Shaking Up Hype Culture: How SOLE DXB Is Putting The Soul Back Into Street Style Festivals

Urban lifestyle festivals mixing music, sport, retail and cultural programming are making a mint, but their once-gleaming halo is showing some slippage as many transition from brand-backed gatherings of kindred spirits into hard-bitten hives of youth culture capitalism, bleeding teen wallets dry. How, then, to avoid an impending backlash, hitch purpose to the hype and capitalize with conscience? The team behind SOLE DXB – Dubai’s 3-day, 4-night brand-infused annual cultural event – believes it knows. Tapping the territory’s youth bulge (34% of people in the UAE are aged 25 or under) it’s digging deep to create a commercially sustainable business model to buck “cynical transactional trends”, elevating the Dubai diaspora on the same wave as other street culture underdogs. Read more at Forbes.