Ahmad Alwohaibi / Fashion Designer

The turning point in my life was when I realized I would never be able to suppress my truth and pretend to be like everyone else.

And believe me, I tried so hard to fit in, or at least find a balance between my inner world and the outer. But it just didn’t work out.

I guess it never does.

A wise man once said: Progress is often marked by a slow return to the original sincerity.

Accidentally or not, Return is the 24th hexagram in the ancient Chinese Book of Changes I-Ching, describing how the way goes back because it moves in a circle.

But the movement is spiral and not round, meaning when you go back, you return to the beginning, but on a new level.

I was not aware of this connection when I turned 24, but something in me snapped right after my birthday, and I changed the course of my life literally overnight.

It was as if I just woke up one day, absolutely ready to feed my soul and forget everything else.

Because the truth was I was never like everyone else.

I had different eyes.

I asked uncomfortable questions.

And no matter how hard I tried, my sense of beauty and harmony could never reckon with something as trivial as a social convention.

Most of the time, I felt like my mind and heart were dancing on separate floors, and I was suffocating in sadness and crossness at being different in a culture that does not care about differences.

But I cared. Even if it meant going out at some point and defending it against all odds.

And that’s exactly what I did.

At 24, the year of my return to my original, invincible self, I launched my fashion label TOO DARK TO SEE TOMORROW in my hometown of Riyadh, which had never seen a fashion runaway or heard of men’s fashion.

And somehow, miraculously, my teenage fashion dream became my adult reality, which ultimately set me free from myself. From my conforming part of the self.

From my fake personality of a software engineer who secretly collects fashion books and just feels isolated.

TOO DARK TO SEE TOMORROW came to symbolize that authentic sense of isolation.

I dedicate it to all the people who are drowning in other dimensions.

People who are inspired by limits that seem to be the norm in our time.

People whose lives are a testimony to the anything-is-possible motto.

Thank you for being around.