AMER’s ‘Bittersweet’ Captures the Emotional Landscape of Lebanon Today

To understand AMER’s latest collection, you first have to understand where it was created. Designed in Lebanon during a period marked by war, displacement and uncertainty, Bittersweet is deeply rooted in the emotional realities of everyday life.

The Fall/Winter 2026/27 collection reflects a country living between grief and hope, exhaustion and resilience, asking what it means to continue creating, dreaming and preserving identity when everything around you feels fragile.

Created by Lebanese designer Ahmed Amer, the collection explores bitterness as an honest reflection of lived experience. Fear, loss, anger and emotional weight are all present throughout the work. Yet sweetness remains there too, appearing in quieter ways through memory, connection, beauty and the determination to keep moving forward. As the designer describes it, the collection exists in the space between voice and echo, mourning and hope, erasure and remembrance.

Rather than offering escapism, Bittersweet feels like a reflection of contemporary Lebanon itself.

The collection draws from the visual language of daily life. Cigarette smoke lingering outside cafés, the ritual of coffee, olives shared around a table, rusted architecture, dark nights, shadows, tattoos and dreams all become references woven into the garments. The colour palette mirrors that emotional landscape, moving through earthy tones, deep reds, ash-like hues and shades inspired by Beirut’s streets and skies.

At the centre of the collection are poppy flowers, a symbol that carries particular significance throughout the work. Blooming across the landscapes of South Lebanon, they represent remembrance, fragility, healing and the persistence of beauty despite loss.

The motif extends beyond the clothes themselves into the accompanying imagery, developed in collaboration with Lebanese photographer and visual artist Nasri Sayegh. Together, the two creatives built a poetic visual narrative around the collection, allowing the flowers to take on multiple emotional meanings.

“Through these images, Nasri expressed his own position and emotions, playing around with poppy flowers as symbols of loss, anger, love, bitterness and sweetness,” Amer explains.

Their collaboration is rooted in a shared history that predates the collection itself. The pair first met during the Beirut revolution in 2019, a moment that shaped an entire generation of Lebanese artists, designers and photographers.

“Looking back now, I feel it was the beginning of a beautiful connection and understanding between us,” says Amer.

That mutual understanding is visible throughout the campaign. The images feel intimate and deeply personal, capturing the emotional tension that runs through the collection while leaving room for interpretation. Rather than illustrating the garments, they expand the story behind them.

Craftsmanship also plays a central role in Bittersweet. Levantine straight-stitch embroidery, patchwork and colour blocking are used throughout the collection as tools for storytelling. Layering becomes a metaphor for preservation and reconstruction, reflecting the fragmented realities that inspired the work while celebrating regional techniques that continue to be passed down through generations.

The collection itself unfolds in two chapters.

The first was developed before the war intensified, shaped by a quieter form of bitterness that had already become embedded within daily life. It speaks to emotional numbness, unanswered questions and the routines people create to navigate uncertainty. The second chapter emerged after the escalation of conflict, when displacement, loss and collective grief transformed the emotional framework of the collection entirely. What began as a personal reflection evolved into something much broader, carrying the weight of shared experience and collective memory.

What makes Bittersweet resonate is its refusal to simplify those emotions.

The collection acknowledges contradiction as part of everyday life. It understands that grief and hope often coexist. That resilience can exist alongside exhaustion. That preserving culture and identity sometimes begins with something as simple as continuing to create.

In a fashion landscape increasingly driven by speed and spectacle, Bittersweet feels refreshingly sincere. It documents a moment, a place and an emotional reality with honesty, creating space for reflection rather than distraction.

For AMER, fashion becomes more than clothing. It becomes a way of remembering, preserving and bearing witness.

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