Suspended between past and present.
I’ve always been drawn to this moment, when Western tailoring first intersected with Egyptian identity. It arrived with structure and precision, brought by European artisans, but it didn’t remain as it was. It was absorbed, reinterpreted, and slowly became part of everyday lifemoving from Aristocracy to the Effendi, and beyond.
This silhouette comes from that reflection.
The oversized maxi coat holds the discipline of tailoring ,the sharpness, the architecture,but I don’t let it stay intact. I shift the proportions, I disrupt the balance, I let it exist in a state that feels slightly unresolved ,almost suspended.
When I look at archival images from that era, I don’t see the past as something to recreate. I see the beginning of a language that kept evolving.
What once symbolized power and modernity is no longer fixed.
It can be softened, questioned, reassembled.
For me, tailoring is not about preservation.
It’s about transformation.
A continuous reconstruction of identity, through form.
Whirling is not dancing, it is remembering what the body already knows.
We are all circling .
Suspended between stillness and motion
Resistance dissolves , so our spirit remains free .
If you live in an old Downtown Cairo building,
going back home has a warm sound you know by heart.
Wooden elevators, black iron doors,footsteps , traffic horns .The familiar voice of Umm Kulthum drifting from nearby cafés or open windows,
quietly holding the noises in balance .
That atmosphere becomes form:
clothes that feel intimately lived in, not styled.
Whirling is not dancing, it is remembering what the body already knows.
We are all circling .
Suspended between stillness and motion
Resistance dissolves , so our spirit remains free .
Space is the element that allows us to set our boundaries ,not only physical, but mental and emotional. It is the space around us that creates freedom, clarity, and comfort. When space exists, even suspension feels held rather than lost. When it disappears, we feel the weight of everything.
In every Cairo alley, there is a familiar rhythm
the sharp grind of metal against metal,
a heritage sound that shapes the city’s memory.Metal is part of our cultural landscape.A texture, a tone, a pulse.
And I’ve always believed that memory doesn’t store only what we see ,it stores what we hear.
These sounds return later as imagination.
As form.
As material.
This is how the street’s metal grinders were translated into “Patina “
a vegan leather surface encoded as a DINA SHAKER brand signature.
SUSPENDED-fw26/DinaShaker
#dinashaker
Downtown Cairo has a sound I know by heart ,
the creak of old wooden elevators,the slide of black iron doors,balcony fences breathing with the wind. And then the Azan rises ,cutting through traffic horns, footsteps, engines,mixing the sacred with the everyday.
And somewhere in between,
the voice of Umm Kulthum plays endlessly
from cafés, taxis, workshops and open windows.
Sounds that stretch time
and make the city feel suspended.
These memories turn into texture for me: patina browns, sculptural blacks,
silhouettes that carry the weight of old stone façades.
Downtown has a scent too
ahwa, tobacco, warm marble staircases.That atmosphere becomes form: earthy surfaces, raw edges,
clothes that feel lived in, not styled.
This is how I read the city.
SUSPENDED-fw26
#dinashaker
The choreography in this moment emerged from the idea of juggling balance ,
the movement we all perform in suspended moments,
trying to keep going while held by an invisible force that defies gravity.
In this space, @karimamansour_official movement became the soul of the garments.
And the silhouette layered, fringed, elongated
became the body of her movement.
