Discovering Dubai with Cadillac and Public School

Dubai is a surreal place. The speed with which the city has been built, and the reputation it has created for itself, is pretty much unprecedented.

It attracts money, and caters to it as well — you want luxury resorts, every shop imaginable, and never-ending entertainment? You’ve got it. Access to this world of more-more-more is understandably exclusive, but travelling to Dubai with Cadillac meant an all-access pass to experience the city. Flying Emirates Business Class (that bar!), staying at the Madinat Jumeirah Resort, cruising around the Palm Islands on a 90-foot yacht, and a show-stopping final meal of what felt like a million delicious courses of traditional Arabic dishes at Em Sharif were all par for the course. But the main event was the one-two punch of Public School’s Pre-Fall 2016 runway presentation closely followed by the reveal of Cadillac’s XT5, the American automaker’s new mid-size luxury crossover.

Cadillac is playing the long game with their revitalization, aiming to attract millennials by slowly tweaking their design language to create their new lineup of vehicles, spearheaded by the XT5 (replacing the aging SRX), and building up connections to the design world, particularly through sponsorship of New York’s new Men’s Fashion Week, and Public School themselves.

“If you think about the luxury consumer,” Andrew Smith, Cadillac’s Executive Director of Design, explains, “they’re fairly sophisticated and aren’t really interested in being engaged in a traditional way. It’s about resonating with their lifestyle, their choices and their personal aspirations. So you’ll see Cadillac moving into lots of different relationships that are all about basically engaging the customer in an unexpected way, and Public School in particular is just one.”

Part of Cadillac’s relationship with Public School designers Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne is supporting the duo’s presentations, whether it be in New York, or, in this case, the much more exotic Dubai. It’s a move that brings them in-line with international presentations by powerhouse brands such as Dior and Louis Vuitton, something that wouldn’t normally be possible for such a young label.

And while Dubai wasn’t the main point of inspiration for Public School’s latest collection, there was an unexpected synergy between their designs and the metropolitan city that seemingly sprang up from the ground in the blink of an eye. “Concept-wise, it matched up with the collection that you guys will see tonight,” Chow mused. “Our designs play into the contrast between technology and nature — where one ends and the other begins. And when you think about Dubai — this huge city in the middle of the desert — it really is a great example of that concept and how those two slash into one. It was a weird match that turned out to be a perfect backdrop for the show.”

Once the designs were on the runway, you could see what Chow meant. The collection hewed closely to the brand’s M.O. — looser tailoring, layers and athletic elements were all there — but the elongated shapes and sparse use of colour shared similarities with traditional Arabic dress. As soon as Chow and Osborne took their (running) bow, the centre of the stage lifted up to reveal the XT5 for the first time, in all its clean-lined glory. It has an aggressive stance that belies its light weight (for its class), and a well-appointed interior with soft leathers, grainy woods, and a new infotainment system that is leagues ahead of previous iterations.

In all, it was a strong, inspiring presentation from both Cadillac and Public School — one that proved both brands are well on their way to conquering the globe, just like Dubai itself.