Designers reimagining Palestinian embroidery
From furniture to fashion, leading designers partner with Inaash — pairing traditional tatreez with contemporary craft for the Cushionania collection and beyond.
Nada Debs
Nada Debs unrolls her latest ‘colour-graded’ collection of Inaash embroidered cushions on white silk. It sits alongside her earlier Inaash collaboration — white on white with colour — and her signature plexi stools with classic Inaash cushions. Raised in Japan with a Levantine spirit, Debs lived across the world before returning to Beirut after a 40-year absence. Fusing a Far Eastern love of minimalism with a Middle Eastern appreciation of fine craftsmanship, she created her East & East concept and secured her place on the world design atlas.
For Cushionania she created two collections: ‘Spectrum of Light’, an interplay of shadow and colour that reveals and conceals the intricate cross-stitching; and ‘Where Land meets the Sea’, inspired by the natural gradients where land and sea converge.
May Daouk
May Daouk is a Lebanese interior designer who studied in New York City and worked much of her professional life in the United States, where she became interested in weaving her heritage into her work. Her signature pieces for Inaash combine beautiful fabrics — soft linen or cashmere in subtle shades — with traditional Palestinian motifs in colours that blend harmoniously with the cloth. The result is a winning combination of old and new: nostalgic, yet thoroughly contemporary in feel.
Jason Steel
Jason Steel is the founder of the Fashion Design program at the Lebanese American University, with a vision to help young designers regenerate a sector hit by much adversity. A practitioner concerned with the human condition, his work explores the unseen signals of an ever-evolving society through the prism of humour. In his collaboration with Inaash, Jason probes the meaning of exile and its impact on those who have become refugees. He holds a first-class (hons) degree from Northumbria University and a Masters from the Royal College of Art, London, where he was awarded the Diana, Princess of Wales bursary.
Co-designed with Tatyana Antoun, the work draws on old tiles, redundant technology and the DNA helix. Of the Cushionania collection Steel says: ‘The viewer can decide on the messages. Tatyana and I had our own clear ideas, but perhaps now is the time to let the meanings filter out of their own accord.’
OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury — Omarvis
OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury is a fashion designer from Palestine (Jerusalem / Birzeit) whose work centres on historic textiles and dressmaking techniques from Palestine. He has worked intermittently with Inaash since 2009, initially as an intern while studying at London College of Fashion. His first design for Inaash was the crinkled (shambar-style) silk shawl. His 2005 encounter with an Inaash embroidered najaf shawl was a main reason he chose to study fashion and research Palestinian embroidery. A jacket embroidered by Inaash from his first collection was acquired by the British Museum in 2011 — reputedly one of the first fashion items the museum ever acquired.
Omarvis’ Magick Forest collection for Cushionania elaborates on the different ‘Saru’ (cypress tree) motifs embroidered on traditional rural dresses across Palestine, exploring their metaphysical and talismanic aspects — often closer to magic symbols than depictions of nature.
Creative Space Beirut
CSB is the flagship label of the Creative Space Beirut Social Enterprise, at the core of its circular financial-sustainability model and a ground for experimentation in industry practices.
The label operates as a dynamic collaboration between the students, alumni, teachers and affiliates of CSB-SD, deploying a living collection of wearables, accessories and functional surfaces — trend-transcendent design thinking, conscious collaboration, and sustainable local manufacturing.
Dina Kamal
Dina Kamal is the creative force behind DK01, a practice focused on precious objects that convey emotional impact. Restrained, pared down to their essence, her signature PNKYRNG collection is emblematic of her style: function and reason, coherence and magic. Inaash is privileged to work with Dina on a unique cushion collection, ‘Filastine’, combining the purity of Bauhaus with minimalist calligraphy in a stunning play of complementary and contrasting colours.
Joumana Ghandour
Architect and designer Joumana Ghandour has practiced architecture for over 35 years across a wide range of scales — from urban design and interiors to furniture, objects, and, more recently, ceramics. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Harvard University, her work reflects a sustained interest in materials, craftsmanship, colour, and the stories they carry, drawing from the layered histories of cities and the lives of the people who inhabit them.
Her collaboration with Inaash is also a personal one. It continues a journey that began more than fifty years ago with her mother, Sima Ghandour, whose designs have been part of Inaash since its earliest years. Today, mother and daughter work side by side, building on a shared visual vocabulary shaped by decades of observation, making and research.
Together, they create pieces rooted in the rich embroidery traditions of Palestine, adapted for contemporary use. Guided by a search for authenticity, they source antique linens from across the Levant and research photographic archives to recover motifs that had gradually disappeared, translating them into new designs that live on through the hands of Inaash’s women artisans.
Above all, this collection is a story of transmission: between mother and daughter, between designer and artisan, and between generations committed to preserving a cultural heritage through thoughtful design and meticulous craftsmanship.