Every creative journey looks accidental in hindsight — but it rarely is. Look closely and you will usually find small moments quietly stacking up until, almost without noticing, you arrive exactly where you were always heading. A childhood memory. A fascination that refuses to let go. A question that keeps leading to another, until the answer turns out to be a life.

Nour Hage's story has that shape. As a child, she would sit beside her neighbour, mesmerised, watching her create large pastel drawings and quietly thinking that one day she wanted to do the same. Later came fashion: Barbie knitting machines, learning to sew, watching her grandmother have clothes made, and a growing fascination with textiles. Alongside it grew an equally strong fascination with research, with one question gradually leading to another until they became just as important as the garments themselves, eventually guiding her towards contemporary art.

In this conversation, we follow that thread: from growing up between Riyadh and Beirut to launching a fashion label, stepping away from the industry, and finding her place in contemporary art, where textiles, women's histories and research remain at the heart of everything she creates.

— How were you first introduced to art?

— My parents weren't connected to art professionally at all. My dad is a doctor, so he has a very scientific way of thinking. He loves music, opera and the arts, but he isn't creative himself. My mum is a teacher, and she is much the same. What they did give us, though, was endless encouragement: whatever my siblings and I wanted to explore, they were always supportive.

My earliest memory of art goes back to when we were living in Riyadh. Our neighbours didn't have any young children, but the woman was an artist who made these beautiful, large pastel drawings at home. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but I must have been under five or six because that is when we left Saudi Arabia. For some reason, I was the only child she would let into her studio and I would sit quietly beside her while she worked, completely fascinated, just watching her draw with these pastels. I remember feeling so lucky that I got to witness it, and thinking, I can't wait until I can do this one day.

— You spent your childhood between Riyadh and Beirut. How did that come about?

— Like many Lebanese families, we left Lebanon because of the Civil War. I was born there, but just before my first birthday we moved to Saudi Arabia, where my father had work opportunities and, more importantly, where it was much safer for us to live at the time.

We stayed in Riyadh from around 1989 until 1994 or 1995. Once the war ended, my parents wanted to return to Lebanon and help rebuild the country. Many Lebanese families who had settled across the Gulf made the same decision during that period.

— Your creative career began in fashion rather than contemporary art. What first drew you to fashion?

— I don't think there was one defining moment. Looking back, it all happened little by little.

When I think about my childhood, there were lots of small signs pointing me in that direction. My parents bought me all sorts of creative toys, but the ones I loved most always revolved around clothes. My favourite was this old computer programme where I could design outfits for Barbie, print them out, cut them from paper and dress the dolls. I also had a Barbie knitting machine, so I was always making things.

Then there was my grandmother. She used to have many of her clothes made, and she knew how to sew herself, so I grew up seeing clothes as something that could be created rather than simply bought.

Then, as a teenager in Beirut, I started wanting to express myself through what I wore. I wanted to dress a little differently, and my older sister gradually showed me how to alter existing clothes and use a sewing machine. From there, it all grew quite naturally, and fashion became the direction I wanted to pursue.

— In 2013, you launched your own fashion label. What inspired you to start it, and what was the idea behind the brand?

— When I was 18, I moved to Paris to study Fashion Design at Parsons – an education that completely opened my eyes to a side of fashion I hadn't been exposed to while growing up in Lebanon. It introduced me to a whole new aesthetic and, in many ways, helped me find my niche as a designer.

One day, I had to leave Paris because of paperwork issues and move back to Beirut. In hindsight, the timing couldn't have been better. There was this incredible wave of young creatives returning to the city, and you could really feel a new scene beginning to take shape. Many of us were fashion designers, and we all started our brands around the same time. It genuinely felt as though we were building something together.

That spirit could be seen everywhere. One of my close friends, who had also studied at Parsons in New York, founded Creative Space Beirut, where I later taught. The school offered free fashion education, accommodation and transport for students coming from outside Beirut, and quickly became a hub for many of us who were trying to build an alternative fashion scene.

At the time, Lebanese fashion was largely associated with couture. Our generation was much more interested in ready-to-wear and wanted to approach fashion from a different perspective. That all became the starting point for my own label.

I found myself becoming fascinated by traditional Middle Eastern clothing, but I didn't want to redesign it – I wanted to understand it differently. I kept asking myself simple questions: why does an abaya look the way it does? Why do shirts have collars? Those questions became the starting point for my collections and I began taking familiar design elements, combining them with European fabrics and adapting them for people living in cities across Europe and North America.

I actually launched the brand with womenswear because, 14 years ago, the Lebanese market was much more focused on women. But I had trained in menswear while working for a menswear designer in Paris, so after moving to London I gradually shifted the brand in that direction, although many of the pieces were unisex and ended up being worn by women as well.

I showed the collections at Paris Fashion Week twice a year, and most of my wholesale business ended up being in Japan. Japanese men really connected with my designs.

At the same time, I was becoming increasingly interested in the research behind the collections. I loved asking questions, exploring the history of garments and understanding why they were designed the way they were. As time went on, I realised that part of the process excited me even more than the pace of the fashion industry itself.

— Do you think you will ever return to fashion?

— If I do return, it will be in a very different way. One of the main reasons I stepped away was that I didn't enjoy the pace of the fashion industry or its constant cycle of production. It simply wasn't something I wanted to be part of anymore. The reality is that running a fashion label usually means either selling huge volumes or charging very high prices to make it sustainable. My brand sat somewhere in between, and I realised that wasn't a model I wanted to continue with.

I would rather approach fashion as an artistic practice than a commercial business: creating small editions of timeless, handmade pieces instead of wholesale collections. Perhaps just ten garments, each receiving the attention it deserves through carefully treated fabrics, embroidery or weaving. For me, the focus would be on the craft and the process rather than constantly creating something new.

— In 2019 you moved from fashion into art. What prompted the transition?

— It wasn't a sudden decision at all.

For context, research had always been a huge part of my design process. I spent countless hours at the Arab British Centre in London, reading about traditional costumes, textiles, weaving techniques and the stories behind them — why garments were made in certain ways, how fabrics were produced and what they represented. Only a tiny fraction of that research ever found its way into my collections because, in fashion, there simply isn't room to share everything you have discovered.

Because I was there so often, the team at the Arab British Centre got to know me. When they were preparing a new exhibition, they invited me to create one of four commissioned works. It was held at Dr Johnson's House, the historic London home of Samuel Johnson, and explored the early encounters between Arab and British societies.

It was my first experience creating work for an exhibition, and I completely fell in love with it. My installation, Sultana Isabel, explored the first encounters between Elizabethan England and the Muslim world. As I started researching Elizabeth I's reign, I became fascinated by one particular decision: at a time when much of Christian Europe refused to trade with the Ottoman Empire, she did exactly that. Following those trade routes led me to the spices, pigments and textiles travelling along the Silk Road, and eventually to indigo and turmeric, which became the heart of the installation.

For the first time, I had the space to communicate all the research and ideas that had always sat behind my fashion collections but rarely made it into the final garments. After that, I started actively looking for more opportunities to work in that way.

At the time, I was still running my fashion brand when COVID hit. The first months weren't too difficult and sales remained surprisingly strong, but eventually they dropped dramatically, as they did for many young independent labels. Funding also became difficult to secure, and for the first time I found myself questioning whether I wanted to keep fighting for a business model I no longer believed in.

Then came the Beirut port explosion in 2020. I was in London, but my husband, my parents, my sister and most of my friends were in Beirut. So many people I knew lost their homes and everything they owned. I realised that if I had still been living there, I would have lost both my home and my studio because they were in exactly that part of the city. It put everything into perspective.

Around the same time, I was offered a research fellowship at the V&A Museum. Spending my days studying its collections only reinforced something I had already begun to realise: the part of my work that truly excited me wasn't just designing collections, but the research, history and storytelling behind them. I already knew how much I loved making art, and that experience gave me the confidence to devote more and more of my energy to it.

My husband used to tell me that I wasn't really a fashion designer — I was an artist. I ignored him for years, but eventually I realised he was right. By the end of 2021, I had made the transition to contemporary art completely.

— You work with textiles in so many different ways. What keeps drawing you back to them?

— The material isn't always the most important part of a piece. Sometimes I create works where it doesn't carry a particular significance, but whenever I can, I try to make sure it has a genuine connection to the work or the research behind it.

That comes from my own relationship with textiles. I grew up surrounded by them, so my love for fabric is almost second nature — it came from my mother and my grandmothers. More broadly, I think we all have an incredibly intimate relationship with textiles. They are everywhere in our lives. When you hold a piece of clothing that belongs to someone you love, or once belonged to them, you can almost feel their presence. I can't really explain it, but I believe textiles hold a certain energy, and that is something I try to bring into my work.

That is why I think so carefully about the materials I use. Sometimes it is the colour, sometimes it is the fabric itself, and sometimes it is the history attached to it. During my residency in Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, for example, I created a project around my grandmother and buried the fabrics in her garden in South Lebanon because I wanted them to absorb the landscape she had spent her life caring for. In that way, the material doesn't just support the artwork — it becomes part of its story.

— Women are another thread that runs through your practice. Was that always a conscious decision?

— Yes, it was, although I don't think it was something I consciously planned from the beginning. It grew very naturally out of my own life. I was raised by incredible women — my grandmothers, my mother, my aunts and my sister — so many of my strongest childhood memories are connected to them. A lot of what we know about ourselves comes from our mothers, and so much of our identity is passed down through the maternal line, often through textiles, clothing and the objects we grow up with at home.

That naturally led me to think about the women behind those traditions. For generations, textile-making was largely women's work, with knowledge being passed from mother to daughter and grandmother to granddaughter. By working with textiles, I am not only drawing on my own family history but also acknowledging the generations of women whose labour, skill and knowledge have shaped this craft, often without recognition. Bringing that invisible history into the conversation has become an important part of my practice.

— Besides being an artist, you have also tried your hand at curating. Tell me about Women's Work: From Craft to Fine Art. How did it come about?

— First of all, I should say that I don't really consider myself a curator. I have only curated one exhibition, and I have enormous respect for people who do it professionally. What interested me was the idea of telling a story through other people's work.

The opportunity came about unexpectedly. I was talking to Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi while he was showing me a newly acquired textile piece for the Barjeel Art Foundation, and I remember saying, "You are collecting all these incredible textile works, but you aren't exhibiting them." He explained that they simply didn't have the space, so I suggested organising a textile exhibition. Almost immediately, he asked if I would curate it.

I assumed it was the sort of project that might happen a year later, so I agreed without thinking too much about it. Instead, less than two months later, I received an email saying they had found a venue and wanted to open the exhibition within another two months. Everything happened incredibly quickly, but I loved every minute of it.

The exhibition brought together textile works from the Barjeel collection that explored the medium from traditional craftsmanship to contemporary art. Almost all the pieces were created by women, with just one exception: a male artist who had learned the craft from women, making him a natural part of the story we wanted to tell. I knew that story from the very beginning, so curating became less about choosing individual works and more about finding the pieces that best supported that narrative.

The experience also changed the way I think about curating. Spending time researching each work and understanding the artists' processes became another way of developing my own practice. I would love to do it again, but only if it is a project that genuinely connects with the ideas I am already exploring in my own work.

— A few years ago, your husband interviewed you for YUNG. What was that experience like? Was there a question that particularly surprised you?

— I don't actually remember the questions because it was four years ago. What I do remember is that it was probably stranger for my husband than it was for me. He is a journalist and takes his work very seriously, so he was quite reluctant at first because he felt he shouldn't be interviewing his own wife. I, on the other hand, just treated him like any other journalist. I know he is an excellent interviewer, so I was happy for him to do it.

What has stayed with me, though, is that a couple of my answers genuinely caught him off guard. He looked at me as if to say, "I wasn't expecting that at all."

— I imagine that must be difficult. When you are interviewing someone you know so well, you probably assume there isn't much left to discover.

— That is true. My husband actually knows a great deal about my work because we talk about it all the time and constantly ask each other for advice. But the interview reminded both of us that there are still parts of me that simply never come up in conversation. I am the sort of person who doesn't volunteer information unless someone asks me directly.

The other day we met a couple in the park. The husband happened to play in a metal band, and when his wife asked whether I listened to metal music, I replied that I used to all the time as a teenager. My husband looked at me in complete disbelief. Later he said, "We have been together for 13 years, and you have never once told me that." I just laughed and said, "You never asked." That is what I mean — I don't tend to volunteer information unless someone asks me directly.

— In that interview, you said that you needed time to understand what it meant for you to be Arab, Middle Eastern and Lebanese. Do you still feel that way?

— I do, although my answer has evolved over the years. I absolutely love Beirut. Every time I am there, I feel alive. But when you are living there, you are surrounded by family, friends and a society that feels completely natural because it is all you have ever known. You don't really stop to ask yourself what being Arab or Lebanese means to you personally — it is simply part of everyday life.

It was only after I moved to London that I gained enough distance to think about those questions. Living alongside a much wider Arab community — with friends from Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE and elsewhere — helped me see both what connected us and what made my own experience distinctly Lebanese. For the first time, I was defining my identity for myself, rather than simply inheriting it from the environment I had grown up in.

Over the past few years, though, my perspective has shifted again. Becoming a mother made me think about what kind of Arab mother I want to be and which parts of my culture I want to pass on to my son. Then the war in Gaza in Lebanon forced me to reflect even more deeply on what it means to be Arab today. It strengthened my convictions and made me think much more carefully about the values I want my son to grow up with and the principles I want him to stand for.

I wouldn't say those experiences made me feel more Arab. Rather, they gave me a much clearer understanding of what that identity means to me. I think the person I was four years ago was probably much more naïve than I am today.