Lebanon Opens Its First Free Fashion School

Photo: WENN

Lebanon, a country going through controversy pegged to prisoner abuse, is looking to change the conversation with the opening of its first free fashion school.

Founded by Lebanese-Armenian fashion designer, Sarah Hermez, the Creative Space Beirut school is tucked away in a weathered apartment building in a corner of the raucous neighborhood of Mar Mikhael. The area is dubbed Lebanon’s “Capital of Cool,” as bars, eateries, art and design studios line the streets.

Hermez, who created CSB in 2011, operates a three-year program out of an average-sized flat and caters primarily to students from underprivileged backgrounds. Donors and charitable contributors help to fuel the coffers needed to retain sustainability and CSB only admits four new students a year, choosing to offer a compact experience rather than overreaching and teaching students with less. “Design education has become institutionalized, and more about how much money you have than talent,” said the 29-year-old Kuwait bred fashion designer. “Back in the day, designers would go work under others and build their way up, but today without a degree it’s impossible to get a job. We’re trying to provide equal opportunities to people who don’t have the access to the elitist world of design.”

Hermez, a product of The New School’s Parsons School of Design, graduated wanting to do more than “fashion for fashion’s sake.” Armed with a desire to merge social work with her love for fashion prompted her to move back to her native Lebanon. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said, “but I knew there was so much work to be done here.” After working in a textile department and teaching preschool to Palestinian refugees, it was during a visit to New York where she had her self-professed “American light bulb moment.”

A conversation with her former professor, Lebanese-American designer Caroline Shlala-Simonelli, Hermez was inspired to marry her passions and Simonelli was eager to help. With that in motion, the blessings began to flow, as a friend of Donna Karan’s donated $100,000 worth of fabric for the future students to work with and multiple streams of donations took root from there.

Hermez and the CSB aren’t trying to just stay in one place, as the former eventually wants to grow the latter into a school for all manners of design, not just fashion. With five students enrolled for the next three months, she has already begun to see some wonderful results, saying, “They started draping and making things — it was this beautiful moment because we could see how talented they were before learning anything. That’s when we knew we had something in our hands.”

By the end of three months, the students had produced 30 dresses.

To learn more about the Creative Space Beirut school, or to donate, please check out the website here.

[via Al-Monitor]

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