Alamira Noor Bani Hashem On Her Success Story and The Secret To Planning The Perfect Supper Club
From disappearing dining rooms to curated cafés and inspired interiors, Alamira Noor Bani Hashim shares why even celebrities covet a seat at her table
A series of serendipitous events; that’s probably the most apt way to describe the evolution of Alamira Noor Bani Hashim’s career. “My personality doesn’t allow me to just do one thing”, she laughs. A natural progression rather than a meticulous plan has resulted in the Abu Dhabi born and bred aesthete becoming so sought after, that A-listers, royals and socialites all want a sprinkle of her Midas-like gold dust.
The now Dubai-based entrepreneur, who joined forces with her Choueifat school friend Buthaina Al Mazrui to launch a pop-up supper club over a decade ago, has seen her staging skills be transferred to bricks-and-mortar restaurant spaces and now she’s being asked to bring her trademark taste to transform homes. Harper’s Bazaar Arabia chatted with the effervescent Emirati about creative collaborations, capturing the zeitgeist and crafting the perfect soirée.
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia (HBA): When you started off, no one really knew what a supper club even was. Was there trepidation in taking the path less trodden?
Alamira Noor Bani Hashim (ANBH): I had a safety net. Believe it or not I still have a day job. I have a Masters in urban planning from Harvard and that’s the field I still pursue professionally. When we started No. 57 we thought we were just opening a café. The dinner club idea was meant to be a marketing ploy to publicise that, to get our name out there and let people know who we were. It was supposed to stop when the café actually opened, but then it became its own entity and took off on its own track.
And, from that our interior design company evolved; it was like an offshoot. We would create a fully curated setting for our dinner clubs. People loved the look and atmosphere and one of our clients gave us the opportunity to branch out into the design sphere. We have never looked back – but there was no plan for it to all work out this way.
HBA: And you’ve worked on these projects as one half of a duo. What is the dynamic between the two of you like?
ANBH: We were two very different people who started off and have now merged into one. I am the design person and Buthaina is the foodie. In terms of our personalities, we play off each other. I am the impatient, go-getter, highly stressed out person. She has the more relaxed, things-will-get-done attitude. We would drive each other crazy at first. But now we have found a middle ground. That’s our dynamic. We both do a bit of everything now.
HBA: Is there an aspect of the project that you like the most?
ANBH: The challenges connected with the staging of every pop-up dinner are exciting when they’re overcome, but exhausting. There’s always a point when we wonder: will we be able to pull this off? There are so many logistics involved from getting the power supply to permissions. But as much as I hate the stress, I love it as well.
HBA: Did you have any idea of how Dinner Club by No.57 would evolve?
ANBH: People liked the look of the dinner clubs and started asking us via social media where we had sourced everything from. We had basically just grabbed things from our own houses and put it all together. But by the third dinner, Tanagra reached out and offered us the chance to pick up what we wanted from their store. By the fourth we were getting requests to organise dinners for others as people thought we were event planners.
HBA: You started off by organising the guest list yourself but then you had a famous name get in touch…
ANBH: Christian Louboutin’s team called us in 2012. No one really knew who we were; they knew about the dinners but not us. He wanted to get on the list for a dinner. That was the beginning of all the collaborations. We never reached out, to anyone, they always contacted us. We have been doing it for 10 years. It is crazy. Our first official partnership was with Louis Vuitton.
HBA: You must be bombarded with people wanting to come.
ANBH: Everyone wants a seat at the dinner club but it’s a small guest list and it’s always very exclusive. Even now we hear of people who have followed us from the beginning and want to be invited. Luckily the café gives the opportunity for everyone to try the experience.
HBA: Social media also was set alight by your unique gatherings.
ANBH: We never hire a photographer or anything. We just take pictures with our iPhones. We don’t have a social media strategy. Instagram was just a way of showcasing what was there. I think it spread because of the people who attended – they shared and created a buzz. People would see the pieces show up on social media on different accounts. That helped create a stir but to be honest it wasn’t important for us.
HBA: How do you curate the perfect guest list? Half the fun was seeing who else was on your table and forging new friendships.
ANBH: At the first three dinners, there were only 12 guests. Buthaina and I were allowed one ice-breaker person each who we knew. The others had to be people no one had met before. We put together a list of random people. We sometimes had a category rather than a name: a poet, or a journalist. And then slotted someone in. It was just an exciting group that we curated. It was a different time then though…
HBA: Can you tell us a couple of your favourite set-ups?
ANBH: Our very first dinner wasn’t the most beautiful, but there was something so special about it. We had no idea what we were doing. But there was this moment, when we sat down at the dinner table, looked across at each other and thought: wow we are onto something. There was magic in the air. We knew our lives were going to change.
When it comes to current projects, we are working on a private home, doing the entire thing, both exteriors and interiors. We have designed every last thing in it down to the forks and knives. Neither of us has the formal education when it comes to this field, but it has all fallen into place. Over the years many people in the community have helped us. They have lent us their skills, or helped us develop the skills we need.
HBA: Has anything ever gone spectacularly wrong?
ANBH: So many times! But by the time the dinner starts it somehow falls into place. We had a dinner that was meant to be near Abu Dhabi’s Marina Mall. We had set it all up, with a generator and everything was fine. But just before the guests arrived, the operator not only broke the generator but split his lip in the process. It was pitch black and we had a wounded team member. I tried to put on candles but there was a wind tower above us so they weren’t staying lit. Guests are arriving and we were panicking. But somehow, by magic, the lights went on and the music came on. It was like we had planned a grand reveal. I don’t know how to this day…
We held a dinner for Celine in an abandoned structure and it took forever to get the go-ahead from all sides. When we turned up to set it all up, the structure had been demolished overnight. It was just a couple of days before the event. Luckily there was somewhere else a couple of doors down that we were able to use. No one even realised we had shifted locations.
HBA: Who have been your mentors during this journey?
ANBH: Honestly, I have to say my mother. And my father too. In the beginning we made everything ourselves and they would help us build, create, install, paint… Now we can afford professional help but my mum still does the table set-ups. We used to steal everything from the house!
My mother loves interiors. Our house never looked the same as she’d constantly be moving things or tweaking things to make it look fresh and different. I learnt that from her. You can do little things to make an impact. My father is so artistic. He does all the calligraphy and paintings. He is so talented.
HBA: You must have an eye for potential.
ANBH: We were naïve but it made us braver and wilder. Over the years we are not as brazen as we used to be; I don’t know if it is experience or age. Earlier, we really never felt anything was impossible. We would think about our wildest dreams and make it happen. And the funny thing is that back then no one knew us and we had no budget so we really had to fight for things. Now it is actually easier. For example, we wanted an animal skull at one of our dinners as part of the museum of natural history vibe, and we went to purchase one and it was really expensive. So my mum was like: let’s go to the butcher! We went to the slaughterhouse and the guy thought we were crazy. I pretended it was a school biology project. We went in and it was really traumatizing, they treated me like a child and they showed me a severed head with everything dripping. But they cleaned it, I brought it and it worked! For 5 dirhams!
HBA: Would you have done anything differently?
ANBH: No. Not at all. I love everything we have done. The experiences have been so different. It has been such an amazing ride. I couldn’t have even planned for it to go this way.
HBA: You were born and brought up in Abu Dhabi; why the move to Dubai?
ANBH: We always wanted a location in Dubai too. Our clientele is so different in both areas. We did café pop-ups in Dubai and saw the potential and realised it was a different ball game here.
HBA: Was it a very different project here?
ANBH: We designed the café ourselves. We knew what we needed and there were so many lessons learnt from the café in Abu Dhabi. I think we had learnt what works when it comes to functionality.
HBA: You are often spotted in regional fashion brands; what are your go-to style choices?
ANBH: Abayas: Manaal Al Hammadi, Bouguessa and AKS are my number ones. I mix and match but I would say my aesthetic is more The Row and the old Celine.
HBA: What is next in the pipeline?
ANBH: Interiors are an added focus, not our only focus. We would like to go into other areas like designing furniture but what people don’t realise is that the team is basically Buthaina and I. That is the way it has been from day one. So it is tricky to find the time to fit everything in.
HBA: What would you consider your biggest professional achievement?
ANBH: It wouldn’t be one project, but the fact that we are still on the playing field. And still scoring.
Photography: Efraim Evidor. Styling: Laura Jane Brown
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s June 2022 issue.