by Victor Argo – yourmiddleeast.com

Can there be a fashion designer from the Middle East without a political conscience? Probably not. A little more than one month ago Your Middle East spoke to Lara Khoury, a fashion designer from Beirut, and learned about her opinionated views. Today it’s Cynthia Chamat’s turn to give her perspective about the fault lines between fashion and politics in Lebanon and beyond. Cynthia Chamat is a self-made entrepreneur, has majored in Law and Political Science and prefers to be called clothing caterer, rather than fashion designer.  While Lara Khoury and Cynthia Chamat are very different personalities they have one thing in common that sets both of them even more apart from the crowd: their shaved heads.

Who do you have in mind when you design fashion?

I design for the marginalized. Mainly women going through post-pregnancy or menopausal physical and hormonal metamorphosis. It could be any woman really, not necessarily Lebanese, because the syndromes are global and inherent to women’s nature. But I do take into consideration Middle Eastern pear-shaped body features.However I’ve recently introduced a few unisex pieces to URBAN SENSE to test male waters and a few unisex brands with a confirmed younger crowd.

How have the markets that you create for changed over the years?

I first started off in the fashion business in
2012. In 2014, Boutique Hub was born with URBAN SENSE, the in-house
label, simultaneously. Today the market is still the same as when I started, but what has changed is customer behavior because of Internet
shopping which was not too widespread in Lebanon back then. So now, it
is just more challenging to convince my potential clients why they
should buy from my shop and support local production rather than
benefiting from seemingly more attractive offers on the net. 

A hypothesis (excuse me if I’m ignorant): in
Lebanon the clothes you design are mostly worn by Christian women. How
does the migration of Christians from Lebanon to Europe and North
America affect your business?

The question indeed does not apply to me. The fact that
my shop is located in Sodeco, which is a very central district of
Beirut – not specifically hip and happening, but very commercial – and
also a former demarcation area between former East and West Beirut,
makes it very accessible to both communities. Consequently I have as
many Christians as Muslims visiting the shop. 

Basically I am against the current trend of
designing specific garments for specific segments (cf. Dolce &
Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, etc.) because I see it as a risk of drawing an
even deeper segregation line between people.

In Lebanon, in the Arab world, and also in Europe, fundamentalists are on the rise. How does this affect your work? 

Allow me not to agree. As a Lebanese – Christian
if you may want to know – born and bred in this part of the world, I owe
it to my Muslim fellow citizens to testify that this is not an accurate
depiction of the world we live in.

I partly give it to you that there may be a rise
of ‘widely reported’ fundamentalism in our region and the world, but
there are also lots and lots of positive initiatives trying to counter
the syndrome however with no coverage whatsoever. 

Why not talk about the advances in KSA’s women’s
rights? They’re shy, true, but the younger generations know that
everything happening around them is at their fingertips, so change ought
to be inevitable.

I would like to take this interview as an
opportunity to share with the rest of the world that on Christmas of
2016, the southern Lebanese city of Saida, known to be a stronghold of
the Sunni Community and Sunni radicals more specifically, celebrated the
Christian holiday for the first time in ages as a positive gesture
towards the local Christian minority. The Christmas decoration was so
fancy it put that of Beirut to shame.

I say, for every radicalization, there is de-radicalization.

How do you deal with questions like: who will wear my designs? Who will be allowed to wear my designs? 

Questions like “who will wear my designs” are obviously normal questions any designer should ask oneself before starting the creative process.

The only challenge that I face when designing is
the actual opposite of what you’re probably thinking of when you ask me
these questions: the overall aesthetic of URBAN SENSE is not too sexy,
chic and structured of course, but not tight-to-the-body. So in a
predominantly patriarchal society where men spend on their women, not as
a sign of generosity but as a sign of strong objectification, it is
sometimes challenging to convert certain women to my style because their
men wouldn’t find it sexy enough. And this has nothing to do with
religion!

Why is it always the women’s clothes (and never the men’s clothes) that are the objects of disputes and politicization?

It goes without saying that I find it unfair to
belong to a segment that still is, in 2017, under constant scrutiny for
gender-based reasons, when at the same time a long beard, normally
associated with radicalism, gets away with it, and with a sexy name too:
Lumberjack (!); talk about (Western) double standards.

But that’s just the way the world has been since
forever. And it is specifically how societies covered or uncovered their
women that has always been an indicator of the advancement of said
societies.

You have customers in the Gulf (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) as well. How do they wear your designs?

Yes I do, and they’re very fashionable ladies.
Especially Kuwaitis – I love how they master elegant layering to a point
you would not even notice their hijab.  

Not that the hijab is not elegant. It just adds up
to the challenge of scoring the right balance of colors and layers
around your face and upper body. 

My Saudi clients obviously think the niqab is
inappropriate, otherwise they wouldn’t be my clients in the first place.
Half of them wear the hijab, the other don’t, although they’re Muslim practitioners. Most of their kids study abroad and their daughters do not wear the hijab unless in the homeland.

How much of a driver of creativity is Beirut’s
nervous energy for you? And how much are you slowed down by the many
inhibiting factors of Lebanon? 

I think we all have that love-hate relationship with Beirut, it is not even an original statement anymore.

I wouldn’t say that the day-to-day living
conditions and difficulties are a driver of creativity of their own,
because you stop noticing them when they’re all you’ve known all your
life. They do not particularly slow you down either, because that’s the
only pace you’ve known too. 

However, the real challenge is the human factor,
not the power cuts, not even the suicide bombings. It’s what I call the
‘Insha’allah syndrome’ that is very inherent to our Arab culture and
which completely drives me mad. It is almost impossible to guarantee
that the people you’re working with will meet their deadlines.

Second challenge, also pertaining to the human
factor, is that you don’t get to build solid long-lasting teams. In less
than three years, I’ve worked with more than ten tailors and three
production assistants. 

The tailors are either too old, or foreigners of
Syrian or Egyptian nationalities, transiting in Beirut. One day they’re
here, the next they call you from some Western country saying they’re
sorry. But can you blame them?

The young production assistants want it all and
they want it now. You may offer them the best career prospects in the
world but they’d still trade you for the job of a modern slave because
you’re not an empire.

Where does the ‘avantgarde-spirit’ of Beirut come from?  

What avant-garde? Have you checked the fashion
scene in Kuwait? Dubai? KSA? Teheran? Have you checked Indonesian
emerging designers? That’s raw avant-garde.

Lebanon is a relatively small third world society
that is characterized by deep discrepancies between the mid-to-high
classes and the lower classes, and where the mid-to-high classes tend to
absolutely want to differentiate themselves from the lower classes. So
we keep on our radar the slightest bud of a new trend hitting the
countries of the first world and we imitate them and we exaggerate them
in a way that we look like we too are avant-garde. When all we are, most
of the time, is mere imitators.

How are freedom of expression and freedom of speech related to fashion design? 

It goes without saying that fashion design is yet
another form of visual communication and expression with clothes,
accessories and shoes as the medium. 

Expression is inherently absolute, and absolute is
synonymous with free, except when free becomes restrictive for someone
else and therefore ceases to be so. So yes, you would rarely see a
conservative fashion designer.

Last question: tell me about your short hair. Very ‘un-Lebanese’, isn’t it? What’s your message with this haircut? 

I first shaved my head almost 20 years ago. I
think it always meant to be a sign of strength for me, the ultimate
self-challenge to detach oneself from everything, to be able to look
oneself in the eye and not be able to hide behind anything. 

Recently, I’ve gone completely skinhead. And the
message I want to convey is that in a shallow society, so deeply
attached to looks, where the average woman goes to the hairdresser twice
a week, it’s ok not to look good, it’s even ok for a woman to be
‘ugly’. For I am aware I may not have been looking my best, but that’s
exactly my point, and I mainly want my husband to get it. He’s actually
starting to find it sexy, at least the initiative of it.

I
personally have never felt as confident and sexy in my entire life. I
feel almost unbreakable, but I’m starting to sense an addiction, which
defies the purpose so I should stop soon and go back to normal
machine-trimming which I’ve been doing for almost four years now.