In Conversation with Reema Al Banna: On Childhood Memories, Palestine and Reemami’s Latest Collection

For As I Remember It, Palestinian designer Reema Al Banna revisits her grandmother's garden in Gaza, childhood photographs and the visual language of Palestinian embroidery. In conversation with JDEED, she reflects on memory, belonging and the personal stories behind her most ambitious collection yet.

A rose from her grandmother's garden in Gaza, a photograph of herself holding a toothbrush for her father's dental clinic, and a collection of Barbies with messy hair and painted faces. These are some of the objects Palestinian designer Reema Al Banna would place inside her own memory box. They also offer a rather accurate introduction to As I Remember It, the latest collection from her label, Reemami.

Developed over a year and a half, the 65-look collection is the designer's most extensive to date. Divided into five chapters, it draws on childhood memories, Palestinian heritage, Bedouin dress, family photographs and the peculiar things we become attached to growing up. The result is unmistakably Reemami: colourful, occasionally eccentric, technically elaborate and full of illustrations that reward a closer look.

For Al Banna, the starting point was deeply personal. "With 'As I Remember It', I wanted to dig a little deeper into my own archive of memories, particularly my childhood visits to Palestine," she tells JDEED.

Those memories take her back to her grandmother's home in Gaza, where the garden, grapevines and everyday family rituals have remained particularly vivid.

"I thought about my Teta's house in Gaza, the flowers in her garden, the grapevines in the backyard, our walks to the beach, and the little boza shop next door," she recalls. "The seemingly insignificant details that, somehow, become the most significant parts of your childhood."

These references appear throughout The Memory Box, the collection's opening chapter, in the form of illustrated prints, scattered flowers, unexpected colour combinations and playful silhouettes. Palestinian trees and folkloric symbols are arranged into scarf-like compositions, while familiar garments are reconstructed through exaggerated proportions, cut-outs, pleats and unusual fabric pairings.

One cardigan features oversized three-dimensional red anemones, inspired by the flowers that grow across Palestine. Elsewhere, sheer organza is covered in delicate wildflowers, corduroy meets denim, and a skirt made from striped deadstock jersey twists into irregular layers.

Al Banna's fascination with Palestinian tatreez is equally important to the collection, although her approach deliberately avoids reproducing traditional embroidery.

"Tatreez was something I was initially hesitant to explore because I wanted to find a way to make it my own without losing sight of what makes it so meaningful," she explains.

Growing up Palestinian, she was fascinated by the stories contained within embroidery patterns, from symbols associated with particular occasions to motifs identifying different cities and villages. Rather than treating these designs as decorative references, she began experimenting with their geometry, transforming cross-stitch patterns into watercolour illustrations, vector graphics and prints.

"I would stretch a symbol, take it apart, change its scale or combine it with other elements until it became something unexpected, while still carrying traces of where it came from."

In one particularly unexpected interpretation, the geometry of tatreez develops into a zebra-inspired print. Other traditional references undergo similarly unconventional transformations. The rope of the agal, traditionally worn as part of Arab men's headdress, becomes a structural element within trousers and dresses, while checks associated with Bedouin clothing are reworked into new graphic compositions.

The experimentation extends to the collection's construction. Pleats are inverted, piping is exaggerated, and familiar silhouettes are manipulated into unexpected volumes. Al Banna describes her process as largely instinctive, beginning with illustrations and textile prints developed in-house before exploring how they might influence the garments themselves.

"I have a direction in mind, but I'm always open to where an idea might lead me as I develop it," she says. "Sometimes the most interesting details emerge through experimentation, and they can end up shaping the final piece in ways I hadn't anticipated."

The collection's second chapter, Through the Blinds, takes this experimentation further. Inspired by fragmented light and shadow, it introduces diagonal stripes, pinwheel constructions and graphic bursts of colour. One shirt uses triangular panels of contrasting pinstripe fabrics to create a radiating pattern, while other pieces incorporate enlarged embroidery motifs and increasingly complex construction techniques.

Among the more unusual references is a series of photographs from her father's dental clinic in the 1990s. As a child, Al Banna appeared in the clinic's catalogue wearing a pink tank top and holding a toothbrush. Decades later, the photographs have found their way into her designs, transformed into illustrations and prints.

It's an amusing detail, but also an indication of how freely Al Banna approaches her source material. A childhood photograph can become a textile print, a swimming costume can inspire a silhouette, and an old family ritual can influence an entire collection.

Yet returning to these memories is not without its difficulties.

"Memory has become more complicated for me over the years," she admits. "There is comfort in remembering the places, people and moments that shaped you, but when some of those memories belong to a place that has experienced so much pain, nostalgia can carry a very different weight."

With immediate family still in Palestine, Al Banna describes the difficulty of remembering the happiness of her childhood while witnessing the devastation taking place in the present. Growing up in the UAE has also shaped her relationship with belonging, leaving her navigating the distance between the places she remembers and the realities she now observes from afar.

For her, preserving those memories has become increasingly important, particularly when so much of the international conversation surrounding Palestine is dominated by destruction and loss.

"Palestine is not only a story of loss; it is also a story of life, beauty, humour, family and the very human desire to live fully," she says.

That perspective is evident in the collection's humour and irreverence. Its bright colours, exaggerated flowers, playful illustrations and unexpected references insist on making space for the ordinary pleasures of childhood.

Asked what she would keep inside her own memory box, Al Banna returns to the objects that shaped her earliest years. A rose from her grandmother's garden would represent the love and pride her family invested in their home. Her father's dental clinic brochure would recall the special relationship they shared, particularly as the only girl after four boys. Then there are the Barbies, which bring back memories of weekly trips to the toy shop with her mother, followed by manoushe from Al Mallah, eaten together in the car.

She would also make room for her childhood swimming costume, remembering how much she loved spending time in the pool. Its stretch, flexibility and freedom eventually informed several of the collection's designs.

These details may seem unrelated to fashion, but they reveal much about Al Banna's creative process. She is interested in the objects and experiences that remain with us, sometimes for reasons we cannot fully explain, and the ways they continue to influence our imagination long after childhood.

With three more chapters still to be revealed, As I Remember It will continue to develop through increasingly intricate techniques and constructions, moving towards what the designer describes as a semi-couture sensibility. For Al Banna, however, the collection's significance remains closely connected to the people and places that inspired it. Through clothing, she has found another way to revisit them, to preserve their details and to make something new from what she remembers.

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