NEW IN: Dancer & Model Nada Abadir Launches Nuu Studio in Cairo

After years on set and on stage, model-dancer Nada Abadir is pivoting from wearing clothes to making them – slowly, experimentally, and very Cairo. Her new venture, Nuu Studio, doesn’t arrive with a runway or explicit brand book so much as a mood board in motion: swatches crushed in the hand, pleats tested on a dance, textures that register first on the skin.

Abadir’s approach is iterative rather than industrial. She starts with the feel, how does this sit on the hip, how does it break when you turn? Being a dancer is the core of her approach: “How [clothing] feels on your body matters. Some days a flowy piece literally makes me dance differently; the cut changes my mood.” Visually, that instinct shows up in layers: Like ballet class, you show up wrapped in layers and shed them off as your body warms up, forms that shift and recalibrate as you move. As someone not formally trained in fashion, Nuu Studio is her place of experimentation and discovery, a way to re-enchant her relationship with the industry. As a model moving from shoot to shoot, seeing the excess waste in the industry and noticing the gap between how a garment feels and how it’s pictured, she wanted to reframe what clothing means to her.

The design process happens in conversation with local factories and craft workers, where learning is part of the brief: finding the right pleat density, the right partner. When one factory wasn’t the right fit she had to search, word of mouth mixed with a bit of serendipity to find her new partner. As Nada shares with Scene Styled, “I kept chasing pleats through word of mouth until I found this old pleating workshop – honestly a small little room – but there was a wall of textures. That’s where something clicked.” It’s fashion by rehearsal, not sprint – shooting pieces to learn how they read on the body before deciding whether to scale, if at all.There’s also a clear Egyptian throughline. Nuu’s behind-the-scenes videos, choosing fabrics in bustling shops, cutting samples at small tables, testing drapes in natural light, feel grounded in the city’s art scene that Abadir moves through. The references are local but not literal: clean, layered forms; plain fabrics turned into topographies through pleats and textures.

You can see the dancer in the cuts. Nothing is precious to the point of stiffness; pieces invite motion. It’s body-led design, made to be lived in, not just posted.Nuu Studio isn’t pitching itself as the next big brand so much as a studio to grow with - craftsmanship, care, and timeless design over urgency. “I’m not rushed. I’m not starting a brand just to sell. I’d rather spend on the product and the people, pay the pattern-maker properly, rather than pour money into content.”
That restraint is the point. In a market addicted to first drops and fast expansion, Abadir is choosing a slower grammar: build trust with collaborators, test in public, release when it feels right.