From Khartoum to Cairo: The Unwavering Resilience of Fashion Revolution Sudan
HADEEL OSMAN
When war forces you to pause, returning with purpose becomes an act of resistance in itself. Fashion Revolution Sudan knows this well. Since its founding in 2020, the organisation has championed sustainability, cultural identity, and community within the fashion space, but the outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023 demanded a necessary step back. Now, with renewed energy and an expanded cross-border presence, Fashion Revolution Sudan is back, and this year's Fashion Revolution Week theme of "Collective Action" could not be more fitting.
Operating primarily from Cairo, with a growing footprint in Nairobi, the team has spent this landmark year rebuilding momentum through collaboration by partnering with organisations across Egypt, Ethiopia, and beyond to spark meaningful conversations about heritage, slow fashion, and what it means to create with conscience in the midst of displacement. From curated fashion exhibitions and film screenings to community mending circles and creative gatherings over freshly brewed jabana, Fashion Revolution Sudan's 2026 programme is a testament to the power of community refusing to be silenced. Hadeel Osman, founder of Fashion Revolution Sudan looks back at this year’s actions.
This year’s theme for Fashion Revolution Week was “Collective Action”, and it fits so well with all the collaborations and partnerships we took part in, to make it a successful year as Fashion Revolution Sudan. It also centers community, which is something we are very passionate about cultivating, protecting and impacting.
Fashion Revolution Sudan has been around since 2020, and this year is very pivotal for us to return to working alongside the community, in sharing awareness and education, while also actively engaging across other countries.
We have taken a break, due to the impact of the war on us as team members, but also in addressing the priorities in life. With most activities taking place in Cairo and Nairobi as a close second, we are hoping to continue this collective work across borders.
Regional Fashion Forum
We established a strategic partnership with Sudan Fashion Future, a platform dedicated to supporting the growth of a resilient and sustainable creative economy for Sudanese and regional fashion, for the Cairo edition of the forum, which is so far the only physical event, as the other editions in Doha and Riyadh launched online due to the war in the region.
This allowed us, Fashion Revolution Sudan, to formulate an engaging event around the theme of “Cultural Heritage & Identity”, which is very fitting, seeing that Egypt has the largest population of displaced Sudanese people, ever since the war started in April 15, 2023.
Our event took place on Thursday 23rd April, the second day of Fashion Revolution Week 2026, at the Goethe-Institut Kairo, via the Makanak program by Goethe-Institut Sudan, which is basically a program that allows Sudanese initiatives to host their public events in an accessible and fully-equipped space.
We put together a fashion exhibition, that included looks from five different Sudanese fashion designers based in Cairo. This was an attempt to show the public the available diverse talents by designers working on small collections to sustainability and identity in mind. We also wanted the knowledge exchange to be central to the forum and invited expert speakers from the Egyptian and Sudanese sustainable fashion industries, as well as a Sudanese social anthropologist to explain the diverse heritage in Sudan, how that impacted fashion and what designers need to do now to maintain their voice, while highlighting the folklore that is being damaged and stolen due to the war.
Finally, for visual stimulation, we curated a film screening program, that included six short Sudanese films, falling between the genres of fashion, documentary and experimental. Each film had a different visual aesthetic, but the main theme was the fashion, dressing, accessories and adornments. It allowed our audience to see diversity and to understand that identity varies, even in one area or one household, and how we need to celebrate these differences, because they collectively represent us.
Mend & Swap
Partnering with Fashion Revolution Egypt and Livable Earth, we came up with the Mend & Swap event, which took place on Public Mending Day, 25th April. This was a purely community-driven event, to bring together people in Cairo to take part in free and paid activities. The free activities included a mending circle with volunteer mending instructors to help the participants fix and renew their items; a swap corner with prompts to write about the garment they are swapping and why, as well as a donation box from the Egyptian Clothing Bank for items that did not pass the inspection space and for any left over items that were not swapped, and a material literacy and care panel discussion. The paid activity was a master mending workshop that included more advanced embroidery techniques with an expert mender.
Public Mending Day Egypt:
Partnering with Fashion Revolution Egypt, we co-organised free public mending circles across five different governates in Egypt, and it was a beautiful way to involve the community and volunteer instructors, in open third spaces, such as gardens and parks, as they mend their garments together.
Fashion & Jabana:
We developed a new concept in partnership with Anbessa, which is an Ethiopian Cafe & Restaurant, that brings together fashion creatives and enthusiasts from the horn of Africa community in Cairo, because they seldom have spaces where they can meet, exist and uplift each other. The event included two activities; a show and tell that allowed the creatives to sip on freshly brewed jabana, as we always do, and talk about themselves, the item that they created and their creative process, in a neutral and open space. Afterwards, we had the fashion stories activity which was conducted by our partner Tram Alwan, an Egyptian initiative that aims to turn waste into art. We used fabric scraps to come up with a slow stitch fashion collage piece, each person made their own little piece, as they saw fit and then we put them together into the finished collage.
OVER TO YOU
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Support Sudanese people in Egypt and around the world through the below initiatives:
Madaniya, Gmas Community Kitchen & SLN are fundraising to support Sudanese refugees in Egypt through Al Tafa’ul, a female-led charity.
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Our vision is of a civilian led Sudan - Sudan back to the people!
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Our vision is to empowerment the Sudanese community in the United Kingdom and in Sudan.
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UK network that supports displaced Sudanese, raising funds and ensuring access to legal support.
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