For Salma, known to many as La Cavalière Élégante, the horse was never a decorative emblem. It became a compass, an inheritance, a living route back to a country she had carried in blood before she fully understood it in spirit.
Moroccan by heritage and raised in France, Salma spent years suspended between two geographies. It was through equestrian culture that the pieces began to gather. “Horses helped me reconnect with my identity,” she says. “For many years, I struggled with where I belonged.”
The revelation began with her first horse. When her father saw the animal, he recognised an uncanny resemblance to the horse once ridden by his own father. That moment opened a door into family history, leading Salma to discover that her grandfather had been a leader in Fantasia, the traditional Moroccan equestrian practice rooted in ceremony, skill and collective memory. He had also been recognised by King Mohammed V.
The discovery altered the meaning of her passion. What first felt like instinct revealed itself as ancestral continuity. “I realised my passion was connected to my heritage,” she says. “It brought me closer to Morocco, my roots and the culture I now feel proud to represent.”
That lineage now shapes the way she works. In Salma’s world, horses are custodians of culture, carriers of memory and living links between generations. She owns several horses, rides three to four times a week and travels around an hour to a stable near the desert because, to her, horses need space, air and freedom beyond the arena.
“They are like family,” she says. “Even with support at the stable, I need to be present, check on them and ride them myself.”
As equestrian imagery becomes increasingly fashionable online, horses are often reduced to visual currency, a symbol of grace, status, heritage or the illusion of a life spent close to them. Salma resists that shortcut. Behind the movement, fabric and horizon, she believes, is care, repetition and accountability. For her, the image only matters because the bond behind it is real.
What Salma has built now sits between equestrian culture, fashion and tradition, shaped by a deep instinct for place. That instinct has reached high-profile circles too, including arranging Madonna’s equestrian visit to Morocco with her family.
Not a niqabi in everyday life, Salma covers her face in her equestrian imagery as a gesture of empowerment, showing niqabi women that ambition does not require surrender.
Through her travels and instinct for wearing a country’s traditional dress wherever she goes, Salma has found modesty woven through cultures. “Tradition is modest,” she says. For her, riding can be powerful, feminine, cultural and beautiful at once.
What she hopes women take from her story is the courage to follow what is truly theirs. “Inspiration is beautiful,” she says, “but every woman should choose what truly belongs to her and build her own story from there.”
This article appears in Soigné Middle East Issue 003, Setting The Pace.
