Saudi women creatives launch model scouting startup to bridge client and talent gap

 On an ordinary November night in 2020, Lina Malaika and Farah Hammad had a conversation that changed their lives.

In the midst of the global pandemic, the pair decided to embark on a business partnership that they hoped would elevate their communities and carve out a new path for them in the business world.

Both women are established in their own right: Malaika has been in the creative industry for over a decade as a filmmaker, designer and entrepreneur; and Hammad is a fashion designer with an acute eye for color and texture and a repertoire that spans several continents.

“Basically, me and Lina are talent agents — Clay is the name under us. We are not an agency yet — that’s the plan. Hopefully, we get investors and we become a proper agency. But for now, we are two talent agents,” Hammad told Arab News.

It all started when they met in September 2020, and shortly afterwards decided to launch their business, Clay Models.

It was Malaika’s brainchild. She got her start at Destination Jeddah magazine about a decade ago and then as a creative director at TheLoftMe, a creative studio based in her hometown in the Kingdom’s coastal city.

For each of those roles, she needed models for photoshoots and found it quite cumbersome and daunting to constantly curate a database for locally-based models.

It was nonexistent at the time, she said, because many women still needed approval from their families to be photographed, and to have their images in the media was still taboo in many ways.

Malaika then decided to study film in New York and fashion in London before settling back home. She found that she was constantly faced with the same task of finding models for each of her roles and decided to take matters into her own hands. She had a Rolodex of models but wanted it to be more streamlined.