Aimé Leon Dore opened its first Middle East presence on Saturday, May 23, with a summer-long takeover of Ounass Stage — the new in-store retail concept from luxury e-commerce platform Ounass, in Dubai. The multi-month installation is the New York brand's first physical location anywhere in the region.
The space
The takeover is anchored by Aimé Leon Dore's Porsche 911SC, parked inside the space as the visual centerpiece. The interior carries the brand's signature vocabulary: vintage furniture and objects curated to Teddy Santis's mid-century sensibility, a basketball-themed installation by artist Tyrrell Winston, and a working Café Leon Dore counter with the brand's signature La Marzocco espresso machine — the first time the café concept has crossed an ocean.
Why Ounass, why Dubai
Ounass is the Middle East's largest luxury multi-brand e-commerce platform, owned by the Al Tayer Group. Routing Aimé Leon Dore's regional debut through Ounass rather than a standalone storefront does two things: it gets ALD into the GCC luxury-customer database immediately, and it gives Ounass a flagship-grade experiential pillar to seed the "Ounass Stage" retail concept with — a model the platform appears to be building as a recurring drop-rotation rather than a single-tenant boutique.
For Aimé Leon Dore, Dubai is the most significant geographic expansion since the brand opened its London flagship in 2023. The summer window is also deliberate: the UAE's domestic luxury calendar largely shifts to Europe in July-August, meaning the takeover front-loads the May-June season when wealthy Dubai residents are still in town. Whether ALD's NYC-coded aesthetic — Yankees caps, Greek diner mugs, Boricua iconography — translates to a Gulf customer base whose own luxury reference points run through Paris, London, and Milan is the question this run answers in real time. See our previous coverage of Aimé Leon Dore's Spring/Summer 2026 outerwear for the seasonal collection traveling with the takeover.
What's inside the curtain
Beyond the SS26 ready-to-wear, the space is set up to mirror the merchandising logic of the brand's Mulberry Street and London flagships: the café up front, the retail floor flowing through the art installations, and a dedicated vintage corner that doubles as the brand's signature flex. Pricing on the apparel matches ALD's global tier — premium, not luxury — which gives the takeover a wider customer net than a typical Dubai mall pop-up. That expansion has a higher-margin counterpart at home, where ALD's SS26 jewelry now tops out at a $6,000 Portrait Link Bracelet.
The takeover runs through the summer at Ounass in Dubai.
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