When asked what the Spring/Summer 2025 collection represents, Kotn co-founder Rami Helali doesn’t reach for buzzwords. Instead, he leans into something quieter, something less marketable but infinitely more human. “The collection is not just a love letter to Egypt,” he tells MILLE. “That’s a part of it, but it really is a love letter and an appreciation of the things about our culture in Egypt, as Arabs in the Middle East, that make it so unique, so beautiful, that we often overlook.”
What he’s talking about is that elusive, hard-to-define feeling—the one you only get during those endless summers spent at home, where nothing is scheduled, yet everything feels full. “I think our ability to sit still, to enjoy—truly enjoy—slowness and human connection and the bonds that are created through these long periods of nothing and these long, unscheduled moments in our days is what makes us so unique.” And Kotn’s new campaign, “Stories Of Nothingness From Everywhere,” tries to bottle that feeling, without diluting it into aesthetic clichés.
Shot by renowned British-Egyptian filmmaker Dexter Navy and directed by Mariam El Gendyin London with an all-Arab cast and creative team, the collection was built around nostalgia, slowness, and a deliberate rejection of hyper-structured life. “When I would come back to the West after a summer in Egypt,” Helali recalls, “my friends would ask me what I did all summer, and I wouldn’t really have an answer—even though I had the best, most full, profound summers every single year.”
This time, that hazy memoryscape was recreated not in Sahel or Cairo, but in London. The choice might seem surprising at first, but it was both intentional and symbolic. “A big part of the reason why we went with London is we really wanted this campaign to be shaped, shot, created, styled—everything from A to Z—by Arab Egyptian creatives that we admire,” Helali explains. “It just so happened to be that a lot of them were in London.”
But there’s more to it. London, with its fast pace and rigid efficiency, served as the perfect contrast to what the collection represents. “We really felt like London would be the perfect backdrop to kind of highlight maybe the contrast between the two worlds—the hustle and bustle of London, and the slower, fuller way we live as Egyptians and Arabs,” he says.
There’s a warmth that spills through every frame of Kotn’s SS25 campaign. It’s the kind of softness that only exists when time stretches and obligations loosen: rugs hang over railings like someone just cleaned the house before guests arrive, hookahs bubble lazily under fruit trees, there’s an old rotary phone, a vintage Mercedes, a tangle of limbs on a tiled floor beneath an orange fan.
The collection itself is quiet, confident, and considered. Crisp polos, oversized shorts, breezy shirting—nothing too polished, but everything intentional. These are clothes for leaning back into a sun-drenched chair, for long games of cards under fig trees, for aimless drives with nowhere in particular to be. And styled on an all-Arab cast, it feels familiar.
The decision to work exclusively with Arab talent wasn’t just about representation, it was about capturing a very specific rhythm and mood. “It was really important that it came from a POV of people who understood it,” he says. “Understanding that feeling and being able to pull that out in the photography, the casting, the styling… that only happens when the people involved have lived that feeling. We wanted people who knew what it meant to have a summer where nothing happens but everything matters.”
This kind of intentionality is woven into the brand’s DNA. Kotn isn’t the kind of label that treats sustainability and ethics as a trendy checklist. From day one, it was built to serve a purpose, and that hasn’t changed. “Collections don’t impact our sustainability practices or community work,” Helali says. “That is a given. It’s always constant, no matter what.” That means sourcing directly from farms, using natural fibers with a natural end of life, and building schools in the communities where their cotton is grown.
To date, Kotn has funded and built 23 schools. Not as a feel-good marketing ploy, but as a foundational part of its existence. “We had a belief, a vision on what we wanted to see for our people and our part of the world and the belief in what it should look like and what it could look like,” Helali says. “So from day one, we’ve worked directly with the farmers. From day one, we’ve had plans to give them tools and a different path for the next generation.”
That long-term view—sometimes unfashionable in an industry obsessed with the next drop—is what defines Kotn. It’s also what makes the clothes feel grounded. “We always take that long-term view on our actions, our decisions, our involvement with our partners everywhere,” he says. “We ask ourselves—how can we make sure that in 50 years the status quo is better than when we started?”
Even the design process comes from that same place. The original idea? A perfect T-shirt. “But it was less about what that T-shirt is as a single item, and more about what it represented,” Helali says. “It’s something you reach for every day. And we wanted to build a collection made up of pieces like that—pieces we’re proud of, in how they’re made, in their quality, in every detail.”
That philosophy hasn’t shifted. “One of my favorite Kotn pieces is a T-shirt I own from eight years ago,” he adds. “We always ask ourselves: will this still be relevant in five or ten years? Will it hold up? Can you wear it over and over again?”
Spoiler: you can.
Photographer: Dexter Navy @dexternavy
Director: Mariam El Gendy @mgendy_
Stylist: Zahra Asmail @_asmailz
Production Designer: Sarah Asmail @sarah.asmail
Agency: BYNK Media @bynkmedia
Models:
Abdallah Diab @abdallahdiab
Bader Elramly @yesbaderyes
Jim Longden @jimlongden
Josephina Deng @josephina_agach
Rayane Sabbagh @rayanesabbagh
