Lebanese designer Darin Hachem is making timeless fashion sustainable

Monitoring Desk

DUBAI: Sustainability has become a hot topic in the fashion industry. As brands and consumers become more conscious about the material they use, Darin Hachem, founder of the eponymous label, tells us exactly how her brand aims to be sustainable.

“The brand’s inspiration revolves around Earth, which as a logical process brings us to thinking about the well-being of Earth and giving back as much as it gives us,” the Lebanese designer said in an interview with Arab News. 

To do that, Hachem, who was raised in Gabon, designs timeless clothes. “When we talk about our pieces, the idea is to create a design that is not subject to a particular fast trend that will vanish, but to make it valid year after year,” she explained. 

The label, launched in 2018, sources materials from existing stocks, if available, to avoid producing new materials that will lead to the use and emission of environmentally-harmful by-products.

“We actively look for high quality natural fabrics already present in the market to give them a second life,” Hachem said. “It is really important to note that dead stocks and high-quality fabrics are not incompatible concepts!”

Not only is her label inspired by her Lebanese roots and her African upbringing, but co-founder Fernanda Gallardo also incorporates Mexican elements to the designs.

Hachem shed light on her Spring/Summer 2020 collection that was “designed around the first abstract Lebanese artist Saloua Choucair,” whose sculptures compare “the Lebanese people that were and maybe still are, at some points, so diverse in terms of religions and habits but at the same time forming one single nation.

“The main (themes) are combinations of masculine and feminine with geometric but also organic shapes,” she said, adding that shades of beige are the main colors in her new collection.

Taking a trip down memory lane, the designer said she always had a passion for the creative process of fashion and for things she can do with her hands.

“My grandmother Soad used to sew her own outfits, I remember very clearly, and all the leftovers she’d keep them for me from one summer to the other for my return from Africa,” she recalled.

And her proudest moment as an entrepreneur? Hachem said it was when Lebanese fashion influencer Nour Arida, who boasts more than five million followers on Instagram, wore one of the label’s designs.

“That day was the peak of my excitement! For me it was a concrete moment of the result of the work and efforts put in the brand,” she said.

Courtesy: (Arabnews)