In the mountains of the Chouf, embroidery becomes a language of memory, identity, and collective creation. Trained in visual communication, Lebanese designer Salim Azzam found in fashion a way to carry the stories of his homeland beyond the borders of the village, giving voice and visibility to the extraordinary women artisans who shape each piece by hand. In this conversation with ZOE Magazine, he reflects on community, craftsmanship, international growth, and the delicate balance between preserving tradition and allowing it to evolve.
You studied visual communication and entered fashion without following a traditional path into the industry. Who is Salim Azzam, and when did you realise that storytelling could take the form of a garment?
I was trained as a graphic designer, & I went into fashion carried by a vision which was to bring the stories of the mountains to the world, to offer the women of my community a platform that would reveal their immense talent as embroiderers, & to nurture that community to the best of my ability. In 2016 I realized that fashion was the best way to give the craft the chance to live outside the borders of the village, and travel across borders and let people wear it proudly to represent their stories. For that I am grateful for fashion, despite all of its challenges.
Your work is rooted in the Chouf and has grown alongside a community of women artisans. How does the idea of authorship evolve when each creation is shaped by many hands and shared memories?
I was raised by these women, by their craft and by the community around me, so I never see the work as something that comes only from me. I may begin with a story or a drawing, but it is shaped by the hands, knowledge, and experience of the women who bring it to life. The craft itself carries memories that are much older than the brand, and each artisan brings her own understanding to it.
My role is to create a space where that knowledge can continue to live, while also giving it room to evolve. I am always conscious that Salim Azzam would never have existed without this collective dream and ambition. For me, the most meaningful form of authorship is one that allows all of these voices and hands to remain present in the work.
Birds, flowers, trees, and familiar figures recur throughout your embroidery like a personal alphabet. How do you transform the stories of your homeland into a language that can resonate across cultures?
These are all things I grew up seeing and loving, embroidery became the way I could preserve them. What makes the language universal is the feeling behind it. You don’t necessarily need to know where a flower comes from or who a particular figure represents to understand how you feel when you see it. Beauty, memory, nature, and the human hand are things we can all connect to.
I try to give these stories the ability to travel beyond the borders of the village and allow people from different cultures to wear them, engage with them, and create their own relationship with them. For me, it has never been about translating Lebanon into something more familiar to the outside world. It is about allowing the stories of the mountains and the craft that lives within them to speak for themselves.
For Cartier, you created a project that brought high jewellery into dialogue with traditional embroidery. How do you collaborate with such an iconic maison while preserving the intimacy and authenticity of the handmade gesture?
I understood this concept early on, its been 10 years of slow and organic growth for the company, growing the team only based on the demand. I respect the craft and its people so much, and as someone from the community, working with your people, you would never do anything to jeopardize their comfort. For Cartier, the scale of the activation was definitely a challenge, when something is made entirely by hand, you can never underestimate the time and attention it requires.
We know our craft and we know we have the capacity to produce in larger quantities, but the challenge was maintaining an exceptional level of quality, detail, and care. For us, it was about scaling up without ever losing what makes the work special in the first place, the hand, the patience, and the integrity of the craft.
Fashion Trust Arabia and Qasimi Rising have helped bring your brand to an international audience. How can a label grow globally without sacrificing the sense of time, community, and place that makes its work so distinctive?
Like I said earlier, I grew up in a place where all of the values we stand on within the brand are cultural norms, nothing is neither created nor forced – it is impossible, and undesirably, for the brand to grow extremely and quickly, we will accommodate for growth that comes within the borders of our principles, and the limits of what we believe is right.
