Rajat, Dubai

Rajat Malhotra grew up ‘all over the world’, starting out as a film school drop-out before moving into business school in New York, which he admitted he hated. “It took a long time to figure out what on earth I was trying to do.” For 8 or 9 years, he ‘did the corporate life’ but that wasn’t for him either and, now armed with the knowledge of everything he didn’t want to do, he set up Sole DBX in 2010 with a couple of friends [Joshua Cox and Hussain Moloobhoy]. A regional festival in Dubai celebrating fashion, culture, art and design, it has evolved from its beginnings as an experimental, open event where people could come together to talk about urban streetwear, hip-hop culture, and more, to become an annual festival which, while still doing all of the things it started out with, now includes everything from live music to art installations to film screenings, and much, much more.

Let’s start with you explaining the streetwear scene in Dubai? If you’re comparing it to somewhere like New York, I feel like it’s slightly nascent, is that fair? 

The first thing I’d say is that street culture, there are two things that we see driving it. One is actual streets, and the other is brands’ participation in that culture and how they can accelerate some of that. With the streets part, it’s difficult to have street culture when you don’t live somewhere that’s pedestrian - LA is an exception, their culture was driven by surf and then skate, but in Dubai, it was a distribution led-market for many years. But, unfortunately, when you are a distributor, marketing is an obligation, not an investment. 

So that limits the culture or arrests it?

It was very limited in terms of where they were engaging; most of it was happening in sports and not really on the lifestyle side of things. What people consumed was wherever they got access to. The physical infrastructure of communications coming into our region changed the game — through telecom, IT, the internet coming, satellite TV.  And what actually happened was we were still in a censored market, but it was even more censored at that point. That was our introduction. 

How is it different today?

Today, it’s leaps and bounds beyond that because people are growing up with access to the same information that everyone else is, so consumption of the culture doesn’t necessarily look that different than you would find in other markets. It is a smaller market, so you will find less space to invest in niche areas. In the space of fashion, while now you have access to everything through e-commerce, and you can order from everywhere, fashion looks a lot like it does in other cities as well. Having said that, because it’s such a mashed-up place, all of street culture, and especially streetwear, and people’s style has its own flavour because everyone’s come from somewhere else. They’ve brought a piece of that with them, so that style meets someone’s style from Sydney or Canberra, is hitting someone’s style from Tunis or Algiers.

Dubai is an ex-pat city, right?

Right. So all of those things coming together make our scene feel a little different. I would also say that our street culture is wildly nascent. Everything in our region, once it starts growing, is hyper-growth. They don’t believe in steady, organic growth, and that comes with its own problems. Hype-beast culture comes first. 

And is that the same now?

Well, now, because the youth are sent away to be educated somewhere, often wherever their parents may be from,  this is the first time that we are seeing those kids coming back after graduating. They want to build something, and we are finally starting to see that there is an opportunity, it’s a small window, but there is a chance for them to make a living doing what they like here. So this is a new milestone for us in street culture because people are trying to open independent brands, and open skate shops, or skate parks, set up bike and run clubs, they’re trying to promote nights; so there’s a lot of optimism in our street scene. 

That sounds genuinely exciting… What do you see as the next steps for Dubai in fostering that? 

Well, I would say the infrastructure for this to get to a point where the output is on the level with New York is not there, and that’s not going to come from the scene, that has to come from the government, or that has to come from large companies. They have to invest in that infrastructure. If I’m a fashion designer and want to go in and make clothing, where the hell do I buy a zipper? Where do I buy buttons? What are my options? Those types of things, while basic, are a major impediment to what’s happening. 

I love this. Is there anything else you want to say about Dubai?

It’s important to know what Dubai means to the region. With Dubai, if you look across the cities in the six countries of the GCC, we’re not oil-rich. It was a place for smugglers, pearl divers, traders, and shipping, so it’s had to find its own way in a different way. The UAE is oil-rich but Dubai is a gateway to how trends are set for South Asia, Middle East, North, East, and South Africa, so looking at it as a gateway for those spaces means that’s the exciting part. 

That’s a great stance for Dubai…

Let’s say you are a big brand like Puma or adidas and you want basketball. In the States it’s a war of attrition, you’re not going to beat Jordan, it’s going to take a lot to make that happen, but there’s still head room in our markets, the shares are soft. There’s a lot more opportunity to have our market look different to other markets, we don’t have to mirror the US and the UK.

When you talk about all of these people coming in, that expat culture, where they bring their own things and they collide together, that feels really exciting to me, because I think we are missing that collision of cultures in streetwear culture in a lot of places in the world, and to hear it still happening in Dubai is super exciting.

Exactly. But you have to keep in mind that we’re a crisis economy. Anything goes wrong in Palestine, in Jordan, in Pakistan, in Iran; all those people come to Dubai, so Dubai means different things to people. Also where is the edge in streetwear? Where is the edge in making a t-shirt and giving it to your friends? It’s your story. The benefit is, there’s actual stories, there’s some real stuff coming out of Dubai, I mean, execution wise they don’t always land it  and that’s a problem. The area we need to improve is that it’s one thing to support communities, and be optimistic and support each other, but it’s very important that we don’t brand ourselves as a geography with low expectations. We have to lift standards and we need to make sure that we are pushing each other to be better in that space as well. That’s where there’s a lot of room.

Who do you see within streetwear or street culture in Dubai at the moment? Who is at the cutting edge of culture? It might be an individual, it might be a company...

Most people will say brands like Amongst You; they got their start back in 2014, and they’ve been really steady, and they focus on quality and simplicity, and they’ve built a good community with good ideas. They’ve been able to just make sure they’re constantly present. It’s not about how to become the biggest brand in the world for them. But if you’re looking for the cutting edge of street culture, I wouldn’t say it’s there yet, because for me cutting edge implies what someone is doing in that space is going to change the game for someone in London, and I wouldn’t say that that’s here yet. 

Do you think there’s people that are positively disrupting stuff?

Yeah. We [at Soul DBX] are. For this generation of people there, we built the scene. The reason we were able to do it, is generally we try to keep a low profile, we keep our heads down, we don’t spend too much time talking about ourselves. The show kicks ass. There’s nothing like it, and the reason is, we don’t book anyone we don’t like, we don’t bring in anything we don’t like, we don’t let brands bring in anything we don’t like, we have to like it or we have to love it; otherwise it’s not in. We’ve been lucky that we’ve got a team of people that’s got good taste and that we can be self-aware and self-critical, so we can build a better product than anyone else. 

Such important factors in making something work, right?

Right. But there’s another reason for it as well: we’re independently owned, and we’ve been fiercely independent in our approach to things, but also, our format didn’t come out of “oh I saw it somewhere, it works, let’s try that”, it was out of necessity. Why was our fashion element consumer-facing? We’re not a buyer’s market. All our buyers go to Milan, and London, and Paris to do the buying for the distributors, so why are we going to host shows there? Why are we going to host something that’s business facing? We’re not. So we looked at the things in our market that felt natural and moved with that. 

How else are things changing? 

I reckon with how fast Saudi is growing, if you look at the next 2 years, the contemporary art scene will not be separable from the street culture scene, and in that space, there are a lot of really good players. There are a lot of people doing really good work. Just look at galleries like The Third Line, who started early and built this roster of superstar Arab artists, or people who have roots in the Global South. If you look at what Jameel Arts Centre is doing, it’s incredible. If you look at some of the individual artists in Saudi, I think the collective they are putting together, just great stuff there. So we have high hopes for that space; there’s a lot to do in it.

What defines the culture in Dubai the most, do you think?

I would say the culture is defined by the mish-mash and our ability to navigate around the limitations the region sets on us. Good creativity is an output to make a living out of; you have to draw some lines, you have to have some limitations. The limitations we face in our region are not there for creative reasons. They’re there for political reasons, social reasons, whatever they are. Those limitations and watching how people still express themselves by either breaking through these limitations or working around them makes our scene unique. 

What else is influencing the scene over there? 

One of the biggest drivers of street culture and streetwear in our region is the Filipino community. When we started the show, before we had brands involved, no one would talk to us, and we were knocking constantly on Nike’s door to be like “you’ve got to bring on Jordan, you’ve got to bring on ball”, and they were like “there’s no product here, the product’s too expensive”, and what was happening is they weren’t seeing that the whole scene was being driven by Filipino ball players on courts, they had their own informal sneaker swaps and things like that, and they’d skip rent to buy the latest drop, and Nike didn’t understand that.

What are your wishes for Dubai in the next 5 years? What do you hope is going to happen?

I'd like people to take a few more risks with what their approach is, that would probably be one. Second, for the wider scene as a whole, there’s something important to know about Dubai; it’s a very strange economic environment. In Dubai, everything is top-down from real estate, everything, that’s not an exaggeration, because that’s the way that cash is coming into the economy and turning over, and so that means if retail businesses start to go bust, the rent doesn’t drop, it just stays where it is. The government is so tied into that, that there isn’t a scene for brick and mortar to pop-up properly, so I’m really hoping that that changes in the city because it’s financially unfeasible for most people to come on and try something like that, and it’s important to have a physical presence. A big part of what we love to see across street culture in Dubai is to export more of our stuff than just import, and whether that’s in the space of music, or if that’s in the space of fashion, we want people to be like “we want that person from there to come and perform here in Berlin”, for example.

Let’s talk a bit more about brands getting involved in the scene in Dubai… What are the watch-outs around that? What are the things they need to do? 

The first step would be to get your community together and ask them what they want. What do they need? Forget what they want. What do they need? And if they get it, where would they go with it? And then the brand can decide that “these 10 things they asked for, these 4 things align with our brand, let’s go down that route”. 

I love the simplicity of that, it’s like, ‘we’re not expecting you to do everything, but do something’, and involving the community, I couldn’t agree more. 

It’s so important… We do think that there needs to be some investment in the infrastructure in the city. Work with anyone. Build a damn skate park. Build something good at the level that you would build somewhere else. 

Like, don’t water it down for Dubai, just because it’s not New York

Yeah, don’t do that. Whoever you speak to here in Dubai will say the same thing. There’s the same theme: do for us what you’ve done in other cities. 

Exactly… And involving the community, what does that look like?

At a basic level, hop in the community, see what they want, and see what you’re willing to provide as a brand. If you’re asking for a list, I would say that if adidas are going to do specific things, project some level of consistency. 

As in…?

For example, if I know that Adidas is going to host a music-related event every year, if I’m an artist, I can build towards that. If I know that for the next few years this platform is there, what do I have to do to get on that stage? 

Making a commitment?

Making a commitment. That is something that adidas can do. But these one-off things, in the short term, one year, or quarterly planning, doesn’t work. It just costs them more. They have to be part of the fabric of the city they live in. When people ask us, ”what are we trying to do?”, obviously we have to run a business, and we have to make some money, and we want to do cool shit, and put on good shows; but as residents of the city, we’re trying to improve quality of life, for ourselves as well, and for the people around us. adidas have the opportunity to do that. 

And it doesn’t have to cost too much either, right?

It’s not like double your budget, it’s more: just spend your money a little bit smarter, spend with independent agencies, spend with independent players in the market, take a risk on the freelancers, help build people’s confidence that they can service you. If you’re just coming in and hiring the same random ass ad agency that you’ve got in other places, that doesn’t do anything for anyone else there, and the quality of work is not good.

You’re speaking my language, Rajat. And I’ve heard this so often over the years… If Adidas want to build a brand around the idea of enabling originality to make the impossible possible, what’s your first reaction?

Truthfully? Put your money where your mouth is. Let’s see you as a brand take a decision that’s counterintuitive to your financial goals to start with. That would be making the impossible possible, and then I’ll believe it. It’s totally doable. There’s no reason for it to not work that way. It’s such an achievable goal. 

And to do that…?

Hire people that value the things we’re talking about. Beyond that, does Adidas, or any large brand, have the ability to be a patron of the art without imposing their judgement on whether it’s exactly right or not for the brand? Because there’s a function to say that they’re here to support the community for art’s sake, like a national gallery of the art, where it’s more about art as a whole, as a culture, is good for the country, and adidas supporting this is good for the industry. So it’s also finding and empowering people locally because it’s functioning better, and it will be creatively better as well. If they devoted that energy to hiring smarter, then you’ve got people you can count on, don’t worry, they’ve got your back; that’s what they are there for as a team.

How can adidas show a genuine respect for the streetwear culture in Dubai? What can they do? How can they use their power to make a difference and invest in the culture and - on top of that - cultivate that culture?

Education. What we’re working on right now, we’ve been asked by a school, but we’re trying to see if we can scale this, to build a curriculum for high school students around Sole, and I think there’s plenty of room for brands to come in and do that type of shit. And this is not an opportunity to shove product down their throat. Really working on promoting wellness, and not cynically. Let’s really get out there and not only promote wellness, and people’s engagement and participation in it, but make sure that we are religiously measuring progress against it, because I think they would be in a position to then be like “we can tell you that we’ve made a difference, this is the metric over 3 years”. 

But educating in a way that isn’t arrogant, right? Using your power to make a difference as a brand and sharing your assets with humility, and grace I guess. 

Right. And I use the term “scholarship” broadly, but building a meritocracy within their own organisation, that’s the most natural thing they could do. Hire from the community. Be a brand of the community, by the community. Make sure that’s how you are tied in, plants and roots. 

You work with a lot of brands, what are the things they get wrong when they work with partners? 

We interact with a lot of brands, and to me, the most important thing is: don’t see us as adversaries, we’re your peers, and if you don’t see us that way then you are not hiring us correctly. 

That’s so important, the respect in the relationship. I feel that’s something Nike misses, they’re so disrespectful. 

I hear you. .. This is not complicated, use me for what I’m good at, because I’m better at it than you are. Just work with us in a way that’s collaborative. My gain is not your loss, this is not a zero sum, and if you accept that to start with, we start at a different point, and we build a better show for people together. Everyone needs to hit their commercial targets, but you want to see people smiling in the crowd, that’s why you are in the business. No one goes into a business to put on shows because it’s super lucrative, it’s a low-return, high-risk business, and you have to be completely mad to be in it. That’s just our experience, but it mirrors other people in the market as well.

You’ve already worked with adidas, what can they do to support you? Show an investment in you? Treat you like a valued member of the family? What can they be doing, or do better?

In any two-party deal, the best way for us to go in and negotiate is that we need to understand their priorities, and they also need to understand ours. We are also looking at a long-term future for the company, and if we are going to do that, we have to plan. There are two things. One is for the community overall, not for us, because they know with us they can’t do this, but one thing that they have to get into their mind is never ask for anything for free, from anyone. Make it a company baseline. “This is good for your portfolio” type of stuff is the wrong way to go in a market like ours. The second is more in line with our stuff, they already work with us, what would be different or helpful to us, give us a long-term commitment so we can plan to build a better show for you, because if we have that, then I know I’m not out there for 6 months a year selling, I’m there 11 months a year planning.

Like a 3 or 5 year plan?

Absolutely. If they have a strategy like “we’re going to be at this show for the next few years”, then I know that I’ve got something to offer them. And also, things like the skate park for example, there’s a consortium that you can build of people from the community, who can build, who are the right people to help market and design this, who are people that can help pay for it. The other thing, from our point of view only, we are not a one-trick-pony, so let’s focus on building ideas outside of that one moment a year. How do you build a relationship where it’s symbiotic for the whole year? The money is the money. In the end, we just want to do fun stuff.

What other ways can adidas use their power to a make a difference, do you think? 

In this space, what we think would be useful on a day-to-day basis from a brand like adidas is to help us become more sustainable, don’t just make it about the product. Teach us the things you know, show us best practice from around the world. Don’t roll this out sequentially geographically, do it everywhere at the same time so that we are communicating the urgency of the matter. It may take more resources in Dubai to make it happen than in London because of where the city is, but the momentum is there so hop on it, we need the help. 

They have knowledge to share and they can share it with people like you, peers and partners, too. 

If you can make that happen, we would love to be the public platform for them to try that together. Let’s talk about it in one space. Let us host everyone equally, same sized chairs at a round table, to be like “here’s the things the big players have learnt.”

It’s just a sharing of knowledge, isn’t it?

It very much is. And where we live, people don’t come to the festival to hate, they come with an open mind, with a lot of optimism. Non-cynical customers are worth their weight in gold, you don’t get that everywhere. They would be very open to these conversations.