Nashwa Mostafa's Heatwave Collection Is Jewellery for The Glam-Perched

CairoScene

16 hours ago

Nashwa Mostafa's Heatwave Collection Is Jewellery for The Glam-Perched
A heatwave swept through the city the same day Nashwa Jewelry launched its latest collection. A coincidence? Possibly. But maybe that's the point, Nashwa Mostafa follows instinct. And this season, instinct burns.
For Egyptian jeweller Nashwa Mostafa, words never merely mean their face value as she sculpts language as deftly as she does silver. With each collection, she plucks a familiar word—Rule the Game, Lucid, Alphette—and recasts it in molten silver.
This summer, she turns to what we give attention in the summer, to what we all speak about when it arrives—'Heatwave', stripping it of lethargy and reclothing it in audacious desire. 'I tied the heatwave to jewellery,' Nashwa tells SceneStyled. 'The jewellery we are dropping is a wave of gems. The heat is making you thirsty for jewellery and shine—thirsty to wear more. As temperatures climb, so does your craving to shine.'
The Muse
Handcrafted across sterling silver, gold vermeil, and high-saturation enamel, Nashwa captures sensation as ornament, and structure. Heatwave is liquid. It slips through the cracks of expectation, refusing flatness or finality. The collection plays with marine references—fish skin, cut-outs, undulating forms—but renders them in three dimensions, with weight, edge, and shadow. 'I kept thinking about fish—not as a symbol, I wanted them to be three dimensional, not flat. It's shiny, scaly, alive.'
The Mood
Beneath the gems lies a pulse of youthful insurrection. Campaign teasers parody overheated iPhones; teasing the possibility of sipping "gem juice" at your favourite cafes. "It's a fling with abandon, hot, sweaty, glorious—free of duty. Turn off your phone. Dive into self-possession." Photographer Hamed Kamel translates this vision into visuals saturated with rebellion and salt-kissed gleam.
The Pieces
The pieces feel almost fossilised—like remnants pulled from the shore.
The collection—40 pieces unveiled across five drops—debuted with seven bold declarations. Central to the narrative is an aquatic muse—reimagined fish skin, rendered in startling 3D.
The hero The Catch necklace isn't static. "I wanted to showcase the magic of the handcraft, it took a lot of trial and error," Nashwa says, her reverence for craftsmanship palpable. "It twists, swims against expectation—a structured shape born from chaos, much like the women who wear it."
The Material
The pieces are colourful acting as unconscious stars in her summer odyssey. Drenched in the chromatic intensity of a Mediterranean midsummer, the collection's hand-set stones blaze in vibrant green, luminous aqua, sun-fired orange, volcanic ruby, passion-pink, and Nashwa's signature mint.
How to Style it
'Our pieces are not minimal nor dainty; they really push you to stack—to wear three layers of bracelets, multiple necklaces, to have big earrings, and to be really popping with your jewelry'
The Verdict
In a world where minimalism has long muted jewellery's instinctive drama, Nashwa Mostafa leans into excess: sculptural forms, fish-scale textures, glinting surfaces that feel kissed by sun and skin. This is jewellery for the glam-parched—for those who crave not just adornment, but attitude. With just the first of five drops revealed, Heatwave already pulses with its own language: playful, hot-blooded, and unapologetically luminous.