Every chapter that got me here, more or less in the order it happened.

Where It Started

Fashion wasn't my first muse. Before it, there was Lego, then cars — car magazines, mostly, and the futile hobby of taking them apart to modify them. It never worked.

At eleven, I started ripping my own jeans and drawing on them. It was the early 2000s; the hype was everywhere, and what I learned came from television, the little internet we had, and my mother's shop in the village. That's where growing up began.

At fourteen, I moved to Beirut. I started reading, observing, understanding — and that's where I found the designer who reshaped how I dress to this day: Ralph Lauren. Iconic yet classy, street yet refined, sometimes flashy, always subtle. Mixing Western denim with a double-breasted blazer and running shoes didn't make sense until he made it make sense. That contradiction pulled me in. I was hooked.

Uniforms and Small Rebellions

Growing up, I wore whatever I was given — gifts, hand-me-downs, that one shirt your uncle wore to Sunday lunch that you quietly claimed as your own. Building a personal style wasn't the priority yet; I wore what my eyes liked first.

Around then I noticed two opposite schools of thought: classic, deconstructed silhouettes on one side, baggy fits and graphic tees on the other. I mixed both, always circling back to Ralph Lauren as my reference.

At fourteen, in grade nine, I showed up to school a little different: a leather dropped-shoulder pleated blazer over cowboy boots, worn over the usual grey trousers and striped uniform. Nothing wild — just not expected. The response was a warning from the principal and a nickname that followed me around the halls: "the fashionable," or "overdressed." I didn't fully understand it then. Looking back, I wasn't overdressed. I was already choosing expression over blending in.

In 2008, when Beckham modeled for Armani, something clicked again — to me, one of the most influential athletes in fashion, long before anyone else took that title. From that point everything shifted: my haircut, my posture, the way I dressed. T-shirts started to feel too basic. I bought my first henley and committed fully to monochrome — henley, jeans, classic brogues or a cheap pair of Converse. Too basic for some. Too classy for others. Not flashy, yet unmistakably unique.

Losing the Plot

Life shifted again without asking. Even with all the love I had for fashion, I didn't go to university to study it. I applied for medicine and got in — spent a year and a half on psychology, then somehow graduated with a degree in audiovisual production. Don't ask me why.

The truth is, growing up I was just as obsessed with chemistry and Arabic literature. I studied science in school. I loved structure as much as expression. But at sixteen, I'd started working as a camera assistant over the summers, and I got hooked all over again — like a fish in a pond, not trying to escape, just waiting for something to notice me.

At university, surrounded by people for the first time with no uniform and no costume, I felt exposed. Trying to blend in felt unnatural. Flat hats came first, then berets, caps, small accessories — subtle statements. Still, something felt off. Denim started to bother me: too common, too shared. Everyone wore jeans, so why should I? By my second or third year I made a quiet decision — I was done with denim. I went all in on trousers: chinos, cargos, corduroy, heavy cotton, anything but denim. But the field I was in was physically demanding, so practicality won. Cargos and streetwear took over.

And then, of course, Ralph Lauren did what he always does. He launched a new denim line in 2011 — camo, military references, vintage-driven pieces, echoes of a Polo line discontinued in the '90s but spoken again in a street voice. The American flag everywhere. History stitched into utility, nostalgia made wearable again. And just like that, the cycle repeated itself.

The Turn

Until around 2010, I was dressing to be different. Not to feel. The pieces didn't talk back to me — no dialogue, no emotional weight, just clothes doing their job of standing out.

What I still feel guilty about is what I did after: I donated everything. All of it. Not because I didn't care — maybe because I didn't know how to care yet. Now those pieces live only in fragments, old photos and a memory that won't let go of the details. Some garments I remember better than people.

Maybe that's when I learned it: style isn't about being different. It's about staying.

The Sneaker Shop

Back to the early 2000s, when sneakers became a cult for me. I was only ten, with minimal access to the internet, the world, information — but some things don't need algorithms to find you.

I remember a summer at my aunt's house in Beirut. She had a library, and my cousin and I spent our days glued to it — books, boredom, imagination. Right next to that library, almost attached to it, was a shoe shop. Outlets and resellers weren't really a thing in Lebanon yet, but the man who ran it, Adel, had lived in the US and Germany — a real sneakerhead before the word was trendy. He was a friend of my aunt's husband and treated us like his own kids. Two months of nothing to do — just play, repeat, wait for the day to end — so I drifted into his shop, admiring, learning. I stayed there.

That's where it happened. My first love: the Adidas Kobe 1, silver colorway — we called it "the iron" in Lebanon. Then the Nike Shox 4, metallic silver with a touch of red. You know that feeling when you see something and your brain doesn't negotiate? I must have it. I started collecting pocket money, coins, small bills, whatever my parents gave me.

Then the unexpected happened. Adel put both pairs aside for us and kept them all summer, waiting. When the time came, he barely took any money. A hundred-to-hundred-fifty-dollar pair of sneakers was impossible for me and my parents back then — but somehow, by the end of that summer, we walked out with both pairs for less than a hundred dollars total.

Looking back, that wasn't just my first pair of sneakers. It was my first lesson in desire, patience, and the quiet kindness of strangers who notice a kid's obsession and decide to protect it.

Reading Fashion Like History

After that, the obsession with history kicked in. I wanted to understand everything about fashion — rivets and zippers, placement, construction, the five W's of every piece: why it exists, who it's for, when it appeared, where it came from, and what it was meant to say. Why did we shift from classic to trashy? Why denim? Why uniforms? Why is rebellion stitched into fabric? I started reading not trends, but history — the meaning of colors, when they appeared, why we started wearing them. It all led me first to one answer: black. All black. Full black.

After a while of reading, searching, digging, I learned something that finally had a name: color-blocking. It's not wrong to wear brown with black, or navy with black. There's no crime in mixing patterns or fabrics — corduroy with denim, cotton with silk, viscose layered over wool. Accessories stopped being extras and became language: scarves, beanies, caps, felt hats, berets, rings, bracelets. I was still wearing black, but quieter now — toned down, not with loud yellow or purple, but grey in the details. And red. Always red. That color never left me. It's been with me since I was a toddler.

Some colors don't get chosen. They choose you.

What a Watch Taught Me

You know that obsession with design? I had it. I could find beauty in anything, and even more in the history behind it. But there was always a missing link. I kept asking myself: what is the perfect men's accessory — timeless, unquestioned, something everyone agrees on? It sat in our pockets long before it ever sat on our wrists. Before trends, before digital. The watch wasn't born as luxury. It was born out of need.

What fascinated me most wasn't the dial or the case — it was the invisible work. The patience required to build something meant to outlive trends, owners, even decades. That's when I understood the difference between decoration and design.

Decoration ages. Design endures.

The more I studied watches, the more I realized something else: good design doesn't shout. It waits. A watch doesn't ask for attention the way other accessories do. It doesn't follow seasons. You don't look at a watch for others — you look at it for yourself, in meetings, in silence, in moments where time feels heavy or too fast. Real design, whether worn, built, or lived, is never about excess. It's about intention, balance, and respect for time.

The Honesty of Workwear

When I stepped away from watches, I realized the logic was the same. Garments, at their core, were never about style. They were about need — protection, movement, identity. From work boots to raw denim to a canvas chore jacket, all of them were made for workers, built to last. They were never designed as fashion statements. Durability came first. Function dictated form, and the minimal design said everything that needed to be said.

Every garment started as a solution: the boot for harsh terrain, the jean for repetition and labor, the jacket for protection against time, weather, and wear. And just like watches, the beauty wasn't loud — it was honest. The stitching, the fabric weight, the way pieces aged instead of expiring, all signs of design that respected time. That's when clothes stopped being outfits for me. They became objects — pieces that make sense, even when no one is looking.

Japan

Learning about Japanese culture felt strangely familiar — not visually at first, but philosophically. In Japan, clothing is not decoration. It's discipline: respect for form, fabric, and time. Garments are built to last, to age, to soften with use. Nothing is rushed or wasted. Even imperfection is part of the design.

It was impossible not to arrive at Issey Miyake, father of the asymmetrical silhouette. He didn't design clothes to sit still — he designed them to move, to fold, to breathe with the body. Fabric became architecture. Asymmetry became freedom rather than rebellion. After him came Yohji Yamamoto, who turned imbalance into emotion, darkness into softness, absence into presence. Their work was never about trends. It was about questioning why clothes exist at all.

Coming Home

When I looked closer, I saw the same values in Lebanese heritage clothing. Pieces made for daily life — for heat, work, prayer, movement. Simple cuts, loose silhouettes that respect the body rather than control it. In both cultures, clothing wasn't meant to impress. It was meant to serve. A garment was an extension of rhythm — of how people lived, sat, walked, worked, gathered.

Silence exists in both. And maybe that's the deepest similarity: both cultures understand that real beauty doesn't need permission. It reveals itself slowly, through use, time, and care.

The Collection

Let's go back to the day I decided to go further and create a first collection. It wasn't about ambition. It was about inevitability. After everything I'd studied — watches, garments, culture, systems — something clicked when I returned to the roots. I could no longer unsee the beauty of Lebanese traditional wear.

People questioned it immediately. Why go that way? You already have a classical style — why look backward? But after reading deeply into Lebanese heritage fashion, that familiar feeling came back — the same one I'd felt discovering Japanese design philosophy. The similarity was clear to me, invisible to everyone else. That's when I understood what Yohji had done: he took traditional Japanese clothing and reshaped it through asymmetry, using a language Issey had already mastered. And I realized: this is exactly what I wanted to do with Lebanese heritage garments.

So I did it. I applied to my own culture what one of my idols had done to his. And that's when the misunderstanding began. In fashion and in design, being misunderstood is almost a requirement. A designer friend told me, after I launched the collection: "We think we design for people like us. But we're wrong. First, you have to find common ground." Statement pieces are healthy, necessary — but what I'd created was quickly labeled as boho, or what people now casually call nomad fashion. As if it were an already exhausted aesthetic. As if the market had heard this story before. They hadn't heard the story at all.

No one wanted explanations. They wanted the garments to speak. So I let them. I embedded the daisy — a flower that grows naturally in our region — and transformed its yellow bloom into purple, a color discovered and mastered by us, the Phoenicians. I rethought identity the way the greats do: by shifting logos, placements, materials, meaning. I introduced three emblems alongside the main logo, one centered on the daisy as a living, bouncing form. Every two pieces carried a different label.

Not decoration. A system.

The garments were always speaking. The real question was who was ready to listen.

Silence

And then something else happened. Not rejection or acceptance. Just silence — the kind that makes you question everything. Was I too early? Was I unclear? Or was I simply speaking a language people weren't ready to hear?

Because the intention was never costume. Never nostalgia. Never folklore for the sake of folklore. It was structure, rhythm, and respect. I wasn't trying to modernize heritage. I was trying to reveal what was already modern in it — the looseness, the airflow, the neutrality of form. The way garments didn't dictate gender, but movement.