layal balubaid
What’s your name and where are you based?
layal balubaid…. from saudi arabia and currently based in london 🙂
Can you describe your practice in a few words?
fashion that is fun and awesome i hope
How did you get into designing and fashion?
i was always into illustrating when i was young, and liked fashion in the “i love shopping” way. i didn’t really get into “fashion” until I was 14/15 (and by then had a huge wardrobe since I loved shopping). i loooved techwear and streetwear (lol) and would always be at fashion events and pop ups in riyadh. at 16 i combined my illustration skills with my love for clothes and was painting on my friend’s clothes (think sulley from monsters inc and care bears vibe….). at 17 is when i started “upcycling” and actually making my own clothes, which was when i realised that fashion and making was something that truly excited me, and i could see myself doing longer term.
You’ve said you start every piece by draping before you cut any pattern. Why begin there?
when trying to make something for a body, it is easier to see it on a body. proportions and scale can easily be quantified on a pattern but sometimes the eye can be so much quicker. it also allows me to be less worried about perfection; you can spend a while overthinking a few millimetres on a pattern only to see it on a body and scrap the whole thing. for new pieces that are still derived from older patterns, i’ll just adjust it to an ‘acceptable’ point and see what it looks like on, then remake the full pattern from that. doing things this way has made it so that i only usually need one proper toile/fitting before being confident in making the final pieces.
Your graduate collection was inspired by the Rat King, a mass of rats whose tails were knotted together and sitting in museums. You paired it with the Cat in the Hat. What drew you to combining the two?
i weirdly kept being drawn towards images of dead rats.. and cat in the hat was (and probably still is) my favorite movie as a child. the combination feltobvious but i actually couldn’t understand why at first. at the time, i was writing my dissertation on the trend of not following trends. what was mostly interesting to me about the rat king is that it wasn’t historically proven to be true, and you couldn’t prove that Cat in the movie was real either, but they were both ‘real’. that idea of that faux authenticity is what put it all together and made it make sense to me.
Speaking of cats, who’s the cat in your profile picture?
my cat habla هبلة (stupid in arabic). we found her as a kitten on top of a garbage bin near a mosque in 2020 and gave her to the feral cat that was raising kittens in our garden. she instantly took habla in and she grew up to be a beautiful independent neighborhood kitty that i was severely allergic to <3 haven’t seen her in years and i miss her so dearly.
You’ve talked about taking unseriousness seriously. Is humor the whole point?
definitely not the whole point- the point is more that it’s okay for things in life to not always be so serious. it’s okay for art/fashion to not be very deep, and it’s also okay to create things that are quite deep and want to laugh at them. i think “‘taking unseriousness seriously’ is a funny thing in itself to say, but it does just represent how i feel about the work i make.” it began as an active practice of trying to take myself less seriously, but my goal was to always inject humour into things without the humour being the only reason they’re good/interesting.
Everything you sell is made to order, by you, in London. What’s the hardest part of working that way?
it is so rewarding but i absolutely do not want to keep working that way .. i love being able to be very particular in every detail during the making process, but the repetitiveness and the time it takes to remake pieces does hinder my ability to explore newer things. i do love working on customs though- i love making something specific for someone and using new palettes that i wouldn’t necessarily choose for my own pieces. and knowing that people out there have one of a kind layal pieces that i made and may one day forget about is a very special feeling. i exist in other people’s lives !!! how incredible
The shemagh is the checked cotton headscarf worn by men across Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, an everyday garment that comes through often in your work, can you tell us how you began working with it?
i remember just asking my dad if he had any old ones that he didn’t want, and he gave me a bunch of beautifully worn shemaghs with holes in them. all i could see was a gorgeous reddish fabric with a unique drape that still smelled like him. for my BA graduate collection i just reused my existing patterns to make pieces and see how the fabric reacted. i also experimented with directly printing it onto stretch mesh (which is now my red thingsuit) and used all my scraps to make boots !
What’s the last thing you made purely for yourself?
tough one …. probably my eid dress? wanted to let myself have freedom (and joy) and have something that was specifically made to fit Me without having to think about how it would work with the rest of my pieces or fit others. i’ve only ever worn it once </3
What’s the best thing anyone’s said to you about something you made?
my favorite thing is when people can look past the obvious ‘big’ feature in my pieces and notice the small specific details (that i truly put a lot more thought to). i recently was told my work was very intelligent, and i think that’s probably the best thing i remember being said to me.
Is anything currently inspiring you?
i started a compost bucket? i think inspiration and motivation really overlap for me, so something that i feel excited to work on is usually all i can think about, and that is currently my compost.
Where can people find you?
instagram @lay.al … website lay.al …. email studio@lay.al …. or just come visit my studio ….! i love having people around
