An Omani entry in H.B Best Dressed Middle East supplement! Yeey.
“The most unforgettable outfits are true manifestations of who you are” – aisha stoby
Aisha wears: Alexander Wang top, Nima skirt and dress, Piaget watch and Dibaj cuff
The Article:
The most unforgettable outfits are true manifestations of who you are,” says Omani art historian and curator Aisha Mazin Stoby. With a wardrobe that is bursting full of exquisite vintage pieces passed down by her mother, Aisha’s look is always unforgettable. Whether she’s wearing her treasured cream cashmere bouclé Chanel cardigan with her favourite J Brand jeans and T by Alexander Wang basics, or her staple Armani blazer teamed with Hussein Chalayan pants and bag of the moment, Céline’s crocodile embossed Phantom, her look is one that’s been put together with intelligence and grace.
Dividing her time between Oman and New York, where she has just completed an internship at The Museum of Modern Art, Aisha (whose mother is the Permanent Representative of Oman for the United Nations) admits that her surrounds directly influence what she wears. For Bazaar’s shoot, she was granted permission to be photographed at New York’s Leila Heller Gallery where she posed against a backdrop of work by Iraqi artist Ayad Alkadhi. Fittingly, she chose to wear a more traditional outfit by New York-based Iranian label, Nima, which she accessorised with cuffs by Dar Dibaj, her favourite Omani jewellery brand. In the Middle East, it’s the Oman Royal Opera House that inspires her style.
“Just by being inside these magnificent places you become more beautiful,” she smiles. Working for some of the biggest names in the arts, including Sotheby’s, the Guggenheim, London’s Tate and Park galleries and MOMA, has inspired Aisha to establish her own creative portals. In 2008 she set up a website for Omani art called Nahdhat Oman and following its success, this spring she’ll launch Middle East Art Now – an online art publication for the region. But it’s her role as creative director of Omani Women 2010, the first female youth-based campaign in the region that she’s most proud of. “I founded a scholarship programme for women from all over Oman to come to Muscat and learn a range of different art techniques. They were taught by leading Omani and international artists and at the end of the course they were given their own exhibition at the Fine Arts Society,” she says proudly. Helping these women to gain a sense of pride and selfesteem was very important to Aisha, for it is these very values that she believes make a woman confident and stylish.
