Sarah Guirguis Luxury and sustainability are two words we don’t often find in the same sentence. Not your typical high-end lifestyle brand, Reform has exquisitely managed to combine both of those qualities in a range of eco friendly fashion accessories and furniture & home accessories, while completely upping the bar for business ethical responsibility in Egypt. We talked to the founders, Hend Riad and Mariam Hazem, about how they pull it off and the story behind this brand.
How did your dream to create a sustainable lifestyle brand begin?
During our final semester in college, and directly after the 2011 revolution in Egypt, we were super excited to be part of the great change around us, eager to make a stand and make a difference. The feeling of responsibility towards serving our society and environment gave us the motivation to solve some of the major problems in Egypt through inventing “Plastex”. After graduation, we focused on design research and development, and we founded Reform Studio in 2012. This year, we won a design award in Egypt followed by another prestigious award in Milan with a participation in Salone Internazionale Del Mobile exhibition, which gave us some self-assurance that this is what the world needs now.
Explain to us your motto – We Design For A Cause.
We believe that design can solve stubborn problems. As designers, we thrive on sustainable and social issues. So we always try to design for a cause, like designing for a social and environmental impact. We are all about designing eco friendly products while empowering local communities, especially underprivileged women with limited resources and education.
What type of measures do you take to make your design process as sustainable and ethical as possible?
We design with sustainable values – considering durability, materials with good quality and the goal of producing a life-long product that doesn’t go out of fashion and of course doesn’t harm the environment or the workers who make them. We do that because we want to promote sustainable luxury and ethical fashion. We believe they are the refined terms for the word ‘luxury’ that we used to know. Such developed terms are made to incorporate the people, the environment and the planet in our mindset.
Have you faced any challenges because of that?
We are always struggling to find sustainable local materials, in addition to the challenges that come with producing high-end sustainable quality through local workshops.
You can shop at their Sahel Showroom in Lakeyard, Hacienda Bay or order worldwide through their website reformstudio.net
