LONDON — Hoor Al Qasimi, creative director of London-based brand Qasimi, collaborated with 84-year-old Sudanese artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq as a way of shedding light on the 2023 Sudan conflict.
Qasimi didn’t do the usual act of borrowing the prints for her collection. Instead, she fixated on a few of Ishaq’s works and drew her own inspiration from some while she plastered others as a print onto the garments.
“Ishaq did a painting called ‘People in Crystal Cubes,’ so I wanted to take this idea of crystal-ism and crystal cubes to bring it into this story. It’s more about how the artist works,” said Qasimi during her London presentation at Somerset House, where the London Art Biennale is being hosted.
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Clear crystals made their way throughout the collection via a body hardness layered over a shirtdress with a peplum; under classic shirts where they resembled curtains and embroidered onto a sheer light yellow vest imitating the outlines of a plant inspired by Ishaq’s 1998 work “My Plant I.”
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This was Qasimi’s most simple and wearable collection to date without compromising on fabrics such as denim, organza and silk, which added a nonchalance.
The presentation also made space for two other collections by Omer Asim from Sudan and Salim Azzam from Lebanon, both of whom were winners of the Qasimi Rising award, a newly founded talent incubator to support emerging designers.
“It’s such a shame that people are stuck for many different reasons. So why not share our platform? They’re able to be here at London Fashion Week because we are here, so let’s share our stage and contacts and, you know, support each other,” said Qasimi.
Azzam displayed three pieces of his work that were inspired by the small village of Mount Lebanon in Lebanon.
“The sun is always shining. There’s a lot of lemon trees and a lot of migrating birds all the time, so I just wanted to reflect this image of home,” explained Azzam of his design process, where each garment is made by female artisans from his village.
He lives in Beirut, where he has set up a small shop for his brand, but visits the 60 women that he works with twice a week.
“There’s something about this land [Lebanon] that is just so incredible, I think that people have been through so much, but they use art and creativity as a way to express themselves, so the creative scene is aggressive and beautiful in so many different ways,” said Azzam.
“The country takes a lot from you, but it also offers a lot, there’s so much culture and diversity — that’s something that I don’t think has been affected by the economical crisis and everything that we’ve been going through,” he added.
For Asim, whose brand is based in London, it was about showing pieces from his archive that he designed between 2017 and 2023 with a focus on a jacket.
His process is not traditional in the sense that he doesn’t use themes nor mood board.
“It’s the concept of using one idea and then continuously building on it as the collections go on and changing it and evolving it,” said Maya Antoun, Asim’s co-creative director.
Omer Asim might be quiet on the fashion front, but it has been running for more than 10 years and has been stocked at Selfridges for six.
Asim studied architecture before moving to social psychology and Antoun was a jewelry maker before diving into design with Asim.