The Beirut fashion school making education free
- Text by Natalie Naccache
- Photography by Natalie Naccache
Najah Raya, 23, is sitting in the corner of a large apartment in Beirut at a table covered in colourful materials. She still can’t believe she’s here. A few months ago she was studying bio-chemistry when a TED Talk by Sara Hermez changed the course of her life.
“I started crying right then and there,” she remembers. “The tuition for fashion education is really expensive. I couldn’t believe there was a free fashion school in Lebanon. My boss hugged me and said, ‘go, just go.’”
The Creative Space Beirut (CSB) is a free fashion design school based in Beirut. Founded by Hermez, it provides creative design education for talented individuals who lack the resources for a degree. “Now, I feel like I’m not cheating myself,” says Najah, as she shows me her stitched coat comprised of different materials, deep purple, black tulle, and turquoise. “I’m not doing something I don’t like. I like science, but where was I going to end up? In a lab somewhere, checking urine samples. This is way better.”
The space oozes creativity. Formerly an apartment, it now plays host to nine students from all over Lebanon and Syria. On the table behind Najah sits Ahmed Amer, who is embroidering illustrations about corruption, bribery, and plastic surgery onto a black coat. Another student is cutting, one is sketching, and another is on their sewing machine. In the corner of the room, Sarah Hermez is having an outfit fitting.
Born and raised in Kuwait to Lebanese parents, Hermez studied Fashion Design, Media and Cultural studies in New York. But she didn’t just want to “make clothes for rich people” after graduating. “It didn’t make sense to me,” she explains. “My work needed to mean something to me, I wanted to mix both social justice and creativity.”
Having never lived in Beirut, but visiting yearly, she wanted to know what it truly meant to be Lebanese. “If I was going to spend my life doing this work, why not do it in my own country? A country that has a lot of work to be done.”
It was during a meeting with Caroline Simonelli, her mentor and now co-founder of The Creative Space, that the idea was born. “I was telling her what I was doing, and wanted to find a way to merge both my passions of social justice and fashion,” Hermez recalls. “She looked at me and said, ‘why don’t you start a school?’. That was my lightbulb moment. That was exactly what I wanted to do.”
To find students, Hermez visited orphanages, refugee camps, and NGOs to search for individuals who were hungry to learn about fashion. “It’s not only raw talent that we were looking for, it was also someone who was collaborative, helpful, accepting to others, no matter their background, their sexuality.”
The pilot program was initially funded by Hermez’s family, but is now backed by multiple private donors, fashion show events, parties, and a ready-to-wear label. In the coming months, CSB will be moving into its new space, which will be offered rent free by Solidere – the company in charge of planning and redeveloping Beirut Central District.
“Our goal is to expand our ready-to-wear brand into the global market, to generate enough income, to build a proper university with different programs,” Hermez adds.
“It’s a huge vision – but if you’re graduating students, the brands can grow, we want to build an ecosystem where we educate, hire, and support individuals in starting their own brands under one umbrella.”
Pivot Points: Stories of Change from Huck Photographers are shot entirely on the KODAK EKTRA Smartphone, a 21-megapixel camera with 4K video capability.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
The last days of St Agnes Place, London’s longest ever running squat
Off the grid — Photographer Janine Wiedel spent four years documenting the people of the Kennington squat, who for decades made a forgotten row of terraced houses a home.
Written by: Isaac Muk
How Japan revolutionised art & photography in the ’60s and ’70s
From Angura to Provoke — A new photobook chronicles the radical avant-garde scene of the postwar period, whose subversion of the medium of image making remains shocking and groundbreaking to this day.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Artifaxing: “We’ve become so addicted to these supercomputers in our hands”
Framing the future — Predominantly publishing on Instagram and X, the account is one of social media’s most prominent archiving pages. We caught up with the mysterious figure behind it to chat about the internet’s past, present and future, finding inspiration and art in the age of AI.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The lacerating catharsis of body suspension in Hong Kong
Self-Ferrying — In one of the world’s most densely packed cities, an underground group of young people are piercing their skin and hanging their bodies with hooks in a shocking exploration of pain and pleasure. Sophie Liu goes to a session to understand why they partake in the extreme underground practice.
Written by: Sophie Liu
What we’re excited for at SXSW 2026
Austin 40 — For the festival’s 40th anniversary edition, we are heading to Texas to join one of the biggest global meetups of the year. We’ve selected a few things to highlight on your schedules.
Written by: Huck
In photos: The boys of the Bibby Stockholm
Bibby Boys — A new exhibition by Theo McInnes and Thomas Ralph documents the men who lived on the three-story barge in Dorset, giving them the chance to control their own narrative.
Written by: Thomas Ralph
