Tala Barbotin Khalidy’s Eponymous Label is an Ode to Slow Fashion’s Ancestry
from Tala Barbotin Khalidy (TBK) SS24 “Tannourine” collection
Tala Barbotin Khalidy’s artistry is the medium for her life; it’s her business, her therapeutic outlet, her love language, and her channel for service. When we met, she’d just returned from the wedding of a loved one in Beirut—an eagerly-awaited production, as many of us from collectivist cultures know—for whom she designed and made the bridal looks. Though presumably exhausted, fueled by adrenaline from a transatlantic flight followed by an all-day celebration, her kindness and vivacity subsumed us both.
“[I’m] all earth and air. I have zero water in my chart,” she remarks when we inevitably float into astrological territory, Sustainable Baddie’s conversational modus operandi. “I have emotions, I swear!” As I share a similar absence of the water element, I recognize a notably Capricorn warmth in her that’s expressed through fervent action. It’s easy to see why her many projects span such a range of interests, yet share a thread of joy and a ferocious will to preserve the virtues of the past.
Barbotin Khalidy is a true multi-hyphenate: designer, embroidery artist, mental health advocate, entrepreneur, and stewardess of ancestral knowledge. Her eponymous label is an archive of Levantine textile tradition transformed to stay with the wearer for generations. “It's important, I think, to not throw away everything and reinvent the wheel, and instead tap into those sustainable practices that exist at the center of our communities.” Her online store boasts an array of silks, jacquards, and natural fibers in fluid silhouettes. Accompanying the line is a description of the techniques used, their historical significance, and a look behind the veil of the production process. Her Parsons training is evident in the breadth of her creative vision, but her skill is marked by its cohesion. Pieces can be worn together, or, like this embroidered puffer, function as a statement.
TBK puffer made with Damascene cotton silk fabric
“They taught us how to think conceptually,” Barbotin Khalidy says of her time at The New School, “how to really finish a collection and have it be full-bodied.” Contrary to her artisan roots, New York’s fashion scene is a hotbed of speed, efficiency, and cutting edge. Parsons’ unparalleled training aside, Barbotin Khalidy was overwhelmed by the enduring demands of fast fashion and the future she foresaw in the industry, until her degree introduced an avenue toward a more sustainable future. Under the guidance of Finnish designer Timo Rissanen, a preeminent scholar of zero-waste techniques, Barbotin Khalidy nurtured her interest in craft as a vehicle for circular models of production, as well as how it could be a healing practice. “We got really academic,” she says, “[I was able] to dip my toes in the water without it being, ‘I'm going to revive the traditions of my country.’” She capped her degree with a thesis on embroidery and identity, occupational therapy, and meditation. That project served as an anchor to which she would later return.
Barbotin Khalidy as a child in her grandmother’s shop
Though raised as a Parisienne, Barbotin Khalidy’s summers were spent in Lebanon, in the warmth of her Syrian grandmother’s shop of curated artisan goods. Nadia El Khoury (born Ayoubi), was a skilled designer in her own right and surrounded herself with a community of equally-expert craftspeople. “She had a little bit of everything. But she was truly an artist and a designer.” Artisans du Liban et d'Orient (Artisans of Lebanon and the Orient) was a haven of traditional textiles, herbs, soaps, and other treasures steeped in history. “My earliest memories of textiles were divided between the [ones] that she used in her designs and the furniture, just at home — everything would be covered in textiles.”
Barbotin Khalidy as a child with her grandmother and mother
Her grandmother’s penchant for preserving the ancient while blending it with the modern influenced much of Barbotin Khalidy’s design instincts. “[She] would wear a traditional tunic, and then she would wear jeans under, and then stacks of silver jewelry, and a fat silver watch and some Converse, and that's who she was.” Barbotin Khalidy generously applies this collage styling approach to her own wardrobe. She hops delicately out of her chair, gesturing to her outfit: a Dôen-esque cream floral top with puff sleeves by Miu Miu paired with a brown slitted skirt tied on either side of the waist, which, like her grandmother, she often pairs with sneakers and silver jewelry. “This is more on the girly side,” she adds, describing other inspirations taken from Japanese labels like Comme des Garçons, but highlighting that her French-Lebanese heritage taught her to “mix prints and patterns.”
You can see these experimental impulses throughout Barbotin Khalidy’s designs, too: streamlined silhouettes paired with structured tailoring, what she describes as “geometric.” She says her queer identity subconsciously leads her away from certain binary design principles. Instead, she’s drawn toward what might renew Levantine dressing for people from the SWANA region and diaspora across identities and intersections, especially in the context of the region’s Western imperialist occupation. “It's cool to be able to take things that are inherently local and traditional and be able to twist them a little bit,” she said, emphasizing that her practice of craft revitalization and distribution in the West is “not only just [for] a Western audience — it's also [for] people who are reclaiming their SWANA identity and seeing how to express themselves.”
from TBK’s collection inspired by Lebanese ice cream cones
Following an impressive series of early-career positions at retailers and design houses, the global pandemic turned Barbotin Khalidy’s skillset inward. She started sewing masks to distribute and sell, using Syrian silks and other Levantine fabrics. “I made so many masks that it funded my first collection,” she recalls. “I made, I think, a thousand or something, just by myself.” She channeled this momentum to start coordinating a network of artisans, textile weavers, and transportation with the continued support of her mother functioning as a production head, establishing a base of operations in Lebanon.
Her collections are produced in small batches, often using a pre-order system to ensure that each garment will be sold and generate a return — a reliable strategy to prevent overproduction and sustain a “slow” model. This term — “slow”— that we’ve come to associate with sustainable innovation in the fashion industry is, indeed, simply what making clothing was before the Industrial Age. The artisan collectives are her assets. Building mutual respect with each specialty enclave has meant taking creative approaches to marketing. Due to customs of modesty, the artisans refused to be photographed; instead, Barbotin Khalidy hired her friend Rama Duwaji, a Syrian illustrator, to animate them, honoring their labor while respecting their boundaries. “People work slowly here,” she said “So there's no alternative.” Where capitalist fast fashion cycles manipulate labor conditions and materials to yield maximum profit, Barbotin Khalidy’s line surrenders to its ecosystem. “You can't rush people to do things. It's not possible. You have to work with their pace.”
Slow fashion, as a movement, is attractive because it implies a blend of quality, exclusivity, and ethical production. But confronting its realities leads us back to the truth that, to ensure our clothes are crafted as opposed to produced, we have to abandon the fundamentally unsustainable expectations of modern fast fashion. “Because I work with artisans and they’re paid a fair wage, a lot of the money that comes in goes back to them.” Barbotin Khalidy faces challenges in retaining a margin, especially when there is an added element of wholesale distributors who take significant percentages from sales. Being “slow” in an industry defined by unethical standards compounds the problem. All clothing could match TBK’s in terms of care, longevity, and history, but designs like hers are still considered luxury purchases.
Barbotin Khalidy’s principles for her labor partnerships are centered on her belief that craft is inherently healing. Her connection to embroidery as a form of occupational therapy arose out of her grief following her grandmother’s passing. Losing the person who had cemented her love for design was something of a reset for Barbotin Khalidy, and she sought refuge in the meticulous rhythms of the needle and thread. “It helped me process my feelings and my grief around her passing. And I thought, if it can help me do that, then it can probably help others.” She’s known for being a certified meditation teacher, working with survivors of trauma to channel their pain into a tactile activity. Now, she facilitates embroidery workshops to preserve crafts while healing wounds. She holds this truth in enough esteem that she’s determined for the women who make her designs to find peace and healing in their vocations.
from TBK’s collection inspired by Lebanese ice cream cones
Reviving ancient crafts also remains a powerful tool of resistance. Barbotin Khalidy has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian liberation. “Palestinian craft has a very specific thing attached to it,“ she says, describing how motifs, like the ones she features in her designs, are etched in the history of each locale. “When it comes to the art of Tatreez (Palestinian embroidery), they all have their own cross-stitching motif that varies from village to village.” Plenty of discourse has been spent on the politics of cultural appropriation, a kind of psychological warfare that aims to rob peoples of their own traditions and histories. Appropriation often reassigns credit for indigenous practices to favor an invading group. In the context of Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine, and its genocide in Gaza, Palestinian resistance includes weaving their stories into their textiles as a way of saying “I’m still here… [Even as] Israel is trying to assimilate those particular crafts and claim [them] as their own…” Barbotin Khalidy testifies, “You can locate [a garment’s] origin and its province, written on [it] in the form of embroidery.” In a moment when colonial violence desecrates indigenous lands, heritage crafts and their stewards refuse to be defined solely as a target of destruction. Barbotin Khalidy’s existence, artistry, and advocacy remain an act of resistance: against grief, against imperialist horrors, against collective amnesia, and against the one-note image of the Middle East as a conflict zone. (For more on how art, beauty, and identity are deeply intertwined with liberation, see GQ Middle East’s groundbreaking Sudan issue.)
Presently, Barbotin Khalidy is working on creating a core line of staple pieces that will live exclusively and permanently on her website, ensuring that a meaningful portion of the revenue is reinvested into the (primarily women’s) artisan collectives she partners with. This core collection will feature many of the thematic inspirations from her previous drops, including embroidered ice cream cones and paintings that adorn the sides of Lebanese trucks (a phenomenon she described in an interview with Sauce Magazine). The essence of her core line is a testament to how art in the Global South lives in the quotidien, not separately from it. It’s in the way we dress, in our homes, and how we speak to one another.
The Tannourine mountains that inspired Barbotin Khalidy’s latest “Tannourine” collection.
“I’m definitely super happy to be doing this work. I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Barbotin Khalidy reflects. “I think I'm trying to offer a different perspective, a different lens to seeing Lebanon, to seeing Syria.” She makes a distinction between craft and production — she believes “craft has an inherent history and soul attached to the word.” Bridging the association between antiquity and high fashion, especially for people with roots in SWANA, remains one of her primary goals looking to the future. “Even in the themes of my collections, [I want to celebrate] the things that are endearing [and] special about this place.”