It was this attitude that inspired the creation of Fashion Trust Arabia – “to support, promote and elevate emerging fashion talents from the MENA region,” says Tania Fares, who launched the initiative six years ago at the alongside co-president Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad. bin Khalifa Al Thani. “There is almost no recognition of talent from the MENA region around the world, and the FTA is the only unique opportunity for young creators to be seen and recognized,” says creative director Ruba Abu-Nimah, who was part of the jury this year. “We saw the immense creative potential of this region, often under-represented on the world stage,” Fares continues. “While the Western framework has traditionally dominated fashion, designers from the MENA region are bringing new perspectives rooted in their cultural origins, which deserve independent recognition. »

It was while studying at university, at Parsons Paris, that this feeling began to translate into Sylwia’s work, when she was tasked with integrating her cultural heritage with Norma Kamalithe creations of for his second project. The process that unfolded made her realize that, despite her desire to explore Palestinian identity, she sorely lacked points of reference from which to work: that she had difficulty finding materials that documented a rich culture; that his story had been regularly ignored, or worse, decimated. But during her visit to Palestine, a wealth of material began to reveal itself: albums documenting traditional costumes, carefully preserved by the local families she met or the traders she spoke with. After talking together, they would often, she recalls, bring out books of their own compiled images for her to photograph with her phone. At a small museum, she convinced them to let her buy a CD-Rom of a 1950s home video they were playing, with Spanish overdubbing; In a library, she found a Chinese book on Palestinian clothing that offered her much more than what she had been able to find online.

“When I was looking at all these things, I just thought: wow. Our culture is so traditional, so special, so rich, so elegant. How could I have looked elsewhere? » These images became her inspiration, woven into the way the people she met wore their clothes – and the imagery that, particularly over the past year, has become the most familiar visual of the Palestinian identity: that of resistance. “When I was doing research and talking about Palestine and traditional clothing and all that… I was just like, ‘How can I talk about this heritage without talking about the fact that it’s being erased? ? “, explains Sylwia. “My teachers and people told me: ‘Don’t get involved in politics.’ No one will hire you. Just focus. You did not enter politics. But I wonder: how do you expect me to talk about Palestine without talking about genocide?”