Sarah Hermez

Sarah Hermez is the founder and director of Creative Space Beirut (CSB), a free, independent fashion school that provides design education to creative talent from marginalised backgrounds across the MENA region.

Hermez spent 15 years developing CSB as an alternative model for fashion education, one rooted in accessibility, creativity, critical thinking and community. The school offers a three-year curriculum, while covering all costs for tuition, materials and studio space and providing transportation stipends.

Students have gone on to launch their own brands, work across the fashion industry and receive international recognition. Notably, graduate Amir Al Kasm, a Syrian refugee who entered the school at age 16, won the Fashion Trust Arabia evening-wear Prize in 2023. He secured an agreement to sell his collection at Harrods, before returning to the school as an instructor in 2024. Meanwhile, alumnus Roni Helou won the inaugural Fashion Trust Arabia Prize for ready-to-wear in 2019 and débuted his collection at London Fashion Week.

In 2025, CSB received the Arab Bank Switzerland Impact Prize at the Institut du Monde Arabe Design Prize in Paris. Today Hermez's work stretches into fashion education strategy and curriculum development, working with institutions to develop new approaches to design education.

Hermez earned a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Media and Cultural Studies from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School in 2010. She co-founded Creative Space Beirut alongside her former Parsons professor and mentor Caroline Shlala-Simonelli in 2011.