Lebanese-American Designer Myah Hasbany Is Making Waves With Her Graduate Collection Debut

Otherworldly Texan folklore met conceptual statements in Lebanese-American Myah Hasbany’s surreal Central Saint Martins graduate collection

At Central Saint Martins’ much-anticipated graduate show in June, one of the most talked-about collections came from Lebanese-American designer Myah Hasbany.

At just 23, Myah captivated the industry with a body of work that was both conceptual and personal, earning the L’Oréal Young Talent Award and a design role with Dior’s haute couture team. Beyond the accolades, the collection struck a chord for its emotional depth and subversive storytelling – an unflinching exploration of identity and alienation through ballooning silhouettes and camp Americana references.

Myah was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, with family roots tracing back to Lebanon. Myah’s grandfather decided to fully assimilate after immigrating to the United States. “He didn’t teach my dad Arabic or involve him in that culture very much. It was more like, we need to blend in,” Myah says. That mindset filtered down early. “I internalised the idea that you’re not supposed to stand out. I didn’t feel like I could express myself outwardly, so I stuck to myself, made things in my room and found ways to entertain myself that way.”

Fashion quickly became an outlet. A childhood fascination with Bob Mackie dolls collected by their grandmother sparked a love for drama. And weekend garage sales with Myah’s mother turned up vintage treasures rarely appreciated in suburban Texas. “Despite it being conservative, the women there are quite camp,” Myah laughs. “I even got to go to this archive in Denton – it had all these Texan oil wives donating their stuff, and it looked like a drag queen’s closet filled with feathers, sequins and rhinestones.” That sense of theatricality was further catapulted at a Dallas performing and visual arts high school, which Myah attended. “It was almost like a miniature version of Central Saint Martins.” There, Myah first met musician Erykah Badu, an alumnus of the school, during one of her birthday show castings. A bold impromptu performance led to an ongoing creative relationship, with the two continuing to collaborate on conceptual looks to this day.

The designer later moved to London to attend Central Saint Martins and even earned a placement at Maison Margiela’s artisanal atelier. Starting at CSM was not peachy. Myah noticed gaps in representation, beginning with the mannequins. “I remember walking in on the first day and seeing a sea of size-zero mannequins. When I asked for one in my size, they said they might have one somewhere.” Despite the industry’s claims of progress around body inclusivity, the designer adds that subtle forms of bias persist. Myah pushed back – not by positioning body diversity as a theme, but by creating garments that naturally reflect a broader spectrum of sizes. “Ironically, it’s worked to my benefit – people see me as someone who looks like them and who genuinely wants to dress them, not for image, but because I care.”

Those tensions around visibility and exclusion culminated in Myah’s graduate show – one of the most talked-about at Central Saint Martins this year. Referencing a Texas folklore tale, the collection took inspiration from a story told in the small town of Aurora, where locals claim a UFO once crashed into a windmill and killed an extraterrestrial being. The townspeople allegedly gave the alien a Christian burial and moved on, pretending it had never happened. The collection served as a poignant metaphor for how those who don’t conform in the South are often erased – buried, both literally and symbolically. “I wanted to reinterpret the story – what if, by burying this alien creature, the town slowly began to mutate into the very thing it feared? I wanted to explore that through my own experience growing up as someone who wasn’t seen as ‘normal’.” It was also a physical manifestation of the designer’s experience with body dysmorphia. The bulbous shapes echoed the ways the body can feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable under scrutiny. But rather than mask that discomfort, the clothes confronted it head-on.

The garments were avant-garde and radical. A hulking white knit with a splash of red across the chest nodded to the Southern football player – reimagined as a warped, overinflated figure of masculinity. “I imagined a government case file on each mutated townsperson – the football player, the beauty queen – like a post-disaster investigation.” Twin models in vintage-style dresses and pillbox hats referenced 1950s pageant girls, except they looked more alien than aspirational. This was Myah’s reinterpretation of Christian Dior’s New Look. “I based a lot of it in the 1950s because Texans still romanticise that era as some kind of golden age – which I think is total nonsense. I wanted to satirise that by identifying the visual archetypes of the time – fabrics, shapes and undergarments. My mood board was basically: what if an alien tried to recreate Dior’s New Look?” Myah adds. The finale look floated down the runway supported by helium balloons – an over-the-top, surreal outfit inspired by the 2009 Balloon Boy hoax. “I wanted people to question what they were looking at. Some even thought it was AI. That’s when I knew I’d struck something.”

Craft was at the core of this collection. For instance, a red coat took a year to construct, with 300,000 beads all hand-stitched. While many other looks were handmade using crochet, a technique that has become Myah’s signature. “I started doing it in high school because I didn’t know how to sew. It was the only way I could make shapes, and it just stuck with me.” Crochet offered more than just structure; it became a way to decompress. “As an anxious person, sitting down and doing something repetitive for hours really helps. It’s almost meditative,” explains Myah.

While a few larger pieces, like the football look, were engineered in part using machine knitting, the majority of the garments were handcrafted. That also includes the now-iconic “butt pants,” originally made for Erykah Badu that she wore to the Billboard Women in Music ceremony. “She came to me with the idea, and I slowly started working on it between internships,” Myah recalls. Eventually, they became a part of the graduate collection. Despite the clothes’ conceptual nature, many pieces are surprisingly wearable. “Once you take the exaggerated elements off, there are jackets, shirts and bags that are wearable,” says Myah. Still, that was never the point. “I feel like haute couture as a concept is pretty much unwearable. People don’t question a ball gown, but they question a strange silhouette or when it’s not shown on a size-zero model,” Myah affirms. The collection resonated with audiences and industry insiders, and Myah was awarded the L’Oréal Young Talent Award. “It was overwhelming. A lot of this collection was about how I felt misunderstood and isolated – a culmination of all my years of suffering. So to have people not only see it but understand it and celebrate it – it was huge.”

From oversized knits in a Dallas high school to Christian Dior’s haute couture team, Myah’s journey has come full circle. It’s a powerful step for any young designer, but even more so for someone of Arab descent in a space where that representation remains rare. Myah’s ascent signals a broader shift; one where new perspectives are finally being seen.

Images: Supplied

Photography: Willow Williams, Art Direction: Trisha Kim, Make-up: Mariia Usanova, Hair: Tasos Constantinou,Set: Joshua Stovell at Drop Studios. DOP: Martin Senyszak, Casting: Bram Stelwagen, Grade: Dan Beddoe at The Hand of God, Focus Puller: Arie Priede, Sound Marvin Jupiter, Photography Assistants DaviD Vail; Harvey J Horne, Styling Assistants: Anna Johny; Paola Estibalis; Clyde Crooks, Hair Assistant: Makoto Hayashi, Set Assistant: Pablo Lopez Buen, Equipment: Fava Rental, Hand Printing: Dot Imaging

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia October 2025 Issue.