Tara Babylon Leads a Creative Masterclass

Tara Babylon, Founder & Creative Director of her namesake label, took FAD Dubai students behind the scenes of her graduate collection.

FAD Dubai welcomed Tara Al-Wali, known professionally as Tara Babylon, the British-Iraqi designer and artist whose namesake label reimagines the ancient city of Babylon through vibrant, fluid womenswear. A Central Saint Martins and Parsons alumna, Tara used her own graduate collection as a working case study, tracing its development from initial research and personal storytelling through performance-led experimentation, textile technique and final garment.

The session moved through the full arc of a design process rarely shown in full: how research is collected and expanded, how it gets translated into colour, material, texture and silhouette, and how limitations and unexpected outcomes, rather than derailing a collection, often end up defining it. Students left with a clearer sense of how an individual fashion identity actually takes shape, from raw research to a cohesive, distinctive narrative.

Equally instructive was how Tara framed the portfolio itself, not as a record of finished work, but as its own act of storytelling, one that has to communicate process and ideas as convincingly as the garments do.

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