Nayrouz

September is a new year of sorts, a time when children return to school, tidier and taller than they left as their summer selves. Autumn is a time when what was once an idea - planted in the form of a seed, has been made whole and ready to be plucked from the earth as a vegetable, a flower, a fruit. 

 

Today we celebrate someone whose name, and nature, holds this image of newness. Nayrouz is not a common name in Lebanon, it literally means ‘the crown of the year’, a time for festival, harvest, and for honouring and celebrating the abundance of life. As a person, Nayrouz brings this to our team at Salim Azzam, crowning our stories in light and fabric as she breathes life to the sketches, transforming inked ideas into stitches. 

 

I first knew Nayrouz as my cousins’ first born, I was a teenager when they married and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl; Nayrouz. When I heard her name, I knew she would be different, a glorious, startling, strange name which could only befit an equally beautiful and unusual girl. Nayrouz has turned out to be just this. 

 

She grew through childhood around the warmth of her family’s love, shared around a farmhouse table. When I visited her family in the village when she was still a child, Nayrouz would share her sketches; her imagination blossoming onto paper and walls, in crayon and ink, I see now this was the beginning of a journey which would bring us together in adulthood, bound through our shared love of illustrative tales. 

 

Today, Nayrouz weaves images into life, lit from below by the soft glow of a golden light. She delicately sketches our illustrated stories onto the fabric, a job which she does with intricacy and precision, so the images can then be embroidered in the final stage of their journey. Her creative insight and skill is so abundant, Nayrouz has recently started to help position the pictures on the clothes, seeing how they will sit in life, when the fabric is lived and moved in. 

 

Nayrouz is part of a long lineage of women supporting other women. As Nayrouz develops her skills and takes her seat at the table of creativity, she brings along other talented women in her life, allowing them to flourish and bloom alongside her. Her sister's creative spirit was nurtured in childhood by Nayrouz and is now nurtured in adulthood, as she also joins our family at Salim Azzam.

 

What Nayrouz does here every day, quietly, humbly and profoundly making dreams a reality is the epitome of what we do at Salim Azzam. We take in the world around us, listening to its wonder, its wisdom and we offer it back, transformed, yet with the same essence. I am so honoured to introduce Nayrouz to the world. She has earned her place in our story through the steadfast beauty of trust, and the expansive, magical beauty of her talent and inspiration. Her tale is one which demonstrates how Salim Azzam is made: collectively, in a way which matters deeply, and brings light and magic to many.