Lara Dizeyee's Kurdish couture

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kurdish designer Lara Dizeyee is preparing a couture collection for Milan Fashion Week. Dizeyee fled Iraqi Kurdistan as a child, grew up in the US, and later returned to Erbil. Her designs draw on traditional Kurdish dress - layered garments, capes, and ornate headpieces - reimagined as bold evening wear. Her work is celebrated in Kurdistan, across the diaspora, and in the Arabian Gulf. Yet despite her growing profile, she lacked the funds to stage a show on the scale Milan demands. Arts journalist Melissa Gronlund follows her as she secures backing and races against time to source fabrics, sketch and sew designs, and collaborate with Kurdish artisans on jewellery and bespoke accessories. More than 30 outfits are completed and packed into suitcases carried by her extended family. On the big day, Dizeyee fits each model and navigates last-minute crises - models too short, earrings that won’t fit, designs that misfire. But as the models walk out in her reimagined Kurdish looks, the emotion in the room is unmistakable. And in that final moment, as the Kurdish flag is symbolically recreated on the runway, Dizeyee presents her culture to the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:13.0	I'm Melissa Grunland, an arts journalist specializing in the Middle East.
0:17.4	And one woman who has become a star in recent years is Laura de Zayi,
0:22.9	a Kurdish fashion designer based in Urbeil. Her work's bold, dramatic, colorful designs drawn
0:30.0	from Kurdish traditions that give voice to stories often left off the runway. This year,
0:37.3	she's embarking on her most ambitious journey yet.
0:40.3	She has been invited to show at Milan Fashion Week in Italy in September. It's January now,
0:46.5	and Laura has less than nine months to attract sponsors, set her creative vision, recruit and inspire
0:54.0	models, and realize her goal.
0:57.2	This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, following Lara de Zagie as she brings her Kurdish couture to Milan.
1:10.4	Music Laura de Zayi is in her early 40s, based in Urbeil, the capital of the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.
1:22.8	From here, she designs dramatic, culturally rooted couture, and shines a light on Kurdish craftsmanship, history, and identity.
1:31.5	Lara exudes determination. She has long, perfectly blow-dried hair, dresses in professional shades of gray,
1:39.0	and is the controlled center of whatever storm is brewing in her herbal atelier.
1:46.7	She is a woman who doesn't give up easily.
1:54.1	Lara grew up in northern Iraq in a Kurdish family whose story was shaped by displacement,
2:03.6	resilience, and deep cultural pride. As a child, she and her family escaped conflict, crossing the mountains on horseback. My parents were really freaked out. They were worried that if we're going to actually make it
2:08.0	there and make it alive. But when you're so young and you each have your own horse and you're
2:13.7	in the mountains in the middle of nowhere and you have smugglers guiding you, taking you.
2:17.7	Like for us, it was an adventure.
2:20.0	Now looking back, I'm like, wow, okay, this was actually a dangerous thing that my family did,
2:25.8	but they had to because they wanted a better future for us.
	...

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