In 'Don’t Go to Basateen at Night' Kotn Reframes Cairo After Dark

Rami Helali, co-founder and CEO of the Egyptian-Canadian brand Kotn, grew up with a line that was meant to keep him safe: s — don’t go to Basateen at night. It sounded ominous enough, the kind of phrase designed to scare a child indoors. And yet, as these things often go, the place itself told a different story. Basateen at night was tea balanced on plastic tables, music leaking from taxi windows, friends slouched on rooftops with nothing much to do. The threat never arrived. Instead, there was a kind of beauty that only revealed itself after the sun dropped — ordinary, a little frayed, but full of life. It’s this everyday contradiction, between what you’re told and what you find, that Kotn’s FW25 collection latches onto.

“Basateen, like many neighborhoods, was seen as dangerous, a place to avoid after dark,” he recalls. “But the truth was different. Basateen was where many of my friends lived, where some of my fondest memories were made. It wasn’t a place of menace—it was a place of warmth and community. People there had so little, yet gave so much. There was a generosity and togetherness that you rarely found elsewhere.”

That doubleness — perception on one side, lived truth on the other — anchors Kotn’s FW25 collection. The campaign borrows its title from his grandmother’s words but refuses their fear. Instead, it offers the phrase as an invitation, to look again, to reconsider what beauty might reside in places we are taught to avoid.

For Helali, the answer lies in nightfall itself. “And that beauty comes alive at night,” he says. “When Cairo’s chaos quiets into a hum, and the heat softens into a breeze, the city reveals another side of itself. Streetlights cast golden halos over cracked sidewalks. Rooftops fill with laughter. Steam rises from tea glasses on plastic tables. Lovers walk down narrow alleys under strings of hanging bulbs. Music floats from balconies and passing taxis. This is the Cairo the world rarely sees — the Cairo we want to share.”

Those images form the spine of the campaign, directed by Jad Rahme. Four short films trace Cairo after dark, a city stripped of its glare and noise, reassembled as a quieter mosaic of friendships, glances, music and steam. What was once a prohibition becomes, in Helali’s words, “an invitation. To step into the unknown. To find grace in the places you were told to fear. To celebrate the humanity, tenderness, and poetry of neighborhoods like Basateen, and of Cairo itself, after dark.”

The gesture is both tender and political. To insist that the most beautiful parts of a city live not in its polished surfaces but in its shadows is to unsettle how beauty is defined. “Because sometimes the most beautiful parts of a city live in its shadows,” Helali says simply.

FW25 brings these ideas into fabric. It is a collection designed less for spectacle than for the intimacy of everyday life, garments that slip easily between function and self-expression. “At the heart of the campaign is the collection,” Helali explains, “exploring the intersections of nostalgia, function, and self-expression, it offers a season defined by eclecticism and modernity. From collegiate classics to artful minimalism, each piece channels a distinct mood while remaining rooted in timeless wearability.”

Translated into clothing, that means collegiate staples that recall youth, tailored jackets for the structures of day, and layered garments built for the looseness of night air. “Designed with everyday life in mind,” Helali continues, “the collection balances refined tailoring with layered, versatile staples for movement and ease.”

The story Kotn is telling here doesn’t begin with this season. Founded on the idea of making a perfect T-shirt—one that compromised neither quality nor ethics — the brand has grown into a certified B Corporation. Each order folds back into community: schools, jobs, systems built in the same landscapes where the cotton is grown and spun. In FW25, that ethos is not abandoned but reframed to explore the contradictions of Cairo’s streets.

Cities rarely give one story. They contain contradictions, warnings, comforts, sometimes on the same street corner. Kotn’s FW25 acknowledges that doubleness, holding both fear and tenderness in the same fabric. “This campaign isn’t about rebellion,” Helali insists. “It’s about perspective. It’s about the romance of Cairo at night — the intimacy of friendships, the spark of a glance, the quiet dignity of ordinary life glowing under neon and moonlight.”