making up for big losses … so their buying becomes more selective,” Thabet told Forbes. “They tend to bet on brands that have performed well in past seasons … have a dynamic social media following, and are less likely to experiment.”
Accordingly, small-scale local designers have one strategy option: “First fulfill local demand,” relying on Egypt’s “huge and growing” young population, Thabet stressed.
Ready-Made Garments and Textiles Chamber head Mohamed Abdel Salam touted to local media in December the importance of localizing high-end garment production and ongoing efforts to attract investments by developing suitable infrastructure and establishing specialized labs and research centers. ”They would not only give money but also technology transfer and upskill the local workforce,” he said.
FDI vs. locals
Due to geopolitical fallout and the need for more efficient supply chains, multinational garment producers have been looking at Egypt. In January, China’s textile producer Kingdom Holding announced a $60 million plant in Sadat City to open in 2026. In February, the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones said it plans to develop a 1 million-square-meter textile freezone to house $1.5 billion worth of Chinese investments.
“China, known for its vast production and industrial capacities, wants to invest in Egypt so it can have access to European markets at zero customs rates,” Mohamed Al-Rashidi, head of the Textile Industries Chamber at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told Al-Ahram Weekly in February. Egypt also has the Qualified Industrial Zones framework, allowing tariff-free access to the United States.
State-owned Al-Ahram Weekly also reported three Turkish garment producers plan to relocate to Egypt this year, investing a combined $760 million for the same reasons as their Chinese counterparts, Al-Rashidi said.
That influx threatens the local fashion sector. “Competition [becomes] not just with fellow independents, but also with established fashion houses and fast fashion behemoths that have the advantage of scale, visibility and, often, a more extensive marketing budget,” said research from Stateless, a business consultancy.
They also “quickly capitalize on trends, deliver products at lower prices, and saturate the market with extensive advertising campaigns, making it harder for smaller designers to get noticed,” noted Stateless.
For Hany Behairy, an Egyptian fashion designer since 2000, the key to success for locals is making attire accessible in price and style. They also “need to pay attention to the finishing and use advanced machinery,” he told local media in January.
That would mean significant upfront investments that financiers shouldn’t shy away from. “Clothing and design are a resilient industry,” Behairy said. “People will never stop eating and will not stop wearing clothes.”
