Baloot, Basra, Cards… names that roll off memory before the tongue, tied to moments of warmth, late-night gatherings, and a small stage where kings and soldiers clash on a table ruled only by luck and wit.

But what if these cards looked different? What if the king wore a daglah, the jack draped himself in a Barqaʿa cloak, and the queen adorned herself with Hijazi jewelry?

In this artwork, playing cards become a canvas that redraws identity in an unconventional way, blending imagination with memory, and replacing global symbols with features that are unmistakably our own.

The Barqaʿa Cloak (Bisht)

The following image shows an illustration of a man from the central region, wearing the Barqaʿa Bisht, a traditional garment handwoven from goat wool. Open at the front, with a wide cut and loose sleeves, it was worn in winter for warmth. Among its most notable wearers was Imam Abdullah bin Saud — may he rest in peace.

The Zuboon with Thawb Dayer wa Manthoor

The following image shows an illustration of women from the western region, wearing the Zuboon, made of satin or Indian silk, worn as an inner layer beneath the Thawb Dayer wa Manthoor, which is decorated with botanical motifs spread across the entire garment. The look is completed with a head covering known as a Mahramah and a Madawrah.

The Zuboon and the Daglah

The following image shows an illustration of a man from the Eastern region, wearing the Zuboon, a long robe with wrist-length sleeves and a front opening fastened with buttons. The Daglah, which resembles it but features a closed high collar, is known as the "suit" and is traditionally worn on formal and social occasions.

Traditional attire in the Kingdom was never made just to be worn — it was crafted to impress, narrate, and record. It was an everyday art form, expressed through clothing where craft met taste, and identity intertwined with art. Our ancestors wove it with fine threads and profound meaning. Today, it stands as more than a preserved heritage; it is a living medium, open to reinvention and continuous creativity.

And this is where the designer’s responsibility lies today: not to merely reproduce the past, but to draw inspiration from it, build upon it, and transform it into an economic and cultural force. Fashion today is no longer limited to producing a beautiful garment; it has become a broad gateway for collaboration with multiple sectors such as visual arts, cinema, and digital technologies. This opens up new investment opportunities and strengthens the designer’s role as an innovator and a creator of cultural content.

From this perspective comes the artwork that reimagines playing cards through Saudi traditional attire, created by artist Faisal Alkhuraiji and supported by the Cultural Development Fund. It embodies how the beauty inherent in dress can be transformed into a contemporary art project that brings together vision, identity, and opportunity.

Alkhuraiji employed a visual language that blends cubism, with its sharp geometric lines, and surrealism, with its dreamlike dimensions, to reshape the figures of playing cards within a Saudi heritage context — highlighting the diversity of local dress and the richness of its details.

This work is part of a series of artistic collaborations by the Cultural Development Fund to support creativity and creators, reaffirming its commitment to empowering local artists and strengthening their presence as a vital pillar of Saudi culture. It comes within a broader framework in which the Fund is developing 16 cultural sectors through an integrated package of solutions that include financing, vouchers, consultancy, and capacity-building.

These initiatives go beyond providing support; they create a fertile environment for collaboration between designers and artists, where heritage is transformed into creative content, and ideas evolve into living cultural projects.