Summer is actually a fabulous season in Dubai. The retailers think it is a lean season because sales are down. People, they claim, are not shopping as much and therefore, are probably out of town. But I have another theory. The people are all here but the Spring/Summer collections are not selling like hot cakes because of their designs. Spring/Summer collections are designed keeping in mind the upcoming warm weather. Little strappy tops and short skirts that blow away with the slightest gust of wind. Cutwork camisoles in pastel colours and pants made of fabric that was originally used to strain juice for babies. Low back, low necklines, high hemlines and little bits of fabric in between.
And it is not good, old-fashioned modesty that keeps people from buying these. It’s because the summers in Dubai are too cold to wear them. That’s right, it’s too cold to wear the Spring/Summer collections. While Mother Nature is trying hard to please those of us who don’t like to be human ice creams, the God’s that control air conditioners in malls, taxis, cinema halls, coffee shops and other indoor, public places are hell-bent on balancing out the weather.
Climb into a taxi, just off a forty degrees pavement and it’s like you have been hit with a snowball in the face. Go into a coffee shop, it’s so cold you change your mind and order a coffee instead of a lemon sorbet. Go into a mall and you shiver involuntarily. Not because you just spotted that flowered, yellow top that would go so well with the off-white Capri pants, but because there is at least a twenty degrees difference between the interiors of the mall and the exteriors. How then, can one wear that flowered, yellow top that has no sleeves, no back and almost no neck? With the Capri pants made of the thinnest linen on the continent?
No way, just stick with the thermals! Bring out the shawls if you put them away and go back to sipping maple crème on the sidewalk, even if a sandstorm is shampooing your hair and the sun is giving you instant sun burn!
Of course there are a few advantages to having icy cold public places. Like the neighbour who leaves open the main door to his apartment, facilitating the entry of the cold lobby air into his home and thus saving a certain amount on the electricity bill. Or taking a few days off work due to ill-health caused by the constant changes in temperature. But for those of us who came to Dubai because it is a warmer place, summers are the coldest season here.
And the worst of it all is the office where everybody has access to the temperature control. The marketing executives that keep going in and out of the office for meetings; and every time they come back from forty degrees on the outside, attempt instant cooling by setting the thermostat at ten degrees. The computer operator who spends hours sitting in one place moving only the minimal of two eyeballs and five fingers; except when he moves to the thermostat to set it on thirty degrees. Or the pregnant administrator who fluctuates between five degrees and forty-five degrees all in the time it takes her to walk three and a half steps to the thermostat and back.
In fact there’s even the theory that the fires one hears of during the summer months are no accidents. They are the frustrated responses of the working mass that is just trying to do their job in a human environment!
What do you think?