Some people know where they want to go from the very beginning. This was the case for Egyptian designer Yasmin Mansour, who was recently named a semifinalist for the 2025 LVMH Prize. The Doha-based creative, known for her architectural womenswear designs, dreamt of entering the industry from childhood. Now one of three Arab designers chosen in the final round of the prestigious LVMH Prize and the 2024 winner of the Eveningwear Prize at Fashion Trust Arabia, Mansour is beginning to make waves in the international scene.
“Believe me or not, I was this kid at 12 years old who felt I would be a famous designer,” she says with a laugh when we connect over Zoom just after Paris Fashion Week. “I was in my dad’s office drawing dresses, and I said, one day I will have a shop in New York or London.”
Her fashion reverie morphed into a venerable career—one that led Mansour to open her first atelier in 2014, where she created custom apparel for private clients. Over the past decade, Mansour has refined her aesthetic, which features intricate pleating and calls to mind the work of Hussein Chalayan and Issey Miyake while looking to traditional Arab women’s handcraft techniques and stories close to home. “Every single dress I’ve made—it was all inspired by my mom’s closet, from the things that give confidence to women,” Mansour explains. “I was doing it out of love.”
The designer first started drawing as a way of dealing with the stress of feeling behind in school. “I’m dyslexic, so I was struggling to read and write,” she explains. “I wasn’t that smart kid. I found myself in art.”
She was obsessed with old Hollywood and classic Egyptian movies growing up, taking refuge in the films of Soad Hosny and Audrey Hepburn and sketching dresses before bed. By age 12, Mansour was developing her own designs and taking them to a tailor with her mom, making jumpsuits and other garments for her small frame. “The story always begins because something triggers you inside,” she says. “For me, it was not being able to find my size, because I was 39 kilos [about 86 pounds]—I was super small, nothing fit. This is where the story really started for me, loving fabrics and understanding that there are a lot of people who want a lot of things, but don’t see them in stores.”
These early designs brought new confidence. “People started stopping me, even on my vacations abroad,” Mansour says. “‘Where is your jumpsuit from?’ When you’re scared, and you hear this, you feel there’s something special about you.” Eventually, Mansour studied art direction and fashion design. She began making clothes for family and friends, then opened the atelier in the mid aughts.
Her upbringing has always been a major source of inspiration. The architecture she saw as a kid, walking the streets of Cairo and Doha, is a strong influence, as is modern and contemporary art. Arab women and their art and craftsmanship are huge factors, too—with upcycled fabrics, including Qatari canvases traditionally used by women to make ancestral tents, paying homage to local traditions.
While competing in Fashion Trust Arabia in 2019, the former Chairman and CEO of Balmain saw Mansour’s designs and invited her to work with the team in Paris. “This was a big hope for me,” says Mansour. “Finally, there’s something happening.”
She put her atelier on pause and traveled to Paris, where she interned with the house. “I came back to Doha a different person,” Mansour recalls. “Because it was COVID as well, it was a very dark moment. Everything was silent—there was no noise anymore. There were no people. You’re spending tons of hours with your loved ones and your family, whom you normally see once a day, maybe. Now you’re stuck with them all day, and you’re stuck with your creations.”
The isolation of the pandemic led Mansour to rethink the framework of her business. She developed her first ready-to-wear designs during this difficult period, taking the scraps from her garments and creating a lush croissant-shaped bag called the Cycas, which comes in vibrant shades inspired by local flowers and food. “We had nothing to do but at the same time, you need to keep going, you need to keep moving. And there are no clients, so girl, you have to make it work,” Mansour says. “I made five bags in five colors and I worked with a Qatari artist to develop a small collection from scraps. It became a sustainable vision and that’s become a part of my DNA.”
Now, Mansour is preparing to show her sculptural, timelessly futuristic work to a wider audience. She’ll be in Harrods this May. Natalia Vodianova, Giambattista Valli, filmmaker Farida Khelfa, and Gaia Repossi have become fans of the brand. All the while, her designs look close to home. “It was always a dream to have this little brand that gives these services to women,” Mansour says. “It’s for the woman who looks for equality, for something special and unique and made out of, I don’t want to say struggle, but out of a woman who fought a lot to make a brand survive for more than 10 years coming from this country far in the Middle East, trying to bring her creation outside.”