Nour Arida Is The Harper’s Bazaar Arabia November 2025 Issue Cover Star

Nine-to-five doesn’t really apply to Nour Arida. The model, activist and consummate multitasker is launching a new skincare brand, co-creating a pioneering TV show, jetting around the world as an Audemars Piguet ambassador – and still has time to teach her daughter all about the Spice Girls. Now that’s girl power…

Nour Arida is obsessed with the 1990s. “It’s everything, I feel like my identity is still stuck in that era,” she declares. “It’s where I feel most like myself – whether it’s fashion or music.” The Lebanese entrepreneur’s outfit for our video call is a good case in point; the oversized Nirvana T-shirt – an ode to the ’90s grunge band she still listens to – teamed with tiny shorts. Her slicked-back wet hair, make-up-free, youthful face and crossed, bare legs – sat on a bed in the Parisian apartment she travels to every month from her full-time home in Beirut – is reminiscent of an outtake from a Corinne Day photoshoot. In fact, the late photographer and Nour, 36, have a muse in common. “I love Kate Moss and I was inspired by the style of the ’90s models,” says Nour. “My room was stacked with pictures of them all; the Calvin Klein ads with Kate Moss and then Natalia Vodianova. I always wanted to be a model.”

Despite this backdrop to her formative years, Nour’s trajectory to becoming a model took a few detours. First came studying medicine; “I left after a year when I realised I didn’t want to be a doctor,” to graduating from the American University of Beirut with a degree in Economics and Math only to discover that she wasn’t interested in that vocation either – just days before starting a finance role at a bank. “No one knew I loved fashion,” reveals Nour. “It’s so stupid to say it now, but I thought I was more intelligent than that. I wanted to work in fashion but I thought it was cooler to be this girl working in finance.”

Nour was keen to please her father, who she describes as her ‘idol’ and followed his suggestion to study medicine, but the matriarchs of the family had always been more interested in style. “My grandma used to be the general manager of a boutique in the 1950s – women in the Arab region didn’t really work then – so she was a pioneer,” she explains fondly. “And my other grandma was this very beautiful woman, very chic and obsessed with Celine, my cousin worked in fashion, and my mum worked in retail – so we have this lineage of fashion. But I thought I was different.”

Finally ready to follow her true passion, Nour entered the extended family’s retail business as a sales assistant. “There were no favours, I started out folding and selling clothes.” Within three years, Nour had worked her way up to becoming head buyer, sourcing over 150 contemporary brands, travelling to New York twice a year… she was now firmly in the world of fashion.

Around this time, she met finance worker George Badawi. The couple married in an intimate ceremony in Paris in 2014 – an event which would kickstart her modelling career at the age of 24. Having recently joined Instagram – thanks to George’s insistence – she shared pictures from the wedding with her 300 followers, and when one of the pictures was reposted by a wedding account in Australia, Nour’s follower count shot up to 15,000 overnight. Ten years on, that number sits at 11 million, with 18 million followers across all her social media platforms.

George somehow convinced a hesitant – and at the time pregnant – Nour to give up work to concentrate on her Instagram account. “I was like, ‘give work up for what?’ I didn’t understand social media but George had a vision and kept talking about monetising the platform.” George was spot on. “I still remember my first paid work; four posts for Ray-Ban – I couldn’t believe I was making money out of a picture.”

Once her daughter Ayla was born in late 2015, Nour partnered with an organic baby food company, and soon the interest of international brands like Tiffany&Co., Boucheron, Make Up For Ever and Sephora was piqued. She has since had her pick of partnerships with luxury labels, but chose to become an ambassador for Audemars Piguet, calling their relationship like “a beautiful family.” A testament to this tight-knit association? For the maison’s 150th anniversary, the renowned watchmaker chose trailblazing women to front its campaign; alongside Serena Williams and Winnie Harlow stood Nour Arida.

The model is a regular on red carpets, magazine covers, fashion front rows and catwalks across the world. George, who is her manager as well as husband, has helped guide every step of Nour’s journey over the last decade and is a key partner in her next steps. In fact, Nour asks him to join our video call as we start discussing her exciting new projects; “He’ll do a better job than me of promoting them,” she laughs. She’s not wrong, Nour’s laidback demeanour is replaced with high-octane energy as George starts talking about SORBÉ – Nour’s very own skincare brand, launching this month. “It’s not the typical skincare brand,” George enthuses. “It’s an on-the-go, multi-effect skincare brand. It merges the skincare element with a make-up effect.”

Many of the product details are still under embargo owing to staggered release dates but Nour is happy to divulge a little more information: “Let’s say that you’re using a serum on your face that’s beneficial for your skin and your pores; this serum when it dries out gives a foundation effect,” she reveals. “And all of the products are designed so you can use them anywhere, not just in your bathroom but on the metro or on the plane.”

The name SORBÉ is clean and cute, but why not go eponymous to make the most of her personal brand? “I wanted something that was inclusive, the products are for everyone not just for me,” she explains. The ideology of the brand is built around inclusivity, with the campaign images showing Nour in varying emotional states. “We’re seeing more inclusivity when it comes to shape, colour, skin type, but you also have to be inclusive of state of mind and emotions,” says Nour thoughtfully. George adds: “We have never seen a campaign of a skincare or beauty brand where the woman isn’t smiling, and this is why our campaign is going out with Nour’s different emotions; you’re going to see her applying her skincare in a shop while she’s actually breaking down.”

It’s a nod to Nour’s candid openness on social media about her struggles with her mental health, the campaign slogans; ‘All the feels’ and ‘It feels and it shows’ embrace not just the face you put on, but the authentic face and emotions that come before it. George has seen that bare-faced emotion many times. “Nour has been the worldwide face of brands for years and throughout her work, she knows what she used to go through,” he reveals. “Let’s say her and I had a fight that day, or she was anxious about a test result related to her health, or her father’s health, she would show up on set and fake the smile.”

It’s very Nour, to ‘keep it real’ in every sense, and SORBÉ isn’t her only new project where she’s giving a no-holds-barred version of herself. Confidence is Queen is the model’s first foray into “experimental reality TV” working both on-screen – as the ‘conductor’ of the show – and off-screen, where both she and George are co-producers and co-creators. “It will be five Arab women from different countries, different backgrounds and statuses, but they all have one thing in common; the urgent need to change their course of life,” she explains. The chosen women are yet to be finalised but the shortlist includes a refugee, a woman unhappy with her physical appearance and another who is too afraid to move forward in a romantic relationship her family may disapprove of.

“During the first half of the series, the women will live in a ‘transformative house’ with me,” reveals Nour, who will use her own personal experiences to guide them, as well as set them up with well-known female mentors. “The second half will see them return to their lives and put their newfound confidence and self-worth into practice.” Nour is hoping to achieve a tone for the show that is fun and engaging but also has real depth, something that could help move the needle on the way Arab women are portrayed – showing a far more nuanced side.

It feels like a natural next step for Nour, whose activism has centred around huge award-winning campaigns to highlight the prevalence of online sexual harassment and gender-based violence. It’s this work that resonates most with her. “I have a voice and a platform, I want to use it to help my community, especially with everything that’s happening; the wars, the injustices – I want to give back, to try to raise awareness and educate people,” she explains. “I want to be a role model in that I want people to remember me as someone who stood up for other women. And this is what I want to teach my daughter as well, and I see that in her; in class, for example, as soon as someone is bullied, she’s the first one to stand up for them.

Ayla, who celebrated her 10th birthday last month, has become a regular on her mother’s social media accounts; be it dance videos, reading about Lebanese heritage together or styling mum in Adidas looks that throwback to the model’s favourite decade. “We’ve actually been planning a ’90s look together for Halloween,” laughs Nour, sharing that her daughter is starting to show an interest in the era. “She asked me; ‘Where were you when the Spice Girls were around?’ So, I started showing her videos of them and explained it’s when all the boy bands and girl bands started – all the icons.” She’s quite the icon herself; raised on girl power and paying it forward. Just like the Spice Girls would have wanted.

Lead Image Credits: Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet Selfwinding Perpetual
Calendar 38mm in 18-carat Pink Gold, POA, Audemars Piguet. Sweater, POA, Elie Saab. Shirt, POA, Dice Kayek. Shoes, Dhs4,020, Giuseppe Zanotti. Socks, Dhs125, Falke. Glasses, Stylist’s own

Photographer: David Slijper at Patricia McMahon Agency. Styling: Timothé Grand-Chavin. Art Director: Paul Solomons. Make-Up: Camille Lutz at Walter Schupfer Management. Hair: Jean-Luc Amarin. Set Stylist: Camille Rousseau. Senior Producer: Steff Hawker. Digital Operator: Olivier Colairo. Lighting Assistant: Maxime Brault. Styling Assistant: Fantin Heiberg. Set Assistant: Oscar Laguerre. Talent Management: Bureau des Créateurs

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s November 2025 Issue.