Italian cotton in Dubai

Dubai, late October. Estiatorio Milos, serving Greek cuisine as the name suggests, is the restaurant where everyone goes in Dubai – assuming one can lump together under a single collective pronoun that motley crew of businesspeople from all over, semi-permanent tourists, fashion executives seeking solutions to the crisis facing Western brands, ambitious politicians and young women in revealing attire who flock to the emirate without being able to claim citizenship there, and without even being able to claim the presumption of innocence that is instead the preserve of Abu Dhabi, where local bankers and analysts raise their families, enduring an hour’s drive every morning to reach the financial centre of the Al Maktoum dynasty. Estiatorio Milos overlooks the dancing fountain of the colossal Atlantis the Royal, which has just been ranked fourth among the world’s best hotels. Looking up from the tables, one can easily see all the rooms, brightly lit and all identical in their décor, despite the architect’s attempt to introduce variety to these cubicles by seemingly stacking them haphazardly; and indeed, one cannot tear one’s gaze away: our brain appreciates symmetry and tends to seek out repetitive, predictable patterns to conserve energy; here, you risk leaving feeling exhausted. At Milos, Stefano Beraldo, CEO of the OVS group, is a regular; he even knows exactly how the fried courgettes with tzatziki should be arranged and explains this to the head waiter: with those in the fashion world, who tend to pursue aesthetics even down to the sugar that accompanies their coffee, one must be patient; and indeed the young man – everyone here is young; one wonders what an impression we Europeans must make on them with our highlights to conceal our greying hair – immediately set to work, piling sauces, fish and vegetables onto the table, arranged with grace and at regular intervals. Beraldo, who prides himself on detesting high society and having nothing in common with the luxury crowd – even though he is eroding their positions and standing with ill-concealed satisfaction – must have had to rethink many of his convictions in Dubai; after all, he has just invested 10 million euros there in the largest of his shops, spanning over 2,500 square metres in the Dubai Mall, with all his brands on display, starting with Piombo and B.Angel – the youth line, in fact – and with particular emphasis on the beauty sector, Shaka, which is seeing double-digit growth everywhere and even caused public order issues at the latest Milan Beauty Week in Via Senato – where a pathway had been set up amongst charming pastel-coloured stands – due to serial sample hoarders, amongst whom no one will ever forget a young woman who turned up with an ultrasound scan to jump the queue. It is unlikely that anyone has ever walked the entire length of the Dubai Mall, as 1,200 shops, an aquarium, an ice rink, restaurants, the famous 24-metre-high waterfall with its silvery statues of divers commemorating the Gulf’s pearl-diving tradition, and countless other attractions are simply too much for anyone. I know for a fact that somewhere there is a bookshop belonging to the century-old Japanese chain Kinokuniya: I didn’t manage to find it, dazed by the sheer number of shop windows, the music and the prospect of the kilometres I’d have to walk, but it must also be said that books aren’t the most sought-after commodity in the emirate. With a few exceptions. The day after visiting the OVS shop, which overlooks the ice rink – crowded even at ten in the morning despite tourism not having fully recovered following last spring’s attacks by Iran – I took a stroll through the art galleries on Alserkal Avenue and from there ended up by chance in the library of the Fiker Institute, a think tank on global affairs and governance founded five years ago by Dubai Abulhoul. If you were simply to explore its website, you would find the following mission statement at the top: “If the world has always had an opinion on the Middle East, the time has come for the Middle East to have an opinion on the world”; in short, lobbying in its purest form, where, amongst the 15,000 books listed – many of which are in English and very well displayed – I was able to see for myself how, in this part of the world, culture and writing on European colonialism and the West’s failings remain a constant topic of discussion. In short, we should be pleased that shops selling national brands are so numerous everywhere, and we must recognise that the soft power of ‘Made in Italy’ in these parts has a further raison d’être – political rather than economic – which, in fact, does not escape Beraldo’s notice at all: “Italy remains synonymous with good taste, design and culture”. He has brushed aside a minor incident – perhaps of little consequence, but indicative of a climate that Europe stubbornly refuses to acknowledge – in which local authorities asked OVS Kids to remove a rainbow from an advertising campaign, claiming it had become too closely associated with the LGBTQ cause – and he has no intention of producing bespoke designs for the Emirati public, as all the major brands have done over the years. Beraldo is also placing a strong focus on the Middle East – which is also shaken by tensions – and South-East Asia, which for OVS means India, and more specifically New Delhi and Mumbai. He strongly disagrees with my interpretation of the country’s historically lacklustre commercial dynamism, rooted in its rigid caste system, particularly amongst the upper classes where the sari remains the norm for any semi-formal occasion and local craftsmanship is highly sought after even in Italy – so much so that at the latest edition of Homo Faber, Italian visitors were enchanted by Sumakshi Singh’s embroidered skirts. He cites as evidence for his viewpoint the growth, even in India, of the B.Angel brand “among a population which, thanks to high fertility rates, is young and seeks easy, attractive fashion for everyday wear”. Using Dubai as a springboard, she is working with local partners on projects in Saudi Arabia, and is delighted to finally have the means to expand abroad, after more than a decade spent seeing her liquidity drained by the interest payments involved in turning round a company – or rather, several companies, as Upim must be included in the calculation, a firm that, before her arrival from De Longhi, seemed destined for bankruptcy. He has never forgotten his first visit to an OVS shop – which at the time was still written out in full as ‘Oviesse’ – nor the initial reaction from the women in his circle: “They told me that, at most, they’d buy their husbands’ underwear there.” Today, they even buy suede trench coats there. A month ago, OVS closed the half-year with sales rising to over 877 million, an increase of more than 10 per cent compared with the same period in 2025, with a positive gross operating margin; two days after our chat, the group repurchased 364,000 of its own shares, bringing the total holding in its portfolio to 5.729 per cent of the share capital – the latest step in an operation that began last June – and Milanese women are enthusiastically snapping up Piombo’s jumpers, with their unusual colour combinations: “We have increased our production of pure wool and cashmere,” emphasises Beraldo, suggesting that another milestone has been reached in this long journey towards social – even before economic – success. In a landscape populated by chief executives who string one disaster after another together, yet emerge each time with generous bonuses and a new prestigious post, no one seems to have realised the spectacular turnaround – both financial and stylistic – now almost complete thanks to this fifty-year-old who, by choosing the creative directors gi