CHRISTELLE EL-DAHER X CSB
We Have Arrived. We Are Home.
2025 Fashion Show
Home isn’t a fixed address. It is the warmth that shuts the world’s relentless noise. It is the freedom of existing without concealing your secrets. It is the win against your demons. It is the moment you realize that you are not alone. It is the space where you accepted your story. Home is where you healed.
One of the most powerful ways to overcome personal hardships is by unleashing creativity. It is life’s natural antidote to its most challenging experiences. Fashion holds a unique place in this dialogue. Through the choices of fabric, texture, color, silhouette, and embellishment, designing clothes has become a profound relief, a way to externalize the unspeakable, and a path of recovery for many, including Iftikhar Kanawati, Mostafa Al Sous, Jihan Azzam, and Patile Tachjian.
This year’s graduates confronted life’s most difficult conversations and intimate themes: grief, trauma, spirituality, and memory. Facing Chronic Grief, Iftikhar dealt with the loss of her mother by embracing the vastness of pain, its sharp loneliness, and surrendering to its waves. Mostafa overcame fear and the unwelcome memories haunting his dreams by questioning the dynamics between virility and vulnerability via Baw7. Jihan delved into Druze beliefs about the afterlife, exploring reincarnation and the soul’s journey from one body to another, from one Vessel to the next. Meanwhile, in Adieu B2079, Patile bid farewell to every playful detail of her childhood home, inviting us into her living room one last time.
By the end of the night, familiar strangers – across gender, age, and background – had mourned, screamed, reflected, laughed, danced, and sung together. The illustrator Nourie Flayhan was overheard saying: “What you express is what you receive. The designers poured themselves into their creativity – their fear, love, passion, and even anger – and that is why we, the audience, connected so deeply with their emotions, and in turn their work.”
To which, designer Elsa Osta added: “Lebanese are artistically talented. There is no doubt about it. Our creations are rich with cultural references. But unfortunately, the potential of our local designers isn’t fully explored yet. That is why the presence of Creative Space Beirut matters.” While art and design often remain elitist and gatekept, Creative Space Beirut is challenging entrenched systems and proving once again that talent isn’t a family inheritance rather a gift at birth that needs to be nurtured.
Sharing the collections, outcomes of creativity and healing, in a public and interactive space, transformed individual stories into collective experiences of sorrow and joy, thus fostering a stronger sense of community. The words of alumnus Roni Helou summed it best: “Once you are part of Creative Space Beirut, you are part of it forever.”
Guest Blogger: Christelle El-Daher
