Cynthia Merhej’s model Renaissance Renaissance is all about rebirth. When Merhej began the label from her residence metropolis of Lebanon in 2016, the second was a little bit of a renaissance for the designer herself. Merhej grew up in her mom’s atelier, however as she reached her teenage years, a way of disillusionment set in—she struggled to equate her homegrown view of the business with the better trend world, which thrived outdoors of Lebanon’s borders. “I had a bizarre schism rising up, seeing trend in these two very other ways,” she tells W over Zoom. After heading to London for varsity, set on following a distinct inventive path, she discovered herself returning to Beirut, selecting up the place her mom—and her great-grandmother earlier than that—left off.
Now, Merhej makes use of her model to bridge the fractured view of trend that plagued her youth. Renaissance Renaissance has a distinctly dichotomous really feel, mixing old-world, romantic silhouettes with extra trendy sensibilities. Skirts of tulle with a French Revolution tilt function dangerously excessive slits solely a lady of the twenty first century would dare to tackle. Tailor-made jackets taper in like a corset and bloom on the shoulders with an ’80s aptitude. Wanting by means of Merhej’s collections, there’s a way of touring again in time, of following a lady by means of life’s journeys. A educated illustrator, Merhej sees the world by means of storytelling and characters, and Renaissance Renaissance tells the story of a lady, her evolution, and her personal rebirths.
“I not too long ago realized this character I created is the girl I need to be,” Merhej says of her imaginary muse. “It’s the aspect of myself I repressed for a really longtime.” Rising up in Lebanon throughout the ultimate years of the nation’s civil warfare, Merhej didn’t at all times really feel she had the power to behave with full freedom. “As a toddler, you’re experiencing trauma, however it’s a secondhand trauma,” Merhej remembers. On the time of Merhej’s childhood, an goal historical past of Lebanon and the warfare was not simply accessible, and her household didn’t need to communicate in regards to the topic. When Merhej left her residence for varsity in 2009, she was capable of research her nation’s historical past with out restrictions. “Most of my initiatives have been about Lebanon, making an attempt to grasp it extra,” she says. “No one was telling me, ‘Oh, that’s shameful,’ or, ‘You possibly can’t take a look at that, it’ll convey up ache from the previous.’”
Merhej and her mom, Laura.
Courtesy of Merhej
Merhej spent her youth in her mom Laura’s salon, which she ran along with her aunt. “I used to be at all times being chased out of the atelier,” she remembers. “They’d say, ‘Purchasers are coming, go discover one thing to do and get out of the best way!’” In the meantime, Merhej was absorbing data, falling in love with the enterprise and creativity of trend. “My mom by no means straight taught me something,” she says. “However being round that surroundings in these youth, I picked up rather a lot.”
“I positively rejected mainstream trend, although, once I was round 13,” she provides. “I keep in mind pondering it was homogeneous. It was a time when there was one very particular physique kind and sort of girl, which didn’t excite me very a lot.” Till that time, Merhej assumed she would observe in her mom’s footsteps, so the disenchantment left her feeling misplaced. Her pursuits in pictures and drawing led her to artwork college at London’s Central Saint Martins and the Royal Faculty of Arts—each establishments recognized for his or her trend design applications, however Merhej as an alternative studied illustration. “I see the world by means of tales and characters,” she explains. “My time in London, nevertheless, received me eager about trend once more: I had the space from it and the chance to rediscover it in my very own means.” After graduating from RCA, Merhej returned to Beirut and spent just a few years saving cash, studying the talents essential to run her personal enterprise. And in 2016, Renaissance Renaissance was born.
Merhej’s objectives for her label are twofold: she needs to design lovely clothes, in fact, however there’s loads of that within the trend business. What Merhej does really feel is missing, nevertheless, is humanity. “What am I doing that’s going to make the style business a greater place?” she asks herself. “How can I convey mild to this darkish business?” One in every of Merhej’s strategies entails excessive sustainability practices, which she discovered from watching her mom work again within the ’90s. “There was at all times a theme of being resourceful,” Merhej says of her mother’s work. “She would by no means waste a scrap of cloth. To this present day, she’ll take a meter of cloth and be like, ‘Oh, we are able to make that right into a skirt.’” Renaissance Renaissance’s fall 2023 assortment was largely created from outdated textiles belonging to Merhej’s mom, except for just a few fur additions courtesy of a secondhand coat Merhej purchased on Depop.
The designer additionally needs to take up area, actually. “My work is a lot about having freedom of motion,” Merhej says. As she’s getting ready for her subsequent assortment, Merhej has been finding out the work of Marianne Wex, a German artist recognized for her 1977 work “Let’s Take Again Our House: ‘Feminine’ and ‘Male’ Physique Language as a Results of Patriarchal Buildings.” The piece evaluates the variations in physique language between women and men. “When I discovered that, I used to be like, ‘Fuck yeah, this truly makes me assume a lot about my work.’” With spring 2024, Merhej will proceed this exploration of quantity, which she feels is a signature of the Renaissance Renaissance model.
After which there’s holding her connection to residence. Merhej now not lives in her native nation, having moved to Paris in 2020, however it was necessary to her that part of the manufacturing stay in Lebanon. Final 12 months, Merhej opened the atelier leg of Renaissance Renaissance, led by her mom out of Beirut. Merhej selected the situation for the atelier’s headquarters so as to hold “the power” within the metropolis—particularly after a 2020 nuclear explosion left over 200 useless, 7,000 badly injured, and 300,000 homeless. “It’s necessary we don’t lose this sense of creativity in Beirut,” she says.
Her spring 2023 assortment featured the primary one-of-a-kind items to return from this system, and since then, demand has grown. As of now, they’re not on the market, however the curiosity has led Merhej to rethink. At this second, nevertheless, the designer is happy that, regardless of all of the hardships, not solely is Renaissance Renaissance nonetheless in existence, it’s thriving. “We’ve handled a monetary collapse, a nuclear-level explosion, shifting nations, marriage, Covid,” she says with amusing. “I’m like, ‘How am I nonetheless standing?’”
