Georgina Lunn

Every day at precisely 5 p.m., Mira Maktabi’s great-grandmother would steep a cup of cardamom tea, and fasten diamond rings on her fingers to match the diamond-adorned glasses perched on her nose – even if no guests were expected. This quiet ceremony of self-adornment left a permanent imprint on the Beirut-born, London-based designer. “It wasn’t about the capitalist fashion world with her,” Maktabi, 26, recalls. “She really valued craft, and I’ve felt that with every piece she passed down.”

That ethos of reverence, of garments as heirlooms and rituals in themselves, defines Maktabi’s emerging fashion label. After completing her master’s at Central Saint Martins last year, she launched her eponymous brand with a debut collection steeped in history and intention. Maktabi’s process from sketch to final stitch is always prompted by fabric. Growing up in Beirut, fabrics were touched before bought. A seam was examined like a signature. Clothing carried memory, meaning. Maktabi internalised this slow, deliberate relationship with her pieces. “I really let the fabric guide the design,” she says. “The only decision I lead with is the quality of the material, natural fibres only – no synthetics. All our wool is British, sourced from Savile Row.”

“I don’t have one way of working, but I would say the thread that connects it all is intuition, because I try everything on myself, on my friends, and I really like to think how I feel when I put this on – does the lining feel good on my skin? If it’s see-through it’ll be super deliberate and thought through, and there will always be a utilitarian aspect in how functional the piece is to put on.” 

Drawing from the draping mastery of Madame Grès and Madeleine Vionnet, she sculpts silk georgette into fluid tops and dresses, pairing them with sharply tailored trousers and structured leather jackets. This duality is a metaphor within her work, and a deliberate choice; “Visually and emotionally, I love this contrast. A key thing, for me, is exploring the intersectionality of Arab women. People say, ‘You’re such a duality,’ but we’re more than that – we’re many things all at once. When you bring together something feminine with something tough, that’s where the real power lies.” Now based in London, Maktabi straddles two worlds. Beirut remains her root system; London, the city of her becoming. “My clothes try to hold both,” she says. The emotion of Beirut, the clarity of London. “Combining femininity with toughness” allows her clothes to act as a kind of bridge between her two worlds. 

Her work feels ceremonial. A draped blouse might suggest both a Grecian muse and a woman leisurely strolling through a London café. Leather meets silk not as contrast, but as a complement. “Softness and strength coexist in all of us,” she says. “My clothes are just an extension of that belief.”

“The brand in three words: elegant, chic and thoughtful. Thoughtful in terms of the design, the woman, and the choices.”

Each item is custom-made or pre-order only. From sketch to final stitch, “I never rush the process,” Maktabi says. “It deserves time.” Time, however, is not something her homeland has been granted in peace. As Israeli airstrikes continue to rattle parts of Lebanon, Maktabi stays focused on her work. For Lebanese people, “resilience is ingrained in us,” she says. “Creation can be a form of escape.” In her hands, it becomes a kind of resistance too, a quiet refusal to surrender grace whilst making the most graceful clothes of all. 

The palette? Earthbound: cream, chocolate, black. “I wanted the clothes to feel grounded,” she says, “but not heavy.” However, Maktabi exclusively told SceneStyled that “We’re debuting a brand new colour at our trunk show launch in September (details to be shared soon),” it’s a continuation and expansion from her recent graduate collection, with just the one colourful addition.

Mira Maktabi’s work isn’t just about clothes – it’s about intuition, ritual, and identity. In a world of fast fashion and fleeting trends, her garments stand apart as objects of intention, made slowly and worn deliberately. They carry the quiet power of heritage, the elegance of restraint, and the strength of duality, reflecting the lives of women who move between softness and structure, past and present. Her future ambitions lie in her preparation for her official launch this September, Maktabi is not simply building a brand – she’s preserving a tradition of care, of craft, and of dressing as a form of ceremony. In each piece, there’s a reverence – for fabric, for time, and for the women who wear them.