HENAN HARIT

Morocco - Clothing style and hairstyle, colorful and shining jewelry of women in the Middle East and their fabulous look always attract the attention of fashion designers. There are also local fashion designers working on their traditional clothing even if we don’t hear their names. Fashion designer Nasreen Yahya is one of them. We spoke to her about her designs. She told us over and over that she works on women's kaftans and dresses in the Middle East rather the dresses in fashion.

Each dress has its story, custom, and history

Some dresses are colorful while others have dull colors like desert colors. Some dresses have shining handiworks on them while the others have objects on their waistlines look like sword and shield. We learn from her that every color and every model of a dress has a meaning, custom, and story. Nasreen Yahya has worked as a fashion designer since 2000 and she told us the stories of the dresses she designed.

“I decided to make my dreams come true in this dream world”

Nasreen Yahya told us that she knows almost all clothing cultures of different civilizations in the Middle East and that she admires for their richness. “When I was young, I followed the fashion like every young woman. I watched fashion shows with interest. I had a great interest in western fashion. But my mother was different. She always wore traditional dresses. Since I am the only daughter of her family, my mother was the role model for me. One day, my mother gave me a needle and since that day, I have listened to the stories of how my mother’s dresses were sewn, what fabrics were used to sew them. When you listen to these stories, you see a colorful world. It is like a dream world. So I decided to make my dreams come true in this dream world,” Nasreen Yahya said.

Nasreen Yahya began to design dresses in her country and she then joined international training courses to improve her ability. “Ability is not enough to create styles; each style has its own soul. I joined training courses in France and the USA and these training courses allowed me to discover only some techniques not to have a professional competence because the dresses I have designed are already like wonders of the world,” Nasreen Yahya said that she wants to reflect the richness of Morocco in her designs.