Karen Wazen opens her first Egypt boutiques, at The Waterway and Arkan Plaza
The eyewear and accessories brand opened at 5A by The Waterway in New Cairo on 7 November, and a second store at Arkan Plaza in Sheikh Zayed is due on 9 November.
Karen Wazen, the Lebanese-born, Dubai-based designer whose eyewear has been on sale in Egypt for five years, now has shops of her own here. The first Karen Wazen boutique opened on Saturday 7 November at 5A by The Waterway in New Cairo, and a second, at Arkan Plaza in Sheikh Zayed, was set to follow on Monday 9 November, Egyptian Streets reported.
Wazen flew in for a three-day programme around the two openings, arriving in Cairo on 8 November. The shops are run with Baraka Group, the Egyptian retail company that has carried the brand in the country since 2021. Until now, Egyptian customers found the sunglasses on shelves inside other stores; the boutiques are the first places in Egypt that carry only Karen Wazen.
The brand began in 2018 with sunglasses. It has since added optical frames, jewellery, belts and other accessories, and all of these are part of what the Cairo stores stock. According to Vogue figures cited in the report, more than 12,500 pairs of its sunglasses have been sold in Egypt since 2021, and shops, rather than online sales, made up 85 percent of the brand's business in November 2025. Wazen built her following first through social media and the blog Karen's Choice, which she started in 2016.
Egypt is a market the brand is taking seriously. The partnership with Baraka Group aims at 15 to 16 Karen Wazen stores across the country over the next four years, and new collections are to reach Egypt in step with their international and online release, rather than months later.
The two boutiques sit in two of the places where Cairo's going-out and shopping now happens: 5A by The Waterway, the open-air strip off the Ring Road in New Cairo, and Arkan Plaza on the 26th of July Corridor in Sheikh Zayed. Prices for the Egyptian stores have not been published, and the brand has not announced opening hours beyond those of the two malls. For anyone who has been buying the frames through resellers, the shops now give a place to try the full range in person, including the optical collection, before buying.