Why the Shirt?

The shirt is one of the most universal garments, yet it carries deeply local histories. Across the Eastern Mediterranean, it has been shaped by climate, agriculture, trade, labor, and ritual. Its seams reveal systems of production; its fibres trace landscapes and industries; its forms reflect generations of adaptation and exchange.

Qamīs begins with the shirt not as an object of fashion, but as a material system. Before it is cut or assembled, it exists as fibre, thread, textile, and knowledge; each stage sustained by people, places, and practices that are increasingly at risk of disappearing.

To study the shirt is to study the relationships that make it possible.