Bella Hadid is adorned with her jewelry...an Egyptian designer wins the Talent Award in Paris

The Egyptian designer Fatima Mostafa’s winning of the Talent Award in the accessories category at the 2026 Arab Fashion World Awards in Paris represents a new milestone in her career that began in 2017, when she founded her brand specializing in jewelry, based on her background in fine arts and her interest in handmade techniques. This honor comes in appreciation of an experience that explores the possibilities of combining plastic art, traditional execution methods, and contemporary jewelry design, through developing a special language instead of being limited to inherited forms.

Mostafa studied oil painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, which formed a background that was reflected in her approach to jewelry design, through her interest in color, composition, texture, and observing nature. In parallel with her artistic studies, she learned embroidery from her mother in her childhood, before discovering the possibility of combining the two fields and transforming artistic ideas and images into wearable pieces. The embroidery in her designs is not limited to the decorative aspect, but rather constitutes an essential element in constructing the piece and defining its visual identity.

Mustafa explains in an interview with Ofek News in Arabic that this technique allows her to deal with thread as a material that carries color and texture, and plays a role equivalent to the role of stones in some designs. This approach gives her room to explore the possibilities of embroidery outside its traditional uses, through precise details that contribute to shaping the final work.

A combination of stones, threads, and metals. Mustafa begins her designs from a picture, a natural scene, or a color relationship, transforming them into preliminary drawings and experiments with materials, taking advantage of her background in drawing to control composition and colors. In the execution of her pieces, she combines gold, silver, and embroidered threads. The metal gives the jewelry its structure, while the threads add color, texture and softness.

This process requires precision in metal shaping and embroidery, with room for experimentation and design development during implementation. It derives a large part of its visual language from Egypt, with its artistic heritage, nature, colours, light and memories linked to specific places.

But it does not seek to copy traditional motifs or re-present them literally, but rather to understand the knowledge, artistic sensitivity and cultural memory they store, and then reinterpret them within contemporary design. The rhythm of a natural scene may be transformed into an embroidered composition, or the metal may take inspiration from an organic form from nature.

She also pointed out that the “Water Lilies” collection is an example of the intersection between fine art and jewelry design, as she was inspired by the works of the French artist Claude Monet and his paintings of the same name, which attracted her in the way they treat light, color, movement, and the relationship between water and nature. She pointed out that she did not seek to reproduce a specific painting, but rather to transfer its atmosphere to different materials and shapes. In doing so, the collection marked a shift towards more organic forms in its work, by combining handmade threads, freshwater pearls and gold-plated silver.

Bella Hadid Pin As for the “Palestine Pin” worn by the American model of Palestinian origin Bella Hadid, Mustafa recalls the story of a piece she designed in 2021, coinciding with the events that took place in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, pointing out that the importance of this moment was not limited to the spread achieved by the piece, but rather was linked to the significance it carried, especially since Hadid uses her platform to express her support for the Palestinian cause. Before winning the Paris Prize, Mostafa collaborated with the Italian brand Max & Co to develop the “Elham” collection, inspired by the natural landscapes and wildlife of Egypt, whose name carried a personal dimension, as it is her mother’s name and means “Inspiration” in English.

She explains that the collaboration, during which she was the only Egyptian designer, allowed her to express her cultural identity in her own artistic language, far from repurposing heritage symbols in a literal way. “Sit with me in the grass” Mustafa’s experience is not limited to wearable jewelry, as she treats it as a form of artistic expression, without being restricted to a specific material or technique. This approach leads her to explore the boundaries between the piece that is worn and the artwork that can be contemplated and interacted with.

Among these experiences is the “Sit with Me in the Grass” chair, which combines metal, embroidery, landscape and personal memory, and reflects her interest in expanding the scope of her artistic experience beyond the boundaries of traditional jewelry.