Emergency Room

Eric Mathieu Ritter founded Emergency Room in Beirut in 2018, and the premise has not shifted: every garment is built from locally sourced vintage cloth and deadstock, cut and stitched by tailors in Beirut and Tripoli, and made one of a kind by necessity rather than marketing. The result is gender-fluid and conceptually serious, carpets turned into kimonos and hoodies, patchwork tailoring, fringed and bejewelled caps. The Fashion Trust Arabia Franca Sozzani Award followed, but the upcycling here predates the recognition and the crisis it responded to. What earns Emergency Room a place is that the sustainability is structural, not a claim, and the clothes still hold up as clothes.