After he graduated in 2011, Ahmed started accepting styling projects on a freelance basis with local fashion magazines. He was well-known by most of them thanks to his fashion blog Nomad - http://nomadstyle.tumblr.com/ - which he started in his senior year with classmate Carla Mallari. Ahmed left Nomad just before graduating so he could focus on launching his own ready-to-wear brand WhiteStain which he did in October of that year.
“The name was chosen because my first collection involved me experimenting with different prints and accessories on a plain white canvas (T-shirts). White is a color I have to include in all my collections, without that color, I think I would probably lose my signature touch.” The collection turned out to be one of the first T-shirt collections to come out of Doha, and soon sold all over the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council countries).
“I was then commissioned to create an exclusive T-shirt collection for Impression Boutique at The Pearl Qatar, which again sold out very quickly,” comments Ahmed. He was subsequently approached by the W Hotel in Qatar and, along with classmate Selina Farooqui, created the exclusive Wahm collection for the reopening of the W’s iconic bar of the same name. He accepts custom orders from his regular clients, and serves also as a monthly columnist for GLAM, a fashion magazine based in Qatar.
Says Ahmed, “It’s definitely a great experience working for yourself; people tend to recognize you and your work more, so it becomes more personal.. Also, working for yourself you have no choice but to learn to be disciplined. You report to yourself, and you pay the price for even one small mistake. I have grown a lot from working for myself and I’ve met a lot of influential people who’ve encouraged me.”
Ahmed recently relocated to Dubai, a move that was pushed for by his Emirati clients. He is in the midst of releasing a new collection, ‘The Desert Collection’, inspired by the GCC.