INSPIRING DESIGNS

DESIGNER SARAH ANSARI’S RUNWAY SHOW CARRIED A MESSAGE OF POSITIVITY AND DIVERSITY FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE US

Two years after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Sarah Ansari launched Artizara, a San Diego-based modest Muslim fashion line designed to showcase the positivity and diversity of Muslim immigrants like herself who have made America their home.

Recently, the Pakistan-born designer passed her message on through a new generation of immigrant girls who arrived in San Diego from refugee camps in Africa, Asia and the Middle East over the

past six years.

In a fashion show for about 150 guests at Ansari’s oceanfront home in Leucadia, the outdoor catwalk was shared by 11 professional models sporting Artizara’s spring 2019 fashion line and 10 local immigrant girls wearing the colourful cultural costumes of their home countries.

Kicking off the show with a brief speech was 18-year-old Habon Hassan, whose Somali family spent six years in a Kenyan refugee camp before arriving in San Diego in 2014. Now a senior at Crawford High School, she will start college next fall with the goal of becoming an obstetrician-gynaecologist (OB-GYN).

Hassan said that in 2018, just 1,200 international refugees arrived in San Diego, a city with a population of more than 1.4 million. As a result, most San Diegans may never encounter a new refugee so Hassan said locals don’t have a “reference point” for relating to the newcomers.

“Refugees are coming from all over the world,” she said. “They wear different clothes, they come from different backgrounds and they eat different foods … but all of them have the same goal — to contribute to society.”

Hassan is one of 19 young women enrolled in the International Rescue Committee’s Refugee Girls Academy in San Diego, which was the beneiciary of all ticket sales. Founded three years ago in City Heights, it’s an after-school program that provides empowerment, social, emotional, inancial and career training to recently arrived refugee girls.

Most of the academy