Alberta Ferretti in Dubai: A Victorian Lady Goes East

Fashion weeks outside the big four are usually described in terms of potential. Dubai has stopped waiting to be described that way. On 1 February 2026, Alberta Ferretti opened the Autumn/Winter 2026-27 edition at Dubai Design District with the house's first full-scale runway show in the Middle East.

The Show

The collection, titled Sweet Escape, was designed by Lorenzo Serafini, who has led the label since 2024, succeeding the founder after forty-seven years. Alberta Ferretti herself attended. Writing for fashionotography, Christian Kim noted she “seemed touched by what she saw”.

Dubai Fashion Week ran 1–6 February at d3, co-founded by Dubai Design District — part of TECOM Group — and the Arab Fashion Council, under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

What Serafini Was After

He described the brief to Olivier Guyot of FashionNetwork, and the answer is more interesting than the usual designer boilerplate because it admits the difficulty:

It was a challenge, because we've always prepared the shows in Milan the same way. Then, all of a sudden, you change environment, you lose your familiar points of reference… But I found everyone here so supportive that I felt very welcome. For this collection, we started with the idea of a Victorian lady, and I combined that world with the very chic 1970s. I wanted this fusion of worlds to create a sense of modernity.

The show notes, quoted by Sarah Maisey in The National, framed the ambition as exploring “beauty as presence rather than performance”.

The Clothes

Eighteenth-century and Victorian references crossed with 1970s ease, in silhouettes that sat close to the body without clinging. Kim's description is precise: “Jackets featured cinched waists and rounded shoulders, creating a structure that framed the body without constricting it.”

• Tailoring: double-breasted and side-fastening waisted jackets, peplum jackets, wide pleated trousers, midi leather skirts.
• Eveningwear: chiffon and mousseline gowns, some veiled and trained; velvet caped dresses.
• Fabric and craft: plissé pleating, ostrich-feather embellishment, beaded embroidery, shibori-like finishes on leather, unfinished hems, nappa and eel skin.
• Colour: creamy oatmeal, dusty mustard, dove grey, chocolate, olive, ruby and aubergine.

Three looks did the heavy lifting in the coverage, all named by Maisey: an oatmeal plissé top and skirt with a cape-let ruffled at neck and wrists; a dusty mustard one-shouldered gown in layered mousseline; and a dove grey drop-waisted midi with pleats set discreetly at waist and hip.

A Note on What We Cannot Tell You

No English-language coverage of this show records the set design, the model casting, the soundtrack or the front row. We could have guessed at all four. We have not, because the gap is real and filling it would be fiction.

Why It Matters

Dubai Fashion Week schedules itself deliberately ahead of New York, London, Milan and Paris — an explicit bid for calendar relevance rather than a supporting slot. It has previously hosted Carolina Herrera and Roberto Cavalli, and Zegna showed in the UAE in June 2025 in its first departure from the Milan calendar.

Around the shows sat an Autumn/Winter Buyers' Programme connecting designers to international retailers, and a talks strand on sustainability, inclusivity and digital fashion. That machinery is the difference between a fashion week and a series of parties.

Serafini, in the same FashionNetwork interview, made the commercial case with unusual bluntness — and it is the most quotable thing any designer said in Dubai this season:

Wardrobes are already full of dresses; you have to give people a reason to buy. And for me, the only reason to buy is creativity. We need to be more creative than ever!

The Rest of the Week

Manish Malhotra closed on 6 February with Inaya: The India Story. Nūra was billed as the region's first AI-assisted eveningwear brand. Lili Blanc showed a leather-forward Chapter 11. The roster spanned the UAE and wider MENA, India, France, Italy, the UK, the US and Vietnam.

No Irish designer, model, buyer or publication features anywhere in the AW26/27 line-up — which is itself a small piece of information about how far Irish fashion's reach currently extends.

Hero photograph by Sirav Talwar on Unsplash. It illustrates the article and is not from the show.