BoF CROSSROADS 2025: How to Tap into Fashion’s Future Growth Markets

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On the second day of BoF CROSSROADS 2025, the conversation turned from opportunities to execution.

With fashion’s emerging markets across the global south brimming with creative dynamism and hungry cohorts of young consumers, both local and international brands are looking for ways to connect and capitalise on the opportunities they offer.

Those that are succeeding are departing from the industry’s archaic system and charting new models, finding ways to empower local craftspeople and preserve tradition and establishing new design, manufacturing and retail infrastructure.

The Global Vision of an American Icon

Tory Burch is a quintessentially American brand built by, in many respects, a fundamentally American woman. The New York-based designer, who cut her teeth in PR and marketing at Ralph Lauren and Vera Wang, set out in the early 2000s to build a global lifestyle brand.

Now in the midst of what editors in New York refer to as the ‘Toryssance,’ the designer and her partner and CEO Pierre-Yves Roussel sat down with BoF CEO Imran Amed to discuss the company’s international growth ambitions.

“Going into any market we wanted to really learn the market, the local traditions,” said Burch. A key part of that is finding a good local partner to help shape and guide strategy, but also adapting shapes, silhouettes and fits for local tastes.

“Our philosophy is you don’t change the essence of who you are, but you translate it into the local culture,” Roussel added.

When Should Emerging Brands Go Global?

Today many young brands operating in emerging markets face a quandary: how to stay true to local roots and heritage while trying to break into a global market.

The challenge raises a number of questions: is success necessarily tied to global recognition? And if that is the goal, when is the right time, and right way, to make the leap?

The founder of London members’ club 1833, Sultan Al Darmaki, explored the issue with Lebanese designer and founder of Dubai-based jewellery brand Bil Arabi, Nadine Kanso, and Filipino menswear designer Jaggy Glarino.

Al Damarki recently moved back to Dubai from London after 20 years. When he left the emirate, the only way to succeed in fashion was to move to one of the industry’s capitals in Europe or the US. But now, there’s an “incredible renaissance happening here in the creative scene,” he said. More than that, the narrative has changed. “A lot of the young emerging brands, they want to build their brands in this region before even considering Paris, New York, Milan, London.”

For Kanso, Dubai is where her designs can resonate culturally. “You have to stay true to your story,” she said. “Once you start doing things for Paris or London or Milan and you lose your identity there’s going to be dilution for the brand.”

But while Dubai has become a thriving retail hub for fashion in its own right, staying local in other markets can be more of a challenge, said Manila-based Glarino. Building a fashion business can be harder in markets that aren’t yet regional crossroads.

“I’m playing a big part in pulling attention to my country and it’s very difficult,” Glarino said. On the other hand, anchoring a brand in less familiar markets provides opportunities to differentiate yourself from international competitors who often draw from the same pool of references. “There’s kind of a repetitive and echoing idea already that is very saturated in the major hubs. So I think it’s really good that we’re trying to push and look at the other way.”

Modest Fashion at a Crossroads

Modest fashion is big business. Spending by Muslim consumers on fashion is projected to hit $428 billion by 2027, marking a compound annual growth rate of more than 6 percent, according to DinarStandard’s annual State of the Global Islamic Economy report.

It’s also a fast-changing business. The sector — which encompasses hugely diverse countries and communities with different trend sources and traditions — is undergoing an unprecedented period of formalisation, industrialisation, and globalisation.

In a conversation with Forbes Middle East presenter Sally Mousa, Kerim Ture, the founder of Istanbul-based modest fashion e-tailer Modanisa, Linda Anggrea, the founder of Indonesian modest fashion label Buttonscarves and CEO of parent company Modinity Group and Rabia Zargarpur, the Emirati designer behind her namesake brand Rabia Z, explored the future of the booming modest fashion market.

Anggrea, Ture and Zargarpur all said they started their businesses because they saw opportunity in a huge underserved market. Anggrea launched her brand after spending time in a high-end shopping mall in Indonesia where seven out of every 10 women was wearing a scarf, but not a single shop was dedicated to selling modest fashion.

“We are so neglected,” said Zargarpur, who launched her label from her grandfather’s garage in Silicon Valley, and more recently moved into education as founder of the Modest Fashion Academy. “I wanted to prove a point that modest fashion absolutely can be shown on a runway.”

Now, the tide has turned. Major fashion labels have launched modest capsules and a growing number of consumers across geographies are now embracing a more modest way of dressing, irrespective of faith.

Ture, who spent a decade expanding Modanisa’s footprint beyond Turkey to markets in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and North America, highlighted the importance of supporting entrepreneurs who adhere to modest fashion themselves. “We need more brands coming from the inside… we need to bring our own brands to the world right now,” he said.

Retail Beyond Borders: How Bata Shoes Unlocked Frontier Markets

Bata, the Swiss-based multinational footwear manufacturer and retailer founded in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (modern-day Czech Republic), has been around for more than 130 years.

The company has had a global presence since almost the very beginning. Today it has thousands of stores across five continents and sells around 150 million pairs of shoes a year. It’s so enmeshed in many of the frontier markets where it operates that many of its customers don’t even know it’s a global business.

In a conversation with BoF president Nick Blunden, Bata’s chief digital and international franchise officer Roger Graell unpacked the brand’s “global-local” strategy.

The company has three pillars of localisation. First is to make sure the product is right for each individual country and culture. Second, it has a differentiated pricing strategy to ensure products are affordable in different economic contexts. Finally, it adjusts its commercial approach to ensure its content calendar and marketing aligns with local dynamics.

“We try to be locally efficient and globally relevant,” said Graell. “Everything that can be shared across different countries is managed centrally but we still have local operations in every single country.”

Beauty in the Middle East: The L’Oréal Playbook

Few industries require as much localisation as beauty. From UV indices to beauty standards to price points, what people want from their beauty products changes dramatically from one country to its neighbour, and often across different communities within a country. .

The Gulf, in particular, is known for being a lucrative region across beauty categories: according to Euromonitor International, the Middle East and North Africa markets were valued at $46 billion last year and are forecasted to reach $60 billion this year, with Gulf Cooperation Council countries driving much of that growth. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

As the world’s largest beauty company, L’Oréal has a rare perspective on how to operate global brands in local markets, running nearly 40 across 150 countries.

In a conversation with The Business of Beauty’s executive editor, Priya Rao, L’Oréal’s managing director for the Middle East, Laurent Duffier, discussed the group’s approach, from product development to marketing to distribution.

“It’s a young region… very passionate about beauty,” said Duffier. At the same time there are many and varied nuances from market to market that brands must manage to be successful. For instance, in the UAE, the population is dominated by expats and highly international; in Saudi Arabia it’s a mostly local audience that is a bit more price sensitive. Kuwaiti consumers are very trendy, Duffier added, while in Qatar it’s all about VVIP experiences.

“These countries have a lot of similarities. At the same time, when you start to put the microscope on, they have a lot of specificities,” he said. “It’s very important to be authentic and to be relevant [in each market context].”

How to Leverage Craft Authentically

It’s been a complicated year for luxury. The sector was already grappling with slowing growth, then came American tariffs.

But there’s a broader chill that’s hitting even the most established houses: the rise of consumer fatigue, and the perceived trivialisation of high-end fashion. Some brands have chosen to combat this disenchantment by doubling down on craft to highlight their connection to exclusive quality and cultivate emotional engagement.

However, authentically leveraging craft and positioning it at the core of a fashion business is more complicated than it might seem.

Carla Fernandez, the designer behind her namesake Mexico City-based brand, knows this all too well. She’s worked closely with Indigenous communities in her home country to preserve and elevate their traditional crafts, becoming an expert on the policies, strategies and relationships that an ethical craft-based business demands.

In a conversation with Kenza Fourati, the French-Tunisian co-founder of artisan-centric footwear brand Osay The Label, Fernandez discussed the outsized importance of slow fashion in a fast-paced industry.

“I’ve been angry for many years, but I’m still very angry with this perspective that it’s designed somewhere in the global north and it’s handmade in the global south,” said Fourati. The artisans “feel very unseen and invisible and that’s something that always enraged me a lot.”

Working with artisans means changing fashion’s prevailing attitude, which tends to celebrate only individual talent of designers, Fernandez added.

“In the Indigenous communities it’s totally the contrary. The creation comes from all of us and collaboration is the most important part,” she said. “For me it’s clear that the future is handmade. Because the objects that are handmade… those are objects that have a soul.”

Designed, Made and Sold in Africa

At more than three times the size of the US, and by some estimates, home to up to two thousand languages, calling the African continent of 54 countries diverse is an understatement.

But for global fashion players looking to better engage with consumers, creators and collaborators in this dynamic region — one characterised by a swelling middle class and millionaire numbers set to increase 65 percent by 2033 — the nuances of this diverse continent must be fully grasped.

With global interest in African pop culture skyrocketing, few regions feel more exciting creatively and commercially, but challenges persist not least for local industry leaders and changemakers.

Sudanese-British writer Rozan Ahmed sat down with Maryse Mbonyumutwa, the founder and chief executive of Rwanda-based garment manufacturer Pink Mango, Laduma Ngxokolo, the South African designer behind luxury knitwear label MaXhosa Africa and Nigerian businesswoman Reni Folawiyo, the founder of concept store Alara, to discuss how an emerging cohort of brands and retailers are overcoming operational challenges — from limited access to local materials to underdeveloped production infrastructure.

“I started Alara from a very emotional place because I wanted to celebrate African creators,” said Folawiyo. “It was a self-empowerment, self determination moment and I wanted it to be celebratory. So I started a shop.”

“We found a way to curate the store with objects, with fashion, with art in a way that the discovery journey kept being refreshed and it kept people’s interest,” said Folawiyo, who curates a potent mix of local, regional and global brands at Alara. “The idea of elevating, but also empowering remains in everything we do.”

Regional creatives are also pushing to bring more global awareness and value to their work. “Made in Africa in general should carry prestige. And it’s not cheap,” said Ngxokolo. “We put in our heart and souls into our work and present it to the world so it sits next to their level of work.”

The Ounass Formula for a Successful Brand Activation

Fashion loves an activation. But in a crowded fashion calendar brimming with pop-ups, dinners, and exhibitions, how do brands break through the noise?

When it comes to the GCC, Al Tayer Group-owned luxury e-tailer Ounass has the answers. Since launching in late 2016, the platform has drawn over 1,300 local and international labels, and built up its own logistical infrastructure, allowing 80 percent of its orders in the Gulf to be delivered by its own fleet. Priding itself on being globally relevant and locally led, the business has helped the likes of Skims, Frame, and Fear of God break into the region.

Pop-ups and events are core to the Ounass strategy. In a closing conversation with BoF’s Imran Amed, Khalid Al Tayer, the managing director of Al Tayer Group’s retail arm and CEO of Ounass, explained how the company keeps a tired model feeling fresh.

“Each activation has to be crazy different and it has to be big,” said Al Tayer. “When we work with our partners, we challenge them, and say, ‘look, let’s do something different. Let’s do something new.‘”

BoF CROSSROADS 2025 is made possible in part by our partners Diriyah Company, Ounass, Snapchat, Chalhoub Group, Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, Wheely and Kerzner International, owner of One&Only luxury resorts.