I was ten years old in a shoe shop in Beirut when I learned my first lesson in desire, patience, and the quiet kindness of strangers.

The shop belonged to a friend of my aunt's — a real sneakerhead before the word existed, everyone just called him Adel. He kept a pair of Adidas Kobe 1s aside for me all summer, the silver colorway we called "the iron," and barely took any money when the time came. I didn't know it yet, but that was the beginning of everything.

Fashion had been chasing me since before that — since ripping my first pair of jeans at eleven, since a leather blazer I wore over my school uniform that earned me a warning from the principal and a nickname that followed me down the halls. I didn't understand it then. Looking back, I wasn't overdressed. I was already choosing expression over blending in.

What followed was years of chasing the wrong question — dressing to be different, not to feel — until I put it all down and started over. I studied everything instead: the mechanics of a watch, built to outlive the person wearing it. The honesty of a work jacket, where every stitch has a reason. The discipline of Japanese design, where imperfection is part of the plan and asymmetry is freedom, not rebellion. Somewhere in all of it, one idea stuck. Decoration ages. Design endures.

Then I looked at Lebanese heritage clothing the same way, and I couldn't unsee it. The same respect for the body over control of it. The same garments built to serve, not impress — for heat, for work, for prayer, for movement. It wasn't ambition that made me start a collection. It was inevitability.

That's where Yawme's mark comes from. A daisy, the kind that grows wild across this region, its natural yellow reimagined in a purple first discovered by the Phoenicians — our own ancestors. Not decoration. A system. Every piece carries a little of that history, whether anyone stops to notice or not.

A blank canvas, reimagined — that's the whole idea. This is where it started.