Fashion
Inspired by family and a shared passion for creativity, La Bottega di Layla crafts unisex garments that are thoughtful, artful, and expressive.
Updated 03:10 pm EST, January 19, 2026
Published 09:00 am EST, January 19, 2026
Inspired by family and a shared passion for creativity, La Bottega di Layla crafts unisex garments that are thoughtful, artful, and expressive.
Updated 03:10 pm EST, January 19, 2026
Published 09:00 am EST, January 19, 2026
A few days ago, I had the immense pleasure of meeting Rasha and Diego, the founders of La Bottega di Layla. I didn’t need more than five minutes into the conversation to know that I liked them; I liked what they radiated, what they were saying, and their story. By the end of the call, that feeling had been completely confirmed.
To me, Rasha and Diego are exactly the kind of people my eight-year-old self would have imagined meeting one day: two individuals with personal histories so distant from one another, yet strangely symbiotic.
They met around fourteen years ago in Dubai, Rasha, of Egyptian origin, with a background rooted in the corporate world and a very formal fashion environment; and Diego, Italian, working at a media agency where dress codes were virtually nonexistent. From that pivotal encounter, they traveled and relocated across continents, with China becoming a true turning point in both of their lives. Along the way, they had a daughter, Layla, and met incredibly interesting people, a story I carefully listened to as a kind of live stream of consciousness and enjoying every single minute of it.
Diego quickly began to influence Rasha in matters of fashion and culture, while Rasha opened herself up and started exploring the possibilities unfolding in front of her. Between these crossings of paths, of art, taste, and shared curiosity, a seed of creation and invention began to grow. Today, almost everything they do carries the name of their daughter. I would dare to say that she is the primary and most tangible embodiment of that seed.
Along this journey, Mieke, the figure who is now Layla’s godmother played a vital role, a woman whose life is devoted to art, and whose different and deeply positive mindset quite literally altered Rasha’s brain chemistry. When the time came for Layla’s birth, Rasha and Diego returned to Dubai, and it was there that they asked her godmother to paint something, something capable of translating that moment through art. The result was impeccable. I even had the pleasure of seeing the original piece and its adaptations into different formats, one of them a collectible closely tied to Diego’s passion for memorabilia.
That artwork became the very germ of what La Bottega di Layla is today.
Rasha told me how her imagination was instantly overtaken by the idea of that painting on fabric, and how this marked the beginning of their first steps into garment creation nowadays; mostly unisex pieces, developed in collaboration with different artists, made from quality materials, crafted by trusted tailors, and entirely filled with intention, color, creativity, and that volatile, ephemeral energy that emerges when the right people come together at the right moment.
Lucía holds a master’s degree in communication management, specializing in fashion and luxury marketing. With a profound appreciation for art, fashion, and history, she has discovered her vocation in fashion journalism. Currently, she dedicates her efforts to this field in her early twenties, residing in the dynamic city of Madrid.
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